The problem of evil is near and dear for me. It is the reason I hated God and rejected him for many years. There are two different aspects to this problem. The intellectual side and the emotional side. The intellectual side is “Can we rationalize why this happens?” and the emotional is “Can we stomach how this could have happened?”. The intellectual side of the problem of evil leads to the existence of God. The emotional side of evil draws people away from God. I know it did for me.

The emotional problem of evil and suffering is the most common objection against the Christian God that I hear. Yet at the same time, evil can only actually exist if the Christian God exists. Without God, nothing is good or evil. It just is.

Now let me start off by saying that evil is a problem for every worldview. Does being an atheist really help with the problem of evil and suffering? If you don’t believe in redemption, final justice (judgment day), salvation, or eternal life then isn’t life just so much worse? You have no hope since the universe will end anyway, and there is nothing to look forward to after this life. So, what’s the point? To suffer for a little while, then cease to exist? Wouldn’t you want Christianity to be true so that there is hope and meaning in this life and the next?

How can giving up God help you with your pain and suffering?

See the problem of evil and suffering isn’t a unique problem for Christians. Atheists also have to deal with the problem of natural suffering and evil and they don’t have a solution. They have to believe that there is no such thing as evil, and suffering is arbitrary, and you are either lucky or unlucky in regard to it. The Christian has to deal with the problem of evil, but we trust in our God to deal with the problem of evil. God’s solution to the problem is the cross of Christ. So, let’s dive into the arguments.

Arguments against God using evil

So, what is the problem of evil? There are 10 major versions of the problem of evil, but I will only cover 6 of them in this post as the others are closely related.

God is the creator of evil

The first is this common argument.

1. God created all things
2. Evil is something
3. Therefore, God created evil

This fails because evil is not a “thing”. It’s the corruption of something. Good is the normal (it is how God created everything) and evil is the corruption of the normal. If you take all the rust out of a car you get a better car but if you take all the car out of the rust, you get a pile of dust. Evil can’t exist without good but good can exist without evil. We get evil from our free will choices.

The agents who do the evil are the inventors of evil. Humans have invented most of the evil in the world and are also the ones who carry it out. An ax is a tool for chopping wood, but it can also be misused to chop off heads. Free will is a tool. It can be used to bring goodness or bring evil. I can equally choose to pet a puppy or kick it.

Problem of evil’s origin

So, if free will is the source of corruption and evil entering into this world doesn’t that lead to another problem?

1. God is absolutely perfect
2. God cannot create anything imperfect
3. A perfect creature cannot do evil
4. Therefore, evil cannot arise in this world
5. But evil did arise in this world
6. Hence It seems that either premise 1 or 2 or both are false

If Adam was perfect, how could he have sinned? If the devil was perfect, how could pride have been found in him and him start a rebellion against God that caused a third of the angels to rebel as well (Ezekiel 28:12-18; Isaiah 14:12-14)? This gets into the way free will works. The problem with the above argument is not premise 1 or 2 but premise 3. God gave satan free will. Free will allows evil to occur as it gives you the freedom to choose against the good you know you ought to do. It also allows us to desire evil. “What/who caused satan to sin?” No one did. He is the cause of his own sin. Sin is a self-caused action. God created the possibility of evil by giving us free will, but we are responsible for making it actual.

Objective morality

There is actually a positive case for God’s existence based on evil’s existence and objective morality. Objective morality is the idea that right and wrong actually exist in a factual way. That it is possible to judge if something is good or bad inherently, without people’s opinions affecting the decision. 

The argument for objective morality goes like this:

1. If evil exists, then objective moral values exist.
2. If objective moral values exist, then an objective standard must exist (the nature of God)
3. Evil exists; therefore, an objective standard must exist. Namely Yahweh’s nature.

If you say that God doesn’t exist, then evil and morality doesn’t exist. This also removes love, justice, free will, or goodness. How can there be love if all love is, is just neurochemicals reacting a certain way for a time until you decide to change sexual partners? How can justice be real, or even be permissible, if all we are is flesh robots with no real free will? Afterall, how can we be held accountable for our actions if we don’t have free will? If we don’t have souls and are just evolved higher lifeforms who have specialized in intelligence and future planning, how could we have free will? We intuitively know evil exists (which we will get into more below) but what about free will?

