Is God a Good God

Personal Theodicy Theodicy is the vindication or justification of divine goodness in spite of the evidence of a world where evil exists. When one has faith in the divine goodness of God, the question of why God allows evil things to happen is one that is not troublesome; it is one when one has no faith or has doubts that the question becomes pertinent.

Thus, it is helpful to explain how and why a good God would allow evil to exist and evil things to befall innocent people so that others might come to believe or might come to believe more strongly. The main reason for the existence of evil is that God gave to men (and to the angels) freedom of will. Men and angels were given the choice, in other words, of whether they would serve Him or their own desires.

The fallen angels (led by Lucifer now known as Satan) chose to serve themselves—and thus they become antagonists to God and all His creation. The first created man and woman (Adam and Eve) also chose to deny God his legitimate claim to the hearts, minds and wills by breaking His commandment to not eat the forbidden fruit.

In that moment, they sinned and brought the knowledge of good and evil to mankind,[footnoteRef:2] passing the effects of sin onto their children as Paul writes to the Romans: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). Evil was thus introduced into earthly paradise by way of man’s disobedience and God’s just punishment of man’s sin.

Today, man must combat not only his own weak will and desire to serve self over God, but also he must combat the temptations of Satan, who seeks to destroy man’s relationship with God. This is the root of evil—and God permits it because He wants man to have a free will to choose Him.

Love is not love that does not have choice in the matter.[footnoteRef:3] This paper will show why all evil is permitted as an effect of Original Sin and is allowed by a good God because in the end man’s mind and heart are meant to be reminded that God alone is their home, refuge and eternity should they but choose to reach out to Him. [2: J.

Patout Burns, "Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil." The Journal of Religious Ethics (1988), 10.] [3: Fulton Sheen, Life of Christ (NY: Image Books, 2008), 74.] C. S.

Lewis puts it best when he says that to ask whether the world was made by a loving God or by an indifferent God is to ask the wrong question and to ignore the drama of the entire Old and New Testament, which explains the matter fully: Christianity, Lewis states, “is a catastrophic historical event following on the long spiritual preparation of humanity.”[footnoteRef:4] It is catastrophic because it so upended the world that the world has seen fit ever since to mark its days by the birth of Christ.

Christ came to directly deal with the problem of pain and sin, and the evidence of this is all throughout Scripture. Christ heals the blind and sick and raises loved ones from the dead. He offers Himself on the cross to the Father that the sins of mankind might be forgiven.

He asks forgiveness of those who persecuted Him and inspires humility in others—like the good thief who asks to be with Christ in the next world, as he is moved to contrition by God’s charity towards others. Christ is the reminder, Lewis argues, that to dwell too long on the problem of pain and evil is to imagine that God did not care about mankind—which is simply not true. God does care and the evidence is Christ.

Divine goodness exists and is there to be had and all one has to do is acknowledge that one is a sinner and depends upon God’s mercy—and then the act of faith is all that one must make. [4: C. S.

Lewis, The Problem of Pain (Quebec: Samizdat University Press, 2016), 8.] However, as Feinberg points out, “the theological/philosophical problem of evil is about the existence of evil in general, not some specific evil that someone encounters which disrupts her personal relation with God.”[footnoteRef:5] The idea of evil in the abstract is what people find difficult to reconcile with the idea of a good God in the abstract—just as Hume (the philosophical skeptic) found it difficult to do.

The problem that people faced with this difficulty encounter is that they believe a good God would not permit evil to exist at all. Goodness can have no part in evil and vice versa. It is a logical argument to make. But the problem is that the premise of what constitutes divine goodness is mistaken. They believe that it is simply a matter of divine goodness being greater than evil—which is true.

What they fail to also attribute to divine goodness is the reality of justice and the reality that God gives freedom of will to intelligent beings. The angels in heaven already made their choice to serve God. The angels in Hell did too—which is why they have been banished: they chose not to serve God. For men alive in the world, they make their choice daily—and at the end of their lives they will be judged for their works, thoughts and so on.

Berthold points out that free will is the missing element in the mystery of God’s allowance of evil to exist: God permits evil to exist because he gave his intelligent beings the freedom to choose to love or not to love their creator, who gave them life.[footnoteRef:6] Some choose not to, and this explains the existence of evil: their rejection of God is the manifestation of evil (i.e., the absence of goodness) in life. [5: John S.

Feinberg, The Many Faces of Evil (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 21.] [6: Fred Berthold, “Free Will and Theodicy in Augustine: An Exposition and Critique." Religious Studies 17, no. 4 (1981), 426.] But what does that say about the occurrence of evil—such as natural evil—sadness, death, typhoons, floods, tornados, etc.? Why does nature itself seem to be full of a malevolent spirit? The reality is that there is plenty of good to be found in nature just as there is plenty of danger to be found as well.

The fall of mankind from the garden of paradise was catastrophic: sin introduced a note of malevolence into the world. God had intended man to have dominion over the earth, but when man chose himself over God, he lost that control and the awesome, fearsome power of nature became fully manifest. Additionally, man would now be forced to suffer the elements, to feel shame for his nakedness and to struggle with concupiscence. Before the fall, balance and order were total. When man fell, the balance was lost as a result.

God’s punishment is just because death is the punishment for sin.

Man wanted to live without God and God has allowed man to do so—but God is good and will not leave His creation: death is the doorway by which man is admitted back to God, whereupon he will be judged: did man show that he wanted to be with God throughout his life? Or did man show that he wanted only himself and did not want to be with God? Where he spends eternity is based on the answer to those questions.

As Wright notes, “the Christian belief, growing out of its Jewish roots, is that the God who made the world remains passionately and compassionately involved with it.”[footnoteRef:7] God allows evil in the world—but He has not abandoned the world, and that is the important distinction that must be made. Just because evil exists does not mean that God is indifferent to the sufferings of mankind.

He sent His only Son to deal with those sufferings—and that is what, Lewis reminds his readers, man must keep in mind. [7: N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 40.] In conclusion, the reason God allows so much evil to exist in the world is that He is both just and good. God has given his intelligent beings the choice to love or reject Him. He respects their choice and allows them to live with the consequences of their choice.

Rather than simply annihilate His creation, He allows their evil and tolerates it. Their evil does not come from Him but from themselves. He suffers it: He Himself suffered it by being crucified on the cross. God is not indifferent: He sees, knows and understands. He still wants men to.