The problem of evil in the world is one of the most difficult—and most personal—questions that Christians have to face. Pain and suffering come into everyone’s life, and Christians are certainly not exempt. A closer look at the nature of the problem of evil, though, produces a surprising insight: the existence of evil is good evidence for the existence of God.
When asked the question about evil, the questioner is attempting to touch on God’s apparent complicity—or minimally His apathy—regarding evil in the world. The way it’s often phrased is as follows:
How can a God be all-powerful and all good if evil exists in the world? If God were good, then He would certainly want to prevent evil from occurring. If God were all-powerful, then He would certainly be capable of preventing evil from occurring. So, since evil does exist in the world, then God is either all-powerful, but not all good, or all good, but not all powerful, or perhaps neither. In any case, the God you worship does not exist.
This is an attack on the consistency of the Christian claims about God’s omnipotence and goodness, and it seems to be convincing. But, there is a fatal flaw in the proposed argument.
One aspect of the argument against God from the existence of
evil needs to be addressed, and that’s the nature of the thing in question: evil. What is it?
It seems that people can identify evil easily enough: the Nazi
holocaust, the
Evil seems to classify those acts that are contrary to that which is good as well as inactions when good acts were required. If that view of evil turns out to be accurate, then evil describes, as St. Augustine observed, a diminution or lacking of good, as opposed to a substantial thing in itself, in much the same way that a donut’s hole isn’t a substantial thing, but a description of where the dough isn’t. Evil, then, is wholly dependent upon good to exist.[1]
So, while both Christians and non-Christians have to deal with the problem of evil, the non-Christian must deal with the problem of good, as well, providing some answer for where good comes from.
In the Christian view, God not only determines good, but actually is the standard of good. That is, good doesn’t exist above God to determine His behavior, and it doesn’t exist below Him, as an arbitrary set of rules that He can suspend or modify at will. Good is determined solely on God’s perfect and unchanging character.
If God’s character determines good, and evil describes a lack of good, then evil describes actions or events that fall outside the character of God. Evil, then, is necessarily dependent upon God to exist. Instead of disproving God’s existence, evil actually demands it.
So, why does God allow things to happen that go against His moral will?
The most sensible line of reasoning that explains the existence of evil is actually described for us in God’s direct revelation to man: the Bible. In Genesis 3:17-19, as quoted here from the New American Standard Bible, God said to Adam,
Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it';
Cursed is the ground because of you;
In toil you will eat of it
All the days of your life.
Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
And you will eat the plants of the field;
By the sweat of your face
You will eat bread,
Till you return to the ground,
Because from it you were taken;
For you are dust,
And to dust you shall return.
God had allowed Adam and his wife to do whatever they wished within the garden. Nothing was off-limits to them except for one thing: the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Why did God allow them a choice that would separate them from Him and lead to the certainty of death?
We get a glimpse of the reason in what Jesus, the Son of God, said was the single greatest commandment of the Law.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. (Matthew 22:37, NASB)
God desires our love, but love cannot be compelled. It must be a free-will choice. God designed humans with the capability to exercise free choice so that humans would be capable of reciprocating God’s love for them. In the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He provided a single initial opportunity to exercise that choice to obey or reject His will, having warned them of the just penalty for disobedience. Their choice to eat the fruit wasn’t simple hunger, but active rebellion and pride in their desire to be like God. God, true to both His word and His holiness, honored their request by partially removing His active and sustaining influence from their universe, causing all the “natural evil” (earthquakes, floods, tornados, etc.) that we experience in nature. Human beings, though, bring on the vast majority of evil in the world as they openly reject God’s moral will.
God, then, seems to allow people free will, including the capability of rejecting His moral will and committing evil acts, so that some will use their free choices to respond to Him in love.
Koukl, Greg.
[1] An
interesting further observation from this definition of evil is that, while
evil cannot exist without good, the converse is not true; that is, good can exist without evil. One can “ruin” something good and make it
evil, but one cannot “ruin” an evil thing and make it good. This notion rejects the moral dualism found
in Eastern philosophies and religions which hold that good and evil are
codependent.