Problems with free will

Free will can’t exist without God. If materialism is true, then we are just moist flesh robots who do what our chemicals dictate about any and all stimuli. If we kill, eat, sleep, rape, play with our dogs, or read a book. It was all dictated by our biological processes set in motion at the big bang and none of it is more valid than the rest. Nor more wrong.

Without objective moral standards, rape is not wrong. It actually becomes an evolutionary advantage as a strategy for procreation (such as ducks and bears). Without God, one of the most fundamentally evil acts becomes an intrinsically good act. As the only source of goodness would be evolutionary advantages (fitness level). It would make nothing Hitler did wrong as he believed he was cleaning up the gene pool and bringing humans into the next stage of evolution. Why is killing the old or sick or poor a bad thing? These people do not contribute to society and are taking resources from those who do. They have no value to offer. We see mercy and charity as a virtue, but natural selection would say it is wrong and bad to help such people. We should just kill them instead or leave them to die. How can you say if it is right or wrong without a moral standard? It all just becomes your opinion.

Without God, there is nothing. Everything of substance is grounded in God’s existence.

Problems with Justice

You can only have true justice if God exists. If God doesn’t exist, then evil goes unpunished. Hitler will have never been punished because he killed himself before he was able to atone for any of his sins. So, ultimately justice can only occur if there is a court system outside of this life in which we are judged and punished.

We know justice is real to us. Every one of us at one point in our lives have said the phrase “that is unfair”. That is a claim to justice. We instinctually know that some things are right and wrong and when we do wrong, we should be punished and when we do good, we are rewarded. Where does this ingrained knowledge and expectation of justice come from? How can we actually sentence a murderer to prison for killing when they have no free will? It would seem unjust to me that ‘justice’ (the criminal legal system) could continue to operate with no free will. Afterall, if a man rapes a woman why is that an issue? He was just procreating. If I take something from my neighbor, why is that an issue? I am stronger and more cunning to take his possessions, so I am more fit. We don’t complain when a smaller predator takes the prey of a larger one. Why is theft wrong? Why is genocide wrong? Why is war wrong? You can argue for “human progress”, but the victors of the war will feel like they progressed just fine by taking all the things that they didn’t work for. The only true standard could be God’s nature. Everything else is subjective and can change at a moment’s notice.

The problem of evil’s persistence and a good God

The third version of the problem of evil is:

1. If God is all-good, He would destroy evil
2. If God is all-powerful, He could destroy evil
3. But is evil is not destroyed
4. Therefore, no such God exists

This one sounds the best out of the objections yet there is a problem with this thinking. Evil is not destroyed yet. God is all-good, and he is all-powerful, and he has a plan to destroy evil in the resurrection where there will be no more tears or pain or suffering. Just because we don’t yet see evil destroyed doesn’t mean it won’t be. God has told us very clearly how he will deal with evil and pain in the bible.

We don’t just have a God who tells us to deal with evil and leaves us to our own devices. Our God actually entered into the problem of Evil himself. He became a man and lived among us. Suffering the common pains of life while also willfully dying the most painful death he could, to atone for our sins. God stepped in and suffered alongside us. He did this so that he could fairly judge us and so that he could deal with the problem of evil. He knows what it is like to be a human. To suffer in weakness and pain. Yet he overcame it on our behalf. He invites us to live with him forever in the next life. Where there will be no pain or suffering. You just need to accept the invitation.

Common objections

Why can’t everyone get into heaven / If God is love, wouldn’t he accept everyone?

Now you might say, “why doesn’t God just let everyone into heaven?”. If someone were to come into your house and kill your entire family then at the court hearing, the judge looked at the guy and said, “I know you are guilty. I have a mountain of evidence against you, but I love you and I forgive you for the act of killing that family.” Would you feel like justice has been served? Would you feel like the judge did something evil by not punishing the evil that that person caused you and your family? The same applies for God.

The evil we do deserves punishment otherwise God wouldn’t be just, and justice would never occur. You, me, and Dupree all deserve punishment. God has to punish us in order to be just, Yet God is also loving and merciful and wants no one to suffer. So, what is the solution to this? Jesus. By God fulfilling the righteous requirements of the law by committing no sin, he can use his righteousness as a payment for our own sin. Allowing God to be just and the justifier (Romans 4-6). To punish sin and be merciful. For grace, love, and vengeance to go hand in hand and to meet at one moment in time. The cross.

