The Problem of Evil, Part 3

I took a creative writing class one time in grad school. Each week, the professor gave us a one-word prompt and we would write a short piece. We could write about anything we wanted, as long as it had something to do with that word. One week, the word was “web.” I started thinking about that word and it occurred to me that the circumstances of our lives resemble webs. Really big webs. Every little thing connects to every other, every decision, every conversation, every seeming coincidence. Even the bad things—the tragedies, heartbreaks, and even our worst failures. Somehow God weaves all of this together into His master plan. That’s what I want to wrestle with here. 

I have previously attempted to show that evil and suffering cannot be used to prove that the Christian worldview is logically incoherent. I have also proposed that the joy and wonder that our free will makes possible (particularly when fully realized in the eternal state) is a very likely reason why God decided that a universe with evil was worth it. Even so, the consideration of evil and suffering—especially the evil and suffering in our own experience—is still fraught with tension. Thinking about God as the sovereign “master Weaver” in relation to the evils of our world helps release some of that tension.

I have argued elsewhere that God knows every possible combination of states of affairs, including how free creatures could, and even would, act and react in every situation. Or, to put it a bit differently, God knows how things could and would go down in any and every imaginable permutation of the world. Armed with this knowledge, He has selected, or actualized, one that is optimal.

If you think about it, this could have huge implications for the problem of evil. God might have minimized, or mitigated, the amount of evil that His free creatures would have to suffer by selecting the world that He did. He also might have been able to repurpose as much of that evil as possible for good. This is similar to Leibniz’s idea that our world is the “best of all possible worlds.” In the face of our world’s great evils (especially the really horrendous ones) a claim such as this could seem ludicrous and even depressing, but I think these kinds of ideas are worth considering. Let me give you a hypothetical example to illustrate the sort of thing I’m thinking about.

Say you come down with a bad cold on Monday. On Tuesday, your good friend Jessica drops by your apartment with a care package with cookies, lemon-flavored lozenges, and of course, chicken soup. Unfortunately, Jessica isn’t careful about washing her hands afterwards, and a couple days later she comes down with the virus. On Friday, she goes to the doctor, who sends her to Walgreens to get some medicine.

Also on Friday, Christopher the pharmacy technician, who normally works Monday through Thursday, gets called into work due to an abnormally large influx of sick patients coming down with this virus, thereby sacrificing the day of lounging by the pool he had planned. Jessica and Christopher, both single, hit it off when Jessica gets to the front of the line.

Several months and pharmacy visits later, Jessica and Christopher exchange phone numbers and go out. Eventually, they marry and start a family. One hundred twenty years later, their great, great, great granddaughter discovers the cure for cancer. All of this happened because you came down with that nasty cold.

Okay maybe that seems a little far-fetched, but think about it. If God has knowledge of all contingencies, who’s to say He hasn’t arranged things thus that cause/effect chains like the one I just described aren’t in the works every single day? A child from the slums of a neighboring city is delivered from poverty because you stubbed your toe. A family of Bedouin nomads in Yemen comes to know Jesus because that relationship didn’t work out. It’s kind of like the movie Back to the Future, but a billion times more complicated. Most of the time, we can’t say for sure whether or not these sorts of things happen, but God’s foreknowledge and sovereignty totally makes it possible.

It’s also worth noting that suffering can serve redemptive purposes at a much more personal level. We all know this. No pain, no gain. If I don’t catch a cold every once in a while, my immune system will grow weak. If I don’t exercise, I will not be healthy. But these sufferings are light and hardly worth the designation. Real suffering can be redemptive too. Someone who has once endured the legal and emotional difficulties of a divorce is in a much better position to comfort others fighting similar battles. A leader who has tasted the bitter consequences of a moral failure will be less quick to compromise in the future. And wasn’t it Thomas Edison who spoke so winsomely about the value of getting something wrong over and over again before finally getting it right (in his case, discovering ten-thousand ways not to make a lightbulb)?

Redemptive suffering is especially pertinent to Christians because we know that our trials are oftentimes directed by the hand of God (Heb. 12:5-11). Suffering also takes us to new depths in our experience and understanding of God’s grace, and the peace which surpasses understanding (Phil. 4:7).

All that said, here me when I say this: Suffering is not inherently good. Death is not good. Divorce is not good. Sin is not good. These things are aberrations, and it would have been better if the need for the kinds of silver linings I’ve been mentioning didn’t exist in the first place. But as long as clouds crowd our skies, wouldn’t you rather the silver linings be there? I would. 

