[A NOTE ABOUT THIS ARTICLE: We’ve established that Absolute Moral Truth exists and that All Truth is Absolute. Now we can take on the Question of Evil.]
THE BIG QUESTION OF EVIL
How can a God that is all good, all powerful and all loving allow evil to exist? This is the Big Question and the most significant challenge – not just for Christianity – but for any world view – whether we believe in one God, many gods or none at all.
We see evil all around us. There is death and pain in all of nature. With our awareness, humans have the special privilege of recognizing his impermanence and living in the shadow of our own extinction. We see murder, rape, child abuse, unfaithfulness, and cruelty. We have Stalin and Hitler and school shootings and 911 and ISIS terrorists lopping the heads off of Christians on the beach. We have cancer and manufactured viruses and sex trafficking and pedophilia. We face diseases that can rob us of control of our own bodies, or perhaps worse, diseases that may render us oblivious to our past, our surroundings, or our very selves. We are outraged. We are shaken to our very souls. An atheist can legitimately ask, ‘Where is God in all of this?’ They then make the argument: This cannot be the work of a God of love. Surely this God cannot exist. If He does, either He is not all powerful or cannot be a God of love.
We’ll begin by just looking at the entailments of the question itself. Notice that we are outraged when confronted by evil. In that very emotion we are exercising judgement and we implicitly recognize the existence of a right standard of conduct. When we condemn the act or the evildoer, we tacitly acknowledge the reality of a Law in our hearts; the Law of Right and Wrong. So if someone uses the existence of evil to deny the existence of God, they destroy the standard on which to judge what is good and what is evil. Because without God; without a source for the Law of Right and Wrong: Everything becomes just preference. ‘Just do what is useful’ or ‘Do you prefer chocolate or vanilla.’ Yet we know evil when we see it. If there is a Law of Right and Wrong….There MUST be a LAWGIVER. That reality, that ultimate standard is God.[i] [ii] So in denying God on the basis of evil we deny the existence of evil itself.
Moralith has to have a source. If we are here by an accident of the right biology, then there is no standard by which to judge. ‘How can God condone such evil in the world?’ The question becomes meaningless. No evolutionary process could ever explain the existence of a moral law. Without God in the equation it becomes man just setting up rules for the smooth running of society. Morality on that basis would always be subject to change. If we are but animals on what basis can we base a moral code? So we are left with utilitarianism, pure and simple. In the end it justifies anything. That’s how you get the Soviet Union and NAZI Germany.
When we recognize evil we recognize a standard by which we judge Right & Wrong. Christian apologist Dr. Ravi Zacharias wrote: “Not one proponent of evolutionary ethics has explained how an impersonal, amoral first cause through a non-moral process has produced a moral basis of life, while at the same time denying any objective moral basis for good and evil.”[iii] Without God everything is just personal preference. Objective morality lives only if God lives.
Here is the argument put more simply. The argument goes: “I can’t believe in God ….because there’s just too much evil in the world. A loving God could not allow that.” It turns out the answer is actually contained in the objection.
- If you assume there is Evil….You assume there is Good
- If you assume there is Good….You assume there is a Moral Law
- If you assume there is a Moral Law….You understand that the Moral Law defines Good & Evil
- If you assume this Moral Law….You assume there is a Moral Law Giver
- Which is just what the questioner is trying to disprove
We an run the same reasoning from the opposite direction.
- If there is No Moral Law Giver….There is No Moral Law
- If there is No Moral Law….There is No Good
- If there is No Good….There is No Evil….So, what’s the question?
But beyond philosophy – God offers us something more….His only Son to share in our pain and to offer:
The Sinless for the sinner. The Just One for the unjust. The Perfectly Pure for the impure. Paying the price we could never pay.[iv]
There is one more counter-argument we have to tackle. That of Dualism found in the Eastern religions and the New Age, that has infiltrated our culture, especially since the 1960s. Simply stated Dualism sees the universe as being controlled by the struggle between two independent divine beings or forces representing ultimate good and ultimate evil. The Chinese call this Yin and Yang, and see it as the battle on the one hand between the negative, dark and feminine and on the other hand the positive, bright and masculine. It is all part of the ultimate reality. It carries with it the notion that both evil and good are coequal parts of the transcendent reality present in all of us. The flaw in the theory again lies in the very fact of defining the concept of evil. Just that concept presumes a standard. No matter the ‘personal beliefs’ of Yin and Yang, both cannot be objectively good. C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, “Whatever the two powers think about it, and whatever we humans, at the moment happen to like, one of them is actually wrong, actually mistaken in regarding itself as good.”[v] Even those who hold to this philosophy implicitly recognize this, that a standard exists, which one of powers fails to meet. Again that standard, that transcendent concept of good indicates a source above and beyond the Yin and the Yang. That source is God.