The problem of natural suffering

So, if God, why evil? Why do people get raped and abused? Why do children get born with cancer and then die horrible deaths? Why do tsunami’s destroy cities and hurricanes wipe out entire land masses? Why do men torture each other for fun? The emperor nero used to light his dinner parties and orgies with the light given off from burning Christians on poles. How could this level of evil possibly be allowed?

If God stopped us from being able to choose to do evil, then we wouldn’t have free will. If he limited us to be able to make free choices but only ones that do not harm other humans, then he would have just created robots with limited capabilities. It is logically impossible to control a free will being since then they would no longer have free will.

So, why doesn’t God stop evil (rape, murder, etc.)? If God were to stop every evil act, then he would take away our free will. That is not what he or we want. You have to allow free will actions in order for the actor to have free will. Why didn’t God just create a world without evil? He did. We messed it up. Why didn’t God just create a world without evil that we couldn’t mess up? That is assuming such a thing is possible. If God were to create any type of world with free will agents, it’s reasonable to assume that evil will eventually come from such a world as evil is very selfish in nature. To make a perfectly peaceful, selfless world you would need to take away the natural desire for food, sex, material belongings, etc. which isn’t really possible. And even in such a situation (the garden of Eden), humans would still choose evil.

Two options

If you didn’t allow your children to ever make any mistakes, do they have free will? Are they even independent agents? God allows us to have free will to live in love with him. I can think of 2 good reasons for God to allow evil. 1) It draws people near him and lets us see how much we need him. 2) It builds up our character and makes us better people. Let me explain.

It builds up the character that we desire and need. A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. If God never made any hardship, we wouldn’t have the character needed to overcome it. It is possible, and likely, that it was necessary to create a certain level of evil for us to grow and mature from in order for the next life to be what it needs to be. We will see the sins of others and the evils that come from sin on judgement day so even those who died in the womb will know of the evil of others and be able to overcome sin. Even just reading about the evil of others can have a positive impact on someone to not commit the same evil. The same goes for reading about someone who overcame great evil in the face of adversity. Harriet Tubman is the first example that popped into my mind while writing this. She helped save 70 enslaved people on 13 trips after escaping and gaining freedom herself. She put herself back into danger to end the same evil she just escaped. Reading heroic stories can make us want to be better ourselves. So, evil makes us better in some way if we are able to overcome it. It also draws us near to God when we are not able to overcome it.

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to a deaf world.” – C.S. Lewis The problem of pain

Evil and suffering is the thing that most moves us. Even just a pebble in your shoe can cause you to stop everything you are doing to fix it. Evil stirs us up and causes us to think about God, good or bad. Pain brings us to a low point where we can humble ourselves and trust on not ourselves but others and God. It helps build relationships and tears down pride.

Problem of the purpose of evil

1. An All-good God must have a good purpose for everything
2. But there is no good purpose for some (useless / innocent) suffering
3. Hence there cannot be an all-good God

As I just mentioned, there are good reasons for suffering but maybe not all suffering. It can be hard to see how this suffering has any good purpose or effect in the world, but God can make good from any bad situation. Suffering can lead to the salvation of many. There are many examples of this in the bible and even more in history. Joseph was sold into slavery and thrown in prison for years for sins he had not committed. God used this as a way to bring salvation to many nations during a great famine (Genesis 50:20).

The story of Aggie Hurst is also a great example of good coming from suffering. Her mother, a missionary in the Congo, died while giving birth, her father was struck with grief and said that God had ruined his life. He left the baby with another couple who were missionaries from America. Within 8 months, that couple also died, and she was given to other US missionaries and brought back to America where she was adopted.

Years later she was sent a magazine which had a picture of a white cross and her mother’s name on it. She learned that because of her parents, one African boy was led to Christ. This boy built a school in the village and eventually led his students to Christ. The children led all their parents to Christ and eventually even the tribal chief became a Christian. She then sought out her estranged father who was ill and still bitter at God for ruining his life. She told her father, “Because you and mom were faithful, there are now six hundred African people serving Christ”. This led her father to return to God and weeks later he died. She later met that African boy. Who, by then, was the superintendent of a national church which had 110,000 Christians that all started from her parents saving one boy. The suffering of her parents has led to the salvation of hundreds of thousands by this time.

There is a story of a Christian family I heard about their daughter who had very aggressive late-stage cancer who was going to die. In order to comfort the daughter, they had her go into a closet. Then one by one they had all the members of her family join her in the closet. They said this is what death will be like. You are going to go to heaven, but we will be right behind you.