So how do all these things help us? Well, they help us to trust in God by giving us a glimpse into how He might operate in His sovereignty with respect to the troubles of the world. They give us confidence that our specific sufferings might have redemptive purposes, even if we can’t see what those are. They give us reason to have faith, that God-honoring and often difficult “assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). Faith that our Heavenly Father is never surprised at the things that happen to us. Faith that at the end of the day—every day—He has every circumstance under His control. Faith that in the life to come, God will show us the web that connects all the failures and tragedies of our lives—the whole sprawling, awful, beautiful web—and over and over again we will be able to say, “I understand now.”

This may not be the best of all possible worlds. But it is the best way to the best of all possible worlds.

The Problem of Evil, Part 2

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude nine earthquake struck in the waters 231 miles northeast of Tokyo, Japan, creating a tsunami that spawned 30-foot waves. The quake was the largest in recorded history ever to hit Japan, and together with the tsunami, took the lives of over 20,000 people. Popular atheist Sam Harris later remarked, “Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn't care to, or he doesn’t exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.”

Harris says that tragedy and an all-good, all-powerful God cannot exist in the same world. You can have one, but not the other. No doubt, the 2011 Japan earthquake was an immense tragedy, and it’s important that we say so. But are such tragedies proof that God doesn’t exist (or alternatively that He is evil, or less-than-all-powerful)? I don’t think so. Elsewhere, I talked about how God might have allowed evil in order to preserve the joy and wonder made possible by our being free creatures. I want to expand on that here, and show how evil actually cannot be used as an automatic defeater for the Christian worldview. 

One of the most interesting recent responses to the problem of evil is Alvin Plantinga’s “free will defense.” The basic idea is this: It’s possible that God could not have created a world in which some optimal number of people maximally experience the joy and wonder of being truly free (let’s call such a world an “optimal world”) without there also being evil. How might this work? First, let me state up front that I’m assuming a couple things. First, I assume that humans have genuine free will. A million factors might influence any given decision, but those factors do not coerce the person into choosing one way or another. Second, I assume that humanity’s free will choice to sin ultimately brings about all evil (including seemingly-arbitrary suffering). 

Okay, with that out of the way, let me articulate how it might be possible that God couldn’t have created an optimal world without allowing evil. Before the creation of our world, the actual world, some astronomically large number of possible worlds existed in the mind of God. Now, it is possible (it’s not self-contradictory or otherwise logically absurd to say) that there was at least one person who would have sinned (and thereby incurred the Genesis 3 curse) in every single one of these worlds (if you like fancy words, Plantinga calls this idea “transworld depravity”). Let me illustrate. Suppose there is some guy who would eventually be born in every possible world named Rumpelstiltskin (I tried to pick an uncommon name, so if you’re reading this and you happen to be named Rumpelstiltskin, I’m terribly sorry). In each and every single one of these worlds, Rumpelstiltskin sins. In some of these worlds, he’s an absolute monster. In others, he’s just a felon. In some, he’s really not that bad of a guy, but he tells a small lie every once in a while. But in every one, he sins and brings about the curse. 

If you don’t buy the idea that any single person could exist in every possible world, that’s fine. We could just as easily say this: It’s possible (it’s not self-contradictory or otherwise logically absurd to say) that there is at least one person in any of the possible worlds who would sin. Even in a world with just two people, there’s a 50-50 chance (from our perspective) that someone would sin. I don’t think two people, even if they both choose against sin, is enough to make up an optimal world. Which is better, two people rejoicing in heaven for eternity, or 20 billion? This actually brings up a great point. We don’t even have to say that Rumpelstiltskin, or some sinner, might exist in all possible worlds. We only have to say that such a person might exist in all optimal worlds. That is a logically possible statement. That is, it’s possible that in all the worlds where an optimal number of people maximally experience the joy and wonder of being truly free, there is at least one person who sins.

The bottom line is that in any of the worlds God would have considered actualizing, it’s at least possible that somebody sins. I happen to think that it’s even probable, given a sufficient number of people in a world. And because of that, it’s possible that God had to allow evil and all its consequences.

Question: Does all of this compromise divine omnipotence? If God is all-powerful, then isn’t it within His power to create a world with free creatures in which none of them choose to reject Him? Well, this might very well be impossible, assuming that God really does just leave some things up to us. If God forced creatures to accept Him who otherwise would have rejected Him, then they are no longer free. To say that God forces free creatures to accept Him is illogical (because free creatures by definition cannot be forced), and God’s omnipotence acts in accordance with logic, because logic finds its source in the very nature of God. So my definition of omnipotence is a little more nuanced than simply saying, “God can do anything.” And that’s okay. 

