Evil and suffering become perhaps the most powerful reasons people struggle with the idea of God. Who has not at some point looked at the world and cried out, like the prophet Habakkuk, “O LORD, how long shall I cry, and You will not hear? Even cry out to You, ‘Violence!’ and You will not save?” (Hab. 1:2).
Evil and suffering are not merely intellectual matters to be solved, but belong to our personal experience. Evil is a matter of both the heart and the mind. Thus, even though this is a book of evidences, we encourage you to err on the side of being gracious and kind with others—especially those who are hurting. Sometimes arguments are unhelpful. When someone is hurting, the biblical response is to hurt with him or her (Rom. 12:15). As Christians, our ultimate response must be one of love. And yet sometimes love requires that we be prepared to speak the truth.
My (Josh’s) father often said, “A problem well-defined is half-solved.” It helps, then, first to define what we mean by evil. Despite what Eastern religions claim, evil is not an illusion, but neither is it a “thing.” Rather, evil is a departure from the way things ought to be, a corruption of good. Just as rust cannot exist without iron, and a lie cannot exist without truth, so evil steals and corrupts from good. This means that there can be good without evil, but not evil without good. “That’s why we often describe evil as negations of good things,” observes apologist and speaker Frank Turek. “We say someone is immoral, unjust, unfair, dishonest, etc.” (Turek, SG, 117) Ironically, then, when someone raises the problem of evil, that person is assuming there is such a thing as objective good. And if there is objective good, then there must be a God.
C. S. Lewis was once an atheist who believed that evil disproved God. But upon deeper reflection, he changed his mind:
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing the universe with when I called it unjust? (Lewis, MC, 45)
The existence of evil ends up being an argument for God. But if God is all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful, wouldn’t he want to end evil? Is there a contradiction in the conception of God and the reality of evil?
While critics often claim a contradiction between God and the presence of evil, thanks to Alvin Plantinga’s God, Freedom, and Evil and the work of many other philosophers before Plantinga, professional philosophers widely regard the existence of God as not being incompatible with evil. Plantinga offers a morally sufficient reason why God may allow evil:
A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can’t cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren’t significantly free after all; and they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can’t give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God’s omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good. (Plantinga, GFE, 30)
According to Plantinga, God is not the creator of evil, nor is he morally culpable when humans misuse their freedom, any more than a car manufacturer is accountable when a drunk driver harms someone. Simply put, no logical incompatibility exists between God and the presence of evil in the world.
But doesn’t evil make God improbable? Craig has noted that we need to consider all the background evidence for God, including the cosmological argument, various design arguments, the argument from mind, the moral argument, as well as all the historical evidence for the life, miracles, and resurrection of Jesus before we conclude that God’s existence is improbable. “When we take into account the full scope of the evidence,” says Craig, “the existence of God becomes quite probable. . . . Indeed, if [a person] includes the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit as part of his total warrant, then he can rightly assert that he knows that God exists, even if he has no solution to the problem of evil.” (Craig, HQRA, 90–91)
The atheist is ultimately silent in the face of evil. According to Richard Dawkins, here is what you can expect from the naturalistic account of reality:
In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no other good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. (Dawkins, ROE, 133)
But according to Christianity, God is not silent. God did not merely send an angel, prophet, or a book. In the incarnation of Jesus, God gave himself. God is not indifferent to our suffering. He took it on himself so we could experience salvation. Paul writes, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32 ESV). At the cross, evil and sin were conquered; they await final destruction at Christ’s return. Evil will not have the final word.
Josh McDowell, Sean McDowell. Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Life-Changing Truth for a Skeptical World.
