Evil and Suffering

A loving God?

How does Christianity deal with the question of suffering and evil? We look about us and see children starving in Africa, a killer tsunami in Japan, a lion maliciously attacking and killing a leopard, hopeless alcoholics and drug addicts wasting their lives away on skid row. We see one human beheading another in the name of Islam, and we see a child suffering the ravages of war clutching her dead mother. It is easy to conclude that the continuing presence of evil and suffering belie the existence of the Christian God, or any other.

God’s plan

Disbelievers will always take the position that God’s knowledge and rational process must reflect ours. The underlying premise (and quite often unacknowledged) is that if cosmic and earthly events don’t unfold the way we think they should, well, then, quite likely there is no God and certainly the God of the Bible is a fiction. Yet Scripture clearly anticipates this mindset and teaches that God wants us to trust him and not ourselves.

In the beginning God could have created a world that was good and devoid of evil, or a world which allowed evil to roam freely. He chose to create a world that was good and without evil or suffering. He also could have created man to walk lockstep with God and without any free will. Instead, he created us with the ability to make choices, and gave us the dignity of acting on our own.

Whether we believe that Adam was an actual person with a sign hanging around his neck saying, “My name is Adam,” or a metaphorical allusion to mankind, Christianity teaches that man elected to use his free will to ignore God and pursue his own objectives. Evil was introduced; don’t blame God. He made us above the animals and gave us domain over the earth, and we elected to pursue lives in complete or partial absence of God. That’s called evil and, consequently, suffering and pain were introduced.

Consider the possibility that God did in fact create a perfect world, but that the creative process didn’t occur in an instant, as we record time, but over thousands, millions, and even billions of years. From our perspective there is no perfection but only turmoil and imperfection. For God, however, who is the creator of time, all is but an instant. He can see yesterday, today, and tomorrow without the interference of a timeline of ‘A’ preceding ‘B,’ which precedes ‘C,’ etc. In other words, from our point of view we are on a journey to perfection.

Paragraphs 310-312 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church succinctly tell us (footnotes deleted):

“310    But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better. But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world “in a state of journeying” towards its ultimate perfection. In God’s plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.

“311    Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus has moral evil, incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil. He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it . . . .”

Evil as a prerequisite to good

“In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring a good from the consequences of an evil, even a moral evil, caused by his creatures. . . .” (Catechism par 312). The scourging, crowning, mocking, abuse, and crucifixion of Jesus is the greatest moral evil ever committed. Yet the Passion is the perfect example of events that initially appeared to thwart our journey to perfection but were prerequisites for the resurrection and glorification of Christ and our redemption.

God gave us the power to cooperate with him in his creation, or oppose him, in his decision to create a world which, from our point of view, is not yet perfect, but is journeying to God’s goal of perfection. “Only at the end, when our partial knowledge ceases, when we see God ‘face to face’, will we fully know the ways by which – even through the dramas of evil and sin – God has guided his creation to that definitive sabbath rest for which he created heaven and earth.” (Catechism par 314).

Evil and our self-inflicted suffering

God created a perfect world, pronounced it good, and gave man the opportunity to live free from strife and in constant companionship with him. Instead, we elected not only to disobey, but also to outwit and second guess him. God gave us a simple commandment in the Garden of Eden, but we disobeyed. But our attack upon God didn’t stop there. Our arrogance has led us to believe that there are no absolutes and that we are endowed with the exclusive ability to determine what is right and wrong. Arrogance leads us to conclude that scripture is archaic and of no further use other than as a source of amusement and incredulity as to the naiveté of believers.

Unfortunately for us, when we block God’s teachings and substitute ours – just as Adam did – we really revert to the most ancient of all mistakes. We introduce our own teachings and standards of belief and conduct with the inevitable consequence of ever more egregious error and misery. Think of all the diseases and horror that could be eliminated if we adhered to the teaching of Jesus that sex is within marriage only and his teaching about divorce. The Church learned that this union was so sacred that the joining of man and woman together in the bonds of matrimony became a sacrament filling the two with God’s graces. Now we have attempted to undo God’s love by not only ignoring his teachings, but actively rejecting and countermanding them. Ergo, the sky-high divorce rate, the number of men and woman ignoring the sanctity of marriage and the increasingly successful drive to legitimize homosexual acts and marriage.

Because we have rejected God and his absolutes and bring in our own relative assessments of what’s right and wrong, only God could set us straight, and then only through Christ’s suffering. We may find this concept of vicarious suffering difficult to understand and somehow think that it can’t possibly be right – but then, there we go again – substituting our own judgments for those of God.

Consider the sufferings we endure. Nearly all could be prevented or significantly mitigated if we but cared enough for each other. If we followed the example set by Jesus and his teachings man’s inhumanity to man and to animals would be eliminated. Murder, theft, religious persecution, malice, envy, aggrandizement, and a host of other man-made or induced sufferings would not exist. We would be miles further along in our journey to perfection.

Natural disasters and unavoidable misery

Still, while we may be able to accept that man’s inhumanity to man is the consequence of our turning away from God, it becomes more difficult to accept earthquakes, fires, tsunamis, unanticipated accidents and misfortunes whereby even the most innocent and faithful are killed or suffer, as anything but events meted out or at least tolerated by a mean god. And since the God of Christian theology is supposed to be loving and caring for us, these sufferings belie his existence.

Two points are to be made here.

First, these tragedies warn us about how fragile and short life is. When we least expect it, we may be taken. Pay attention! Life is short, eternity forever and none of us knows when we will make this inevitable transition. Natural disasters and unexpected suffering, whether through disease or accident, tell us we should never delay our examination of Christ’s life, teachings, suffering, death, and resurrection. When we delay, we effectively reject him.

Second, even the suffering caused by natural disasters could be significantly reduced if we cared enough to develop early warning systems for tsunamis, hurricanes, etc. and build organizations and infrastructure to provide safety and relief for all peoples, whether living in North America, Africa, Asia or anywhere else. That, however, would require us to love one another as ourselves. Apparently, we’re not ready to do that.

Through science and a sustained effort, we could eliminate nearly all disease and hunger. But that would require a giving and sacrifice that would interfere with our individual taking. Our continuing rejection of God assures us that while progress may be made, such progress will always fall short. We have the collective ability, but unfortunately not the desire, to obey God and be stewards of each other and nature.

Don’t blame God for our unwillingness to be his instruments to move his creation along towards perfection. Don’t deny God because you don’t like the way he set things up.

Suffering for our salvation

How often do you think of God when things are going swimmingly well? What about when you are enduring physical or mental anguish? I think you know when you are closer to God, and when you seek him most. Listen to what Brother Lawrence says in The Practice of the Presence of God – Brother Lawrence: “Suffering is God’s grace and a means that He uses for our salvation. God is often nearer to us in our times of sickness and infirmity than when we enjoy perfect health. Put all your trust in him.”

Not bad advice.

Some websites and references

Last modified July 28, 2019