God and Evil

One of the most difficult questions for a theist to answer concerns the relationship between the sovereignty and the goodness of God and the existence of evil in the world. Those who cannot reconcile the co-existence of a good and sovereign God with the existence of evil will usually respond by either denying or modifying the meaning of God’s sovereignty and/or God’s goodness, or by denying the existence of evil. He will argue that, if God does not have the ability to prevent evil, then he is not omnipotent or sovereign. If God does have the ability to prevent evil and simply allows it to exist anyway, then he cannot be good.

The skeptic or the inquisitor typically asks probing questions such as “If God is sovereign and good, then why does he allow evil to exist in the world?” Or in a more aggressive mode, the skeptic or inquisitor may ask, “How does one explain the goodness and sovereign control of God over the creation to a child who has been brutally abused by an adult?” Or “How does one explain such evil as we recently witnessed in the subway of New York where a homeless man pushed another man chosen at random onto the tracks in front of an oncoming train?” He may even go so far as to declare that God’s allowance of such evil as the abuse of a child and the random act of violence against a stranger demonstrate that God is, in fact, evil himself.

Generations of theologians have wrestled with these questions, so there is not much chance that they will be answered within the context of this short essay. Hopefully, we will revisit this subject in days to come. For this essay, let’s begin with the question concerning the young girl who was so tragically abused. How do we answer questions concerning the greatness and the goodness of God in light of such a horrendous event?

First of all, let’s establish some fundamental truths about God. God is sovereign in the Universe – in fact, in all of eternity. His sovereignty is not an element of time, space, and matter, but of infinite proportions. He is omniscient, so there is nothing that has ever occurred that He did not know about. God never learns anything because he already knows all that can be known. He is the source of all knowledge and wisdom.

Furthermore, God is eternal. He has always been and always will be; therefore, he has always known all that he knows. That means that before he ever created anything, God knew about the person who would commit the crime against this young girl. But he also knew everything else that would ever happen and everybody else that would ever be born. Yet he created them anyway.

Since all that God does is righteous and holy without any degree of error, we can be assured that this way of creating is the only way that a creation could take place. God may have had options related to the method of creation depending on his purpose for creating. However, when he determined to create for the purpose of applying his plan of redemption, God did not choose from among a series of options. A world where evil is an integral part of the system is the only way his purpose for redemption could be accomplished.

God’s ultimate goal and desire is to be worshiped with the same degree of adoration as that which exists within the Trinity. The purpose of creation was to produce sons that would worship him and give him glory for all of eternity as does the Son and whom he could love in return with the same passion that he loves the Son. The method by which God produces those sons is called redemption, a plan which was instituted before the creation of the world. In order for there to be redemption, there had to be a reason to redeem – a condition or a place from which man needed to be redeemed.

Therefore, God created the universe as we know it – a universe that, though created perfectly, was allowed by God to become imperfect and corrupted by sin. For those of us who are created – finite beings deficient of the attributes of omniscience and omnipresence – such a method seems fraught with risk. C. S. Lewis addressed this idea in Mere Christianity:

The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.

Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk.

I see one weakness in C.S. Lewis’ argument: For God, there was no risk. He knew the outcome before he ever began the process of creation. Sin and evil did not catch him by surprise, but are an integral part of what he determined to accomplish through the creation. He knew that the conflict between good and evil would produce the fertile soil needed for the generation of righteousness in the creation and the regeneration of a corrupted creation and fallen man.

As with all of the creation, man, too, was created perfectly. However, God could not declare the creation of man as “good” until he had created complementary aspects of the human being in the form of a man and a woman. The created being of man was only finished after God created a woman. The intimacy that would develop between the complementary elements of the human being, both recreational and procreational, was intended to create a unity in their existence that to some degree simulated the intimacy between the elements of the godhead and gave a forecast of the passion that awaits the completion of God’s purpose in the creation.

Nevertheless, like all other elements of the creation, this relationship, too, was corrupted by the introduction of sin into the environment of man’s perfect world. What God had designed for the purpose of unity became a tool of cruelty in the hands of man who forfeited his God-like image in exchange for the uncertain knowledge of good and evil. That decision by man separated him forever from the wisdom of God apart from the gracious act of God’s redemptive plan.

Once separated from the source of knowledge and wisdom by his sin, man found himself destitute of righteousness and of the ability to recover what was lost by his rebellion. He became a creature that was totally depraved – not devoid of some degree of goodness and even altruism, but incapable of maintaining a righteous stature – both within himself and in his culture – in which that goodness would be the norm apart from the necessary element of force.

All men are descended from that first man and thus every man is, by genetic makeup, corrupted, incapable of achieving righteousness in his own power, and destined for an eternity separated from God. The man who perpetrated the cruel abuse in the original scenario above is a product of the totally depraved nature of man after the fall. He may be acting within the parameters to which he has been limited by God, but he is not acting by the direction of God.

He is exercising his will with malice toward another human being, but he is exercising that will within the limited realm of total depravity, apart from God’s direct involvement. He commits such a crime because he has no power of constraint within himself and despises the constraints that God and society attempt to place on him. He has chosen, and for his choices he will face the ultimate judgment of God. Thus the goodness of God has no direct bearing on the abuse.