I don’t think telling the child that there is no God, and her life was born into endless suffering because of bad luck is of any value. If you have suffered in this life, know that the next life is incomparable, and you won’t even remember or care about your present darkness.

God can and has used any and all sorts of evil to bring salvation to many.

The problem of physical evil

1. Moral evil is explained by free will
2. But much physical evil does not result from free will
3. Therefore, much of physical evil cannot be explained by free choice
4. Hence either God or nature must be the cause of these physical evils
5. But both of thse are traceable to God and are his responsibility
6. Such evils are incompatible with an all-loving, all-powerful God
7. Therefore, a theistic God does not exist

This is a more interesting argument to me, but I would still point back to the reasons I have already mentioned. I would say that premise 3 and 4 are flawed. Most natural suffering (disease, illness, pain, etc.) is self-caused. It is not fair to point to lung cancer as a problem with God when the person who has it smoked a pack a day for 20 years. In the same way. Much suffering is caused by indirect free will choices such as laziness leading to poverty or obesity. Neglectful farming practices leading to arid conditions which cause dust storms or desertification and famine. Bad decisions can lead to poverty and starvation of millions such as the case of China during the communist revolution in China. Much of world poverty is caused by those in power siphoning goods and gifts which were intended for the poor which you can read in several of Cal Beisner’s books on the subject.

Some suffering is a byproduct of a good thing. Having too much water can lead to drowning if someone falls in. But would it be better to have no water? Earthquakes recycle minerals required for life but can also take life. Rain brings life but can cause flooding (which could have been from free-will choices in deforestation and uprooting plants making the soil unstable). The suffering that isn’t explainable through direct or indirect free choices are often needed for life to exist at all or could be used to build up our character as mentioned above.

Life is unfair

I have heard many saying something along the lines of “This life is awful! I wish I was never born! How could a God make this world when it is just full of pain and suffering!”

Judging this life and considering that there is no value in it, and that it’s all suffering, would be like judging your entire life from the first 10 minutes of it. You are just born, in extreme pain from the trauma of birth, everything is too bright, cold, and uncomfortable. You are comforted slightly by the presence of your mother but ultimately you are without comfort.

But it wouldn’t make sense to judge your life by the first 10 minutes of it, would it? After a million years in the next life in joy and peace, would it make sense to judge your current life by a couple dozen years of hardship and suffering?  Be comforted by the fact that this life is fleeting and just a moment of time for us and what’s to come next (in Christ) is so much better than anything this life could offer.

None are good

We are all evil. “Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?” He doesn’t. No one is good. The only good person who ever lived was put onto a cross and killed.

Human nature is evil. It is the most obvious fact of history. We are evil in a unique way that other animals aren’t (other than maybe cats/dolphins). Humans invent ways to torture each other for fun. Read about Unit 731 or learn about the rape of Nanking if you want examples. We like to think we are civilized and beyond what evil our stone-age ancestors viewed as normal, but the worst atrocities men have ever committed were done in the last 100 years.

I have seen many atheists online who say “I don’t believe in God, but I hope there is a Hell for those people” when talking about certain particularly evil atrocities. Like the acts of Jeffery Dahmer or unit 731.

The Stanley-Milgram experiment at Yale showed that 60-80% of random normal people pulled off the street will execute someone in an electric chair if someone in a lab coat tells them to while the person they are “killing” is begging them not to and screaming in agonizing pain. This experiment has been carried out all over the world and the results have been consistent.

The most frightening thing that we have learned about the holocaust is that the most advanced culture and society in the world agreed and went through with mass genocide. And that it was carried out by normal people just like you and me. If you were in nazi Germany, you would probably be a nazi. Read the book “Ordinary men” if you want an example of this. A Jew who survived the holocaust was at the trail of Adolf Eichmann who was one of the leaders at the concentration camps. He said:

“Eichmann was an ordinary man. He was an exemplary father, a considerate husband. I was shaken by his normal appearance and behavior.” Harald Welzer, a German psychologist, wrote in his book on mass murders, “As we look at the perpetrators of genocide and mass killing, we need no longer ask who these people are. We know who they are. They are you and I.”

