The Problem of Evil
The first of these is the atheist
position:
Proposition # 1: If God is
all-powerful He could destroy evil.
Proposition # 2: If God is all-good
He will destroy evil.
Proposition # 3: But evil is not
destroyed.
Proposition # 4: Therefore there is
no all-good and all-powerful God.
So the atheist concludes that either
God is all-powerful but He is evil. Or he may conclude that He is good but not all-powerful.
But ultimately the atheist will conclude that there just isn’t any God and evil
exists but God doesn’t. This is the position that evil is eternal. But he
doesn’t even have the right to make those propositions. For example, if evil is
eternal then it is normal, and if evil is eternal and normal then what that
means is you can’t really distinguish between good and evil. All human
viewpoint concepts go back to the chain of being where everything is within one
circle. That means you don’t go outside the circle to get some absolute value
of what is good or bad, it is determined by what is inside that circle. So the
creature generates the concept of good and evil. In Christian terminology we
would say the circle really describes the creation. In divine viewpoint we have
the creator who is distinct from the creation. So atheists are generating their
values from within their own experience, from within the framework of creation
itself. Ultimately, if evil is eternal then that means that any distinction between
good and evil breaks down and their position destroys and real substantive
meaning for good and evil because they are determined on a relative basis. How
do you know this is good and this is evil? It doesn’t work for us. That is what
our society has determined. That is what our group has determined isn’t right
for now but it may be right or wrong for another culture or another group. So
that it becomes fluid. Well once it becomes fluid then the meanings of
something being good and something being evil are completely destroyed. You
can’t even communicate any more. You don’t have the right to say this is good
and this is bad because, Oh, in the 1920s homosexuality was bad and marriage
and fidelity was good; but now that has changed. So what gives you the right to
even use terms that imply absolutes? What we see is that in their very
discussion they are borrowing the meaning of good and evil as absolutes from
Christianity. You can’t let an unbeliever do that. Where do you get the concept
of good and evil? How can you say that? That is one approach. You have to ask
the basis for their definition of good and evil.
What we see happening here is
something we can be very guilty of ourselves, and we have to be careful of
this. Don’t develop abstract concepts and then make God conform to those
abstract concepts. For example, don’t come along and say, I have an absolute
concept out here of power. This is what the atheist does. He says, Okay I’ve
got a definition of what omnipotence is. But what is embedded in their
definition of omnipotence is that omnipotence means you will restrict evil in a
certain time period. They don’t bring that out; that’s in the closet. Then
they’ll also talk about goodness, but embedded in their definition of goodness
is the concept that if you are really good there is no reason that you would
allow this kind of suffering to take place. So they develop an abstract
category, and abstract value, and they say, God, if you are God you have to
conform to omnipotence and goodness. In other words, they are approaching God
is if out there somewhere there are ideals, some sort of yardstick or measuring
device that God has to measure up to. That is an intellectual form of idolatry.
There is a passage where Isaiah
deals with this in Isaiah 40. Isaiah is writing about 200 years before the
Babylonian captivity but from chapter forty on he is writing as if he is in the
captivity to comfort the people while they re living in a pagan environment. So
God is speaking to them, and in verse 12 He begins to challenge them: “Who hath
measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the
span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the
mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?” He is challenging their concept
of knowledge, that man empirically may be able to estimate certain things but
he doesn’t have comprehensive knowledge. He can’t give you an exact precise
measurement because that would mean he would have to have an infinite database
that could handle all that information. The point of His questions is to show
that man’s empirical knowledge is finite and limited. Verse 13, “Who hath
directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counsellor hath taught him?” That
brings out the idea that God is not taught by anyone. His knowledge is not our
knowledge. We learn everything; God never learned anything. God’s knowledge
does not increase or diminish; no one teaches Him. Verse 14, “With whom took he
counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of justice, and
taught him knowledge, and showed to him the way of understanding?” Who taught
God justice? No one did. If you taught God justice there would be this external
ideal of justice that God would conform to. What Isaiah is saying is that God
doesn’t conform to some external category of justice; what He does is just.
That is the measuring rod. When we go through the essence box and talk about
the fact that Gold is sovereign and righteous and just, etc, these are not
abstract categories that God measures up to and because this being measures up
to these categories we then say, Okay, He is God. God is who He is He radiates
these categories. So God is the measuring device, He doesn’t meet up to some
measuring device. Verse 18 is the point of Isaiah’s confrontation here, “To
whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?” There
is nothing external to which you can compare God or to liken God. He is the
standard. If you set something up as a comparison that you are going to use to
understand God, then what you are doing is setting that intellectually above
God and that then becomes an intellectual idol. This is a very sophisticated
concept of idolatry. It is mental idolatry. What it is, is man in his
independence wants to define God on the basis of values and categories that are
generated by the creature. It is a complete breakdown of that creator-creature
distinction where the creature wants to define the creator and the creature is
going to generate his own categories, his own values, his own definitions, and
then say, God, if you are just and righteous then you have to do this. In other
words, you have to dance to this, and I’m not under your sovereignty and
control. The thing that we have to recognize is: how do we know what God is? How
can we even define what omnipotence is? How can an unbeliever define what
goodness is? Isaiah brings this out a second time in verse 25, “To whom then
will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One.” There is no point
of analogy. God is incomprehensible and He is above us that we could understand
Him. We can know Him to some degree but we can’t have comprehensive knowledge.
