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The Problem of Evil, Part 1: God, Suffering and Evil

A few days after the 2005 tsunami in Thailand killed upwards of 275,000 people (high percentages of them children), a local talk-show host posed the question Why did God allow it to happen? Listeners called in expressing all variety of opinions, ranging from the condemnatory — Because there are too few Christians in that part of the world — to the atheistic — He didn't; God oesn't actually exist. Predictably, the show turned into debate over what philosophers and theologians call the problem of evil.

The Problem of Evil

In case you're unfamiliar with the problem of evil, it can be articulated as follows: God is, by definition, an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being. An omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being would have both the desire and the ability to prevent the existence of evil. Evil is commonplace, however. Therefore, God must not exist.

Of course, it's not altogether easy to understand why God — being omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good — would allow the existence of evil. Yet suppose a good explanation is possible. Suppose, for instance, that good can't exist without evil, and suppose that a world with good and evil is better than a world with neither of them. Then it follows that an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being would allow the existence of evil.

This explanation covers only the existence of evil in general, however. It leaves the existence of horrific particular evils — such as each innocent child that drowned in the tsunami¹ — completely untouched. Even if an omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect being couldn't create a good world without allowing some evil, surely, He could prevent a lot more evil than He actually does. Surely, He could have prevented innocent children from drowning in the tsunami, and surely the world would have been a better place had He done so.

With the addition of a few words, the argument so easily refuted two paragraphs above is suddenly formidable: God is, by definition, an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being. An omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being would have both the desire and the ability to prevent the drowning of innocent children. Such evils are commonplace, however; thousands drowned in the tsunami alone. Therefore, God must not exist.

Other Varieties of Evil

Natural evils such as the tsunami are only one kind of evil, though. Consider the following passage from Dostoevsky's The Brother's Karamazov (and if you haven't read it, be warned; it's gruesome):

[T]he Turks and Circassians, there, in Bulgaria, have been committing atrocities everywhere … they burn, kill, rape women and children, then they nail prisoners by the ears to fences and leave them like that until morning, and in the morning they hang them — and so on, it's impossible to imagine it all. Indeed, people speak sometimes about the 'animal' cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals, no animal could ever be so cruel as man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. …

[If you're already having trouble reading this, then skip to the next paragraph, for it gets much worse.]

… These Turks, among other things, have also taken delight in torturing children, starting with cutting them out of their mothers' wombs with a dagger, and ending with tossing nursing infants up in the air and catching them on their bayonets before their mothers' eyes. The main delight comes from doing it before their mothers' eyes. But here is a picture that I found very interesting. Imagine a nursing infant in the arms of its trembling mother, surrounded by Turks. … they fondle the baby, they laugh to make it laugh, and they succeed — the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk aims a pistol at it, four inches from its face. The baby laughs gleefully, reaches out its little hands to grab the pistol, and suddenly the artist pulls the trigger right in its face and shatters its little head.²

This is a fictional account, but things like this actually happen.³ But how on earth can God allow it? God knows it happens — in fact, He's aware ahead of time. God has the power to prevent it. And we know that God hates it. He understands better than you and I that it's evil, opposed to everything He loves. Yet He allows it anyway? It doesn't seem to make sense.

Or, for another variety of evil, consider the story of "Jimmie G," a patient of neurologist Oliver Sacks. Although Jimmie G was in perfect physical shape, for 20 years he suffered from a strange disorder that prevented him from forming any new memories.⁴ Of course, among other things, this prevented him from remembering a single detail about anybody he'd met in the past 20 years.

For Jimmie G, human relationship was impossible. But what about his relationship with God? And what about God's desire to have a relationship with Jimmie G? In his shape, surely there couldn't have been one.

Dr. Sacks visited Jimmie G weekly. Suppose Jimmie G encountered God five minutes before each of Sacks' visits. Nobody would know about these encounters except God. Jimmie G wouldn't even know about them, for his memory would've failed to retain them. But isn't it obvious that God — being Jimmie G's omnipotent, morally perfect Heavenly Father — had both the ability and the desire for Jimmie G to have a relationship with Him? If so, then why didn't God make it possible? Why didn't God put Jimmie G in a place where he could at least choose not to have a relationship with Him?

Finally, there are evils accidentally committed against friends and loved ones. Consider, for instance, a story relayed by Alvin Plantinga, about a man who drove a cement mixer truck.

He came home one day for lunch; his three-year-old daughter was playing in the yard, and after lunch, when he jumped into his truck and backed out, he failed to notice that she was playing behind it; she was killed beneath the dual wheels.⁵

This story is horrifying on its own, but consider the possibility that this guy was a Christian and in the habit of asking God to make him a good father, the kind that would never accidentally kill his own daughter. Why would God allow this to happen? How could He?

This is probably the heaviest portion of text you'll ever read in Nerds' Corner, but I've included it for two reasons. First, when dealing with the problem of evil, it's important to square off against the most serious and formidable version of it, not some watered-down Disneyland version. Thus, I've presented instances of evil I think are particularly horrifying and confusing.

Second, evil is real, disturbing, and utterly beyond the glib answers we Christians are accustomed to giving. A pat on the back and a God knows best in response to any of the above scenarios would only have the practical affect of making God look evil. It's important that we see how serious the problem really is.

Theory vs. Praxis

Now, while they go under the rubric "the problem of evil," really, two problems for theism surface in the examples above. First, there's a purely theoretical problem. On common understandings of omniscience, omnipotence and moral perfection, devastating tsunamis, tortured babies, et cetera, seem logically incompatible with the existence of God. Yet theists maintain that both exist.

How can this be?

Second, there's a practical problem. At every age, in both genders and in every culture, the human heart finds faith difficult in the face of apparently pointless natural suffering and unchecked malice. As a matter of fact, the question Why did God allow this [fill in the blank with an above example or one of your own]? can tempt even the best of us to conclude that Because He doesn't exist is the right answer. Evil is a practical problem for the theist because, in the presence of pain and suffering — especially pain and suffering in combination with unanswered prayers for the alleviation of this pain and suffering — it often feels as if God doesn't exist.

Distinguishing between evil as a theoretical problem and evil as a practical problem is important because, while philosophical solutions are appropriate for the former, they're terribly suited for the latter. As a general rule, the last thing a tsunami victim or mourning father — or Holocaust survivor, or widow, or quadriplegic, or paranoid schizophrenic — needs is an abstract philosophical explanation for God's allowing his or her world to be a lonely, painful, frightening place.

C O F F E E  S H O P

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With all the pain in the world, have you ever wondered whether or not God exists?

More importantly, how did you deal with it?

Join the discussion!

So, remember, next time you're interacting with someone whose faith has been cracked or shattered by a personal encounter with evil, your making his or her world a less lonely, less painful, less frightening place — and doing so in the name of God — will probably do him or her a lot more good than your best effort at explaining the ways of God.⁶

Bright, Happy Conclusion to Nerdy #8

That said, this is Nerds' Corner, and as you've probably guessed, in the articles to come, I'm going to address the problem of evil from a theoretical perspective. In fact, in this series, I'm going to argue that, while evil does constitute a substantial practical problem for the faiths of real, live humans, it constitutes no theoretical problem at all.