The Problem of Evil (2/3)

In last week’s bulletin article, I talked about the theories of evil in the world and I would like to follow up with a few different theories of why there is evil in the world.

The one that is sometimes used is that if there is evil in the world there must not be a God or he does not care about us. This is obviously not the case because if God did not care for us then why did he send his only Son for our redemption? Suffering can lead us to question God’s existence and that is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on where it takes us. If it takes us to despair then it is bad, but if it forces us to look at our faith then it could be a good thing because it will lead us to explore a deeper understanding of God and how he works in our lives. Sometimes bad things happen to us and we do not know why and sometimes something we think is bad is actually better for us, to quote Garth Brooks “sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers”

The first theodicy, or theory of the problem of evil, is that it is a byproduct of our human free-will. There are two parts to this; the first is that by not choosing God and choosing sin we introduced evil into the world or it is a punishment for sin; the second part is that for a real choice to exist we must have options, so if there is a choice for good then there must be a choice for evil. The second theory is called “the best of all possible worlds.” This one is difficult because it claims that the world we live in was the best one of all of the possibilities for God to have created. Since God is all knowing, then he would have known what the outcome of all the possibilities of the creation of the world and with all of the factors, this world was the best one. This still relies on our own free will. The third theory is from St. Irenaeus who states that the purpose of evil is for our soul-making. God created the world imperfectly so that every imperfect being could develop through a soul-making process into a child of God in his perfect likeness. God could not create us perfectly in his image because it requires cooperation with God. This is something that cannot be given, we need to accept it and work with God to become perfect images of God.

The simple truth is that all of these arguments and theories are just that, theories. As much as we want to understand things, we do not know why tragic things happen. We have a desire to find out why and how things happen. We do not know why bad things happen to good people. My advice is to pray about it and ask God for the answers. God will provide the answers when we really need them. Trust that the Lord knows us better than we know ourselves and loves us more than we could possibly know.

God bless,
Fr. Ken