Answering the Toughest Questions About Suffering and Evil

Bruce Bickel, Stan Jantz

• Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780764218729
• eBook ISBN: 9781441231154
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Bestselling Authors Tackle Difficult Issues for Believers and Doubters

When it comes to the big questions about suffering and evil--Did God create evil? How could a good God allow evil? How could a loving God allow people to suffer?--Bruce Bickel and Stan Jantz don't pretend to have all the answers. But they do know how to wrestle with uncertainty and doubt. They welcome questions, and in these pages they ask some of the most important ones you have about suffering and evil. With candor, insight, and a disarming touch of humor, they provide some answers to these critical questions, while leaving enough space--and grace--for you to keep wrestling, asking, and seeking Truth.

There is no shame in asking--after all, even some of the greatest men and women in the Bible had doubts. Don't let your questions go unanswered. What you find might just change your life.

1
If God Created Everything, Did He Create Evil?

Introduction

It was a Saturday night, and my wife and I (Chris) were arguing about the origin of evil. (Isn’t that what you do on Saturday evenings?) We agreed the world is often a dark place, and the darkness had to start somewhere, sometime, with somebody.

“Adam and Eve,” she said. “The Bible clearly says Adam and Eve gave into temptation and disobeyed God. Presto—sin and evil.”

“I agree. But what role did God play in it?” I asked.

“None,” she said confidently. “God is all good. Even more than that, he’s love. And if God is love—one hundred percent, all the time—he can’t create something that’s not.”

“I hear ya.” I tried to keep this a conversation rather than an argument, yet I couldn’t help myself. “But the Bible also portrays God as sovereign over everything, so he had to know that this was going to happen. Perhaps he was even in on it.”

“Wait, what?” Now she was getting fired up. “Are you insinuating that God played a role in the creation of evil? I don’t think so. It’s not possible.”

“I want to believe the same thing—and I’m stoked we’re talking about it—but I’m just not as certain as you are,” I said as I continued to think out loud.

Then I re-posed the question that ignited this passionate conversation in the first place: “If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, couldn’t he create a world that was only good? And if he could—but he didn’t—then is he not complicit in the making of evil?”

It’s THE Question

For many people who do not believe in God (or the God of Christianity), the existence of evil and suffering is the reason. In Timothy Keller’s stellar book Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, he restates the well-known argument.

If you believe in a God who is all-powerful and sovereign over the world and at the same time is also perfectly good and just, then the existence of evil and suffering poses a problem. The classic statement of it was given by David Hume. . . . “Is he [God] willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”1

Keller then comments, “Many insist that this problem is the single strongest objection to the existence of God in general and the plausibility of Christianity in particular.”2 In short, the existence of suffering and evil poses a major roadblock in the journey of faith for a lot of folks. In fact, this is probably the reason you picked up this book.

For eighteenth-century English philosopher David Hume—and much of humanity before and after him—these questions about God do more than wrinkle our brains. They rattle our feelings. We once heard Nicky Gumbel, a vicar in the Anglican Church, say, “Every intellectual objection to God has an emotional source.”3

When ISIS warlords rape and murder innocents across the Middle East, we angrily question God’s goodness. When divorce destroys a family, we wonder in sadness about his love. When a child goes unprotected, cancer goes uncured, and criminals go unstopped, we cry out, “Why?!” “Where are you?” “Why don’t you do something?” Much of our wondering points to a profound inquiry: If God created everything, did he create evil?

This is a bold question. Those outside the church regularly raise objections to God based on the atrocities, injustice, and pain in life. But few of us in the body of Christ feel safe and free to courageously ask, is it all God’s fault? If a trial was held and evidence given for the genesis of evil and suffering, would the final verdict declare God’s guilt?

We must not be afraid. This is an important question to pose (that’s putting it mildly!), as are each of the others in this book. Whether we admit it in public or not, many of us are wrestling with the toughest questions about suffering and evil. So let’s get started.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

• What is the reason you picked up this book?
• Has the existence of suffering and evil proved to be a roadblock in your belief in God? Why or why not?
• How have you wrestled with this issue before? How did you do it?
• How would you describe why suffering and evil exist?

God Created (Everything)

Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, was the original teacher of cause and effect. He taught that everything had a cause, and each cause could be traced to its cause. But Aristotle argued that there was an original, primary cause that sparked it all. He called that primary cause the “unmoved mover.”4

Christians can agree with Aristotle. The Bible teaches that it all started with one Supreme Being—God. Genesis 1:1 declares, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Bang. The Unmoved Mover set the universe in motion.

It doesn’t stop with Genesis. Every corner of the Bible—the Psalms, Prophets, Gospels, and Epistles—describes God as the original initiator of all there is. Here’s a snapshot:

“You alone are the Lord. You made the skies and the heavens and all the stars. You made the earth and the seas and everything in them. You preserve them all, and the angels of heaven worship you.”

Nehemiah 9:6 NLT

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?

Psalm 8:3–4

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

John 1:1–3

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.

Colossians 1:15–16

From beginning to end, the aggregate message of Scripture is that God made all we see and all we don’t (see also Isaiah 42:5 and Revelation 4:11 for more). God made every human of every kind. He made hippopotamuses and the tiniest organisms still undiscovered. He made the sun that warms our summers and the stars no one has named. Everything that exists, according to the Bible, is God’s doing.

