The Problem of Evil
If there is an all-good and all-powerful God, then why does suffering and evil exist in the world?
Logically, the only possible answer is that this must be necessary for some achievement of some greater good(s). Here are 7 that seem to necessitate the existence of evil and suffering, at least temporarily:
Freedom
God could eliminate a lot of evil in the world by eliminating our Free Will. In fact, probably the greatest evils in the world come from our own choices. But He instead gives us the freedom to choose either good or evil in every action, every word, and every thought of ours. If God forced us to always choose The Good, there would be less evil, but also less good, because we would be automatons rather than individuals.
A brief note on Free Will: some people say that there is no such thing, but everyone knows on a visceral level that this isn’t true, including proponents of determinism. No one denies that we are influenced by our friends and family, our life experiences, and our genetics. But we all have within us a faculty called the will, and we can direct our will towards what is good, or towards what is evil.
If we direct our will towards what is good, we will find that it becomes strengthened over time, and it becomes easier to do what is good. If we direct it towards what is evil though, we will find resisting evil becomes more and more difficult, as our will becomes weakened. There is a sense in which those who are the most free with regard to their will are those who have practiced the most at pursuing the good, whereas those who are the least free, and in a sense enslaved, are those who always choose what is easy instead of what is right.1
But you can always, with God’s grace, once again choose to pursue what is good.
The Material World
But what about other seemingly gratuitous evils, like Hurricanes and animal pain? It’s difficult to see how the material world could exist in any meaningful sense without such evils. If there were no animal suffering, the “creatures” that remained would not be animals in any real sense. We could bash their heads in and drop them off cliffs and what would it matter? They would be like physical manifestations of video game characters, and likely treated with a similar callousness and lack of empathy.
If there are no real physical evils that can occur, then reality itself is at risk. You can’t have physics itself without certain evils. Take the evil of a stubbed toe: if the desk moved out of the way when you were about to hit it, or melted into thin air, or changed its nature to be soft in preparation for impact, the physical world itself would lose its physicality and become a mere playpen. The Material World requires the possibility of pain and suffering. Even Hurricanes are the result of the way temperature changes and energy is diffused across the world, physics that I’m sure someone else could explain better than I. But to get rid of the possibility of Hurricanes we would have to get rid of physics itself. Unless you want to live in the Truman Show or a video game rather than Reality, you have to have real physical consequences, real stakes.2
Humility
Evil and suffering serve as a remedy to our pride and help us to grow in humility by reminding us that we are not God. They do this in two ways:
First, they remind us that we are not all-powerful. We will all experience evils and suffering that we have no control over and can do nothing to stop. Sometimes we will even do everything right, but still fail and come out on the losing side.
Second, they remind us that we are not all-good. Even when we want to do good we often fail because the evil exists within our own hearts. “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
The sorrow we feel at not being all-powerful and all-good should serve to teach us humility. Humility is essential to encountering God, and Pride the ultimate stumbling block. Pride tempts us to be our own God, where nothing thwarts our own will and we decide for ourselves what is and is not good.
Evil and suffering serve as constant reminders that we are not, in fact, God, because God is all-powerful and all-good, and we are not.
By teaching us humility and tampering our pride, evil and suffering can make us open to God – Whether on an intellectual level if we do not believe in God to the idea and possibility of something, or someone, who is all-powerful and all-good, or on an experiential level if we do believe in an all-powerful and all-good God, but sometimes forget what that means for us.
Closeness to God
If we are open to God, evil and suffering can also help bring us closer to God, increase our trust in Him, and deepen our relationship with Him.
This is true with evil that simply happens to us and causes us suffering. When we experience sadness, we should use that opportunity to increase our dependence on God and remember that the things of this world can never completely satisfy us. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” – St. Augustine, Confessions.
But this is also true with the suffering that we bring upon ourselves through sin. Evangelicals rightly emphasize the need for a relationship with God. But relationships are a two-way street, and you can leave a relationship at any time. Through our sin we can hurt our relationship with God, or even reject Him completely.3
But He will always take us back. When our sins inevitably yield sorrow, we should always turn back to God and cling to him even tighter. In contrast to Martin Luther’s advice to “Sin Boldly,”4 we should Repent Boldly. Yes, we trust in God’s mercy, but instead of a Theology of Presumption,5 which is false mercy, we should have a Theology of Repentance, a theology we “work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling.” Philippians 2:12. Frequent repentance, brought on by the suffering we experience from the sins we commit, is an opportunity to renew and strengthen our relationship with God, who is working to gradually transform us, through our cooperation with His grace, so that we become stronger as we acquire virtue and root out vice in ourselves. God doesn’t want to just declare us good, He wants to make us good, because he wants to heal us. And we should want that too6 – to be made perfect, as our Heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:48.
