British philosopher and skeptic, David Hume, propounded, “If God is all powerful, all-presence, and all good God exist then whence is evil?”
Indeed, if an all-good, and all-powerful God exist then, why is there evil, pain and death in the world? Why does our loved one dies? Why all these suffering?
To be honest these questions is not at all simple to answer. Bright-minded philosophers, theologians, and apologists has wrestled with this age-old question.
Yet nothing seems to satisfy our mind as to what is the correct answer to this all common question, namely the problem of evil. The problem of pain, and suffering is not at all easy to deal with since this question involves more emotionally than intellectually. For instance, how can we defend the problem of pain and suffering to a person who has just lost his beloved family through a airplane crash, or a beloved daughter who suffers from leukemia and is about to die.
Or a teenage girl who is going through a therapy because of her past experiences being raped and molested by her own father? What about other atrocities, genocide etc, etc. These evil in the world are not to be taken lightly. Nor should we ignore as Christians the suffering of a child.
Sometimes our reasoning prowess does not suffice with those who suffer with pain, and with those who has lost their beloved ones. All we can do, in such circumstances, is to offer, love and compassion, just as Jesus Christ would do.
However, with all the evil and suffering in the world and all its unbearable pain we sometimes or perhaps often times experience are just temporary. This is the hope in which believers in Christ can look forward to in not so distant future.
Atheism And The Meaning of Life
I’m in accord with those who believe that evil exist because God has an ultimate purpose. But what is the purpose and hope for life in Atheism? Can atheism give us an suitable answer as to why there is evil and sorrow? Let us see and examine briefly what atheism has to offer for us in this question.
In the non-purposeful, mindless, dog eat dog world cannot have any meaning and purpose in life. Pain, evil and suffering are part of our existence—live with it says the atheist. Death is like part of breathing process therefore no use asking why all these suffering exists.
We live our lives the way we want it to be and if we die we are gone into oblivion forever. That’s it and that’s that, period.
Atheism as a worldview is far from being rational. Being as it is, atheism doesn’t have much comfort to usher those who has no meaning and hope in this otherwise painful life.
Atheists who flatly denies God’s existence has no business in raising the objection against Christians, since after all “what is evil” or “what is good” to an atheist?
Isn’t this universe just-so randomly processed and life is nothing but red in tooth and claw? My point is this, if God does not exist, then life is objectively meaningless. Knowing that life has no meaning, man cannot live consistently.
Of course, knowing that life has no purpose, atheists would pretend to be happy and believe that life has meaning. Atheists kind of hope about life amounts to self-delusion. Is this the best hope atheists can offer to mankind a let-us-pretend kind of hope?
This is not so with Christianity. According to the Christian worldview, God does exist, and the human life doesn’t have to end in the grave. The Christian Scripture tells us that, God will someday conquer evil and death, once and for all.
Believers in Christ will be physically resurrected someday in so that man may enjoy eternal life and fellowship with his Creator in heaven. Thus, once in heaven, evil, suffering, pain and death will totally be eradicated and will no longer exists for all eternity.
The Cause And Effect
We may not find satisfactory answers by our skilled philosophers, theologians, and apologists etc, we may, however, find comfort in their rigor explanations, and have more broader understanding as to why evil, death, suffering exists.
Christians theodicists must be very careful not to engage this problem much too deep hoping to find a “formula” that will knock-down skeptics arguments against the existence of an all benevolent God.
I believe that only God can give a satisfactory answer since His thoughts are higher than our thoughts (Isa. 55:9).
In The Beginning
Christians must come to mind that this cosmos and earth we currently inhabit is not as it was in the beginning God intended it to be.
In the beginning just about a few thousand years ago, God the Creator created the universe and everything in it, and at the end of His creative process, God saw everything He had made was “very good” (Gen. 1:31).
The statement “very good” as we should understand it, cannot contain, defects, such as pain, evil and death.
If the opposite is true then I don’t see or understand why it is “very good” to have an unbearable headache, or a lamb, just about to be eaten by a lion for breakfast, yet God would state that it was very good.
As a matter of biblical truth both humans and animals were vegetarians at the time of creation (Gen. 1:29-30). So no blood, no death before the Fall.
Adam and Eve Sinned
We have read and heard about Adam and Eve on the account of Genesis of the Old Testament. Undoubtedly God created Adam and Eve to be a perfect, obedient, couple. God placed them in a perfect garden (Garden of Eden) with the full capacity to chose between being obedience and disobedience (free will).
God commanded our first parents not to eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or they would suffer death (spiritually) as a consequence (Gen. 2:17).
