Sally had never encountered what she regarded as true evil. Oh, she had seen suffering, but most of it seemed circumstantial, even natural, as hard as it was. And some of it was plainly consequential, the result of the sufferer’s own actions. Sally could understand natural and consequential suffering. She knew the world isn’t perfect. It had its hazards. She also felt that hard consequences were often appropriate, ensuring that we learn. And she also recognized that when one person suffered deserved consequences, others nearby might suffer along with them, even when suffering was undeserved. Yet then, in the awful thing that she saw someone do to a close friend, Sally for the first time saw what she felt was true evil. And Sally realized that she had to find a new perspective on the world to account for it.
Problem
Good is seldom a problem. Peace, prosperity, kindness, and flourishing reassure one that creation is good. The generosity of a neighbor, trust of an employer, love of a righteous spouse, and joy of healthy children make believing in God easier. When times are good, God can easily seem good, and faith can abound. But the presence of evil can certainly challenge one’s faith. Suffer a little, and you may find your faith wavering. Suffer a lot, and you may find your faith challenged. Suffer due to deception, say from the betrayal of a friend or, worse, of a spouse, and you may begin to doubt just how good creation is. Face evil itself, in the malicious desire of a criminal to murder and destroy, and you may reflect deeply on the world’s essential problem. Many question the problem of evil. As good as the world may appear much of the time, evil seems always to lurk right around the corner. A sound faith gives you a good perspective on evil.
Good
The first thing that faith teaches is that God created the world as good, and not just mostly good but wholly good. God did not create evil, even a little bit of evil. Genesis 1 states plainly that everything that God made was good, including humankind. Those lacking in faith may wrongly blame God for creating evil. They rightly argue that a good God would not create evil. Yet God is not the author of evil. Anything that God creates is good, not evil. Attributing evil to God undermines everything about God that faith teaches, including who God is and what God does. To blame God for evil is to place oneself above God, judging God as if one had the standing, authority, and purity to do so. One may as well make oneself god as to attribute evil to God, or even to attribute to God the deception, disorder, weakness, and confusion that fosters, promotes, and permits evil. Faith instead teaches that God is good. Whatever you make of evil, start from the standpoint that God is good and does not create or perpetrate evil.
Evil
You may feel that you know evil when you see it, especially in malicious acts the purpose of which is to unnecessarily and viciously destroy, while taking satisfaction in destruction. Degradation and destruction for its own sake, and taking pleasure in them, defines evil. Evil is in that essence the absence and opposite, or negative reflection, of good. You can certainly see evil in criminal acts. We adopt and enforce the criminal laws largely to prevent and punish evil. Yet you can also sometimes see evil in the cruel play of children, who at times seem not to know the difference between good and evil or who even want to test the consequences of doing evil. And you can sometimes see evil in your friends and family members, and even yourself, although we tend in those cases not to call it evil. We may instead call it error or mistake, or if we’re willing to be a little more frank, then corruption, selfishness, or sin. A sound faith encourages us to recognize the presence of and temptation to evil not just around us but also within ourselves.
Degrees
Evil is sometimes easy to recognize, while other times not. To put it another way, evil expresses itself in degrees. Some acts, like murder, rape, and terrorism, are so obviously evil as to appall and astonish. We can imagine such horrific acts of evil because we know they occur, but we cannot imagine ourselves acting after that manner. Yet other acts, like theft and fraud, while plainly wrong, seem significantly less evil. We even find them sympathetic if not justified at times, such as a hungry man stealing food or a poor man cheating a rich man out of a little helpful cash. And we may even find ourselves tempted to participate, especially when convenient, seemingly harmless, and plainly hidden. The law accordingly provides for different degrees and sentences for punishing criminal wrongs, based on their reprehensibility, evil motive, extent of harm, and other factors. First-degree murder may lead to life in prison or even the death sentence. Intentionally writing a bad check may, by contrast, lead to a slap on the wrist like probation, restitution, and community service, if anything at all. Evil may be evil, right to the core. But evil expresses itself in degrees of reprehensibility and harm.
