Essentials of Apologetics - Lesson 16

If God, Why Evil? (Part 1)

Sean McDowell
Lesson 16
Essentials of Apologetics

If we were to briefly summarize what we've covered so far, we'd say we talked about the importance of truth. Truth is noble. We made a case for the existence of God. Now we shifted towards God revealing Himself in the person of Jesus in the scriptures. Now what we've got to do is consider some of the biggest objections against the Christian faith. No objection looms more significant than the problem of evil and suffering. So we're going to spend two sessions on this. In a sense, this isn't really a challenge to the existence of God, depending how you cash this out. It's really a strike at the heart of the goodness of God. Now all you got to do is open up and look at the news of the day and what do you discover? Yes, if it bleeds, it leads, but leading stories, if you just analyze it, are about natural disasters, about evil things that human beings cause.

Why is the world so broken? Now every worldview, like we talked about, has to give an explanation for why the world is broken. The question is not, "Can I tell you exactly why you suffer or exactly why some evil has happened to you?" If that is your expectation, you're going to be disappointed at the end of this lecture. But if the question is which worldview is the most existentially or emotionally satisfying and intellectually satisfying, then I think we'll have a very different perspective. In some ways, I teach a full class on this as I do the resurrection, a grad class. And I tell my students, as I'll say today, this really is the big question we see emerging everywhere. So what are questions of immigration really about? People are suffering. And how do we respond as a nation to this? What are questions of gun control about? People are getting hurt. Is the best way to solve it to take guns or give people more guns?

Almost every ethical and cultural issue in some way, if you trace it back, is about evil and suffering in the world and us trying to respond. This is a perennial issue. In fact, even Einstein made statements like, "God doesn't play dice with the universe." He talked about the design and purpose built into the universe on some level, but it was evil and suffering that made him doubt that there was a personal God. Even Darwin, if you read the Origin of Species, it's not just about science. It's kind of like suffering and evil and brokenness in the natural world seems to be driving it. And one of the greatest skeptics over the past few decades, Bart Ehrman, interestingly enough, a textual critic, a brilliant scholar. It wasn't his doubts about the Bible and his questions about the resurrection that drove him from the faith. Even Bart Ehrman said, "I left the faith to what I took to be and still take to be an unrelated reason, the problem of suffering in the world."

This is the perennial question, but it's not just a question that skeptics have. It's a question that followers and believers in Jesus often have. I've asked this question many times in my life. When my wife had a miscarriage, I recently went through some pretty severe physical pain. It's natural to say, "God, You can stop this. Why don't You? It takes no effort for You to do so." In fact, Habakkuk, the minor prophet said, "How long, oh Lord must I call for help but you do not listen or cry out to you violence, but you do not save." The problem of evil and suffering is a human question. The question is how will we respond?

A friend of mine, a scholar by the name of Doug Groteis, a PhD in philosophy, brilliant. His wife who he was married to, was a part of an international high IQ society, and she had a rare form of dementia where she could not remember how to tie her shoe. And he wrote a whole book grieving this. And he said, "The question I kept coming back to was, was I going to believe that God is good and God knew what He was doing even if it made no sense to me?" That's the heart of the question, and that's where faith comes in.

Well, in one sense, when we say the problem of evil and suffering, it's not just really one problem. There's actually multiple angles and way to approach this. When I graduated from Biola University, I had taken a class my senior year in Apologetics, got an A under the great J.P Moreland. And I was thinking, "I got an A on my paper in the class. I'm ready to go. Bring on some skeptics so I can defend the faith." And I was in Breckenridge, Colorado and I went in to get my hair cut. Sat down, was reading a Christian book, and the lady, if I remember it was maybe 25 or 30. Set the book down and she says something to the effect of, "Oh, is that a Christian book?" I said, "Yes." She said, as she started to cut my hair, "Do you mind if I ask you some questions?" I said, "No." Inside I'm thinking, "Bring it on. I just got an A in Apologetics."

And the first question she asked was something fact of, "If God is so good, why is there so much suffering and evil in the world?" Inside I'm thinking, "That's all you got. Are you kidding me? We talked about this." And I was like, "Well, think about it. You can't have evil without good. You can't have good without God. Have you thought about how your objection proves God exists? Besides, God didn't make us to be robots. He wants us free will. We have free will to do good. We have free will to do evil." She asked the question, bam. I had a response. I'm thinking this is going awesome. Until all of a sudden she stops and she kind of takes a step back and pauses and she's literally shaking. And a tear runs down her face and she goes, "It can't be this simple. You've got an answer for everything."

