EMAIL THIS PAGE
PRINT
RSS
If you're a Christian, you have plenty of opportunities to respond to the problem of evil. The devastating earthquake in Haiti is only the most recent and pressing example of evil operating in the world. There's ongoing disease and starvation in Africa, terrorism in the Middle East, a shooting in Virginia (why do shooting always seem to happen in Virginia?), cancer in just about every family at one time or another. The opportunities to respond to evil are all around you. Unfortunately, most responses Christians give are lousy. Here are a few: "Evil is necessary." This response comes out of the idea that a diamond sparkles when placed against a black background. In other words, good looks better when evil things happen. Or to push it further, good could not exist without evil. This is a really dumb response because it's based on a totally false premise. Good is an absolute property, and it can exist without evil. On the other hand, evil could not exist without good. Therefore, evil is unnecessary. "This is the best of all possible worlds." This is like saying, "Well, at least you have your health," to someone who has just lost his jobs, his marrige, his house, and his dog. This is definitely not the best of all possible worlds. As Norman Geisler says, it's actually the worst of all possible worlds. It's as bad as God will let it be. "Evil is a punishment for sin." Unfortunately, this lousy response comes out of the mouths of way too many Christians, including some high-profile Christians who undoubtedly make God cringe everytime they say this. Jesus refuted this response when his disciples asked him if some people died because of their sins. "I tell you, no!" Jesus replied (read the story yourself in Luke 13:1-5, and then tell Pat Robertson to read it). "God is using this horrible thing for your own good." This is the number one lousy response a Christian can give to anyone going through tough times. It's true that God uses all things--even bad things--for the ultimate good of those who love him (Romans 8:28), but this is a terrible response to anyone in the middle of a very difficult situation. What about you? What's the worst thing someone has said to you about something tough you were going through? What are some other lousy responses to the presence of evil in the world? |
Comments
Stan-
Alright I've got one. This is on a much smaller scale than the examples you referred to but I think it still applies.
I'd been in seminary for all of 3 weeks. I had driven 3,000 miles solo to reach my Boston school. I was eating an entree of carbs every night from the school cafeteria and I was taking Greek. Oh and I was tense from cringing every time someone butchered the sound of my name due to the Bostonians inability to pronounce the letter "r". All of this led to a nasty case of strep throat. So here I am, sick as can be and out of nowhere, a fellow seminarian (God Bless her), approaches me with, "Carrie (more like Ka-wee), some of us were talking and we think you're so sick because you have unconfessed sin in your life."
How's that for a lousy response?
Oh man, that is a big one. It's hard to believe the audacity of someone to say that to another person face-to-face. Beyond that, where do people come up with that stuff. Great story!
Here's a daft response I've heard from certain "apologists": the problem of evil presupposes evil; only theism can make sense of that presupposition.
I haven't heard that one. Interesting. Here's my problem with it. If evil presupposes evil, doesn't that mean that evil is in a sense pre-existent? In other words, evil has always existed as some kind of antithetical principle to God. Am I understanding that correctly?
I think that the idea is rather that the problem of evil presupposes the existence of evil, which in turn is supposed to commit you to theism.
This doesn't answer your questions but SOMETIMES we do go through bad things as a consequence of sin - either our sin or the sin of others. For example, if you rob me, I'm suffering as a result of your sin, even though I'm completely "innocent" in this situation. Sure, in the Luke 3 passage Jesus makes it clear that the man isn't suffering as a result of sin, but that doesn't negate all the other passages that say that are consequences for sin (Gal. 6:8 for example.) In other words, we might not ALWAYS suffer because of sin in our lives, but that doesn't mean that sometimes we won't suffer because of it.
Also, sin or more specifically the fact that we live in a sinful world, does explain why evil exists, even if every time we suffer we can't draw a direct correlation to the suffering and a specific sin (as many insensitively do when there's a catastrophe like Haiti or Katrina.) But in heaven, where sin and evil cease to exist, so does suffering.
A while ago, I attempted to give a response to this question. You can find it here http://betterthingsahead.blogspot.com/2007/10/good-god-bad-world.html
this would be more helpful if you included a not-lousy response to the problem of evil, now i'm not sure what to say