This is what Scripture teaches – "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:9. “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” James 5:16. Christ actually cleanses us, and actually heals us when we repent and turn from our sins.
Therefore, we shouldn’t use our belief in Christ as a cover to justify our sins, but allow Him to use our sins to bring us back to Him.7 And while the idea that Christ can actually heal us, can actually make us righteous might seem like an impossibility, “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:18.
Charity
The entire point of life is to know, love, and serve God in this life, and to enjoy happiness with Him in the next.8 Therefore, we need to:
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Know who God is
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Know how to love him
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Know how to serve him
Otherwise we will be unable to experience happiness in heaven.
So who is God?
“Let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4: 7-8.9
In case you missed it the first time, St. John repeats it, “God is love.” 1 John 4:16.
How do we love God?
“The righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’” Matthew 25:37-40.
“If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” 1 John 4:20-21.
We love God by loving our neighbor as ourself. Luke 10:25-37.
How do we serve God?
“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction.” James 1:27.10
God’s Perspective
If the above is all true, then it would seem that from God’s perspective what is good is whatever increases love in the world, whereas whatever does not increase love is at best insignificant, and at worst evil.
This, in contrast to what is often our perspective, that whatever increases pleasure and decreases pain is good, and whatever increases sadness and decreases happiness is evil.
From God’s perspective then, if pain and sadness increase love, this would turn a minor evil into a much greater good. In fact, what if God has designed all of creation as an aide to our love of neighbor and our love of Himself?
Love can obviously exist without evil and suffering, but the question isn’t whether or not love would exist, but whether we would possess it. Would we have charity (another word for love) in our hearts without being reminded and taught, over and over again, of the necessity of love?
Life is not fair. We suffer evils that we do not deserve, and we possess blessings that we did not earn. If we recognize this as true, then the pain and suffering of our neighbor can stir within us compassion, and increase the charity in our hearts. The poor may need us for material reasons, but we need the poor for spiritual reasons, to teach us how to love.
Without suffering and evil, we would lack an additional aide to us learning true charity, and might not experience the inner transformation necessary to make us ready for heaven.
The Possibility of Heroism
When discussing the Problem of Evil, we should be careful not to anesthetize it. There really is incredible evil in the world:
At this very minute, thousands of children across the United States are being psychologically abused and groomed for potential later chemical and surgical castration by their parents, their doctors, and their teachers, and a large part of the country supports this sexual abuse because of a pseudo-scientific ideology.
We just witnessed tens of thousands of Gazan civilians killed by aerial bombardment and starvation as a disproportionate act of retribution by an arguably racially supremacist ethno-state, that rejects its King, Jesus Christ, and a large part the country supports these murders because of a pseudo-religious ideology.
Rape and sexual abuse are perpetrated everyday. Hunger and homelessness are everywhere. We have systematic corruption, we have murder. We have loneliness, we have despair. People pretend to care in the abstract, but do little when it comes to particulars.
It can almost seem overwhelming how much evil there is in the world, and no one is coming to save us, at least not in the way we might at first want. What can just one person do against it all?
Have courage and be a hero, that’s what you can do.11 Without impossible odds, enemies on all sides, and almost certain defeat, there would be no possibility for courage and heroism. Without evil, there would be no heroes. Without dragons, there would be no dragon-slayers.
And as the Fairy Tales teach us, dragons can, in fact, be killed.
Greater Ultimate Satisfaction
The good news is that we win in the end. In fact, the decisive victory has already been won. “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33.
The rest of history is just everyone choosing which side they’re on.
But that doesn’t mean that all the evil that happens to us in our lives is just meaningless suffering, with a reward that makes up for it all in the end. Rather, the suffering provides meaning to the victory.12
With anything worth doing here on Earth, the experience of suffering itself actually serves to make it worth it when you finally achieve your goal. Just as the overcoming of difficulties makes the reward all the more satisfying when we triumph in this life, so too on a grander scale in the next.
The victory of the resurrection provides meaning to suffering of the cross, and the evil of the crucifixion makes the glory of our redemption all the greater.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle (a paraphrase). See also Atomic Habits by James Clear and The Christian's Guide to Character and Success by Rev. Edward F. Garesché for more insights on building character and cultivating habits/excellence.
For a fuller explanation of this argument, See C.S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain.
“Once saved always saved” is false and Arch-Heretic John Calvin is in Hell, burning for all eternity for all the Souls he has misled. If you think you can sin with impunity because you have been “saved,” you’re going to be in for a nasty surprise come judgment time. See 1 John 5:16 for the distinction between venial and mortal sin in Scripture.