That tees up our question nicely, then. If God made everything—the good and the bad, the gorgeous and the grotesque, the terrific and the terrible—does that include evil? Dare we ask? We must.

Is Evil a Thing?

I (Chris) recently saw a friend’s old family photo in which his dad and uncle were proudly sporting Lilly Pulitzer pants. Not familiar with Pulitzer’s style? Google her and you’ll see how wild it is. It was the 1970s, and colorful patterned knickers were all the rage, apparently. I gawked at the men’s crazy floral pants and wondered aloud, “Was that really a thing?” My friend answered, “Oh yeah, it was definitely a thing.”

To say that evil is a “thing” in the way crazy pants are a thing would be flippant and foolish. Evil is no fad. It’s never in vogue. So obviously, when we ask the question “Is evil a thing?” we mean, “Is it a created thing?” This question is pertinent because Christians believe God created everything. Every thing.

It is difficult philosophical work to try to describe what kind of thing evil is. But we do know this: Evil is not a run-of-the-mill object. You can’t pick up a batch at the Evil Corner Market. You can’t touch it, build it, transport it, or put it on your Amazon Wish List. Yet we all know evil is real. So are goodness, love, beauty, and dreams, but we can’t grasp, construct, carry, or purchase them, either. With that in mind, we’ll forgo the investigation into what kind of thing they are. The question instead is “Were they created?” We’re not trying to split hairs to let God off the hook. We just want clarity. Stick with us as we think out loud.

It’s clear that good and evil are not easily described or defined. In fact, if you substitute the words good and evil with cactus and poodles, answers will come much more easily. Cactus and poodles can be seen, touched, and interacted with (we’ve got scars to prove it). And virtually anyone who graduated from kindergarten can describe both.

Evil, on the other hand, is not so easily wrangled. It is easy to include cactus and poodles in the list of “everything” God is responsible for, but it’s more difficult with good and evil. Even so, we see the impact of good and evil in our world, our communities, and our lives. When we discuss good and evil together, we are even better able to set a definition and then, hopefully, get closer to discovering what role God played, if any, in the existence of evil.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

• How do you define evil? How about good?
• What makes them difficult (or easy) to define?
• Would you say that evil is a created thing?

Evil Is a Deprivation of Good

Like men and women, land and sea, and peanut butter and jelly, good and evil exist side by side yet are vastly different. In fact, one idea about the existence of evil states that evil simply cannot exist without good. This idea is called the deprivation of good. Evil, in other words, is the absence of good.

We have some friends who are architects and interior designers. They are fine artists who have introduced us to the concept of negative space. Imagine a completely empty room, with stark white walls. The room is full of space, but not negative space. Until, that is, you put a chair in the room. Now imagine taking one chair (a fancy new one or a janky old one, your call) and setting it against one of the blank, empty walls. Presto. The moment the chair is placed, negative space is created. Why? Because negative space is not the chair, but the now definable space around the chair. That space only exists because the chair exists.

Assuming we described the concept well, negative space helps us understand the deprivation of good. Deprivation is the lack or denial of something considered to be a necessity. We would all agree that good is an absolute necessity. No one survives without the good that God provides: love, joy, peace, hope, beauty, health, and relationships (to name only a few). Evil, then, occurs with the deprivation of good. The absence of good—the negative space around the existence of good—is the space in which evil exists, grows, and thrives.

In Frank Turek’s book Stealing from God, he makes the same point that Saint Augustine did: “While evil is real, it’s not a ‘thing.’ Evil doesn’t exist on its own. It only exists as a lack or a deficiency in a good thing.”5 The argument is that evil can only exist if there is good, just as negative space around a chair can only exist if there is a chair. And there is little doubt that God created good.

But like good, evil does not exist in a vacuum. What is good can only be seen through the good that is done. Likewise, evil exists, but it is only experienced when someone does something evil. So the absence of good creates an opportunity for the presence of evil.

It’s Also the Corruption of Good

An additional theory goes one step further. Some claim that evil is not simply the absence of good, but rather it is the corruption of good. Similarly then, evil is contingent on the preexistence of good.

In our society today, there is the proliferation of tragic and senseless school shootings, terror attacks, and acts of random violence. In the wake of these horrific and disgusting crimes, comments from the perpetrators’ friends and families regularly reveal a strange phenomenon. Those close to the criminal will often say something to this effect: “We don’t understand why he did this. He was a good person. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

These kinds of comments could stem from shock, and from the inability to see reality (i.e., anyone who murders innocent people is not a “good person,” even if they are a close family member or friend), or ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. If God Created Everything, Did He Create Evil?
• 2. Why Is There Suffering and Evil in a World Made Good by God?
• 3. Why Doesn’t God Eliminate Suffering and Evil?
• 4. Why Is the Bible So Full of Violence?
• 5. Does God Care That the World Is Falling Apart?
• 6. Why Do the Innocent Suffer?
• 7. Is There a Difference between the Evil in the World and the Sin in Me?
• 8. What’s the Point of Suffering?
• 9. What Happens If I’m Suffering and My Faith Isn’t Enough?
• 10. What Can I Do About Suffering and Evil?
• Notes
• About the Authors
• Back Ad
• Back Cover