If you have ever discussed the faith with an atheist or an agnostic, you have almost certainly heard of the problem of evil, even if you don’t know it by that name. It is the question of how an all-good, all-powerful God can allow evil in the world. It is hands-down the toughest argument non-believers can present against any sort of belief in God, not just Catholicism, so we need to know how to answer it.
Finite vs Infinite
I have written about this problem before, but this time I want to dig a bit deeper. A few years ago, I wrote an article about the answer to this problem as it is presented in the Book of Job. I explained that, according to Job, we finite human beings cannot possibly understand all the reasons why an omniscient Being might allow bad things to happen, so we shouldn’t try.
Now, that answer is true enough. We cannot understand everything God does, so we shouldn’t bite off more than we can chew. However, there is more to it than just that.
While we cannot understand all of God’s reasons for allowing evil, we can understand some of them. For example, God allows us to choose evil because He also gave us the ability to choose good. Genuine love requires a free choice, so if God wants us to truly love Him and one another, we have to be able to choose the opposite as well. Simply put, if love is possible, sin must be possible too, and that explains some of the evil God allows.
However, there is another kind of evil that is a bit harder to explain. It is what philosophers call natural evil. Catastrophes and problems that aren’t created by humans, such as natural disasters and random tragic events, do not fall under the free will explanation, so what should we make of them? Is this where we just have to trust that God knows what he is doing even if we do not, or can we at least catch a glimpse of His reasons for allowing these kinds of bad things as well?
A Broken World
I would suggest that it is a bit of both. While we can’t explain every individual occurrence of natural evil, we can understand at least one reason why God allows it in general. The entire Christian tradition rests on a key fact about the world we live in: it is broken. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, they damaged all of creation. They separated themselves from God and wounded their own human natures (which in turn meant that human nature in general would be fallen, since we all inherited our humanity from them). Their disobedience also threw the rest of the physical world into chaos as well.
We suffer because of this damage to both our human nature and to the created world. It is why we have the constant pull toward sinfulness, why we feel all sorts of pain throughout our entire lives, and why we die.
What the tradition of the Church calls Original Sin is the root of all the evil we experience in the world, and it is also the reason why the second Person of the Trinity became man and died for our sins. The whole point of Christianity is that Jesus came to save us from the effects of Adam and Eve’s sin, set the world right again, and bring us to our intended goal of eternal bliss with God. He got the process started at His first coming, and He is going to finish it at His second coming.
God to the Rescue
So what does all this have to do with God’s reasons for allowing natural evil? The point is that our world is broken, and we need God to rescue us from it. We need Him to set things right for us. And while He has promised that He will do that for the physical world around us when Jesus comes again, our own salvation doesn’t have the same guarantee. Only if we accept God and His salvation will He rescue us from our fallen condition. If not, then He will respect our free will and let us remain as we are, separated from Him and broken for all eternity.
When we experience natural evils that are entirely outside of our control, like hurricanes, deadly diseases, and freak accidents, they remind us of that predicament. They remind us of just how bad things are and how desperately we need to be saved.
On the other hand, when everything goes well, many of us have a tendency to be content with the way things are, and we forget about how much we need God. In fact, we sometimes even forget that we need Him at all, and that is a major reason why God allows natural evil. He lets us experience the brokenness of the world firsthand so we can remember that we need His salvation. If we often forget our need for God even with all the bad things we go through, imagine how much harder it would be to remember it if He kept us from experiencing any natural evil at all.
No Natural Evil?
Now, the idea of no natural evil may sound nice at first, but natural evil isn’t the worst effect of the Fall. The worst thing that happened when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit was their separation from God. Our purpose as human beings is to spend eternity with Him in a communion of perfect love, so to fail to reach that goal is the worst thing that can happen to us.
By the same token, reaching that goal is the best thing that can happen, but if there were no natural evil, how much would we really strive for it? How much would we really try to obtain the salvation we so desperately need if God took away some of our greatest reminders of that need?
That may sound cruel from our limited, earthly perspective, but our faith teaches us that heaven is so unimaginably, unfathomably, inconceivably great that even the worst suffering of this world is nothing compared to its joys (Romans 8:18). Heavenly bliss with God will be so incredibly and unbelievably amazing that even the worst sufferings of this life are worth enduring if they get us there.
