The Problem of Evil

The problem of evil is one of the most difficult subjects to deal with. I heard it described once as the only intellectually honest reason to be an atheist. Regardless of your opinion on that description, it points out how tough this subject is. People have been debating this issue for thousands of years. I am not going to solve the debate today, but I will attempt to give some insight.

Biblically speaking, evil comes from three sources: humans, spiritual beings, and nature. I am going to work through the list backwards.

Nature: this might seem like a strange inclusion. How can nature be evil? First we have to fix our word evil. Most of us are familiar with the Eden story and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Dr. Tim Mackie does a good job of pointing out that the Hebrew word is not a 1 to 1 correlation of what evil means to an English speaker. The word is ra. It can be translated as evil, it is most often translated as bad.

The tree of knowing good and bad.

While evil has a lot of baggage, especially moral and spiritual, the word bad does not.

Murder is bad. So is gluttony. Both are ra. Nature can be a source of ra when natural events are harmful to people.

Spiritual beings: the first bad or evil act that is mentioned in the bible was not done by a human, but by a spiritual being. People are surprised at how little information the bible actually gives us about various spiritual beings. In the story of the Genesis serpent we are given two important pieces of information. Spiritual beings exist, and some of them work to thwart God's plans. These beings are evil. These beings have the ability to tempt people, and in cases such as possession various beings can directly influence actions. We don't get much information, but we are shown that God has granted some of his authority to these beings. It seems that this authority was granted before any of them became bad, and has not yet been removed. There are several times in the bible where spiritual beings use this authority to perform evil acts, or cause evil things to happen. The most famous example is the story of Job.

Humans: humans are God's representatives on earth, his image. God created us to partner with him in managing and overseeing his creation. This means that God has willingly granted some of his authority to us as well. Just as with the spiritual beings, this authority was granted before our evil acts, and has not been removed. As we see through the bible, God's preferred method of acting among humanity is to act through humans. Sometimes it is a single person, sometimes it is a group. Sometimes the person or group being used is not good, but God is using them to accomplish something. Babylon was used to judge Israel. Persia was similarly used to judge Babylon.

God chooses to accomplish his work through imperfect human action because that is our job as his representatives.

So why do evil things happen? In the case of spiritual beings and mankind we have the ability to make this choice ourselves, and the outcomes might be evil. Let’s start with sin itself. If you ask anyone for a quick definition of sin, they will likely boil it down to “doing something bad.” That is not necessarily a bad definition, but it doesn’t encompass enough. The Hebrew word that we most commonly translate as sin is cheit. It is an archery term that means missing the mark. Sin is not merely doing something bad. Sin is a failure to meet a set standard. Sin is ra, bad.

Let’s look at it with an academic example. Say you need a 75% to pass the test. That 75% is the mark. You could take the test, and get a 70%. You missed the mark. It wasn’t because you did something wrong, it was just you failed to meet the standard. On the other hand, you could cheat and get a 100%, but in this case the teacher knows you cheated. You still missed the mark because you tried to reach the standard by the wrong means. In both cases you sinned.

A common cause of sin is elevating a lower good above a higher good, or twisting a good in other ways.

Being proud of yourself, what you have accomplished, is a good thing. Being arrogant is bad.

Enjoying sex is a good thing. Rape is bad.

Feeding your family is a good thing. Abusing and misusing other people to do so is bad.

Of course this doesn’t cover nature. Nature is a bit different, sometimes natural evil happens due to the actions of men or spiritual beings, sometimes natural evil seems to happen for no reason than nature running its course. Even if you don’t believe the biblical view that mankind’s choices have caused creation to be broken in some ways, you cannot deny that human action does cause natural evil. Overlogging causes landslides when it rains. Overhunting of one species causes others to balloon in number and cause issues. You can remove the spiritual aspect and still see that human action has led to preventable natural disasters.

People often ask why didn't God do anything? Why does God allow evil to happen? The most often cited reason is free will. This is definitely part of the reason, but it is not all. This leads to questions about why one person is allowed to exercise their free will over another.

For starters, humans are expected to oversee creation, this includes themselves. Our God granted authority means that we are the Godly representatives who are supposed to stop this evil from happening, at least in the case where the evil is human caused. We often abuse this authority and cause evil to happen to others.

This leads to the question of why doesn’t God just stop everything bad beforehand. Seems like a simple question, but we fail to consider how many human actions are bad. We like to point to the big ones such as rape and murder, while ignoring ones such as lying, insulting, and looking at another person lustfully. We are asking God to prevent only those bad things which we do not approve of. We try to limit what we think God should be able to do, while simultaneously complaining that he has not done anything.

The most important answer to why God doesn’t judge such actions immediately is that none of us would survive, and God does not want that. God is giving us all a chance rather than judging us the instant we fail.

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9

As for evil caused by spiritual beings, we do not have the answers there. We are not privy to all of the working of the relationship between God and such beings. We know that they have authority to work, and that their authority will come to an end. Beyond that, we know very little.

Now I said I can’t solve the problem, and I don’t expect to. I can only make a few points.

Evil caused by humans is primarily the job of humans to deal with. If God stepped in to judge all human evil immediately none of us would be here.

God exercises patience with us to give as many people as possible the chance for salvation.

We do not know enough about spiritual beings, or even nature, to sufficiently answer the question of evil from those sources.

Something better is coming, something that is worth all of what we have now. We have hints of what it is, but our understanding is currently limited.

About the Author:

Stephen Mayo lives in Montana with his wife, daughter, corgi, and three cats.

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