Imperishable Inheritance

In the dis­cus­sion of apolo­get­ics (defend­ing your faith, 1 Peter 3:15), the so-labeled “Prob­lem of Evil” con­tin­u­ally arises. I will explain the frame­work of this so pro­posed “log­i­cal” refu­ta­tion of the exis­tence of a divine Cre­ator. Maybe you have encoun­tered it while evan­ge­liz­ing to someone.

This argu­ment is one of the worst against the exis­tence of God, but it is often uti­lized due to the sheer emo­tion that one can play upon when debat­ing with a The­ist (one who believes in a divine yet per­sonal Cre­ator such as a Chris­t­ian). I hope to give you a frame­work to effec­tively answer this ques­tion in ful­fill­ing The Great Com­mis­sion (Matthew 28:19–20).

What is the Prob­lem of Evil?

The logic might slightly vary, but here is a gen­eral out­line to the argument:

1. If God is per­fectly good (omni-benevolent), He would desire to abol­ish evil.
2. If He is all pow­er­ful (omnipo­tent), He would abol­ish evil.
3. Evil exists in the world.
4. There­fore, an all pow­er­ful, good God does not exist.

This argu­men­ta­tion is a deduc­tive argu­ment or to be another way, a solu­tion is derived from its premises. In evan­ge­lism, you might come across the argu­ment, maybe not in the form above, but some­thing along the lines of:

“How can you believe in a God when He allows infants to die at the hands of oth­ers, the Holo­caust, and nat­ural dis­as­ters? If He was who you say He is, then He would stop all the evil in the world.”

Don’t panic, this argu­men­ta­tion is com­mon and very weak. We find in those that adamantly try to dis­prove the exis­tence of God that they have cer­tain pre­sup­po­si­tions that they carry through the argu­ment. For instance, an athe­ist may believe strongly that evo­lu­tion is true and God does not exist; so, when he looks into the exis­tence of God he will carry his pre­sup­po­si­tions through to his con­clu­sion (another liv­ing exam­ple of our depravity).

How do we answer this question?

When solv­ing the prob­lem of evil we use a “theod­icy.” A theod­icy is a branch of the­ol­ogy that attempts to rec­on­cile evil with a good, lov­ing, omnipo­tent God; when we uti­lize this branch of the­ol­ogy, we are giv­ing a “theodicy.”

How many theod­i­cists does it take to change a light bulb?
100. One to change the bulb, and 99 to explain why an infi­nite God of love would allow dark­ness to occur in the world at all!¹

First, it is impor­tant to hit on theod­i­cies many Chris­tians use with­out think­ing of the impli­ca­tions of their argu­men­ta­tion. From this, they end up cor­ner­ing them­selves in their very own arguments.

The Free Will Theodicy

This is by far the worst to use in debat­ing this issue. The argu­ment fol­lows that God has endowed us with so much free­dom (Lib­er­tar­ian, autonomous, self-determining free will) that we cre­ate the evil, and God is thereby not respon­si­ble for it. Let us look at why this argu­men­ta­tion is so flawed.

First, the Bible does not reveal that we have been granted with self-determining free will. The Bible clearly states that God knows all (omni­scient) in verses such as Job 37:16, Psalms 139:4, and Matthew 10:30; the Bible also declares God’s Sov­er­eignty and divine plan accom­plished through fore-ordination (1 Tim­o­thy 6:15, Rev­e­la­tion 4:11). Through these two truths, it is not that we are self-determining—because God has already, per­fectly deter­mined the future! But let us not get caught into think­ing that we have no will of our own and that we are not respon­si­ble due to this. James writes in his epistle:

But each one is tempted when he is car­ried away and enticed by his own lust.
James 1:14

We do indeed have a set of desires that we act upon freely! The verse before (vs. 13) pro­claims God as not tempt­ing any­one with evil! We do act wickedly out of our own nature. God does not coerce us or yank us around to accom­plish His plan. We are also respon­si­ble for all of our actions (Isa­iah 55:6–7, Luke 11:9–10, Rev­e­la­tion 3:20); in fact, we will be judged by our deeds on judg­ment day (Romans 2:5–6)!