Justification
Faith warns against justifying oneself by relative degrees of evil. Don’t assume that you’re fine because you did just a little wrong. With God, a little wrong may go a long way, especially when the one committing the little wrong is one for whom he cares. A father disciplines his children stricter than he would consider punishing someone else’s child, for their own welfare. To make that point, Christ equated looking at a woman lustfully with adultery itself, when one might otherwise have excused a peek now and then as relatively blameless. Christ also noted that we are constantly ready to point out the speck of dust in our brother’s eye, while failing to recognize the log in our own eye. In other words, we see the small faults in others long before seeing the large faults of our own. To be faithful and act faithfully, don’t justify your evil, whether large or very small. Instead, stop it, confess it, repair any harm, and don’t do it again.
Sin
Faith characterizes evil and its wrongs as sin. Sin, though, doesn’t just include obvious malicious crimes and intentional, deliberate, and knowing wrongs like murder, fraud, and theft. In faith’s reckoning, any departure from God’s commands, will, instruction, and desires may constitute sin. The root of sin is to miss the mark, as in shooting an arrow in a direction other than the appropriate target. Thus, even your innocent-looking acts, that in another context would be for good, can become sins if God instructed otherwise. God may, for instance, authorize that you quit your job and start a business, both potentially innocent and even laudable acts. But God may at the same time instruct and desire that you wait until the right time, such as after your wife delivers your first child or you and your wife have saved for expenses. If, instead of waiting, you rush ahead, your doing so might constitute sin, out of God’s will and desire. Sin certainly includes pursuing horrible evils. Yet sin doesn’t have to be obvious corruption. Sin can instead be poorly timed actions that in another context would be good. Listen to God, and do his will in his timing.
Choice
How, though, did evil enter God’s wholly good world? When God made humankind in his own image, he gave us his free will. God did not intend that we, with our limited knowledge, self interests, and limited discernment, make our own judgments about what was good or evil. God expressly prohibited that man or woman would, as the Genesis account puts it, eat from his tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God instead reserved that judgment to himself, for only he has the unlimited nature, complete knowledge, and holy character to know good and always choose good rather than evil. From the first man and woman, though, we have been eating from God’s tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We have been making our own judgments of good and evil. Humankind invites evil into the world by exercising free will. Free will presumes choosing either good or evil. And so, to please ourselves and our desires, we sometimes choose evil, whether tempted and deceived into or not. Evil is thus a corollary to human will and choice rather than the design of a wholly good God. Don’t blame God for our evil. Instead, thank God for our free will, confess and repair wrongs, and don’t repeat them.
Mercy
Some people wonder why God doesn’t just promptly rid the world of all evil. God could indeed eliminate evil. But to do that, he might have to fundamentally change creation’s nature, including eliminating us or removing our free will. You might prefer that he only eliminate the most-evil people. But where to draw the line? If you or your child fell into committing a serious evil, you might hope for God’s mercy. And maybe God has eliminated the most-evil people or, if not enough of them, given us the authority and means to do so. Remember, too, that God is wholly good. If he instantly removed every person committing an evil act, you might not consider God to be so good. Indeed, he would have to remove all of us. God’s mercy toward humankind is an essential aspect of his goodness. When God left room for choice and the evil that could flow from it, he left room not only for us but also for our good choice to turn to him. The response to evil is thus not to condemn God but to turn toward him.
Plan
When allowing choice and foreseeing the potential for evil that might flow from the choice, God also planned for the destruction of evil and the redemption of all creation. God’s merciful design is to save humankind out of its corruption through the sacrifice and resurrection of his perfect Son. In sending his Son into the world to suffer the worst of evils, God showed that he would not subject humans to any evil that he would not willingly suffer himself to rescue his creation. God does not suffer deservedly, as humans suffer deservedly. God suffered undeservedly, to rescue undeserving humans. The good news of Jesus Christ is thus not a patchwork plan over an imperfect creation. Rather, in creating humans imbued with free will, God knew we would exercise that free will poorly. God accordingly brought his own Son into the world to rescue and redeem us and the rest of creation. We would not be who we are, tempted by our flesh and struggling against evil while simultaneously saved and victorious, if God had not so designed the world. Recognize your humanity, purpose, and possibility in God’s redemptive plan. Faith in God’s plan explains the world.
