God and Evil

V. Justin Bright Benjamin - Thesis

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully

as when they do it from religious conviction.”
Blaise Pascal, Pensees (#894)

INTRODUCTION

A pastor is mowing his lawn. He looks up just in time to see a dump truck backing
out of his neighbor's driveway--right over his neighbor's eighteen-month-old son who had
been squatting by the tires. The little boy is crushed beyond recognition. A father dies
suddenly, leaving behind a wife and six children. Former tennis star Arthur Ashe died of
the AIDS virus through a blood transfusion—not through immoral behavior. The movie
Sophie's Choice portrays a woman who is asked to make the anguished choice: which of her
two children will she keep, and which will she allow to be taken away to die at the hands of
the Nazis?

Some 20-50 million Chinese died under Chairman Mao. Probably over 20 million
died under Stalin's purges and forced economic programs. Six million Jews were killed
under Hitler in the Holocaust. We read of some of the horrendous brutalities that have
taken place in history, we are shocked, outraged and saddened.

In the book Shoah, we read of one villager who witnessed the brutal treatment of
Jews’ who were being transported by train (once the Nazis had invaded the Ukraine 1):

“Once when the Jews asked for water, a Ukrainian went by and forbade giving any.
The Jewish woman who had asked for water threw her pot at his head. The
Ukrainian moved back maybe ten yards, and open fire in the far. Blood and brains
were all over the place.”2

Not only that, but the wicked seem to prosper: "Why does the way of the wicked
prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?" (Jer. 12:1). Haven't the scales been weighted
on the side of injustice for too long? How can God allow gross horrors and evils to occur?
Why doesn't he intervene? Is he really all-good and all-powerful? Where is God anyway?

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga says that the problem of evil is “deeply baffling.” 3
Theistic argumentation in favor of theism may seem to offer “cold and abstract comfort
when faced with the shocking concreteness of a particularly appalling exemplification of
evil.”4

Writer L. M. Montgomery (who penned Anne of Green Gables) gave her verdict on
God and evil:

1
In fact, the Nazis were actually welcomed there initially—until they started to carry out their
atrocities.
2
Claude Lanzmann, Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust (New York: Pantheon Books,1985), 30.
3
Alvin Plantinga, “A Christian Life Partly Lived,” in Kelly James Clark, ed., Philosophers Who Believe
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 71.
4
Ibid.
 “I believe in a God who is good and beautiful and just--but not omnipotent. It is idle
to ask me to believe in a God who is both good and omnipotent. Given the conditions
of history and life the two things are irreconcilable.”5

Montgomery felt “compelled” to opt for Dualism, the belief in a good (but not all-powerful)
God and in a Principle of Evil, “equal to God in power.” Both of them are involved in “an
infinite ceaseless struggle.”

In this session, we will discuss the problems of evil, but we do not do so lightly or in
a detached frame of mind. It is probably the most difficult problem that theists face.
Although we’ll deal primarily with the intellectual aspects of evil, we’ll also briefly address
the emotional or practical problem of evil, which requires pastoral care, personal presence,
and practical help. I echo C.S. Lewis' remarks in his preface to his book on pain:

“the only purpose of the book is to solve the intellectual problem raised by suffering;
for the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was never fool enough to
suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my readers except my
conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much
knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture
of the love of God more than all.”6

5
The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, vol. 2, Mary Rubio & Elizabeth Waterston, eds. (Toronto:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1987), 371.
6
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 10.