Teacher to Teacher - December 2008 - (Page 6)

continued from page 3 • • • • • end is often very difficult (Joseph, Daniel). Evil is directly caused by sin, not by God, and He will make these things right before the end (Psalm 1:6). He often chooses not to answer our questions, thereby indicating that He wants us to trust Him (Psalm 37:3; Ecclesiastes 12:13; Daniel 3:17−18; Habakkuk 2:20; Romans 9). It is our relationship with God that enables us to trust Him in the dark times (Psalm 37:4−5; 73:16−17). We can gain confidence during the times we do not understand by recalling God’s consistent record of goodness in similar situations in the past (Psalm 78). When we suffer, we are experiencing what Christ Himself has already gone through (1 Peter). He must put up with something else that He does not want. And that sounds inconsistent with omnipotence.13 Others observe that in places in the Bible—such as Romans 9—where one might expect the free-will defense to be used, it conspicuously is not.14 We are designed to live eternally in a perfect environment. Part of the joy of that environment will be the stark contr ast between it and what we lived in before. • Evil as Grace. Some kinds of evil, most obviously pain, serve as warnings of danger and thus help to protect us—for example, we quickly snatch our hands from a hot pot, thereby avoiding serious injury. The problem with this idea is that it is at best only a partial solution. How does an earthquake protect us? And could an omniscient, omnipotent God not have designed warning devices that would not injure us in the process? • Evil as Foil. We are designed to live eternally in a perfect environment. Part of the joy of that environment 13 will be the stark contrast between it and what we lived in before. Sin, pain, and death, then, serve as something for us to escape, and they thereby increase the eventual joy. In the meantime, they increase our yearning for that future world that will be free of the sorrows of this one.15 Again, this answer is insufficient. What about those who do not escape? And is it really necessary for us to suffer the consequences of sin in order to appreciate the joys of eternity? Do the unfallen angels not appreciate those joys? Doesn’t God? The Role of Relationship A major inadequacy of the standard theories is that they tend to treat the problem of evil philosophically, objectively, abstractly, impersonally. There’s a place for that kind of investigation, of course, but limiting ourselves to that approach omits a key factor for us: God is a person Who has designed us to have a relationship with Him. And that changes both the way we investigate and the standard of proof. Let me illustrate what I mean by using an illustration from Charles Ryrie.16 Suppose I come home from work a few minutes early and find a strange car The Standard Theodicies Believers throughout history have approached the problem of evil in several ways. What follows are a few of the most common.12 • Evil as Necessity. God wanted to create beings who could have a relationship with Him; but for that relationship to be meaningful, these beings cannot be robots; they must have the ability to choose. And that necessarily means that they will be able to choose evil. And since they are the ones who have chosen, evil is not “God’s fault.” Some observe that in this scenario God is then bound by logic outside of Himself; if He wants one thing, 12 15 For other options, all of which he rejects as unbiblical, see Frame, 155ff. Teacher to Teacher | December 2008 Defenders of the view reply that God is consistent with this logic not because he is bound by it, but because it is His nature to be logical. Thus He conforms to the principles of logic for the same reason that He is good, or true, or unchanging. Frame, 161−62. 16 This is actually one variation of a broader view, sometimes called the “greater-good” view: that God has determined that allowing evil into His universe will result in greater good in the long run than not doing so. One of these “greater goods” often suggested is the moral development of the soul—“no pain, no gain.” Another, obviously, is salvation—though not of all—and the greatest good, as the Westminster Catechism reminds us, is the glory of God. Basic Theology (Chicago: Moody, 1999), 107. 14 page 6

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