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Evil confronts us not in abstract only but through bitter personal experience. It meets us in the cancer ward, the nursing home and the crematorium. It assaults us through the carnage of the evening news; it saps us through the daily monotony of failures, feuds and fading hopes. Every one of us knows evil.

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You may have realised that I am using the word “evil” very broadly to include moral evil (deceit, cruelty, pride, etc.), natural evil (disease, tsunamis…) and that last enemy, death. In the truest sense all these “evils” are unnatural, for they are disrupt the peace (shalom) of God’s good creation. They are all signs that things are not they way they ought to be.

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Not surprisingly, people find the experience of evil difficult to reconcile with the existence of a benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent God. For many atheists this philosophical “problem of evil” is a compelling argument against belief. Eighteen of the essays in 50 Voices of Disbelief at least mention the problem of evil, and for five of these it is their main topic (the essays by Russell Blackford, Nicholas Everitt, Christine Overall, Stephen Law and Gregory Benford).

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It is unfortunate that some atheists wave around the problem of evil like a winning lottery ticket, just as it is unfortunate that some Christians dismiss it with flippant theodicies. (A theodicy is an attempt to justify God’s actions. I do not mean to imply here that all theodicies are flippant, merely that theodicies of the flippant variety are particularly regrettable). However, many other people, atheist and Christian alike, demonstrate a real sensitivity to suffering, often amplified by personal tragedy. Gregory Benford’s article ‘Evil and Me’, for example, is more a sigh of despair than a carefully reasoned case. Many atheists grieve at the injustice and suffering of our world, which seem so clearly to deny God and his goodness.

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So how ought Christians respond to this?

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First, we must respond with tears and compassion, with knees bent in prayer, and arms outstretched in charity. Evil is not an intellectual conundrum; it is a dark and terrible perversion of God’s good creation. If evil seems to atheists to deny God’s goodness that is because it does deny God’s goodness – a quality evident from the time sin first entered the world (Genesis 3:1-5). The whole creation is groaning, and is in bondage to decay (Romans 8:21-22). The present experience of creation is one of futility (Romans 8:20) – a word that evokes all the confusion and frustration evident in the book of Ecclesiastes. We do not understand all the evil in the world, and nor should we expect to. So rather than argue with your atheist friends who are distressed by evil and suffering, why not weep with them?

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Secondly, it is helpful to recognise that the problem of evil actually consists of several problems. There is a philosophical problem – how can we reconcile God’s existence with the existence of evil? There is an experiential problem – we all live under the shadow of death. And most fundamentally of all there is a moral problem – we are culpable for evil, we are guilty. Indeed, the moral problem precedes the experiential – “Cursed is the ground because of you” (Genesis 3:17). We are perpetrators of evil before we are its victims.

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Thirdly, and most importantly, we must respond with the gospel. We may not have a complete explanation for evil, but we do have something even better – a God-given solution to evil. This solution is both Christ-centred and future-oriented.

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It is Christ-centred: God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)  Jesus’ substitutionary death and resurrection deliver us from the guilt, penalty and power of sin. God the Son entered our world, took on our moral evil, and drank the full cup of suffering that was its due. Through his resurrection Christ has conquered death and brought the new age forward into the present.

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But the gospel is also future-oriented: But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. (2 Peter 3:13)  We still wait for Christ’s return, for the final day of judgement which will establish universal justice and peace, and for a new creation free from the taint of sin and death.

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The gospel, therefore, invites both faith in Jesus and his past achievement, and hope for the glorious future he has already secured. And so, with our future secure in his hands, Jesus enables us to live with love in the present, acting in small but significant ways to alleviate the suffering of others.

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But all of this is something quite different to giving an explanation in answer to the philosophical problem of evil. That is, none of this means trying to reconcile God’s existence with the existence of evil. I, for one, am comfortable with that. After all, why ever would we want to reconcile the two? In the final analysis, one of them must go. The atheist’s mistake is to decide which it will be too soon.

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The experience of suffering and evil drives some people away from God. But it also drives many people to God – as it did with me when I became a Christian as a teenager. When I groaned with creation then, and when atheists groan today, we express the very problem for which the gospel itself is the solution. Don’t withhold it from them!

