Before stepping into the most powerful objection to Christianity that the world affords, it’s important to offer a major concession: there is no escaping the emotional potency of the Problem of Evil. It’s easy to intellectualize evil and suffering, but it’s an entirely different thing to actually suffer. A Christian response to the Problem of Evil must keep this in mind: that life can be beyond difficult and reason often doesn’t offer the comfort that people truly need.
And so I don’t want this response to be ready as a means of sidestepping the emotional validity of the argument, which is very real. One has certainly not lived a full life without having to answer this question not from a philosophical lens but from a personal and existential perspective.
I wanted to say this before moving on because I never want to diminish the experience of suffering, which is often done when approaching the question from an abstract perspective. And as a Christian, this article would be a failure even if it had the best reasoning in the world if it came across as dismissive of anyone’s pain.
Defining terms in the Problem of Evil
One inconsistency with the Problem of Evil is that it rejects theism and yet upholds metaphysical entities like evil. It’s certainly a possibility that ethics can exist in a metaphysical realm without a personal being, i.e. a God, but it’s certainly more internally consistent to either be a materialist or a theist.
But the true materialist can have no difficulty with suffering or evil because these are simply material facts. There is no ethical realm, at least that we have access to through science, and so it’s inconsistent to claim that there is even such a thing as evil or that suffering is a bad thing. Evil and bad are both terms that are out of place for anyone who rejects the possibility of a metaphysical realm.
I can, however, understand the argument as a critique of Christianity and an attempt at exposing an internal inconsistency within theism, but the problem is that almost every proponent of the Problem of Evil has a strong sense that material suffering in the world is a great evil, and as a Christian, I very much agree. I just think that this is revealing of an internal inconsistency in the attacker’s position instead.
The advocate of the Problem of Evil is ultimately using evil to mean suffering. This is an important distinction because, for the Christian, these are two very distinct things. Suffering in the Bible is not viewed as evil but rather as inevitable, but as we talk about the Problem of Evil in this article, we’ll use the word evil to mean pain or suffering.
A Christian response to the Problem of Evil: Love
I will begin with what I think is the strongest argument against the Problem of Evil. The entirety of the Problem of Evil assumes the highest values are pleasure and pain, because in the absence of metaphysical values like justice or freedom, only material concerns remain (i.e. pleasure and pain). But this is already inconsistent with the Christian view. These values rather belong to the Epicureans and Utilitarians and have never belonged to the Christians.
If God was compelled to have the same ethical values as Epicureans and Utilitarians, then you certainly have Him caught. But the easiest sidestep is to say that though pleasure and pain are certainly conditions that God is concerned with and aware of, they ultimately are never communicated to be his highest concern.
It is important to begin by saying that the New Testament does not attempt to deal with this question in a philosophical light, although it does contain many passages that do offer hope or encouragement despite these realities. I say this before offering what I see as higher values that are communicated in the New Testament.
A teacher came up and asked Jesus what the greatest commandment in the Old Testament was, and this was His response:
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
Mark 12:29–31
If Love is the purpose for living rather than pleasure, and if oftentimes these two values are held in opposition to one another, then it becomes fathomable why this world would be so full of suffering.
The problem of eternity
It is difficult for me to bring up specific accounts of suffering because all of the reasoning and abstractions in the world seem shallow compared to death, war, and rape. But all of these things do become much smaller on an eternal spectrum.
Jesus says, Lazarus and the rich man are living the flip side of the coin in eternity. Negating God doesn’t add meaning to suffering, it rather strips it of making any cosmic sense. It means that there can be no eternal justice. It’s clear that there is little justice in this world, but if there is a God, there is not only the possibility but the expected condition of an eternal justice.
We often counsel people to “give it some time.” And eternity is a much wider frame of reference than we usually give it credit for. Death may actually not be so problematic when we’ve existed for a thousand years after.
The problem of endurance
Although the Problem of Evil is currently used as attack on Christianity, much of history is composed of people who are pushed into Christianity by the exact same question. Christianity—and for that matter other religions—have flourished during periods of great persecution.
At a different, less modern point in time, Christians actually believed that suffering was a mark of faith and that by suffering one was communing and more fully participating in the divine nature. God Himself, when He inhabited human flesh, suffered to a much greater extent than many of the examples we use in this thought experiment.
A Christian response to the Problem of Evil: Conclusion
Often we become fenced in by our underlying beliefs, and this is exactly one of those scenarios. The person who rejects God because He has not made the temporal world to their liking cannot accept that God could make sense of the temporal within the eternal. The very same problem is created in the rejection of the possibility of miracles. If there is no God then there can be no miracles, but both questions are actually predicated on the original belief or rejection of a God.
All of these things being said, thinking about suffering and actually suffering are two entirely different things. And all the abstractions and explanations in the world often don’t help at all against real pain. Instead of intellectualizing our emotional reality, however, I think it can be quite productive to accept the distance between what we think and how we feel. Every day these two things may not line up, and following tragedy they may not line up for quite some time.
If you have ideas about the Problem of Evil or want to continue the conversation, please reach out. I don’t want this to be just a place for me to share my ideas but I want it to be a place that fosters dialogue.