“I feel drawn to the idea of God, but I don’t think I can get over the reality of things like childhood cancer, spousal abuse, and sexual assault. If God is out there, why is He letting these things happen? If I were driving down the road and saw someone attacking someone, I’d be morally obligated to intervene. Yet this God who we’re supposed to worship is passive? If He is real, is He even worthy of our love or glory?”

A new person to our church asked me this question a few weeks ago. She wasn’t being a smug skeptic; she was genuinely wrestling with the nature of a personal deity who tolerates such decay.

The problem of evil isn’t merely a topic to be discussed in Philosophy 101 courses; it’s a wound that exists in the heart of every person who loves suffering persons and is simultaneously trying to hold onto the twin doctrines of God’s providence and God’s goodness. Like a mother trying to attend to three crying kids all at once, the problem of evil harasses the soul, pulling it in three directions.

“Tread lightly,” I warned. “Do you know what you’re starting to sound like?”

“I know, I know,” she responded, “I’m not smarter than God, blah blah blah. I sound like a Reddit atheist who’s socially awkward, who only knows how to connect with people by antagonizing them.”

“No, that’s not what I was getting at. You’re starting to sound like a biblical author.”

She stared back at me, surprised. “What? I’m telling you about obstacles to my faith, just to be clear.”

“Yes, I hear that. And your obstacles to faith sound like faith. The questions you are raising sound like what we read about in Job, Psalms, Lamentations, and even what we hear from Jesus when He’s suffering. ‘How long, oh Lord? Why have You forsaken me? Why do You stand by idly in the face of evil? You said You hate evil, yet the evil ones flourish.’ What you’re describing as doubts are actually the seeds of faith. About a third of the prayers in the Psalms and a few of the whole books in the Bible sound like this.”

“I didn’t know about that. I thought that was ‘unbeliever’ language,” she said.

“Oh, quite the opposite,” I continued. “In order to be angry at evil, you have to have a concrete belief in the existence of not-evil, or goodness. This shouldn’t be assumed.”

Where Does Good Come From?

“Okay, tell me more.” She leaned in. “Part of what brought me here today is a sense that there has to be a design to all of this; like, for my kids to be objectively and not just subjectively meaningful, there has to be some moral structure to the world.”

“Yes! Exactly!” I said. “That belief in order, meaning, goodness, and beauty—where can it come from? For childhood cancer to be not good, it must be violating some standard of goodness that exists not just in your mind, but above your mind. The same with spousal abuse. If you want to be able to say that these things are objectively bad, there must be an objective good, a standard that is over-and-above subjective preferences or cultural sensibilities.”

“Okay, but how does that connect to faith in God or Jesus?” she asked.

“Here’s how. If everything came from nothing, on accident, then, so the story goes, all that exists is physics and chemistry. Protons and electrons. Atoms. Chemicals and chemical reactions. Your consciousness is just an illusion, a fizzing bag of the periodic table colliding together. Science and scientific inquiry cannot give you an ‘ought,’ but only an ‘is.’ They can’t say what should be. They can only describe what has been. There is no moral or immoral. No good or not good. No beautiful. No ugly. Just a view on reality.

“But,” I continued, “if we aren’t inhabiting mere ‘nature’ but instead a ‘creation,’ then there is a ‘should’—a ‘how things are supposed to be.’ There, evil can be truly evil, not just ‘against my preferences.’”

“I see,” she replied. “I think I’ve been sensing that, and that’s why my family is here today.”

“I can see that. And what a step you’ve taken. The problem of evil is difficult, but the problem of goodness is more difficult. It is certainly part of why I am a Christian today. I have an answer to the problem of goodness, but I’m rarely satisfied by my answer to the problem of evil.”

Trust in the Ultimate Good

“How?” she asked. “How can you not have an answer?”

“Oh, I have an answer,” I said. “But it is only sometimes emotionally satisfying. Often it isn’t. Then I start to pray like the biblical authors. ‘How long, oh Lord? Why do You do what You do? I don’t like what You’re up to!’ The genre is called lament. In Hebrew, Lama means ‘why?’ Many of the laments offered up in the Scriptures are not answered. It is frustrating. When Jesus laments on the cross, He still dies. God in the flesh took His own medicine. So I can at least trust that He gets my emotional state.”

I went on. “But He rose from the dead three days later. So we see that God can use evil for good. Rarely do we get such a clean demonstration of goodness like we do in the good news of Jesus. So we can choose to trust. We inhabit the tension. A preacher named Charles Spurgeon once said, ‘The Christian trusts Him where he cannot trace Him.’”[1]

“Well, I don’t love that, but I guess it makes sense.”

“Yes, but do you see how the problem of goodness has to come before the problem of evil? How beauty must precede ugliness? The chaos of naturalistic evolution cannot deliver on the problem of goodness.”

“Yes. Absolutely,” she said.

“The life God is inviting you into does require trust that grows over time. You have faith in the existence of a creation; next comes faith in the Creator. However, no matter how much you trust Him, you’ll never outgrow the prayers of lament until He returns and makes all things new. And even then, I’m not convinced I will understand all that He’s done in this life; He’ll always be infinite, and we’ll remain finite even into eternity. To trust the infinite One will require discomfort. You are already stepping into that by coming here today and speaking with me. It seems like the Lord has a hook in your mouth, but you’re not quite yet in the book. He will continue what He’s started.”

She teared up, thanked me for talking, and said she’d better go get her kids from the kids’ ministry.

Here’s the reality: No slick answer will solve the relational and emotional difficulty of the problem of evil. A cute answer may even unintentionally cheapen the suffering. Validating the inquirer’s concerns while simultaneously inviting them to consider an additional problem, the problem of goodness, can validate a small spark of faith while inviting the person into an honest life with God. In seeing the person behind the philosophical questions, we can faithfully represent the One who will hear them when they learn to call on His name.

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[1] Charles H. Spurgeon, “A Happy Christian,” from Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Volume 13, The Spurgeon Center, https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/a-happy-christian/#flipbook/.