Harris thinks that such free-will defenses are cases of heaping “bad philosophy onto bad ethics.” Quite frankly, he’s wrong. As I’ve hopefully demonstrated, the existence of evil does not automatically defeat the Christian worldview because it is at least possible that God had to allow evil in order to bring about an optimal world. None of this compromises divine omnipotence. That doesn’t mean a person cannot marshal evil as evidence against the Christian worldview. People do that all the time. Obviously, there’s still tension (and I want to talk about that some here). What all of this does mean, however, is that evil cannot be given as conclusive proof that the Christian worldview is untrue.

The Problem of Evil, Part 1

“Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”

— David Hume

Let me restate this in more contemporary language. Wouldn’t an all-good God require Himself to eliminate evil as far as possible? And couldn’t an all-powerful God make it happen? Then why is our world so full of evil?

No one is immune from feeling the need to ask these kinds of questions sometimes. I’ve suffered. I bet you have too. To be fair, I’ve brought on a fair amount of my own suffering by acting stupidly, but I can’t say that about every painful experience I’ve ever had. 

And I think for most of us, suffering is what this question is really about. We don’t question God’s goodness or sovereignty when life is a pleasant stroll through the woods. We question God’s goodness or sovereignty when our hearts break and our dreams die, or when we fall victim to someone else’s depravity. When someone you love decides to not love you anymore. When the doctor walks in with a cancer diagnosis.

In this reflection, I want to spend a little time addressing why I think the classic Christian response to the “why evil?” question—that is, the problem of evil is rooted in God’s preservation of our free will—is probably the right one. I'll expand on this idea in a subsequent reflection.

A quick note to suffering people from a fellow sufferer: I think it’s true that when you’re suffering badly, philosophical reflection on the problem of evil may seem hollow, or maybe even offensive. It’s always been sort of the opposite for me. If you are suffering badly, then maybe these thoughts will resonate with you and bless you, but maybe they won’t. I hope they do. If you’re in the valley right now, know that whatever your circumstances, someone has almost certainly tread there before. Maybe even I have! At any rate, you don’t have to walk through it alone. And as the old saying goes, “this too shall pass.”

Now, back to my argument: I’ve noted that the preservation of our free will is the classic reason Christians give for why God allows evil to persist. I will assume here that every kind of evil exists as a result of the curse described in Genesis 3, which fell upon humanity for their rebellion, and upon the earthly domain God had given them to rule over. Accordingly, this includes both human-caused evils (moral evils like murder and adultery; also evils caused by human-imperfection, such as a poorly-designed building collapsing in on the innocent people inside), and non-human-caused evils (also called “natural” evils, such as disease, or any destruction of human life or happiness caused by earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters). 

So, what is it about free will that makes it worth all the pain and suffering? The merit of the free will explanation hangs on the answer to this question. Allow me to draw upon C.S. Lewis’s keen insights here:

Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having…. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity [San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2001], p. 48) 

I think Lewis really nailed it here. I’m not a married guy (not yet, anyway), but if or when that changes, I want my wife to want to be with me, to choose me just as much as I choose her. And I’m willing to bet most people feel the same way about their relationships and marriages. I think we can all agree that the words “I love you” just don’t mean anything if spoken by force or compulsion. 

Here’s another example. I love to make up stories, and would love to write a novel someday. I make up stories because it’s fun and I want to. But it probably wouldn’t be as fun if I had no choice, if somebody forced me to do it. Something inside would me would cry out in rebellion against whoever was forcing me to write. 

As Lewis intimates—and this is important for our use of free will as an answer to the “why evil?” question—the truest and fullest benefits of our being free creatures are yet future. In the present life, we experience enough suffering to make us wonder whether or not it’s all worth it. But in the new creation, we’ll experience an “ecstasy” in our activities, and more importantly, in our relationships with God and others. This perpetual state of ecstasy will explode our present categories. This is something to look forward to.

David Hume mocks this delayed gratification idea in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and I’m sure many others have too. To be fair, if you reject the idea of an afterlife, this will be of little use or comfort to you. But allow me to push back. If you do believe in an afterlife, and particularly if you believe you will spend eternity with Christ in a restored creation, then this is huge. The Bible talks a lot about the hope of the Christ-follower, and I believe a lot of that hope finds its basis in the promise of a restored creation: 

“Look! God’s dwelling is with humanity, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will no longer exist; grief, crying, and pain will exist no longer, because the previous things have passed away” (Revelation 21:3b-4, HCSB).

The wonder and happiness that free will ultimately makes possible, particularly when it finds its fullest and most blissful realization in the restored creation, gives us the “greater good” that will make all the pain and suffering of this life worth it. For this reason, I am convinced that free will works as an answer to the “why evil?” question.