At that point I felt bad. Changed the topic, gave her a big tip. I was probably 22, so I remember thinking it was a big tip, probably wasn't. I walk outside and my friend was with me and I was like, "Man, what is up with Miss Sensitive?" And I'll never forget what he said to me. He goes, "Sean, do you have any idea how arrogant you were towards her?" And it hit me like a ton of bricks. It's like time stood still, and I thought, "Wow, I was trying to sound smart, win an argument and had no thought or care that this is a human being in front of me with real questions and probably real struggles." Some people ask me, "Why does God allow evil and suffering," unless it's a radio debate that I'm in the middle of, I'll often say something like, "Of all the questions you can ask about God, why that one?"

Now why is that a helpful question? The person might say, "I was in a chat room when we were debating this. I was reading a book. I'm in philosophy 101, or I was watching Batman verse Superman." In fact, that movie is about the problem of evil. They state the problem of evil in that movie. Then it's probably more of an intellectual question, but I'm convinced when people ask this, the vast majority of time it's personal. "Why is my uncle dying of cancer?" "Why did my parents get divorced?" "Why was I bullied as a kid?" This is what we call the emotional problem of evil. It's how do we help people who are suffering, who are struggling? Now, this doesn't require an intellectual response. In fact, oftentimes when somebody is suffering personally. And we say, "Hey, turn that frown upside down. Romans says, God works all things together for the good."

You can actually do more harm than good. You better believe there's a time and place to cite scripture, but there's a time and place to not cite scripture. In fact, Romans 12:15 says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep." In other words, meet people where they're at emotionally. When my son recently came and goes, "Dad, I got an A on my test." What is he looking for? Need to go, "Son, that's great. Tell me about it. How did that make you feel? When did you first find out." Enter into that joy with him. When somebody shares hurt, what are we looking for? Just be present with me. Just hurt with me. Just cry with me. It's called empathy. That's a Christian response. Job's friends did everything right when he was suffering until they opened their mouths. They sat with him for a week. A week and were just present. Then they gave excuses, bad theology and messed everything up.

Sometimes we avoid people in pain because we don't know what to say. You know what? Sometimes you don't have to say anything. Sometimes you can just simply say, "I know you're hurting. How can I best minister to you? I just want to care for you. What does that look like?" Maybe they say, "I don't want to talk." Maybe they say, "I just want to talk." But just being present for people is a Christian, biblical response. Now, this is not a counseling class, but let us make sure when people are suffering, we respond emotionally and pastorally and with the heart that Jesus did. He wept at the death of Lazarus.

With that said, we also have to give a philosophical response. Dennis Prager is a Jewish talk show host. He wrote a book called Happiness is a Serious Problem. It's a fascinating book, and he noticed that many couples who experienced the sudden tragic death of a child, according to his research, most would get divorced or separated. He said, but couples who stayed together, one common factor was they at least had a philosophy of life that could make sense of such a tragedy as this. Doesn't take the pain away, but gives you context. So shifting to the philosophical response helps us respond to suffering, but also be prepared with an answer when people ask. Now, a helpful place to start is to define what we mean by evil. What do we even mean by evil?

C.S. Lewis, a former atheist, by the way, a lot of people don't know that, he writes this in his book, Mere Christianity. He said, "As an atheist, my argument against God was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust. But how had I gotten this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?" This is a brilliant insight. C.S. Lewis was saying, "As an atheist, I looked at the world, I said, it's unjust, it's broken. But the thought never dawned on me that when I was saying the world was unjust, that implies a standard of justice. And if there is no God, how do you get a standard of justice?"

You see, you can have evil. You can have good without evil, but you can't have evil without good. You can have good without evil, but you can't have evil without good. I think the problem of evil is one of the best reasons to believe that there is an objective, moral standard that has been broken. People have fallen short of it. That's in part what C.S Lewis is explaining. Now, we'll come back to that and we'll unpack it. But think about when you say there's evil in the world, what are you saying? You're kind of saying things are not the way they're supposed to be or they aren't the way they're supposed to be. What do both of those imply? A way that the world is supposed to be. If there's no designer and there's no mind and there's no God, there is no way that the world is supposed to be.

The complaint of evil is that things are broken. We talk about a broken clock. That means it's not functioning as it's supposed to function. We talk about a broken vase. Its design has been marred. When we talk about a broken world, the same thing naturally implies that there's a design behind it that's been marred or broken. So the problem of evil points towards objective good, which only makes sense if there is a God. That's what C.S. Lewis was onto. Now, sometimes we think of good and evil as if they're kind of two equal and opposite competing forces, so to speak. Kind of like a yin and yang. There's a little good in evil, a little evil in good, but I'm not sure this is the most helpful, intuitive way to think about evil.

Think about it more like this. Take something that has an original design such as a wrench. What happens when a wrench goes bad? It gets what? It gets rusted or it gets bent. It gets rusted. It's no longer the way it was meant to be. In a sense that's what evil is like. So you could have a wrench according to its good design that if you care for it never goes bad. But the idea of rust only makes sense if you have something good that's gotten corroded. Give you another example. Take healthy teeth. Now, some of you know where this is going. Let me just spare you. Don't search online for tooth decay. There are some painful examples. This one is actually somewhat mild tooth decay. Now, could you have healthy teeth that never get decayed? Sure. Floss. Don't eat too much sugar. Brush your teeth. But decay by itself means that something of its original design has gone bad. It's rusted, it's decayed.

