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.

When approaching the problem of evil it is important to begin by making some key distinctions.  Distinctions help us to define the issues more precisely, which leads to greater clarity of the problem as well as the solution.  This is just one reason philosophy is an indisensable tool for believers.  Here are some of the key distinctions:

First, it is important to distinguish between the intellectual problem and the existential problem.  The intellectual problem requires a tough-minded philosophical response while the existential problem requires a tender-hearted pastoral response.  If you attempt to answer the existential problem merely with philosophical abstractions or Christian cliches, you may as well keep your mouth shut.

This distinction needs to be considered on a personal level as well.  You may have answered the intellectual problem with careful philosophical analysis but another question remains:  Is your soul prepared for suffering?  This question haunts me a bit, particularly since my wife and I have had children.  Sometimes I ponder how I would respond to God if something tragic were to befall one of my kids and I must confess, I am a little pessimistic about my own response.  I think it reveals my ever-present need to cultivate greater virtue and not just philosophical acumen.

In 1940, C.S. Lewis penned The Problem of Pain, addressing the intellectual issues surrounding evil.  A little more than 20 years later, Lewis wrote A Grief Observed, journaling his experience of pain and suffering after the death of his wife, Joy.  In the first half of the latter book, Lewis seems to indicate that his intellectual reasons offered no help with his existential struggles:

"Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God.  The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him.  The conclusion I dread is not 'So there's no God after all,' but 'So this is what God's really like...it's easy enough to say that God seems absent at our greatest need because He is absent--non-existent...she was in God's hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here.  Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body?  And if so, why?  If God's goodness is inconsistent with his hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for in the only life we know He hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all we can imagine.  If it is consistent with hurting us, then He may hurt us after death as unendurably as before it."

Some have cited Lewis' experience as evidence that our intellectual reasons are unhelpful and therefore, not needed in the existential struggle of pain, suffering, and evil.  I have three responses. 

In conversations with atheists in Berkeley last week, they often raised the problem of evil and suffering as a problem for Christians.  It's not likely, they argued, that God exists given the amount of pain and suffering in the world (actually, several were trying to push the logical problem of evil).  . 

However, the problem of evil is a problem for atheists as well.  Last week, we (New Covenant Community Church's college group and I) spent some time dialoguing with U.C. Berkeley's student atheist club, called S.A.N.E.  In this video, one atheist student attempts to explain what suffering amounts to in an atheistic universe and what he would say to a young girl who is suffering: