God, Suffering, and Evil
The question of God and evil is often used in philosophical debates to suggest that belief in God is unreasonable. Yet, it is also a question that Christians often find troubling. If God is good, loving, holy, and all-powerful, why is it that he allows evil and human suffering? How might we go about understanding the relationship between God and evil?
Understanding Evil and Suffering
Evil is often defined negatively as anything that does not align with or is opposed to the will of God. In a broad sense, evil involves human action (often referred to as moral evil), an environmental component (often referred to as natural evil), and, at times, a more narrow contextual component (often referred to as structural evil).
Moral and natural evil are tied together. When God created the world, he instituted an order. The various elements of creation were distinguished from one another so that they could fulfill the unique functions God assigned to them. All creation elements were set within boundaries (e.g., light and dark, earth and water, etc.). These boundaries were part of the created order. Ignoring those boundaries would disrupt God’s order and result in negative consequences.
In Genesis 2:16-17, God establishes a boundary for humankind and conveys the consequences of crossing that boundary. Like the law that would be given to Israel after the Exodus, ignoring God’s command would result in disorder evidenced by consequences that would involve suffering. Disorder results from the human couple’s decision to exercise their own judgment apart from God. Disobedience leads to disorder. Disorder brings with it the possibility of suffering.
Suffering is one of the unfortunate consequences of living in a disordered, chaotic, fallen world. Such suffering is the result of sin, though it is not necessarily the direct result of a particular sin. In the book of Job, Job’s friends advocated for a rigid connection between sin and suffering. As such, the urge Job to repent () while Job continually asserts his innocence (Job 6:1-30; 12:4). We see a similar perspective at play in John’s gospel when, upon seeing a man born blind, the disciples ask Jesus whether it was the man or his parents whose sin brought on the blindness (Jn 9:2). The Pharisees echo this conception (9:34). While it is possible for suffering to be the direct result of a particular sin (Gen. 4:13), it is not necessarily the direct result of a particular sin.
From a biblical perspective, evil arises as a consequence of human divergence from God’s order. At the level of human action, sin can be informed or uninformed. At times, those who oppose God don’t seem to know they are opposing God. The “pharaoh who knew not Joseph” (Exod 1:8), for instance, ends up opposing God in his initial attempts to limit Israel’s population (1:9-22). While one might argue that the pharaoh should have known better, his ignorance of Joseph and the way God blessed Egypt because of Joseph led him to a faulty conclusion about the Israelites and what needed to be done to secure his nations.
The same pharaoh also provides an example of informed divergence from God’s order. Once Moses and Aaron speak to Pharaoh on behalf of “the God of Israel” (5:1), Pharaoh actively chooses to disobey God’s command. Clearly, Pharaoh may not understand just who the Lord is. Still, he decides to disregard God. He ultimately pays the penalty for resisting the Lord.
The book of Leviticus acknowledges unintentional sin (Lev 4). In a fallen world, sin can occur apart from a specific act of rebellion. Sin, in other words, does not require ill intent. We may not always mean to sin.
The Problem of Evil’s Origins
Recognizing that evil and suffering are the result of human sin doesn’t resolve the whole problem of evil. If God created a perfectly ordered world, how it is that humanity would ever have had the inclination to rebel against God? Genesis 3 answers this with the introduction of the serpent in Genesis 3:1. The serpent questions God’s character by suggesting that the command God has given regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is designed to keep humanity under God’s thumb. The serpent convinces the human couple that their paradise is actually a prison (For a more detailed discussion of Genesis 3, see my chapter on Trajectories).
Most Christians can get their heads around the idea that human sin resulted in the fall; however, it is difficult to know what to do with the serpent. Even suggesting that the serpent is Satan who fell from heaven after allowing pride to overcome him, the question remains: how could God allow such a thing to happen given that (a) he knew it was coming, (b) he could have stopped it, and (c) he would have wanted to stop it because he is a good and loving God?
It is important to understand that the way the question of God and Evil is structured creates a sucker’s choice. It assumes at least two things: (1) God and evil are the only factors, and (2) the evil we experience represents a worst-case scenario. Both assumptions are problematic.
First, God and evil are not the only factors in the equation. There are other creatures involved. Without going too far down the rabbit hole that is free will, it seems important to acknowledge that God creates beings with minds of their own. While we do not know a great deal about angels (the Bible gives us relatively little information about the angelic world), it does appear that angels and other spiritual beings make choices. They have the capacity for belief and the capacity not to act on that belief (Jam 2:19). Because God created beings with the capacity to reject Him despite his evident goodness, there was always the possibility that one or more of those beings would rebel against God.
Again, some may question why God created beings with that capacity. I tend to think God’s creation of such beings is similar to God’s “inability” (i.e., God is not self-contradictory; his determination of a thing is consistent) to create a square circle or a triangle with more than three corners. The nature and character of beings capable of making choices necessarily involve the ability to choose to oppose God. To put it differently, once God determines the sort of being He will bring into existence, the character and nature of that being creates and limits possibilities for good or ill.
When God creates other beings, they become part of the equation. It’s not just God and evil. These beings are now involved in and bound up with God and the rest of creation. Because God is not a puppet master pretending to create an autonomous world while controlling a set of marionettes, the beings God creates (e.g., angels and humans)have agency and volition. They can choose God or choose to oppose God.
When the beings God created decide to oppose him, they disrupt His order. That disruption has consequences. Evil and suffering result from the creation of beings capable of making choices…even bad choices. Yet, even this still leaves open a question: if God knows which beings will oppose Him, why wouldn’t he just avoid creating those particular beings? That brings us to the next assumption.
Second, because of the evil and suffering we witness and experience, it is easy for us to imagine that the evil and suffering we see and feel is worse than any other sort of evil or suffering we could experience. To be clear, the Bible does not provide us with a great deal of insight regarding God’s thought process during creation. As such, in thinking through these matters, we are in speculative territory. With that said, here is the basic argument:
- God has exhaustive knowledge of the world.
- God not only knows the world but all the worlds that he might have created.
- Because God is wise, sovereign, and benevolent, we can trust that the world God has created is the best of all possible worlds.
- If God created the best of all possible worlds, he opted not to create worlds that would have been worse.
- Had God chosen not to create the beings that oppose him, it is possible that, without those individuals in the world, others would have opposed God. This point assumes that we have an effect on one another again, for good or ill.
This view is not without its problems. It is based on a philosophical idea called the possible worlds theory. While I tend to see the theory as somewhat viable, I don’t believe other worlds would need to be possible for this argument to hold (though some slight modifications might be required). We could make largely the same point, appealing only to God’s wisdom. That argument would be as follows:
- God has exhaustive knowledge of the world and has a full understanding of how to design and work within that world at any given moment (i.e., God is all-knowing and wise)
- God’s perfect ability to design the best possible world for human flourishing is evident in the creation narrative of Gen 1 and 2.
- Because He can design a world maximally well-suited for human flourishing, we know that God created the best possible world while allowing us to choose whether to obey or reject Him.
- We can assume God did something similar for other beings with the ability to choose.
- The rejection of God despite his maximally wise creative work is not a matter of God encouraging evil but of humankind (and other beings) choosing it.
In this argument, there is only one possible world. That world’s initial design was maximally well-suited for human flourishing because God is wise and benevolent.
This latter argument is likely stronger because it is a bit more biblically defensible. I’ve included the argument with possible worlds theory as slightly different options that, in my estimation, are still viable. Neither argument suggests that the evil and suffering we experience are trivial. Instead, the point is that the moral argument against God doesn’t account for a scenario in which, by creating the world He did, God put us in (and keeps us in) the best situation possible rather than the worst.
Conclusion
The discussion above attempts to provide a reasonable answer to the question of God and evil. The Bible does not provide a clear answer to the question of God and evil. Any answer we provide, or argument we make is, to some degree, speculative. From a biblical perspective, we can be sure of a few points:
- God is good, wise, and sovereign. His creation, which culminated in the Sabbath, was designed to allow for human flourishing, not human suffering.
- Humanity’s distrust of God resulted in brokenness, pain, and suffering.
- Despite humanity’s rebellion, God acts to redeem His creation.
God is not the source of evil. He is actively moving to eliminate evil from his creation. However we think about evil and suffering, we must always remember where God began (e.g., a creation that culminated in the Sabbath) and where he is taking us (e.g., a world without pain and suffering). As we read in Revelation 21:1-4, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
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