So in a sense, evil is a corruption of what is good. Evil is a corruption of what is good. So that means you can have good without something be corrupted, but something -- you can only have a corruption if you first have an objective standard of good. So you might think about it this way. Think about evil and good in the relationship of the truth and a lie. Can you have truth without somebody telling a lie? Sure. Can you have a lie without truth? No. What's a lie? Yeah, an intentional misrepresentation of the truth. So a lie in a sense is a corruption or a perversion or a twisting of the truth. That's what sin is. That's what evil is. Think about a test. You could have a test. If I gave you a test and it was two plus two equals all of you would get it right. All of you would get it correct.

So it's possible to have a test where everybody gets it right but the idea of getting something wrong implies what? There's a standard that you missed. There's something that you did not understand and answer correctly. That's what's meant by evil. So think of evil like a lie is to truth. Like wrong in a test is to right. Like a bent stick is to a standard of straightness. Like injustice is to justice. So if there's really justice, if there's really goodness, if there's really an objective standard of morality, then the idea of evil makes sense. But if there is no objective right and wrong, we can't even have evil in the world. So this doesn't help us understand why God allows evil. It doesn't tell us that, but it helps with the complaint itself to realize that the complaint itself only makes sense if God exists.

One of an atheists I've mentioned before, Christopher Hitchens wrote a book and his book was called God Is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything. And a friend of mine, Frank Turk, was debating Hitchens before he passed away and he kept saying, "Hitchens, you're saying religion poisons everything. That means you're saying religion is bad, but that only makes sense if there's a standard of good. How do you get a standard of good if there is no God?" And he kept pressing him and pressing him and pressing on this. Frank is from New Jersey, so he dropped this line at the end that I loved. He goes, "Christopher, you sit on God's lap to slap Him in the face." And he's exactly right. Now, in the next session, we're going to unpack a little bit more of what the problem of evil is and offer a Christian response to it. But so far questions that I could clarify or respond to of what we've covered? Yeah.

The way I look at good and evil when somebody asks me that question, I'd say that first of all, God created the Garden of Eden and there was no evil. Evil did not come from God. It came from Satan. Satan has corrupted the world and everything we see. If there was no Satan, no evil but that makes the question about the evil in our own hearts.

So this is great. What he's saying is when he's asked to explain good and evil, points towards the garden. God doesn't create evil, but creates human beings and beings like Satan who have the capacity to choose, who bring evil into existence. And I think that's right. Think about there's no evil until you get to Genesis chapter three. So you can have good without evil. Otherwise you would say evil is eternal alongside God, which is going to raise some serious theological problems. God is not the author of evil. God knew evil was going to come. Hence Jesus was the Lamb crucified before the foundation of the world, but its human beings and Satan who chose to reject God's good command and brought evil into existence.

And God-

Other questions? Go ahead.

I just read a commentary about another possible definition of the word adultery, particularly in the commandment of thou shalt not commit adultery. And it suggested that in addition to the marriage context that it can be defined as a failure to align with the original image. Do you have...

I'm not an expert on the root of the word adultery, but for the sake of this conversation, here's what I would say. Adultery implies failing to live up to what marriage is supposed to be. So that's a brokenness, that's a corruption of an original design. The mere fact that across cultures, C.S. Lewis argues that people recognize you just can't have sex with anybody you want to, anytime. You're supposed to make certain commitments to people. There's a recognition throughout the ancient Near East that adultery in itself is wrong. Tells us that we know there are certain ways human beings are supposed to live and things we're not supposed to do, which tells us there is a certain design built into the world itself. So the idea of adultery tells us in the same way there's an idea of what marriage is supposed to be. So great example. Maybe we have time for one more question. Go.

So I was speaking to someone who denied the existence of hell. And their reasoning was that if hell is eternal and it exists, then evil exists for eternity. How would I respond to that? You know what I mean by evil is eternal?

So there's a difference between evil being eternal in the past as a part of God's nature and God creating human beings choosing to rebel against Him, and then God allowing them to continue to exist in that rebellion in a state that's called hell. So I wouldn't say it's eternal because it didn't exist forever in the past, even though it would continue into the future.

So evil exists forever? Hell exists forever-

If hell is eternal and you understand if hell as eternal conscious torment, then people are going to live in rebellion against God, but will be sequestered away from God's presence and others for eternity. That doesn't make... Let me make a distinction here. There's a difference between something that's eternal in the past and something that will keep going into the future. Evil had a beginning moment in the past. It was not eternal, but once God makes free beings, then He's going to allow them in the next life to continue to rebel against Him. That would be the difference. So we'll get back to hell in a little bit.