Answers to Sunday School Questions, Part 1

Last Summer, we took up questions from our Adult Sunday School Class at First Presbyterian Dyersburg, Tennessee.  I have adapted the answers I gave in articles in the church newsletter, and I wanted to share them here.  I hope you find the short essays helpful. 

 

If God is all-good and all-powerful, why is there evil?

Why would God allow ________ if he is real?

            These questions get at what many people have called the “problem of evil.”  The problem of evil is supposed to be the main philosophical objection to Christianity, but it’s not a philosophical problem at all.  But there are two types of the problem of evil, and each has a different approach and answer.  These are the philosophical problem of evil and the personal problem of evil, and you must ask questions to determine which one the person is dealing with.  We will look at them each in turn. 

If you ask a person, “What do you mean by that?”, and their answer involves David Hume or Immanuel Kant or Richard Dawkins or “I learned in my first semester philosophy class…”, then you are probably dealing with the philosophical problem of evil.  The philosophical problem of evil I have very little intellectual respect for because it has been satisfactorily answered many times over and in many ways. 

The philosophical problem goes like this: If God is all-good then He would not allow evil.   If God is all-powerful, He would be able to stop evil.  Since evil exists, God must be either not all-good so that he doesn’t want to stop evil or not all-powerful such that he cannot stop evil.  Since Christianity teaches that God is both all-good and all-powerful, then Christianity must be false. 

There are many problems with this argument.  First, the argument assumes that God does not have a good reason to allow evil.  If God truly has a good reason to allow evil, then the problem is solved.  Good will come out of evil somehow, and we don’t necessarily have to name the reason for there to be a reason.  John Calvin used to say that the reason God allows evil is to make His people more like Christ.  Jonathan Edwards and John H. Gerstner used to say that the reason is God must punish evil, and we are all evil at some level.

Second, how do we know what “evil” is to start with?  Christianity has a definition of evil: evil is when people do something that God forbids or fail to do something that God commands to be done.  It also calls evil what happens when people made in God’s image are subject to undeserved pain.  Without God, we have no way to call anything “evil” in that sense of the word.  The unbeliever has no way to call one thing good and another thing evil in and of themselves.  C. S. Lewis used to point out that all we must do is ask an atheist “why” several times, and they will run out of reasons to think that some things are good, and some things are evil. 

Put another way, Greg Bahnsen used to say that an atheist must borrow the definition of evil from Christianity to criticize Christianity, so the unbeliever has a bigger problem with evil than the Christian does, namely that to an unbeliever “evil” cannot exist.  Things just happen for no ultimate reason at all in a world where all we have is matter in motion.  There is no meaning in what we do nor are people valuable.  If actions are meaningless, then who cares whether the actions are performed?  If people are not valuable in and of themselves, then why does it matter whether something hurts them? At least a Christian has a reason to call something “evil” and fight against it. [For more of Greg Bahnsen’s approach, listen at https://www.bahnseninstitute.com/the-problem-of-evil/.]

Knowing that evil “is,” that it exists, is enough to convince me that there is a God. We cannot define evil without defining good. Evil is in some way good’s opposite, falling short of the good. Knowing that evil “is” leads us relentlessly to a God whose character is the very definition of the good. Without Him, we would not know evil when we see it.

To move on, if you ask a person, “What do you mean by that?”, and they answer something like I got sick as a small child and suffered terribly; my grandmother died of colon cancer and I had to help take care of her and watch her suffer; or I went through a divorce when my spouse who professed to be a Christian deserted me, then the person is struggling with the personal problem of evil.  That problem is different.  I have much respect for that version of the problem.  I both sympathize and empathize with a person who struggles with this problem.  (The three examples given in this paragraph are from my own life and experience.)

An answer to the personal problem of evil must be delivered carefully.  In this case, the answers for the philosophical problem of evil above are too harsh and cruel.  Sometimes the best answer is to listen, pray, and shed a sympathetic tear.  Yet Christianity does have an answer that has long satisfied me. 

God became a man in the Person of Jesus Christ.  Jesus suffered many things in this life, including rejection, disappointment, betrayal, bereavement, insult, and extreme physical pain, none of which he deserved.  God is willing to go to great lengths to suffer with us, and that is worthy of respect. 

I have found the Christian faith to be a great comfort to me. The following quote from Steve Brown illustrates why.

In response to the problem of evil and pain, the Christian must always start with Jesus and the incarnation. Everything else is a dead-end road. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). No other religious or philosophical system deals with the problem of pain in the unique way with which the Christian faith deals with it.

God enters time and space and suffers with his people.

The infinite God says to us in our finiteness: If you could understand it, I would explain, but you can’t understand it. Instead, I will come to suffer and die, not to keep you from suffering but to suffer as you suffer … not to keep you from your loneliness but to be lonely as you are lonely … not to keep you from asking your questions, but to have mine, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus Christ has been there … and sometimes that is enough. He knows how much it hurts.  [“How Could He?” by Steve Brown, an article in “Key Life,” published by Key Life Network, Inc. Easter / Spring 2009, Volume 24, #1, p. 2-3, 8.]

Evil can take on several forms, it can be personal evil, where someone sinned against another and caused them pain, or natural evil where we experience earthquakes, tornados, tsunamis, wildfires, etc.  The answers are the same no matter which of the two is causing the problem.