God and the Problem of Evil

One of the most common reasons that people do not believe in God is because of what is called "the problem of evil." Many people ask, "If God is good, why would he let people suffer like this? Why doesn’t he ever help anyone when they need it?" Many just give up and say, "There is too much evil and suffering in the world for God to exist." But is this so? The problem can be formulated logically through the following propositions:

1. God exists
2. God is all powerful
3. God is all knowing
4. God is all good
5. Evil exists

The logical problem is the idea that all of these statements cannot be true at the same time. Atheists deny premise 1 and say there is no God, so the existence of evil isn’t a big deal. Buddhists deny statement 5 and say evil is an illusion so there is no contradiction. Pantheists deny premises 2 and 3 and do not believe in a personal God that desires or can stop evil.

But as Catholics we believe that God exists, and that He is all wise, all powerful, and all good. Yet evil exists. Why doesn’t God just get rid of it? If He knows it is bad, and He can get rid of it, then why doesn’t He do it already? In order to understand God’s tolerance of evil we must take a closer look at evil itself, especially moral and natural evil.

Moral evil is the result of our fallen nature. Because of original sin, we bear a tarnished image of God. We are capable of acting just and merciful like God, but often times we act contrary to God’s will. Much of the suffering in the world is caused by sin (Isaiah 24:5-6). The abuse of our free will, to choose good or evil, is responsible for murder, rape, divorce, wrath, adultery, heartbreak and numerous other ailments of society.

This means that evil is not a part of God’s creation. This is important because since God is all good, he cannot be directly responsible for evil. God created all things, but evil is not a "thing." Instead, evil is a privation or a lack of good. It occurs when our actions do not conform to God’s will, and a lack of good is created in the process. Like how cold is merely a lack of heat or darkness is a lack of light. Heat and light are energies that can be measured and quantified, while cold and darkness cannot.

First, it must be noted that there is no such thing as a "good person." Paul writes that, "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 6:23)." While there are people who are morally better than others, this does not change the fact that we all sin and suffer from other people’s sins. Because people have free will and can choose to act in a good or evil manner, then their consequences will have positive and negative impacts for themselves and the rest of us.

Why couldn’t God create a triangle with four sides? Or a married bachelor so that young men aren't lonely? The reason is that God can’t. Now keep in mind, God is still omnipotent. He has infinite power to do anything, anything that is possible. God can perform any task, but some tasks are so contradictory that they do not even exist. For instance, God is Truth, so even though God is omnipotent he cannot lie (Titus 1:2). Asking God to do logically contradictory things would be like asking God if he could "gyre and gimble in the wabe (Alice in Wonderland)." That is about as meaningful as a married bachelor, or a human without freewill. Without freewill we would just be robots, and we could not truly love God or each other.

Some people still complain and say that there is too much evil in the world. That, yes, with freewill there will be some evil, but does it have to be this bad? A good question to ask is how much evil should there be? Frankly, it is impossible to draw the line. Is God just if only 5,000 people die in the tsunami instead of 50,000? Maybe in another universe 500,000 people died and God kept that from happening. The problem that arises is known as "the problem of the sliding scale."

Gossip                Robbery                Rape                Murder                Torture of children

Imagine a scale, the same scale we use to rank some sins as greater or worse than one another. Now ask God to take away the greatest of all evils, let us say the torture of children, now there is not too much evil. Right?

Gossip                Robbery                Rape                Murder                Torture of children

Wrong! People will not have any idea what torture is, but they will know what murder is, and to them, there will be too much evil in the world. God could take away murder too, and just for good measure rape and robbery. Now okay there is only a little evil right?

               (These sins no longer exist to compare to gossip and show how venial it is.)
Gossip                Robbery                Rape                Murder                Torture of children

Wrong, because in this new world people would still complain that gossip is too much evil. Why? Because they have nothing to compare it to say that it is not really a big deal.

"But what about disease, or natural disasters, like the tsunami disaster in Asia? Sin did not cause the tsunami, it must have been God, or at least He could have stopped it and not violated our free will."

Natural evils are sufferings that are caused by non-moral agents, like hurricanes or cancer. These things do not mean to cause evil, or have a choice in the matter. They are simply a part of nature. So why does God allow them to happen?

