The Problem of Evil

There is a really interesting discussion on Beliefnet today about the problem of evil. The problem of evil is: how can we reconcile the belief in an all powerful, all knowing, and good god with the fact that there is so much evil and suffering in the world? The discussion was prompted largely by the natural disasters which left thousands dead in Burma recently.

I think its a incredibly tough question and one that is impossible to reconcile, as attempts to reconcile are pretty unsatisfying

It is first of all easy to try to attribute a 'greater purpose' to the violence in the world. Maybe God is trying to teach us something or accomplish something with all this evil. But this just begs the question. If God is really all powerful and good, can't God accomplish things in a better way than through evil. It's hard to imagine that God was thinking, "how do I teach the world a lesson?" and the most efficient answer he could come up with was "the Holocaust" or "a devastating cyclone" or "AIDS babies." Or something. If God is so powerful, God can think up better ways to teach the world.

'Free will' also has some appeal as an answer to the problem of evil. In some sense, this answer sthe problem pretty well. Afterall, if even omnipotence is limited such that God cannot create a rock that God cannot pick up, then maybe God also cannot give people free will but stop them from making bad choices. Still, 'free will' doesn't really cut it. First, even if God gave us free will, God didn't give us infinite capacities. We may have free will, but we don't have the free will to fly or to grow 100 feet tall, or to mind read, or to make Jason Mraz music palatable. We only have free will within our capacities. Maybe God should have not given us so much capacity to be evil. Also, even if God gave us free will, there is no reason God can't intervene to stop our use of free will. If America can intervene to stop that Nazi's, surely God can also intervene to stop the Nazi's. If this seems silly, maybe what really seems silly is the idea of a literally all powerful being.

A third possibility, which I find the most troubling, is just to surrender to the mystery of God. This is kind of the lesson of Job. Who are we to understand God anyway? But, if we really can't understand God in even basic ways, then what does it mean to say God is 'all powerful' or 'good?' If we say 'God is good' and then God seems to let something bad happen and we say 'God is still good, but only a mysterious kind of good,' then we are really just saying, 'God is by defnition good' and that is a tautology. Plus, where's the mystery about whether its okay to let thousands or millions of people die if you can stop it? Seems an easy question to me, and I'm not even all-knowing.

At the end of the day, there is no way to reconcile how God can be all powerful, etc, and allow evil to happen. Fortunately, we don't really need God to be all powerful, all knowing, etc anymore. We can explain lots of things and solve lots of problems without appealing to God. But a lot of people do need their relationship with God. It is a unique relationship for a lot of people, myself included. Maybe this isn't a relationship with an all-powerful God.

Or even an entirely good God; hell, the Bible if full of people criticizing God. Abraham gets in an argument with God about Sodom and Gemmorrah and wins!

But some of us need god for is the unique relationship (some of us find that unique fullfillment in other equally valid ways) and that relationship maintains itself despite all the evil.