So the atheist concludes that if God
exists He is not all-powerful. So therefore if evil exists God must not exist.
Or in some case the atheist would conclude that if God exists He is not
all-powerful.
The other hidden assumption which
undergirds almost all human viewpoint reasoning on this topic is that if God
wanted to destroy evil it would have been destroyed by now. How do you know?
How do you know that there is not some higher purpose? Well, I can’t conceive
of one. So in your limited empirical knowledge you know enough to know that
there can’t exist anywhere at any time a higher good that is being accomplished
by God’s extension of evil and allowing evil to run its course in the universe.
There are hidden assumptions in each of these points and we need to be sure
that they are understood. The assumption there is that God would destroy evil
if He could. That presupposes omniscience about evil and the purposes of the
universe on the part of the creature that is cannot be derived from either
empiricism or rationalism. He is just assuming this.
Now the Christian has an answer to
this that has been formulated:
1)
If God is
all-good, and He is, then He will destroy evil.
2)
If God is
all-powerful then He can destroy evil. He has the ability to destroy evil at
any point in time.
3)
Evil is not yet
destroyed; therefore evil will be destroyed eventually. Evil in the biblical
worldview is limited; it will be destroyed. Because the Christian position
recognizes that there is a plan and a purpose to history and there is a reason.
We don’t have to understand it fully for there to be a reason. Just because it
is incomprehensible doesn’t mean it is unknowable or irrational. God is
rational, He has a plan and a purpose, but as we saw with Job He is not
required to let the creature know all the information. That is the arrogance of
the human viewpoint position.
In pantheism there is the view that
God exists but evil doesn’t, it is just illusion. This is the Hindu position.
In America this came up in Christian Science. To accept that position they have
to deny the data of empiricism. In other words, whatever we know or learn from
our senses it is not really true. Well if evil is an illusion, good is an
illusion. You can’t have it both ways. You have to ask the question, how do you
determine that good isn’t an illusion? Or maybe it isn’t that good is the
reality and evil is the illusion but that good is the illusion and evil is the
reality. So in pantheism they not only have to ultimately deny that empiricism
can provide any factual, reliable data whatsoever.
Second, it would deny all scientific
data in relation to disease and historical disaster. It denies, of course, the
biblical data about the reality of sin and evil. This is one way the unbeliever
copes with evil. In the first position the atheist has to cope with evil by
ultimately reducing its significance by making it normal because he can’t
handle evil in all of its biblical reality. The escapist, the pantheist, can’t
deal with evil either so it doesn’t really exist. He is just living in a state
of psychological denial. This again shows that all unbelieving positions either
trivialize evil or act as if it doesn’t exist. Those are the only options.
A third position that has been
popularized over the last few years is that God has lost control. So what we
see again is the same basic fallacies that are in the other positions, a
creaturely imposed definition on the creator. This is what good is and, God;
you have to meet my idea of good. It is once again the creature trying to
dictate to the creator.
What we have to realize as
Christians is we must always start with God and not with human reason or
experience. Revelation always precedes experience. You go to the Scripture to
find out who God is and you start with God’s revelation of Himself, and that is
what sets the standards. Then you come along and utilize those standards. But
God Himself is the standard. One of the classic examples that you run into with
people is that four-letter word, fair. God is fair. What do you mean by fair?
Where do you get your definition of fairness? What is the content of that word
fair? So God is fair, and God is isolated into an abstract category and God has
to meet that category. Well God wouldn’t let that happen because God is fair.
Well who sets the standard? This is a radically different way of thinking about
God. We’ve all fallen into that trap, it is a heritage from our Aristotelian,
Platonic Greek heritage in western civilization to think in terms of these
categorical values as autonomous, abstract ideas.
