Board index ‹ The Problem of Evil and Suffering

[Newbie]

How is evil in existence, when in the beginning all that was in existence was God, and God, being perfect, created everything good and pure? I would like to hear your thoughts on this. It is really a hurdle when it comes to trusting God for me.

Here's my thoughts so far:

God = perfect Autonomy = self governance. In the beginning was perfection, then God created a perfect Creation (for God can only create good and pure things). Creation desired autonomy. Desire of Autonomy caused withdrawal from God, which in turn caused darkness, which is absence of light Absence of light should equal NOTHING. However, darkness is suffering and pain.

[jimwalton]

Evil is not something that has an existence all its own. Instead, it's a corruption of what already exists. It's the corruption of good. Rust, for example, can only exist as long as metal exists, so also tooth decay because of the tooth, rot on a tree, or decay on a carcass. That's not to say evil isn't real. While it doesn't have an existence all its own, it involves real corruption of an actual entity.

Where did it come from? First of all, God is eternal, so by definition, anything that he created is not eternal, and therefore not God. Therefore anything that is created has the potential to stray from perfection, because it's not God. A crystal glass in my hand may be perfect, but that doesn't mean it can't be shattered.

Secondly (and consequent to what I just said), if human beings were created with a free will, but their will was bound so that it could only choose the good, then it wouldn't be free will. People would be automatons, forced to choose only what was right and good. So a world containing truly free creatures who are truly free to choose any alternative (whether good or evil) is more valuable than a world containing mere robots who always do what is right because they are unable to choose otherwise. God can create free creatures, but then he can't determine them to do only what is right. He must create creatures who are good (because he can only create what is good) but who are capable of making their own choices, and therefore capable of moral evil. You see? He can't create the possibility of moral evil and at the same time prohibit its possibility. As it turns out, God, the perfect autonomy of self-governance, created a perfect creation, but one capable of choosing the wrong, for love, to be love, has to be freely chosen and not forced. As it turned out, his creatures exercised their freedom to do what is wrong. The fact that moral and free creatures sometimes err in no ways speaks against God's power, love, or goodness. The only way to eliminate the possibility of moral evil was to remove the possibility of moral good, which is not an option. The wisest choice was to create people good (though with the necessary option to choose evil), tell them what was the good choice, what would happen if they made the evil choice, and urge them to choose the good, which is exactly what happened. And when they chose evil, he instituted a plan to reconcile them to himself, and sacrificed himself, motivated by love, to redeem them.

[Eyes for Lies]

Fantastic reply there. That's pretty much what I had boiled it down to. I think God created the best he could without creating another God. But I still get confused about the fact that God, existing in the divine realm, outside of time and our physical realm, is all-knowing, always had been, and always will be. In fact, for God, "had" and "will" don't apply because the past, present and future are as one to him. So he knew that his creation would fall, and A LOT of people would go to hell and He KNEW they would suffer for eternity. I'm conflicted because I know the answer for no evil (torment) is to have no good. So God would have to have created nothing and deny the existence of all who do recieve the redemption offered, but in my mind I cannot fathom how eternal torment for a lot of people is a fair price to pay to have others live. And that's why I am not God. He must have his reasons, but I still am troubled by this.

[jimwalton]

OK, now this is a different question. At first you were asking how it's possible that evil exists, but now you're asking (if I read you right) how it's fair that people get punished for evil, and why would God have created as he did, knowing that he would end up punishing bazillions of people for eternity.

To this I think it's fair to say that you have a misunderstanding of hell, and we should talk about that. First of all, we can be certain that there are degrees of punishment in hell (not levels, like in Dante's Inferno). Here are some verses about that:

Mt. 11.22-24 – “more tolerable”
Mt. 23.14 – “greater condemnation”
Rev. 20.13 – “each in proportion to his works”
Lk. 10.12 – “it will be more bearable for Sodom than for that town”
Lk. 12.47-48 – beaten with few blows or more blows

People will receive punishment commensurate with the kinds of lives they lived—which brings me to another point. Because punishments are proportionate to the infraction (which is only fair, obviously), I quite convinced that hell is not fire. I think we all know well that fire doesn't have levels of punishment. Being burned is just awful. I think fire is an image used to let us know how awful separation from God will be, but not an image that we are to take literally. If all transgressors burn for eternity, there is no "degrees of punishment." The Bible uses other images for hell besides fire:

- Darkness and separation (Mt. 8.12; Jude 13; Lk. 13.27-28; 2 Thes. 1.7-9)
- Suffering and remorse (Mt. 8.12; 22.13; 25.30; Lk. 13.28)
- Punishment (Mt. 25.46; Rev. 14.11)
- Death and destruction (2 Thes. 1.7-9; Rev. 20.14)

Now let's build on this picture. Romans 5.13 tells us that "sin is not taken into account when there is no law." So it's possible that none of the people before Moses will be punished with hell, or at least not severely. We also know that children and mentally incapacitated people will not be judged with hell because they are not morally culpable. In Deuteronomy 1.39, the children who were too young to make a realistic decision are not judged, but are shown mercy; their level of accountability was directly related to their moral awareness. Isa. 7.15-16 teaches the same thing: God deals differently with people based on their knowledge. So we're getting a sense of the fairness of God, and that he takes many things into consideration as he makes his perfect decisions.

So I think when it comes right down to it, the people who are really going to be punished in hell are the people who were deliberately and defiantly rebellious against God. It's also true that whoever doesn't have a love relationship with Jesus will also be separated from him (the real definition of hell), but it's just not the perpetual torment of agony (and unfairness) that is the caricature of what the Bible teaches.