So let’s get back to the meat of the question. Is it that God is perhaps not all powerful? Or perhaps He is not all good? What is the reason for the exitence of evil in the universe?
Inherent in this whole discussion of good and evil is the notion of free will. Nothing can be evil, no value can be attached to actions without this concept of Free Will. So we are left with man as an agent with free will. And with this notion comes the ability to choose one’s own course of action. In so doing we become a source for the evil in the world. We have seen that the standard does exist. Yet it is in the nature of man to try and set up a world in which he is independent of that standard. This is our rebellion. This is the story of the fall, both Man’s and Satan’s; the attempt to set up for ourselves, some sort of ‘meaningful’, existence outside of the transcendent moral standard. This is an existence without God.
We’ve seen that the logic of atheism renders ‘evil’ a meaningless term. And dualism and paganism, the idea that there are many less than all-powerful gods, again robs the term of meaning. Which god shall we choose to please? Which standard shall we pursue? Only the concept of God, as an all-powerful, loving creator, with the ultimate good inherent in His character, can explain the notion of evil in a logically coherent manner.
Now God could have created a world in which men and women would not be able to sin. But that would not be a world without the highest ideal: Love. To have love we must be able to choose NOT to love. That involves free will. Without it there would be no meaningful relationships either between men and women or between God and His creation. God has made man capable of choosing the good….but also free to choose not to love; to choose evil.[vi] Implicit in that choosing is the notion that our real-world choice will bring with it consequences, to both ourselves and our world.
Then evil can be defined as the choice we make to separate ourselves from Him when we reject Him. And we reject Him when we ignore his ways. It is all a matter of free will. Jesus speaks to this in Matthew. 22:37 “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” When Jesus gives the command to love, it pre-supposes the ability to refuse to do so. It is our choice. When Jesus gives this command too, it is a call to adhere to a life in the very center of His will, to become one with the very essence of life. The greatest good then would be to plug in to the power of the universe, to love the God who by his nature is all-good. To embrace that standard then would preclude the possibility of evil. To reject it is to open the door to its existence. Love is the ultimate good. One cannot even conceive of love as an involuntary response. It is only logical then that in order to experience this ultimate good of perfect love we must be free to reject that love, to renounce the ultimate good.[vii]
This is the aspect of Christ’s teaching that speaks to the very meaning of life. It is not our individual happiness, nor the ideal of achieving the greatest good for the greatest number that is the ultimate purpose of life. Meaning is found in the knowledge and love of God. Man’s place in the Genesis story speaks of the relationship of both Adam and Eve to their Creator. The Bible tells us that they walked with God. And they walked with God by choice. When they rebelled, it was an act of free will. So we muse choose to love God. A loving personal relationship is possible only if we have the free will to accept or reject Him. In a universe where love is the highest virtue, the potential for evil will always be present. Yet since love is the highest value, and God is the essential expression of that value, because it resides there in His nature, then to choose love, to choose God, will provide the ultimate meaning in life. Our purpose then, is found in our relationship to Him. It is His will that we, as spiritual beings, freely choose to love and relate to Him. But love is only conceivable in a world in which we have the ability to reject love and chose evil. The conclusion: Fulfillment then is found in a knowledge of, and relationship with, God.[viii] [ix]
[i] Lee Strobel, The Case For Faith, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 2000,
[ii] Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods, World Publishing, Nashville, 2000, Pg 114
[iii] Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods, World Publishing, Nashville, 2000, Pg 113
[iv] I’m not sure where I got this from, but I know that I owe recognition for the basic argument behind it.
[v] CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, Broadman & Holman, Nashville, 1996, pg 49
[vi] S Michael Houdmann, Why Does God Allow Evil?, Got Questions, monitored April 30, 2017,
https://www.gotquestions.org/God-allow-evil.html
[vii] Peter Bocchino, If God….Why Evil?, Legacy of Truth Ministries,
viewed March 2002
[viii] Dr William Craig, Dr Craig’s Opening Statement, Does God Exist, Craig / Nielson Debate, University of Western Ontario,
Ontario, Canada, ReasonableFaith.Org, February 1991
[ix] Rich Deem, There is Too Much Evil and Suffering For God to Exist?
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