So from all this we must not use this argu­ment, sim­ply because the Bible does not pro­claim such free­dom. Also, using this line of argu­men­ta­tion falls apart when the per­son you are con­vers­ing says, “you are actu­ally mak­ing God out to be more ‘evil.’ You are declar­ing that God cre­ated us with free­dom know­ing we would com­mit such evil acts.” In other words, we will have got­ten no where. It also fails to ratio­nal­ize why there are nat­ural dis­as­ters or evil not caused directly by man.

Deny­ing Omni­science or Omnipotence

Some Chris­tians take down the premises by declar­ing that God is in fact not omni­scient or omnipo­tent. In other words, you are say­ing that God can­not know what is to hap­pen and is pow­er­less to stop it. We must never resort to this argu­men­ta­tion (this argu­men­ta­tion is found in the phi­los­o­phy of Malthe­ists or those that believe that God is not all good and even extend to say that God is evil). You must be care­ful, because even though this argu­men­ta­tion might sound ludi­crous explained this way; many Chris­tians who do not believe the afore­men­tioned def­i­n­i­tion declare it unknowingly.

A Proper Theodicy

We have estab­lished that we must use a theod­icy that hon­ors God’s omni­science, omnipo­tence, and omni-benevolence while affirm­ing that we can­not sim­ply ascribe evil to a self-determining will. So then, what are we to say of the prob­lem of evil?

We must not for­get of the argu­men­ta­tion used above against the exis­tence of God. In a deduc­tive argu­ment, one or more of the premises must be flawed in order for the con­clu­sion to be invalid. My argu­men­ta­tion will focus on premise num­ber 1.

This theod­icy cen­ters around the dis­tinc­tion of two agents, that being God (the first) and humans (the sec­ond). In other words, can both agents have dif­fer­ent plans for actions? In other words, could God view an action for a benev­o­lent pur­pose; but yet we view an action, and carry out as such, as evil? Let’s try an anal­ogy (graphic but poignant):

Pic­ture a man hold­ing down a child while other men stick pieces of metal into the child’s eye, all the while the child is scream­ing in pain, cry­ing out for them to stop. On the sur­face it seems like a hor­ri­ble, cruel thing these men are doing to the child. But if we add the infor­ma­tion that the child is bleed­ing to death from the nasal cav­ity, that there is no time for anes­thetic, that the man hold­ing him down is his lov­ing father, and that the men stick­ing the metal into his eye are doc­tors try­ing to save his life, then the prob­lem of evil dis­ap­pears. The evil doesn’t dis­ap­pear, it is still there (just ask the child!), but the prob­lem of evil is no longer present, because the inten­tion is good.²

This argu­men­ta­tion prop­erly illus­trates that God can, and does indeed, fore­or­dain evil; but yet He is still benev­o­lent because He is not the author of that evil (James 1:13) and He does not inter­cede because His plan for those actions are for His greater pur­pose and His will that is a mys­tery to us (Eph­esians 1:11).

Also, I believe this theod­icy, along the same line of rea­son­ing ade­quately answers the ques­tion of why God allows nat­ural dis­as­ters and other “evil” events out­side of the realm of human causality.

Wait, how can God not be the author of evil?

An anal­ogy?

A prison war­den, call him Bill, who hires a guard, Chuck, to exe­cute a con­demned rapist and mur­derer, Spike. Now sup­pose that Chuck derives some per­verse plea­sure from killing Spike, and Bill knows this. Does this involve Bill in the evil of Chuck’s action? Not unless either the action of killing Spike is evil in itself (which it is not), or Bill shares the same pur­pose as Chuck (grat­i­fi­ca­tion of some per­verse desire) in killing Spike (which he does not).³

God serves as Bill (let us allow for anthro­po­mor­phism), we as free, moral, respon­si­ble agents par­al­lel Chuck, and the object of our evil is man­i­fested in Spike. So, God can indeed know that you and I will enjoy a per­verse plea­sure, but yet He uses it for His glo­ri­ous inten­tion and glo­ri­fi­ca­tion. Also, the impor­tance of James 1:13 comes through in this.

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God can­not be tempted by evil, and He Him­self does not tempt any­one.
James 1:13

Bib­li­cal Examples

There are many exam­ples where God does indeed use an evil intent (un-created by God) to accom­plish His glory. The most preva­lent exam­ple are those in the story of Joseph in the book of Gen­e­sis, The book of Job, and the cru­ci­fix­ion of Jesus Christ.