Illustration: If you saw someone
down and out and suffering in the street, you would help him or her, wouldn’t
you? I would say, yes. I don’t want them to think that somehow they on their
own power can change their circumstances. They are in the gutter because they
have rejected God; they are reaping the consequences of their own bad
decisions. So leave them there in the gutter. I don’t want to come up with some
sort of solution for their sin, making them think that somehow they can live in
unhappiness and meaning and value in life apart from God. I’ll give them the
gospel, talk to them, and things of that nature, which was the foundation of
true, genuine Christian compassion—soup kitchens, missions that operated
in the slum areas. But they always gave the gospel with the food. But the
illustration is that if you saw someone down in the street, you’d help him or
her, wouldn’t you? Well how can God sit back and look at the whole human race
and all kinds of wars and everything and not help us? He must not care. But
see, once again what happens? They are exporting to God their own value
systems. Furthermore, they don’t understand the nature of freedom—freedom
of choice means freedom to succeed and freedom to fail. For there to be true
freedom you have to have freedom to fail. To have love, and God creates man to
love Him, to have genuine love that is marked by obedience. We see that again
and again in the New Testament: “If you love me you will keep my commandments.”
So obedience is linked to love. So for there to be genuine love there has to be
genuine freedom, and to have genuine freedom there will be freedom to fail and
freedom to succeed. Real freedom in choice means that the more significant the
choice the more radical the consequences. If you have a choice between
worshipping God and not, and obeying God or not, then the consequences are
radical. This is what we saw in Genesis 3 where the consequences of man’s
negative volition are quite radical. Therefore we have to come to grips with
the true dimensions of suffering, disease and evil, and that all of that came
into the whole cosmic system as a result of disobedience to the creator.
Another approach that people will
raise is: what about the innocents? What about the little babies? What about
birth defects, natural disasters? Once again, the question betrays a shallow
and superficial view of evil. What we see in Scripture is that evil is
something that was like a poison that penetrated every dimension of the
universe, and that is the way God constructed reality. Not that God is the
cause of that but because reality couldn’t be any other way. He is demonstrating
that the creature cannot survive at all independently of the creator because
his negative decisions affect everything, not just the immediate situation.
Sometimes people will ask why God had
to visit that curse on the animals and the natural world. Actually, what we see
here is more of a consequence. The word “curse” is only used two times in
Genesis 3 in verse 14 and verse 17, and both times it is used in the passive.
The serpent is cursed. He received the action of cursing, but who performs the
action? In verse 17 the ground is cursed, but who performs the action? The
judgment on sin was spiritual death, separation of the creature, and there are
really two options. Either God causes the negative consequences, which would
make Him the direct author of evil and calamity, or evil itself is
constitutionally structured in such a way that the simple act of eating a piece
of fruit in disobedience to God would change the structure of the universe.
That is what the bible is saying. It is not that God caused the earth to be
different. What caused the earth to be different was Adam’s choice. Evil
changed reality; it permeated everything. That means the believer has a
profound understanding of what evil is, much more profound, much more real than
what the unbeliever has. But that allows us, then, to also deal with it in its
reality.
When the unbeliever comes to evil he
has three options in terms of coping. First of all, to deny the reality of the
evil. This is done a couple of different ways. One is the irrational approach:
it just doesn’t exist, it is an illusion, and there is no real evil. Another
way is one that plays out in personal life. Apparently Mary Baker Eddy had a
lot of unhappiness in her early life and she was trying to escape personal
suffering. Such people try to cope by denying that it is real. Or, the second
option is to come up with saying good and evil are only conventions of language
and culture. I can’t really deal with the fact that I have certain proclivities
in my nature and temptation; it is so much easier to just say this is really
okay. I’m really miserable if what I am doing is a sin and it is wrong. I have
a struggle and a fight. But if I can say it is not really wrong then I can do
away with that struggle and fight. So good and evil, then, in human viewpoint
become merely conventions of language and culture. That makes it fluid and good
becomes evil and evil, good. That is pure relativism.
The second major solution that you see
in modern thought is the existential leap into the absurd. They know evil
exists but they can’t explain it. There is no God so somehow the only way I can
really survive suffering and misery is I have to give it some meaning. If you
read the existentialist, they can’t get meaning from God, they can’t get
meaning from some external absolute, they can only assign it from their own
thinking. They generate the meaning. In real existentialism it is no real
ultimate moral difference between pushing a woman in front of a car and helping
her across the street as long as you do something to validate your existence.
It is the absurd. If I’m going to survive I’m just going to give it my own
meaning. So I assign meaning, I define everything.
The third coping strategy is the one
we find so dominant today: escapism, or let’s just anaesthetize the pain. They
know there is evil there but they have no solution to it whatsoever. That is
why all the unbeliever can do is cope. The believer has a solution; all the
unbeliever can do is escape. That is why drugs are on the rise. Leave God out
of the equation and you are left living a really miserable life. You can’t deal
with the pain. Or, you get involved with just pleasure, sex, pornography, music
and entertainment. Just immerse myself in this so that I don’t have to face
reality as it is. There are all kinds of escapism, like immerse yourself in
work so that you don’t have time to think about reality. Many things aren’t
necessarily wrong but they are used to avoid reality.
The believer can handle problems. He
can solve them. The Christian answer is not just coping; the basic
problem-solving devices handle evil in his own
life.