Dear People Whom God Loves,
GOD’S INTERACTION WITH THE WORLD – VII
Perhaps the thorniest question that religious believers face and which causes many people to doubt or totally not believe in God is the problem of evil. The problem is this. If God is active in the world and is so good and powerful, why doesn’t he prevent all the terrible things that happen to people and the rest of creation.
I think that we could very honestly say that if we had all that power, we would not let countless children starve to death. If we, with our limited goodness, would stop these evils, how could it be possible that a good God would not do so. We might then think that God isn’t so powerful…that He must not be the powerful God that we thought. I think that that is a good place to start. Maybe God can’t make a world that perfect. I would like us to consider that, but in a less blunt fashion.
I think that we often get misled in many areas when we are not nuanced. I can think of no place where that is more important than when we speak of God.
St. Augustine tried to get God off the hook by saying that evil is not something. He said that evil is the absence of good so God didn’t make evil. You don’t have to make absence.
That is a good try, but it doesn’t help me very much. I see evil as a very strong something. I see evil as real. The slaughter of millions in the holocaust is very real evil. We can’t brush it aside by calling it an absence of good. To use a smaller example. If someone is suffering from a debilitating and painful illness, it isn’t much comfort to tell them that what they are going through is just an absence of health.
Someone might say that adversity can make us grow stronger. There is truth in that, but sometimes adversity overwhelms people. Also it doesn’t make sense with something like genocide. We must probe more deeply.
More next time.
Smile, God Loves You,
Father Clay
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