BLOG POST | Hey Deacon!

With all the evil in the world, how can an all-loving, all-powerful God exists?

With the horrific, senseless killings of innocent lives over the past two weeks, I thought I would speak to the existence of evil in the world, drawing from theologian Peter Kreeft.

More people have abandoned their faith because of the problem of evil than for any other reason. It is certainly the greatest test of faith, the greatest temptation to unbelief. And it's not just an intellectual objection. We feel it. We live it.

The problem can be stated very simply: if God is so good, why Is his world so bad? If an all-good, all-wise, all-loving, all-just, and all-powerful God is running the show; why does he seem to be doing such a miserable job of it? Why do bad things happen to good people?

In looking for an answer to the problem of evil in the world we need to recognize that evil is not a thing, an entity, a being. All beings are created by God. And everything God created is good, according to the Book of Genesis. We naturally tend to picture evil as a thing, a black cloud, or a dangerous storm, or a grimacing face. But these thoughts mislead us. If God created all things and evil is a thing, then God is also the Creator of evil and is to blame for its existence. However, evil is not a thing but a wrong choice, or the damage done by a wrong choice.

The origin of evil is not the Creator but the creature (person) freely choosing sin and selfishness. Take away all sin and selfishness and we would have heaven on earth. Even the remaining physical evils would no longer cause resentment to and upset us. We know that the saints endure and even embrace suffering on earth, but they do not embrace sin.

God's solution to the problem of evil is his Son, Jesus Christ. The Father's love sent his Son to die for us to defeat the power of evil in human nature: that's the heart of the Christian story. We do not worship a deistic God, an absentee God that does not intervene with his creation. We worship a God that sent his Son into our messy world, to clean up our sinful and evil messes. How do we get God off the hook for allowing evil? God is not off the hook; God is the hook. That's the point of a crucifix.

Pointing to evil to disprove God assumes objective evil exists. However, to correctly recognize objective evil, objective good (right values, actions, and experiences for all people) must exist. To quote C. S. Lewis, “A person does not call a line crooked unless he or she has some idea of a straight line.” Knowledge of evil is impossible without knowledge of good, and the existence of objective goodness is impossible without the existence of God (moral argument for God’s existence). Evil, therefore, is surprising evidence for God, not against Him.



Author Bio:
Deacon Dan Vaughn