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For further reading:

• Habakkuk – read and see how it moves from the philosophical problem of evil to hope in a God-given solution to evil.
• Romans 1-8
• Byron Smith’s discussion of the problem of evil has greatly informed my thinking on this question. Check it out on his blog.

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photo credit: allspice1 – Consolation

photo credit: hdptcar – African rebel camp

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Consider the words Jesus spoke to Peter at the time of his arrest: Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword shall perish by the sword. (Matthew 26:52)

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Taken in a strict, literal sense, this is of course not accurate. Sometimes violent men die peacefully. But Jesus’ saying does capture something that is more generally true of the world. Violence incites further violence, and so its perpetrators often become its victims. Carl Williams comes to mind.

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More significantly, Jesus is beckoning us toward an even more profound insight. Peter’s actions stood in stark contrast to Jesus’. Peter drew a sword, and struck out to defend Jesus. But Jesus himself submitted to his arrest, humiliation and crucifixion. Jesus overcame evil by yielding to its fury; Jesus brought peace by suffering violence. In the same way Jesus’ followers are to be “peacemakers” who “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:9, 39). On this theme, you might also like to reflect on Hebrews 12:24 together with Genesis 4:10, 14-15. Jesus’ blood speaks a word of grace which breaks the cycle of vengeance!

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However, not all generalisations are windows into wisdom; some act as shutters to a sham. Take this quote by philosopher A. C. Grayling:

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The distorted lives of the victims of religion are plain to see from the Bible belt of the United States to the veiled and shrouded women of Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan; genital mutilation, “honour killings,” forced marriages, and dozens of other abuses are perpetuated in the name of religion and tradition contrary to rationality and humanity; the toll is great, and constitutes an indictment of religion as by far one of the least happy inventions of human ingenuity.

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These words comes from Grayling’s essay in the book 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schüklenk.

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In one sentence Grayling is guilty of two questionable generalisations. First, he lumps American Christianity together with Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, implying all are equally guilty of genital mutilation, “honour killings,” forced marriages and other abuses. (Incidentally Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan are countries, not religions, although Grayling’s intention seems clear.) Secondly, Grayling groups together “religion and tradition”, and then, forgetting he has included the latter, blames the miseries just mentioned entirely on the former.

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To be fair, it is possible that Grayling meant to attribute this list of evils only to Islam, having already critiqued Christianity for teaching doctrines which lead various people to feel “apprehension and doubt because of their sexual feelings”. But in any case, I am not certain that causing “apprehension and doubt” about sexual temptation warrants the same condemnation as mutilation or murder.

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Grayling has conjured up a powerful piece of rhetoric, which is nonetheless completely devoid of the clarity and precision necessary for sensible thought and debate. But then again, that’s the danger with generalisations.

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I have just finished reading 50 Voices of Disbelief, and over the next week or so plan to post a series of reflections on atheism. 50 Voices is only one entry in a recent spate of books attacking religion, but this particular volume attracted my attention because it has an Australian editor (Blackford) and a number of Australian contributors. And for all the indiscretions of some of the essays in this book, I’m glad to say that Blackford himself is aware of the risk of overgeneralising.

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In a recent talk at the University of Newcastle Blackford stated that it is difficult to discuss what is wrong with religion because religion is not really a unitary thing. This is a crucial observation, with which I am in full agreement. Christianity is not the same kind of thing as Islam, and neither is the same kind of thing as Hinduism or Buddhism. Different religions must be evaluated individually. If critics aim to sweep away everything in one stroke, they will end up demonstrating nothing except the weakness of overgeneralisations. That said, most of the essays in 50 Voices sidestep this danger by focusing their sights particularly on Christianity. So it seems appropriate to offer a particularly Christian response.

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However, in making a response, I want to acknowledge that Blackford’s caution cuts both ways. Religion is not a unitary thing, but neither is atheism. So my general reflections on atheism may suffer the same weaknesses as general critiques of religion: they will not be true of every atheist, and in fact may be vast caricatures of some.

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So please don’t use these reflections to bludgeon your non-believing friends. Instead, as we search for deep truths and try to expose deep deceptions, please receive these thoughts in a spirit of dialogue and feel free to add your comments.

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Stay tuned…

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photo credit: foxypar4 (sheep)

photo credit: xJasonRogersx (man)