the problem of evil

In a recent conversation, a friend of mine posed a question: If God knew from the very beginning all that would happen – the insurrection of Lucifer and humanity’s subsequent choice to rebel – why did he continue on with creation? I knew immediately what he was getting at. Why didn’t God do something to stop it? It is a dilemma that haunts us, gnawing at the edges of our faith: Why does God allow evil?

 

We see its effects all around us, filling up our world with pain and suffering and death. The remnants of broken hearts and broken lives litter our existence like refuse. Boldface headlines scream to us of war-torn nations, innocents used and abused, natural disasters ravaging the already-impoverished. Subconsciously, we find ourselves asking, “How could God let this happen?”

 

The devout and the deviant alike have brooded over this for millennia. More than a few skeptics have, for lack of satisfactory answers, dismissed all possibility of God’s existence: “A loving God wouldn’t…” And as many believers have for the same reason stagnated in their faith. But perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Perhaps we need to reframe our inquiry: “How could a loving God not allow evil?”

 

Ever since Lucifer’s expulsion from heaven in the wake of his failed coup, a question mark has hung over our universe: Is God good or is he merely powerful? That is, does he rule from a beneficent heart or is he an iron-fisted dictator? Herein we find the reason for our free will. If God had not given us the capacity to choose, we would be puppets, moved by the whims of a superior power. But God desires more of us. His heart longs for relationship. He craves our affection and love. These, by definition, can never be the product of coercion; they must be given freely, for love that is compelled is not love at all.

 

And so God presented to our first parents a choice – to live in a utopian state of innocence, free from all defect and blight, or to choose independence. We know how the story goes. Humanity inclined its collective ear to the sibilant whisperings of a wayward serpent as he revived his seditious mantra: “Is God good? Can he be trusted? He holds out on you! Rise up and take for yourself what he will not give.” We hear echoing in his words to Eve – “eat from that tree [and] you’ll be just like God” (Genesis 3:5, MSG) – his own duplicitous ambitions:

 

How you are fallen from heaven, O shining star, son of the morning. You have been thrown down to the earth, you who destroyed the nations of the world. For you said to yourself, “I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God’s stars. I will preside on the mountain of the gods far away in the north. I will climb to the highest heaven and be like the Most High.” (Isaiah 14:12-14, NLT; emphasis mine)

 

To prove once for all his intentions and in hopes of winning our love, God did the unthinkable; for a second time, he exposed his heart to be broken, knowing that it indeed would be. For the prospect of love, God permitted the possibility of hate. And in true turncoat fashion, humanity chose the latter, siding with Satan and the fallen angels. That decision, freely made, held untold consequences: War and murder, poverty and injustice, famine and death. These are the repercussions, not of a loveless God, but of our choice. Could God speak the word and mend our broken world, erasing all traces of suffering? Of that there is no doubt. But to do so would be to overturn our capacity to choose and thus, our ability to love.

 

And yet in steadfast devotion and tireless love, God pursues us. The resolute romantic, he would win back our hearts from the enemy who stole them. We see in Jesus, not the annulment of our choice, but one who offers us the opportunity to change our mind, to return to that fateful moment in Eden and choose rightly.

 

Just as we reframe the question, let us also reorient our vision, learning to look at this world through God’s eyes. What he saw within the epochs of eternity past, we must see today: Missteps and the molestations of evil do not negate the goodness of what God created; each is an opportunity for redemption. “Oh your cross, it’s where my hope restarts – a second chance is heaven’s heart.”