Where is God in the face of evil?

By Ricardo Barber


Each day the news and newspapers are filled with mindless killings, rape, torture, and abuse. Even the entertainment industry depicts these atrocious events and makes profit at times from glamorizing what in real life one would call evil. Why do we have to suffer? That’s the question that lingers in the head of great a many people. This question more often then not is put to the Christian for an answer, but other worldviews answer fewer questions and leave more questions unanswered. The burden of proof sometimes needs to fall on their shoulders to summit an answer to this multi-faceted problem. Christians should be faithful to what their worldview teaches about the problem of evil, which is the first step to answering the problem of evil.

“So why does God permit evil?” or “Why didn’t God fulfill his purposes without permitting it?” or “Why can’t God bring about every greater good while still preventing evil?” Is it logically possible that God has a reason for creating a world that now contains evil? Several interrelated attempts to justify God’s permission of evil are given in what we call theodicies. Theodicies are used in refuting the appeal to the proposition that God permits evil either to make possible some greater good or to avoid some greater evil.1

But perhaps the greatest version of the problem of evil is called gratuitous evil. If one can successfully get pass one argument by stating that God does have some reason for allowing so much evil, how can one explain the seemingly unwarranted and unreasonable suffering? What purpose is it for a two year old to develop cancer and struggle to live for 6 months then dies? What about the mentally deformed children and the hundreds that reside at St. Jude’s hospital or the millions in the world that suffers horribly from starvation? What could be the greater good for the six million massacred in the Holocaust? Couldn’t it have been five million or two million or ten people instead of six million? What greater evil was God trying to avoid in that case? Throughout history this world has been marred with wretched evil by the hands and choices of humans (moral evil) and by the horrors of earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, famine and the like, not resulting from human choices (natural evil). Are these mindless, irrational cases of evil? If so, the appeal to greater good would collapse.

But how could any human being know that gratuitous evil exists? Humans are limited to space and time, God has a wider frame verses our narrow frame of time.2 We don’t know what affect or role one’s suffering could play in all of history. God sees down through the centuries, we only are capable of seeing things unfold in our finite lifetime. So we have no grounds to say that gratuitous evil exist. Many evils appear to be gratuitous. Humans have cognitive limitations, so how could one actually know that some particular evil is gratuitous. “It seems the most that can be known is that some evils appear gratuitous."3 There are certain Christian doctrines that prove God’s presence in the face of evil.

1. The purpose of life is not human happiness, but knowing God.
2. Mankind is in a state of rebellion against God
3. God’s purpose spills over into eternal life. (Romans 8:28)4

These three show that we can find God in grief and suffering because he never promised a trouble-free life in an ungodly world especially when he has eternality to work with.

When it comes to dealing with the problem of evil one must have proper discernment to distinguish the many faces of evil. The mistake of confusing the emotional problem of evil with the intellectual problem of evil can bolster greater problems among the questions being addressed. “All my study and all the intellectual answers were of little help because the religious problem of evil (the problem about one’s personal struggle with pain and suffering and how that affects one’s relation to God) is not primarily an intellectual one,” writes Feinberg, “ instead it is fundamentally an emotional one!”5 People dealing with personal encounters of evil can go without a philosophical discourse about the nature of God and his providence over creation. However when a person is wrestling with the theoretical implications of evil, someone trained to assess the argument is required. The former is best conducted with the help of a caring pastor or friend, the latter demands assistance from a philosopher. These two problems ought not to be totally separated as to say that intellectual answers can’t help the person dealing with evil existentially. Spiritual truths must be used at times when the emotional pain has healed enough so that they can properly absorb and understand the answers given.6 It is very important that we keep these two problems at the forefront of encounters with persons who raises this vexing issue. If you know someone who is facing trouble in their life reach out to them. Your love and care for them may be the only thing that brings any light into their life. It is difficult to go on with life without hope. The fact that you care may be the only ray of hope that person has and God can use to bring a realization of himself to them. Remember the goodness of God in the face of evil and Jesus himself suffered to the point of death (Phil 2:5-11). We are not alone!

1 Daniel Howard-Snyder, “God, Evil, and Suffering”,77.
2 Patrick T. Smith, Notes from Challenges to Christian Faith and Practice, 11.
3 Ibid, 11
4 Debate between Walter Armstrong and William Lane Craig
5 John S. Feinberg, Where is God: A Personal Story of Finding God in Grief and 6uffering (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2004), 25.
6 Ibid.