Joseph in Genesis

Joseph, after being sold into slav­ery by his broth­ers out of hatred (Gen­e­sis 37:4, 28) endured much hard­ship but was all through­out pro­tected by the LORD, and He even brought Joseph into pros­per­ity under the Pharaoh (Gen­e­sis 39:2). After famine struck, Jacob sent his sons down to Egypt to buy grain (Gen­e­sis 42:2); Joseph showed mercy upon them.

Joseph remained faith­ful, grace­ful, and showed fruits of God’s pres­ence in his life. At the end of Gen­e­sis, Joseph makes a procla­ma­tion to his broth­ers among their apologies.

Then his broth­ers also came and fell down before him and said, “Behold, we are your ser­vants.” But Joseph said to them, “Do not be afraid, for am I in God’s place? “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to pre­serve many peo­ple alive.
Gen­e­sis 50:18–20 (empha­sis added)

As Joseph declares: “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result”.

The Book of Job

Job was a very suc­cess­ful man and con­tin­u­ally lived in praise of God (Job 1:3–5). Satan chal­lenges God and says, “But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face” (Job 1:11). In response, God allows Satan to have reign on Job and thereby allow­ing evil upon Job (Job 1:12).

Much hap­pens to Job includ­ing los­ing all of his sons and daugh­ters, the loss of his flock, and is even stricken with a ter­ri­ble skin dis­ease. Job’s friends Elip­haz, Bil­dad, and Zophar attempt to explain why God would allow such a thing to hap­pen (that being sin is given as the pun­ish­ment for dis­obe­di­ence), but Job did not dis­obey God. But we know, from our view above, that the evil was all as a result of Satan.⁴

God then pro­ceeds to re-iterate His divine prov­i­dence in allow­ing Job to endure such a time

Then the LORD said to Job, “Will the fault­finder con­tend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer it.” Then Job answered the LORD and said, “Behold, I am insignif­i­cant; what can I reply to You? I lay my hand on my mouth. “Once I have spo­ken, and I will not answer; Even twice, and I will add noth­ing more.” Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm and said, “Now gird up your loins like a man; I will ask you, and you instruct Me. “Will you really annul My judg­ment? Will you con­demn Me that you may be jus­ti­fied?
Job 40:1–8

In the end, all that was to Job was restored by God (Job 42:10). We can not only see this as a par­al­lel for how God allows such events to come about (that being evil), but that God rewards those who are faith­ful and who per­se­vere on Him.

The Cru­ci­fix­ion of Jesus Christ

This is such an elab­o­rate exam­ple, and one that most Chris­tians are famil­iar with that I will do an analy­sis on the fol­low­ing pas­sage in Acts.

“Men of Israel, lis­ten to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with mir­a­cles and won­ders and signs which God per­formed through Him in your midst, just as you your­selves know– this Man, deliv­ered over by the pre­de­ter­mined plan and fore­knowl­edge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of god­less men and put Him to death. “But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impos­si­ble for Him to be held in its power.
Acts 2:22–24

We know that God hates mur­der, but yet He allows mur­der to accom­plish His prov­i­den­tial will of glo­ri­fi­ca­tion through His Son. Notice that verse 23 empha­sizes that God knew and even pre­de­ter­mined, but that He did so into the hands of “god­less men and put Him to death.” Jesus Him­self makes a strong claim of the sin of those who deliv­ered them up (thereby affirm­ing their responsibility).

Jesus answered, “You would have no author­ity over Me, unless it had been given you from above; for this rea­son he who deliv­ered Me [the Phar­isees] to you has the greater sin.“
John 19:11 (note added)

Jesus Christ, the true, incar­nate God was foreordained—by His Father—to be mur­dered! Use this to spring into the Gospel.

Con­clu­sion

Don’t let this “prob­lem” come between you and shar­ing the good news of Christ Jesus with a lost soul. They use it only as a defense out of their rebel­lion to God (John 3:19, Romans 3:9–18). Per­se­vere and have faith that God, in His majesty and sov­er­eignty, will bring about His pur­pose and His glory!

Soli Deo Gloria!