Perhaps the most often-asked and seldom-answered question on earth is this: if there is a God, and if He is good, why do bad things happen? Why is there so much suffering? You may have asked this, or may have heard it phrased in any number of ways. It is the fundamental philosophical problem of the ages - the Problem of Evil. Entire religious systems have evolved around explanations of this one basic fact of evil. If you have ever been involved in an untimely death, you are likely to hear weak though sympathetic attempts to answer this question to comfort the bereaved, and to bring meaning to it all.
Some have answered this questions by saying, "There is no God. No good or evil. There is only the random, chaotic, meaningless cosmos, and beyond it - the void. What we call life and consciousness is only mechanistic chemical reactions taking place for no purpose but continued self-existence." Now if that is really true, why do we become so upset over things like racial injustice, gender inequality, the extermination of six million Jews, or 20 million Cambodians, or 40 million unborn babies. If there is no good or evil, no purpose, then there is nothing wrong with these activities. They too are simply the result of chemical reactions. Nothing matters any more. Just do what feels good to your senses, and damn the consequences to anybody else. But we know that this cannot be the answer. There is a very strong innate sense of right and wrong in every person that cannot be denied. That is because we are spiritual creatures, created in the image of God.
Others have answered the problem of evil by imagining that God has placed evil in the world to accentuate the good, just like an artist puts shadows in a picture to bring out the light. He has given us trials to develop our character, our personality, etc. Try telling this to a black person who has just had his church burned to the ground. Try telling this to a Jew with a yellow star on his chest boarding a train to a concentration camp. Even some Bible-untaught Christians believe this way. C. S. Lewis calls this religion "Christianity-and-water." It is totally unsatisfactory because it claims that God deliberately created evil. God then becomes a game-playing god.
The Bible gives us the answer to this question, if we would only take time to read and understand it. Jesus told a parable in Matthew 13:24-30 we refer to as the parable of the wheat and the tares. Jesus taught, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares... But when the wheat sprang up and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. And the slaves of the landowner came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?' And he said to them, 'An enemy has done this!'..."
Let me recast this question. "God, if you are so good, why is there evil in your world?" The simple answer is "AN ENEMY HATH DONE THIS!" Put another way, "God, why do bad things happen to good people?" Because we have an enemy. There is an enemy of God, an enemy of good. This enemy wasn't evil when he was created by God. He was a magnificent, beautiful, righteous spiritual being. But because he was created as a free moral agent, he had the capacity to "do his own thing." This being was corrupted by his own pride and fell out of favor with God. Evil came into existence when he fell. Ultimately he infected the human race with sin in what we call the Fall of Man. There is evil in the world because the world is fallen in sin. Why isn't life fair? Because Satan is "the god of this world," as Jesus told us.
First of all, I just heard many narrow intellectual minds snap shut when I mentioned the name "Satan." Sorry, my good friends, I can't help it. Secondly, I realize that the door is still open to many other philosophical questions. But the most pertinent and practical truth remains, that God is adamantly opposed to the suffering and fallen state of this world. He hurts along with you in the loss of your loved ones. He is vehemently opposed to sickness and disease, poverty, fear, and death. He has made provision for the ultimate redemption from the fallenness of the world through the death of His only son Jesus, and this plan of salvation of all things is still working itself out.
There will be a final triumph of righteousness. Good will win out. The evil will be done away with for all time, and we who accept this "foolish" message of salvation through Jesus Christ will spend eternity in the presence of Good personified, our loving heavenly Father. His original plan will have been fulfilled, and there will be no remembrance of the other in eternity.
@ copyright 1996 by Scott H. Northrup. All rights reserved.