Full letter for context - https://www.projectwittenberg.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/letsinsbe.txt. Luther is writing to Philip Melanchthon to give his view that the vows of priests and monks can be disregarded. The “Sin Boldly” quote comes near the end, when Luther is giving his views on mercy, arguing that God’s mercy is stronger than our sins (glossing over the need for repentance in order to receive that mercy). Philip Melanchthon was an early German Lutheran “Reformer” (heretic) who must be distinguished from Philip of Hesse, a German Prince and early supporter of the Protestant Heresy, who both Luther and Philip Melanchthon advised that it was ok for him to commit bigamy. “I confess that I cannot forbid a person to marry several wives, for it does not contradict the Scripture.” – Martin Luther. Not sure how it could be more obvious who the bad guys were in this period of history, but if this is your first time hearing such a view, remember you’re reading this in English, and the Catholic Faith, the universal Church founded by Christ (rather than some fat bigamy-supporting German man from the 1500s who’s chief doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone is literally contradicted word for word in Scripture by St. James, lmfao (This (understandably) made Luther big-mad, and he tried to kick James out of Scripture, calling it an “Epistle of Straw” and intentionally mis-translating it (which, side note to the side note to the side note to the footnote, also contradicts his doctrine of Scripture Alone, since you need Luther’s edits and interpretation. Can you imagine the arrogance required?)), was illegal in England for centuries. Many of the cultural and religious prejudices still remain and are only just now being dismantled with the help of freedom of religion and free speech, which will eventually lead to the complete dissolution of historic and doctrinal Protestantism. Another interesting tidbit here in this letter, since you’re reading this already way too long footnote, is that Luther seems to take for granted the authority of Philip (Melanchthon) to absolve sins, a power you’d be hard pressed to find a Lutheran minister today who would dare to claim. That’s because it’s reserved only for successors to the Apostles – “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” John 20:23. And Lutheran ministers aren’t successors to the Apostles (lol), and they know that, but still choose (hairesis) to persist in their heresy rather than resubmitting to the teachings passed on by the Apostles (See 2 Thessalonians 2:15).
St. Paul contradicts this Theology of Presumption in Romans (a Catholic document), “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means!” Romans 6:1-2. If your reading of Romans has led you to a contrary view of salvation than that described here, perhaps you should take St. Peter’s warning to heart, “There are some things in them [Paul’s letters] that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.” 2 Peter 3:16-17. If St. Peter thought it was hard to interpret St. Paul, perhaps Scripture is not a matter for private interpretation (See 2 Peter 1:20). If we do not understand the Scriptures, we should look for guidance, emulating the Ethiopian eunuch and looking to the Holy Spirit as He guides the Church and the successors to the Apostles. See Acts 8:26-39.
I think there’s a Chesterton quote along these lines, but I cannot for the life of me find it, if anyone knows what it is please let me know! Edit - Dale Ahlquist has suggested Chesterton’s answer when asked why he became Catholic: “To get rid of my sins.” I’m pretty sure that was the quote I was looking for - We don’t desire to simply cover up our sins, we actually want to be rid of them. See e.g. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9. See also C.S. Lewis’s argument for our inherent need for Purgatory, where we would say to a God who would simply cover up our sins without healing us, “With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I’d rather be cleaned first.” “It may hurt, you know.”--“Even so, sir.”
Compare “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.” Proverbs 28:13 with “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” Psalm 32:1. See also Romans 4:7-8. The covering of sin is false when done by man and unaccompanied by repentance, and true when done by Christ and accompanied by repentance.
The Baltimore Catechism.
Additional context provided to prevent misinterpretation – "No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also." 1 John 2:23. See also e.g.,"Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son." 2 John 1:9.
Additional context provided to prevent misinterpretation – The entire verse reads, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” James 1:27. See also e.g., “‘The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’” John 4:23-24.
Remember though, “If you wish to reform the world, first reform yourself, otherwise your efforts will be in vain.” – St. Ignatius of Loyola. Interestingly, there have actually been some anti-heroism articles circulating around on Substack recently. See E.g.
and
Of course, anti-heroism takes should not surprise us, since the left hates men (and women) and true masculinity (in addition to true femininity), and the authors of the listed articles no doubt support egregious evils that we, spoiler alert, will be needing heroes to oppose. St. Ignatius’s advice is far wiser than their trite ideological recommendations.
This is in contrast to Buddhism, where the goal is to escape the afflictions that cause suffering. According to Buddhism, suffering comes from our desires, cravings, and attachments. The goal of Buddhism is to eliminate suffering by eliminating these desires. By contrast, Christianity teaches that our desires are good, but that suffering is a result of sin (Gk. hamartia, to miss the mark, like in archery), which is disordered desire. In Christianity, the elimination of suffering is linked with the fulfillment of (true) desire, in heaven, rather than its elimination.
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