If we are evil by nature, isn’t it God’s fault that we are evil? If a man drives a Toyota Prius while intoxicated and runs a red light and kills a family walking across the street is Toyota responsible? But if Toyota never made that Prius, then the driver never would have used it to kill the family. While true that doesn’t make them responsible. The maker isn’t the one who made the driver drive drunk. Free will is the origin of evil. If you have free will and use it for evil, then you are responsible for misusing the tool God gave you.

When God did stop an evil (human sacrifice, rape, genocide) by killing the Canaanites who were committing such things, through the Jews, people get upset. They say the God of the Old Testament is a moral monster for commanding the death of humans, but God can only stop evil by killing us.

So, in order for God to get rid of evil he would have to get rid of us entirely. God can’t destroy evil in this life without destroying us with it. This is the plan, but this plan will happen in the next life when the corrupted human nature is restored after the resurrection.

“Being a good person is all that matters. God only cares about if you are a good person. Not that you arbitrarily believe in Jesus, I deserve heaven.”

No, you don’t. You do not deserve heaven. Good works are not what saves us. Our good works are like used menstrual pads to God. You can’t earn your way into heaven. If you think you can, you just don’t understand how evil sin really is and how evil you really are. It is a sin to think you deserve heaven, called self-righteousness. If there was someone who was found guilty of murder and his defense was “but judge yesterday I helped an old lady across the street and gave money to a homeless man. I have done more good deeds than evil ones”. The judge will look at the man like he is crazy and say “That doesn’t matter. Doing a couple good things doesn’t solve the problem of the evil you have done. You have killed a man and deserve punishment”. The number of good deeds is irrelevant. It is about the severity of crimes committed. No amount of penance can cover the cost of your sins. They are far weightier than any good deed you could do.

Hell is unfair

“Isn’t hell unfair and why would a loving God send anyone to hell?” No. Hell is very fair. Heaven is unfair. No one deserves Heaven, we all are evil and deserve Hell. You don’t want fairness, you want grace. 

“Well, why would God infinitely punish me for finite sins?” This assumes 2 things. That sinning against an infinite God doesn’t require an infinite punishment and that you stop sinning in Hell. Why can’t the sins continue in Hell? The first sin was rebellion against God and pride. Who says that can’t keep happening.

So, can we be good enough to pay our debt in the courtroom of heaven without the riches of Jesus to pay them for us? Why do we need Jesus? The problem with this thinking is the misunderstanding of how evil sin really is. The debt of sin we have is something that we couldn’t hope to pay off even with multiple lifetimes of good deeds. 

The problem also comes in, “why are you doing the good deeds?”. Are you doing them because you want to pay down your debt? Or are you doing them because it is the right thing to do? Do you have ulterior motives that would make your actions not truly righteous in nature? The short answer is no. You can’t pay your own debt because even your good deeds are done with evil intentions most of the time and the good deeds you do honestly aren’t enough to satisfy perfection.

God’s standard of goodness is himself. Perfection. So, if you are below perfect then you are not able to pay for your own sin. If you are less than God, then you can’t be holy in God’s sight. Thus, the need for Jesus who is God. God can use his own perfection in Jesus as the payment for the imperfection in us. He satisfies his law, wrath, and justice by punishing Jesus in our place. So, God is loving, merciful, and just only through the blood of Jesus. Which is why salvation comes from no other means. God’s justice can only be satisfied in the punishment of sin. So, either you pay for it and go to Hell or Jesus pays for it and allows you to live with him in life and truth.

Imagine you are in court with a debt you can’t possibly pay even with multiple lifetimes of work. Well now there comes in a rich man who pays for your debt. And in court if someone pays your fines then you are free to go even though you yourself had no way to pay those fines. There was a court case in California where a judge’s daughter was caught speeding. So, during the court hearing he got up, took off his judicial robes, came down from his authority, and paid the debt and offense of his daughter. 

The same thing happens with Jesus. Jesus legally goes in front of the judge and offers to pay for your crimes with his own riches. The only way we can get out of paying this debt is to let our God, who has infinite abundance, pay the debt we are meant to pay. And he did this on the cross. He came down from heaven, took off his divine robes, and assumed the role of a man in order to be in position to pay off our debt. The only thing we need to do is simply have faith in him as God and as our sacrifice (Romans 10:9, Ephesians 2:8-9).

There aren’t very many words that will help someone in suffering or who has suffered extreme loss in their lives. I think the only comforting words are that Jesus Christ (God) has died so that we may live with him forever and what is lost here is never truly gone.