It is a problem that all of us face. Sooner or later, whether believers in Christ or not, all of us must answer the question: “Why does evil exist?”
For the Christian, this question is compounded with another: “Since evil and suffering exist, what kind of God must there be?” The concept that God, who is described in the Bible as omnibenevolent (all-good), omnipotent (all-powerful), and love seems to leave us with an apparent contradiction in a world marked with universal pain and suffering.
Elie Wiesel and his family endured the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust when he was only a teenager. In the memoirs of his survival, Night, Wiesel recounts his face-to-face encounter with evil and suffering. As he recounts the execution of several prisoners charged with possessing weapons, Wiesel describes in explicit detail the most painful part of human suffering: the seeming absence of God in the midst of evil. He writes:
One day, as we returned from work, we saw three gallows, three black ravens, erected on the Appelplatz. Roll call. The SS surrounding us, machine guns aimed at us: the usual ritual. Three prisoners in chains – and, among them, the little pipel (a young boy)…
The SS seemed more preoccupied, more worried, than usual. To hang a child in front of thousands of onlookers was not a small matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was pale, almost calm, but he was biting his lips as he stood in the shadow of the gallows…
The three condemned prisoners together stepped onto the chairs. In unison, the nooses were placed around their necks.
“Long live liberty!” shouted the two men.
But the boy was silent.
“Where is merciful God, where is He?” someone behind me was asking.
At the signal, the three chairs were tipped over.”[1]
The existence of evil is one of, if not the, universal question that stands in the way of belief in the existence of God.[2] One simply has to access his or her local and national news agencies to see how the world is immersed in evil actions, ideas and the consequences of such. Timothy Keller, in his book The Reason for God, writes of a specific event that brought worldwide attention to the problem of the existence of God in the midst of suffering: “In December 2004, a massive tsunami killed more than 250,000 people around the rim of the Indian Ocean. Over the following weeks, newspapers and magazines were full of letters and articles asking “Where was God?” One reporter wrote: “If God is God, he’s not good. If God is good, he’s not God. You can’t have it both ways, especially after the Indian Ocean catastrophe.”[3]
It is the purpose of this next series to examine the actuality of evil and its apparent inconsistency with the existence of God. It is my intent to demonstrate how the reality of human suffering in no way negates the actuality of God as He is portrayed in Scripture.
Please feel free to post replies and responses to what is presented within this next series of posts. It is my prayer that God would lead us all through His Word and by His Spirit to make sense of such a difficult concept.
[1] Elie Wiesel, Night (Oprah’s Book Club), Revised ed. (New York City, New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), 63-64.
[2] Ravi Zacharias, Norman Geisler and general editors, Who Made God: and Answers to Over 100 Other Tough Questions of Faith (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2003), 33.
[3] Timothy Keller, The Reason For God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (New York: Dutton Adult, 2008), 23.