The first point to remember is that our souls are not divorced from our bodies; the two are intertwined into what is called the psychosomatic unity. Simply put, we do not have bodies, we are bodies! That means that just as sin corrupts our souls, it can also corrupt our bodies and, through original sin, it has. If our bodies were not mortal, then a tornado or tsunami might be an entertaining experience. And if human beings were perfectly altruistic then the loss of property would not matter as much either.

However, the Bible says that this world is not as it should be. In Romans 8:18-23, Paul writes that all of creation was affected by the fall of man. When God was told to shove off, He did. Man is called to have "dominion over nature" (Gen 1:28) so if man’s nature becomes corrupted, so will that over which he has dominion. With great power comes great responsibility.

Moreover, how would God remedy the natural world of evil, and keep it a place for humans to have free will? For example, gravity is a normal part of our lives, and many of our machines depend on the normal function of gravity. However, gravity is also the source of a natural evil when one falls off the empire state building. If God curtailed natural law to remedy natural evil, then we would live in one crazy, unpredictable world. When you stepped out your front door in the morning you would have no idea if next you would be walking to your car or would have no gravity and shoot upwards into the sky so as to avoid some natural evil like spraining your ankle in a gopher hole. And of course, God’s existence would not be a matter of faith anymore. Someone would wonder, "Geez, who keeps doing this stuff?"

The bottom line is that any argument from evil can be answered with the following premise:

These reasons are well attested to in Scripture. For example, suffering helps us grow closer to God and be a witness for him.

"It was good for me to be afflicted, in order to learn your laws,"
(Psalm 119:71).

"As he passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him," (John 9:1-3).

In addition, suffering can be used by God to achieve a greater good. The following story about Jacob’s son, Joseph, is an excellent testament to this. Earlier in Scripture, Jacob gave his son Joseph a beautiful coat of many colors. His brothers were extremely jealous and tried to kill Joseph, but they ended up selling him into slavery instead. Joseph was sent to Egypt and became an advisor and trusted confidant of the Pharaoh. During a famine Joseph had saved Egypt from, his brothers went to Egypt for food and dreaded seeing him again.

"Now that their father was dead, Joseph's brothers became fearful and thought, "Suppose Joseph has been nursing a grudge against us and now plans to pay us back in full for all the wrong we did him!" So they approached Joseph and said: "Before your father died, he gave us these instructions: 'You shall say to Joseph, Jacob begs you to forgive the criminal wrongdoing of your brothers, who treated you so cruelly.' Please, therefore, forgive the crime that we, the servants of your father's God, committed." When they spoke these words to him, Joseph broke into tears. Then his brothers proceeded to fling themselves down before him and said, "Let us be your slaves!" But Joseph replied to them: "Have no fear. Can I take the place of God? Even though you meant harm to me, God meant it for good, to achieve his present end, the survival of many people," (Genesis 50:15-20).

Finally, we have to trust that God has good reasons to allow evil to exist because He is God and His knowledge and wisdom infinitely exceed our own.

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts," (Isaiah 55:8-9).

A final thought to remember is that the problem of evil is a real problem. It is not some abstract problem people talk about in philosophy, it’s a problem that people cry and wail over. How has God solved the problem of evil? By becoming man, so that God could experience evil like us, evils like hunger, thirst, loneliness and pain, before defeating them on the cross. Many people find this "solution" trite. They say "I don’t want to hear about that stupid ‘Jesus paid for your sins on the cross’ stuff." The objection is not new. When Lazarus died Jesus met his sister Martha and he told her:

"’Your brother will rise.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus told her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world," (John 11:23-27).

Martha is saying yeah, I know I know my brother will rise, sigh, on that whole resurrection of the dead thing everyone talks about. Jesus seeks to reaffirm her by saying the resurrection everyone is talking about is Him! That has to be confidence right there.

Many people ask why God does not do anything. The answer is that he does do something, everyday. In order to not violate our free will we must freely choose to act like God in the face of evil so that He is there to help. The challenge for all of us is to not have a hopeless mentality when it comes to evil. Through Christ we find hope and meaning in suffering which makes us stronger. That allows us to help others who are suffering and have no hope.

"The LORD is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack. In green pastures you let me graze; to safe waters you lead me; you restore my strength. You guide me along the right path for the sake of your name. Even when I walk through a dark valley, I fear no harm for you are at my side; your rod and staff give me courage. You set a table before me as my enemies watch; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Only goodness and love will pursue me all the days of my life; I will dwell in the house of the LORD for years to come," (Psalm 23).

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Last updated on Tuesday, August 25, 2009

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