Ask the Pastor

By Pastor Scott Denham of Harvest Fellowship, Shambaugh, IA

Clarinda Herald Journal Publication Date : 09/05/2007
 

Evil and the Goodness of God

            "When a child--a baby--is beaten to death, or a child's life is taken, why does God let such things happen?"

            The Bible teaches that "God is Love" (1 John 4:8). Love is the core attribute and defining quality of God’s nature. That means that He does all that He does to bring about the highest good for all He has made.

            The Bible reveals a God whose love is self-sacrificing, a God forever looking to the good of His creation. This is most evident in the crucifixion. The Bible says, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). God loves you so much that He endured the cross so that salvation could come to those who believe—that’s self-sacrificing love!

            However, many a saint and sinner have wrestled with this seeming contradiction: God is all-powerful and all-loving, but enormous evil and cruelty exist. Why does He seem to look on with benign indifference to pain? When children—the most helpless among us—suffer, it appears as if God is somehow a co-conspirator with evil—complicit by His inaction.

            The solution to the problem of evil that best vindicates God as the loving and just deity that the Bible reveals is that God values our freedom. Free moral agency—the power to choose—is a precious gift from God. This is not to say that our will is completely free from other influences, but that we have sufficient freedom to make responsible choices. Our freedom may not be absolute, but it is genuine.

            God will not force us to love Him; nor will He control our decisions. Were He to stop bad people from doing bad things, He would have to control all free choices. This God will not do. If He were to eliminate moral freedom, we would no longer have a capacity for evil, but we would no longer have a capacity for good either. Under such causation, we could only render to Him mere robotic obedience, and incapacity to love.

            Newbery Award-winning author, Madeleine L'Engle, writes; "The problem of pain, of war and the horror of war, of poverty and disease is always confronting us. But a God who allows no pain, no grief, also allows no choice. There is little unfairness in a colony of ants, but also there is little freedom."

            It is reasonable to conclude that if we are to experience love and make choices, if we are to choose to love God, then we must invariably have the freedom to make bad choices—even those that might harm children. Freedom is an awesome and wonderful responsibility. Remove freedom and you remove your divinely-imparted uniqueness. With freedom you might turn out to be a tyrant; without it you might just as well be a turnip!

--Pastor Scott (www.askpastorscott.com)