On top of that, if God didn’t let us see how broken our world really is, then we would risk even greater suffering in the long run by ignoring our need for Him and missing out on the purpose of our entire existence.
So, in a nutshell, God lets us experience the reality of our broken world for (at least) two reasons: 1) So He can save us from the even worse torments of hell, and 2) So He can bring us to the incomparable joy of heaven. Granted, this isn’t a complete answer to the problem of evil; there is a lot more to it than just that (for example, the free will explanation is important as well). Nevertheless, this is an important part of that answer, and we would all do well to keep it in mind.
15 thoughts on “A Partial Answer to the Problem of Evil”
” I didn’t mean to imply that Genesis is literal history. ”
” However, the Church does teach that there was in fact a real first couple that we’re all descended from, and that they did in fact commit an original sin that resulted in the Fall.”
With all due respect, I think the Church is confused.
What makes you think that?
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In his book, “Aquinas,” F.C. Copleston has an excellent discussion of what he sees as a non-problem, the so-called “problem of evil.” He mentions that St. Bonaventure said that if anyone asks why God did not make a better world or make this world better, no answer can be given except that He so willed and that He himself knows the reason. He also says that Aquinas taught that the metaphysician can prove the existence of God, independently of the problem of evil, and that we therefore know that there is a solution to the “problem” even though we cannot provide it. Copleston goes on: “In conclusion, it may be worth while pointing out that to say that God permitted evil for the sake of a greater good, which is to a great extent veiled from us, is not to say that human beings should do nothing towards diminishing the amount of evil in the world.” Guy, Texas
Very well said, Guy. That’s a wrap.
Yes, as I say in the article, there does come a point where we have to just trust that God knows what He’s doing because we can’t understand all of His reasons for allowing all the evil we see around us. However, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to understand as much of it as we can. It helps us to present the faith more persuasively to non-believers, and it also helps us to trust in Him if we can catch at least a glimpse of His reasons for allowing so much evil in the world.
There’s a more direct answer: “I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I, the Lord, do all these things” (Is. 45:7). Don’t question an omnipotent and omniscient Diety!
Yes, as I say in the article, there are many instances of natural evil that we simply can’t understand, so we just have to trust “an omnipotent and omniscient Deity.” But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to understand what we can. In fact, we should try to understand what we can because it allows us to present the faith as persuasively as possible to non-believers.
I forgot to add that another reason why we should try to understand as much of it as possible is that it helps us to trust God. Sure, we can make a completely blind act of faith in Him, but it’s much easier when we can catch at least a glimpse of His reasons for allowing so much evil in the world, and not everybody’s faith is strong enough to make that blind leap. Some people need that little glimpse to sustain them until their faith grows stronger.
Not only does God allow natural evil, but he uses it to punish human evil. He also uses nature to reward human righteousness. The state of nature is connected with the state of humanity (see Psalms 107:33-38 and Deuteronomy 28).
Sometimes that can be true, but it’s not always the case:
“As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.'” (John 9:1-3)
When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, …
This is why our Modernist CC is going to win in the end. Thank God they had the fortitude
to stand up for science and free the faithful from such an exit-less rabbit hole.
What “exit-less rabbit hole” are you talking about?
Every time an author mentions Genesis as literal history it because a stumbling block for it is impossible to blend allegory with scientific discovery and recorded history. Jesus died to show us the way to heaven. He didn’t need A & E for that.
Sorry for the delayed response. I was busier this week than I had anticipated.
I didn’t mean to imply that Genesis is literal history. Of course there are figurative elements in it. I even wrote an article once arguing that the 7-day creation story was never intended to be taken literally.
However, the Church does teach that there was in fact a real first couple that we’re all descended from, and that they did in fact commit an original sin that resulted in the Fall. And that’s also what St. Paul teaches in Romans 5. This is important because Jesus didn’t simply “show us the way to heaven,” as you put it. He died to free us from the power of sin, and unless we want to say that God created us in slavery to sin, there must have been a real fall from grace that affected the entire human race. And there’s nothing unscientific about that. Sure, science can’t confirm it for us, but it also can’t refute the notion either.