Personal Theodicy: Why God Permits Evil in a Good World

Introduction: The Problem of Evil and Divine Goodness

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 not particularly troublesome; it is when one has no faith, or has doubts, that the question becomes pertinent. It is therefore 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 became 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 their hearts, minds, and wills by breaking His commandment not to eat the forbidden fruit. In that moment, they sinned and brought the knowledge of good and evil to mankind,¹ 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 that sin.

Today, man must combat not only his own weak will and desire to serve self over God, but also 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 that has no choice in the matter is not truly love.² This essay argues that 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.

Free Will, the Fall, and the Origin of Evil

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."³ It is catastrophic because it so upended the world that humanity 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 found throughout Scripture.

Christ heals the blind and the sick and raises loved ones from the dead. He offers Himself on the cross to the Father so that the sins of mankind might be forgiven. He asks forgiveness of those who persecuted Him and inspires humility in others — such as the good thief who asks to be with Christ in the next world, moved to contrition by God's charity toward 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 available to all; one must only acknowledge that one is a sinner who depends upon God's mercy, and then make the act of faith. As Lewis demonstrates throughout The Problem of Pain, the incarnation is itself the definitive theological answer to the question of divine indifference.

Conclusion: God's Justice, Love, and the Christian Answer

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. Rather than simply annihilating His creation, He allows their evil and tolerates it. That 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 choose Him out of love, because He loves them.

That is the reason God allows so much evil to exist: He knows that even out of evil some good can come — some souls will realize that evil is not their end, but rather that God wants them to be with Him. Evil is not there because God hates men and the world, but rather because He gave free will, and those who rejected God had to bear the consequences of that rejection, so that they might realize the gravity of their sin and come to know the goodness of God. Sin, death, evil, pain, natural evils — these are all effects of sin, and Christ came to help men overcome sin. The solutions and ways forward are there; all man must do is cease imagining that God does not care. God does care, and that is what the Christian mysteries reveal. To understand how and why God can allow so much evil to exist, one must understand the Christian religion. Christ is at the heart of the answer — as Lewis argues again and again. Without a sense of Christ, one cannot obtain a satisfactory answer to the problem of why so much evil exists in the world today.

Bibliography

Berthold, Fred. "Free Will and Theodicy in Augustine: An Exposition and Critique." Religious Studies 17, no. 4 (1981): 525–535.

Burns, J. Patout. "Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil." The Journal of Religious Ethics (1988): 9–27.

Feinberg, John S. The Many Faces of Evil. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004.

Lewis, C. S. The Problem of Pain. Quebec: Samizdat University Press, 2016.

Sheen, Fulton. Life of Christ. New York: Image Books, 2008.

Wright, N. T. Evil and the Justice of God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006.