Instead of heeding to God’s warning they did exactly the opposite. They took the Serpent’s lie and ate the “forbidden fruit” in which God clearly forbid. Because of Adam’s defiance by disobeying (cause) his Maker, death, pain, suffering enter and wreck havoc into this world (effect).
“Thorns and thistles” has now become part of this world. All were cursed including plants and animal. The heaven and the earth in which God created was no longer “very good” or perfect.
Suffering and death now abounded as a terrible consequence thanks to our first parents, Adam and Eve. By Adam’s sin the whole world and everything in it, now under sin-cursed and will remain so until the Second Coming of Christ.
Ever since Adam and Eve sinned, (humans, animals, plants) the entire universe has been groaning and travails (Rom. 8:22). In addition, by Adam’s disobedience, death, suffering etc, affected the whole intellectual, physical and spiritual part of man.
“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” (Rom. 5:12).
Not only thistles and thorns, pain and sin became reality, suffering and also the most dreadful and feared by mostly, namely, death— is now part of our existence. Because of death nothing, humanly speaking, is forever. Life would slowly decay. Death, evil, deceases, and pain now reigns in sin-cursed universe.
A New Heaven and A New Earth
In case you didn’t know, Adam was a head representative of the human race. We are therefore counted guilty because of his sin.
Because of Adam’s defiance against his Maker, “All men sinned” (Rom. 5:12) including you and me. Frankly, I don’t find this news quite uplifitng or do you?
We might think that this is unfair. Let us examine this whether or not this is fair.
New Hope
But, what does it means that Adam was the representative of human race. This simply means, as I have noted earlier, we sinned and died in Adam. As in Adam all are cursed. All are now under the judgment of God. Paul wrote,
“Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation” (Rom. 5:18). As a head representative of the whole human race Adam failed.
But then came the second Adam namely, Jesus Christ. Through Adam’s disobedience all were made sinners, Christ’s obedience on the other hand “shall many be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19).
The bottom line is this Adam brought suffering, and death, while Jesus Christ brings eternal life (Rom 5:21). In Christ all will be made alive,
“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22).
Does this still sound unfair to you? The first Adam was made by dust, while Jesus Christ was not created and came from heaven (1 Cor. 15:47).
Remember, sinners (that is to say unbeliever) are still under condemnation by God. Only those who have trusted their salvation in Christ Jesus will be made alive and have eternal life (John 3:15).
New Creation
War, victims of war, rape, murder, incests, infant genocide, hunger, poverty, sickness, pain, suffering, and death are part in our daily lives. This is so because of one man’s sin.
To make the matter worse, Satan as for this moment is the god of this world (2 Cor. 4:4; John 12:13). He and his hordes of demons is at work full time! No such thing as part-time job here.
Nevertheless, all suffering, death (Rev. 20:14) and even Satan will be wiped out (Rev. 20:10) in the future. All of these maladies will be eradicated. The once paradise lost will be new paradise found.
In Revelation 21:1,4 We read this,
“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth…And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”
Isn’t the passage above comforting, and wonderful? Imagen a new heaven and new earth. New holy city, new Jerusalem, with no tears of sorrow, or crying because of a painful situation, and death itself will be no more.
No matter what you are going through right now, pain, sorrow, death by which we all experience are temporal. But the promise of God is forever! The Book of Revelation is the final chapter which God wrote and reveals to us.
This is a wonderful message and an eternal joy for those who are with God. We do not know as yet how it is to be with our Creator and Redeemer. But one thing is certain though that we will be in eternity with God will be more glorious and wonderful!
Before closing this subject let me quote shortly one of my favorite Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga concerning God and suffering:
“As the Christians sees things, God does not stand idly by, coolly observing the suffering of his creatures. He enters into and shares our suffering. He endures the anguish of seeing his son, the second person of the Trinity, consigned to the bitterly cruel and shameful death of the cross…”
Conclusion
The world around us as it is now is under cursed by one man’s sin Adam. Sin, pain, evil, and suffering reigns supreme. God did not intentionally created this present world.
Atheism cannot possibly be the correct answer to our questions. If atheism is true (which is not) then our question to the problem of evil make no sense. To atheists we simply live in a dog eat dog world.
The first Adam brought sin, death and suffering upon humans yet the second Adam, which is Jesus Christ, brought new hope, salvation, and life.
Christians believes that this present world with all its maladies will someday be erased, thus a new heaven and new earth is created. In it, pain, sorrow, death will no longer exists.
Recent Comments