Problem of Pain... more, and still more

In the West, the Christian story is so ingrained that when we talk about God we are (almost without exception) talking about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the Bible, the God that you and I worship in the person of Christ. The problem of evil does not trouble the Greeks, for instance, because their pantheon were much more mutable, much less dependably gracious, and much less powerful than the God of the Bible. For the Greeks, the problem of evil was pretty much, a “Yeah, so?” kind of problem, because they did not believe that any one God was all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing. For them, the cosmos were filled with deities, each one having a slightly different agenda. Sometimes these gods co-operated with each other and with man, and sometimes they were more pissy. A drought killed thousands; “God did it,” was an explanation that fit perfectly with their theology – killing thousands of people was the sort of thing a god might do. Thus the existence of the Greek pantheon is not contradicted by the existence of evil – far from it! In fact, random evil reinforces a belief in their god, for “If god does not exist, then who killed all those people with the lightening bolt?” For Christians, who worship a God who is One, no competing deity can be blamed. The Greeks could have said, “Well, obviously, this is the work of god A. God B would not do something like this. Damn you, god A!” The God of the Bible is alone sovereign: he is jealous; he demands all praise; he alone bears the blame.

The point of this is to point out, from a different perspective, that the existence of God is not militated against by the existence of evil. One very specific construal of God is disallowed by a very specific method of inquiry – the question we face as human reasoners is “Is the God that is disallowed the God I worship?” Put another way, “Is Christian theology robust enough to deal with the existence of evil?” To this question, my answer is an unabashed “Yes.”

It is would love to point out all the allowances that the scriptural account gives for evil, but I will just touch on a few pertinent points:
a) Humans are responsible for much of the evil that is present in the world. God gave humanity the freedom to choose, we chose badly, and continue to choose badly, and as a result we suffer. Human choices are the cause of all suffering – the fall of man was, according to the Bible, led directly to our ongoing struggle against nature, and to all kinds of suffering. This leads us unavoidably to question why God allowed us the freedom to choose. Once again, I am forced to shrug. I do not know why God made puppies, or sunsets, and I do not know why God so values freedom. The Bible hints at some reasons, but is most clear in its promise that we know the mind of God only when God reveals his mind to us. To pinch a phrase from Augustine, “We are talking about God. What wonder is it that you do not understand? If you do understand, then it is not God.”
b) This suffering, this whole world, is temporary. According to Christian eschatology, God has made provision for an end to suffering and evil. This is slender comfort when one is actually suffering, but pain is not the end. There is hope; things will get better.
c) This suffering is purposeful. It is purposeful for the development of character, and perhaps more importantly, it is purposed to allow for God’s demonstration of love in this: “ that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Christ could not have died if there were not death, and he could not have died for us when we were sinners if there was not sin. He could not have demonstrated the depth of his love for us without allowing us to be distant from him. Recall the story of the father who ran down to his prodigal son. God could not have come to us “while we were still a long way off” if we had been constantly at his side. I think it is telling that, in that story, the son who stayed behind ended up bitter and angry. He had not seen the depth of his father’s love because he had not been far off. As Christ said Simon in response to the woman who washed Christ’s feet with her hair, “Who has been forgiven much loves much.” Suffering, it seems, serves ultimate purpose: it teaches us about love.

Surely the universe could have been constructed in another way; surely we could have been instructed in a less costly way. Perhaps it is true. But it is also possible that God is constrained to act in this way, that what we call love is a feature of God, and he could not imbue his universe with his character (love) without making it possible for us to suffer loss. Perhaps this is not the best of all possible worlds, but it is perhaps the most God-like of all possible worlds. The truth or falsity of this claim, it seems to me, is not important, however.