Apologetics

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"People ruin their lives by their own foolishness and then are angry at the LORD." -Proverbs 19:3 NLT

The problem of evil is one of the greatest reasons for Christians falling away from the faith and maybe the greatest fuel for atheism and agnosticism. Of course, the premise is all-too familiar: if God is all-good and all-powerful, then why is there pain and suffering in the world?

One can study ways to answer this question. There are ways to answer it, and Christians need to be prepared to do so. But this isn't really an exhaustive attempt on my part to explain that age-old question.

This article is really devoted to the question itself of why God allows suffering, rather than the answer itself. Is it a good question? Absolutely. The problem with many skeptics of the faith who use this argument is that they lack knowledge of the concept of sin. That's the bottom line. They are not defining sin the way God does. I'll explain this more in a second.

If an attacker is going to borrow the Christian belief that God is all-good and all-loving, then they must also borrow the Christian explanation for that God allowing evil. It's logical suicide to avoid accepting the answer to a problem simply because it's not what you want to hear.

Another problem with skeptics is this: they look at the evil in the world and claim that God either doesn't exist or that He's not all-good or not all-powerful. Ok, well that's pretty basic, right? Let me pose this picture, and you tell me what's wrong with it: a verbally abusive parent upset that their child isn't happy. And this one: a man who avoids all contact with people and getting depressed because he has no friends. The problem is that they're both hypocrites. That parent doesn't realize (or want to accept) that their child's suffering is a result of their own doing. The lonely man has only himself to blame for his depression since he's the one not taking the initiative to meet people. So many skeptics fall under this same illustration, only they take it a step further and blame God for the pain caused by their own actions. The lonely man might say something like "I have no friends. Nobody loves me. God does, you say? Yah right. There is no God. If there was, he'd want me to be happy." It all goes back to this: if you're going to borrow the Christian concept of an all-good, all-powerful creator, logically you must borrow the Christian concept of evil. To not do so is like someone coming in and trying to tell you how to play a game that you invented. Who are they to say?

All the many people who trump God's existence with the evil card are usually the same people who jump from bed to bed (fornicate),lie, cheat, steal (regardless of value), and harbor jealousy. Now just who's standard of evil are they judging by? Not MY God's. Every single person on this earth has at one time or another been a channel through which the very things we blame God for have come into this world. I've hurt people in my life before. Is it God's fault? No, it's my own foolishness.

In short, if you blame the Christian God for evil, then by Christian doctrine you're a hypocrite. But when you begin to understand it's your own fault and not His, you begin to take responsibility for your own actions. You're accountable. And when that happens, God will start to move in you. Overall, the problem of evil is a very good question, and one that needs to be addressed. It's not at all stupid to ask about it. Even the greatest Christian thinkers have wrestled with it. The point though is that many people who ask it are asking it with the wrong mindset.

Remember, God does love you!

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