Revelation
A perfect world from the start, with no choice and no evil, would also not have been a world that revealed God’s love, his perfect Son, and his glory. God executed the perfect plan to reveal his primary attribute, which is love, expressed in extraordinary humility, self-sacrifice, grace, and mercy. Evil is not in the world to spoil creation nor to corrupt and challenge humankind. Evil is instead in the world to reveal God as greater than we would ever have known, if evil had never existed. We would not have known that God was willing to sacrifice his beloved Son for us, if evil had not given him the cause to do so. We would not have known the glory of his Son, if we had not chosen to disobey his loving and merciful Father. We would not have known the cost of extending that glory to us and therefore the high esteem in which God holds us, if God had refused free will to us, knowing that we would exercise it in evil. Don’t see despair and destruction in evil. Instead, see God’s glory that evil revealed.
Redemption
While evil exposes God’s glory, God also redeems evil. Evil is not good but is instead poisonous, destructive, deadly. Yet being wholly good, God cannot help but turn evil to good, in a way that evil surely did not anticipate because evil does not intend to bring good. God turns the suffering of the soul and even the awful death of the body that follows it into the glory of the soul accepting his Son’s salvation and the glory of bodily resurrection. Evil’s object death shows both the inestimable power of God and his limitless goodness, in turning us to salvation and granting us eternal life. God redeems even the specter of death into salvation and eternal life. Evil is not the victor. God does not bring evil into the world, nor does he sanction, tolerate, or ignore the world’s evil. God instead draws eternal life out of death, through Jesus Christ his Son. God vanquishes the world’s evil. Evil’s legacy is not death and destruction but instead the revelation of God’s glory and love in eternal life.
Restoration
God, though, does not stop at overcoming evil with good. God’s plan further includes the restoration of the world to its full goodness, relieved of all residue of evil. God gives us the power to resist and overcome evil, to participate in the world’s redemption. God further promises the return of his Son and, with it, the conquering of the last vestiges of evil. And after Christ has vanquished all evil from the world, God will join heaven and earth again to live in eternal paradise among his people. God promises that on that day, no tears will fall, all nations will rejoice, and the earth will be free of death and destruction. Faith offers promises beyond imagination, including the banishment of all evil from the world and the world’s restoration as a garden paradise. Your faith can answer the question of both good and evil.
Reflection
Do you see tremendous good and beauty in the world? Do you also see great evil in the world? Have you suffered greatly, not just under hardship but also under the oppression of evil? How did you respond? How did God, or how is God, helping you to respond to evil? Do you question the explanation of evil? Do you commit occasional or rare wrongs that have evil of some kind at their root? Do you justify or excuse your wrongs, or do you confess, stop, and repair them? What would a world without free will and the ability to choose your own path look like? Would you still be human in such a world? Do you believe that God should condemn evil? Have you embraced God’s mercy in Jesus Christ so that God need not condemn your evil? Do the wrongs that you commit help you to see God’s goodness and mercy in offering his Son Jesus Christ to pay for your wrongs? Have you embraced Christ? Are you participating with full commitment in the redemption of the world through Jesus Christ? Do you look forward to that day when God reunites heaven and earth?
Key Points
The presence of evil and suffering in the world challenges faith.
God is wholly good and neither creates nor approves of evil.
Evil desires to destroy with no purpose other than its own satisfaction.
Evil expresses itself in degrees of reprehensibility and harm.
Never justify your own small evil because all evil offends God.
To sin is to miss the mark, meaning to do other than as God desires.
Our free choice to follow our own path inevitably leads to evil.
God is merciful toward wrongdoers, preferring to save from evil.
God saves us from evil’s punishment by the sacrifice of God’s Son.
God’s salvation plan reveals his mercy and the glory of his Son.
God’s salvation plan redeems us from death to eternal life.
In the end, God will remove all evil to reunite heaven and earth.