Essay Question: “I sincerely prayed to God to heal my mother but she died

anyway. Therefore, there is no God.” Discuss.

One of the favourite justifications for Biblical sceptics and theological liberals’
inability to accept the existence of God is that they cannot resolve the issue of the
Biblical God being omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent whilst
simultaneously seeing the world in a state of dishevelment and corruption, being
dominated by evil in all its shapes and forms. But what is evil? This is a question
Saint Augustine answered for us through his Privation Theory of Evil, a
theological and philosophical doctrine entailing that evil, unlike good, is
insubstantial in itself, so thinking of it as an entity of its own is misleading; rather
it is the absence or lack of good. The consensus of atheists is that if God really
were all the qualities attributed to Him, He would be both able and willing to
prevent evil which they can see is not the case due to its overwhelming presence.
We even acknowledge the presence of evil by having something as simple as a key
to our house door. Would we need a key to open our own door if we were certain
no one would trespass on our properties? The reality of evil in the form of pain and
suffering is the most undisputed truth that all humanity can come to realise.
Christianity’s cynics therefore take this plaguing existence of evil, being the rock
of atheism, as incompatible with a powerful, knowledgeable and loving God, often
posing the question “How could you possibly tell me that God is all-loving,
all-good, all-holy, all-knowing, all-powerful then explain to me evil, a very
troubling reality that goes against each and every one of the Divine qualities
Christianity claims to see in God?” Therefore, in the minds of some, the Biblical
God cannot exist and that belief in Him undermines the search for knowledge and
truth ascribed to the philosophical life. Unfortunately, we often do not know how
to answer this question adequately despite being given the answer in the bible,
through God himself. There are some who see this as such a serious dilemma that it
supposedly puts the Christian in a state of scepticism and hesitation on his own
ten-yard line and the only option is either to punt, change the subject or snap back
with Deutoronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong to the Lord, Our God,”
(NKJV) and kick that as far as they can into enemy territory. However, is that the
best we can do when pressed against our own theological end zone? Absolutely
not! If you knew the divine playbook, then you would know there is a perfect plan
designed not just to get a temporary escape or get us in field-goal range but there is
an answer in the Bible with which we can and will score a touchdown. Scripture
gives us an answer, not only an answer we can fathom but one we can joyfully
accept and this is what I will be discussing in this article. The aforementioned
essay question pertains to the cruel, untimely and unpredictable nature of death
which fits within the scope of Natural Evil, one of the two main types of evil and
joins the ranks of natural disasters, disease and other physical infirmities. I have
broken down the answer to the enigma of natural evil into four concise, principled
and scrupulous arguments.
Thus, the logical contentions to be outlined in my substantive regarding natural
evil outline:
1. That natural evil is the result of the nature of free agency - The Free-Will
Theodicy
2. Humans are a very small aspect of a larger, more vast universe and hence,
they can not fathom nor comprehend the complex workings of the mind of
God - The Soul-Making Theodicy, Greater Good & Our Human Limitations
3. The standard by which we determine evil, pain and suffering is proof for the
harmonious coexistence of God and evil
4. A Theistic response regarding the pastoral and emotional dimension to the
problem of evil.

The Free Will Theodicy

Argument A: An all-powerful God would be able to destroy evil,
An all-loving God would want to destroy evil,
Evil Exists,
Therefore, the all-powerful, all-loving God does not exist.

The above argument draws a faulty conclusion from a flawed argument, therefore,
in the free will defence first formulated by Gottfried Leibniz, a 17th-century jack
of all trades and recently enriched by prominent, modern-day philosopher and
theologian, Alvin Platinga, I will demonstrate how the same logic can be applied to
come to a valid surmise.
Argument B: An all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving God would be able and
willing to create the best possible world,
The perfect love of God necessitates that He gives us free will for it
to be the best possible world, not only that we may live life freely
but also that our love for Him is not imposed on us forcibly,
Once God creates beings with free will, He can neither restrain nor
m compel their actions,
Therefore, humanity can choose to do evil (moral evil) or perceive
certain situations/circumstances as evil (natural evil - suffering).

From these arguments, both the theist and the atheist have no choice but to come to
a consensus on the following points;

Where there is love, there must be freedom.

Where there is freedom, there must be a choice.
Where there is a choice, there is the possibility and opportunity of evil.
When there is evil, there is the possibility of suffering.

Both arguments acknowledge the qualities of God at the outset - His omnipotence,
omniscience and omnibenevolence, as indispensable qualities He must have in
order to be the supremely divine being that is God. Furthermore, both acknowledge
in one way or another that God created the world in a state of incorruption and
therefore God is not the author of evil, as the opposite was implied in the essay
question. Where ‘Argument B’ gains the upper hand is in the next section where it
cleverly utilises the truth and reality of free agency, logically substantiating the
presence of evil in the world and proving that God’s intervention with evil would
be an infringement of this free-will that he has granted us from the very beginning.
J.L Mackie proposes an alternate world in which God would have made humans to
have free will only to choose good;

“If God has made men such that in their free choices they sometimes prefer what is
good and sometimes what is evil, why could he not have made men such that they
always freely choose the good?” (1)
To this, I would ask J.L Mackie - how can one be truly free to choose if the
outcome of their choice is always predetermined? We would clearly not be free at
all and this would go against God’s benevolent nature. In brief, God would not be
God - we would be giving the atheist the grounds to ask the same question as
Epicurus, “Then why call Him God?” As esteemed philosopher and author, C.S.
Lewis, famously stated,

“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go
wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but
had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also
free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God
give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the
only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world
of creatures that worked like machines would hardly be worth creating.” (2)

This truth cannot be if God were to prevent evil from occuring in the first place and
doing so would indeed be an infringement of free will as we will not actually be in
control of our actions. Alvin Plantinga, professor of philosophy, described by
TIME magazine as “America’s leading philosopher of God” states,

“Now God can create free creatures, but he can not cause or determine them to do
only what is right. For if he does so, then they are not significantly free after all. To
create creatures capable of moral good, He must create creatures capable of moral
evil.” (3)

To God, it is better for us to have free will and abuse it to sin rather than not to
have it at all. For God, it is better to have sheep who get lost but eventually find
their way back to Him or vice versa rather than to have a flock who does not get
lost at all because they simply can not move from His side either way, whether they
willed it or not. As Saint Augustine so perfectly puts it,

“Such is the generosity of God’s goodness that He has not refrained from creating
even that creature which He foreknew would not only sin but remain in the will to
sin. As a runaway horse is better than a stone which does not run away because it
lacks self-movement and perception, so the creature is more excellent which sins by
free will than that which does not sin only because it has no free will.” (4)

God has to fulfil His divine goodness by giving us freedom of choice, any other
scenario would not be characteristic of strong and unconditional love, rather
compelled and coerced love.

The Soul-Making Theodicy, The Greater Good & Our Limited Perspective
The ‘soul-making theodicy’, popularised by John Hicks, suggests that evil exists to
perfect the individual person by helping them develop desirable God-like qualities,
particularly higher virtues such as love. In order to achieve these, there are
“obstacles to be overcome, tasks to be performed, goals to be achieved, setbacks to
be endured, problems to be solved, dangers to be met - and this is pain and
suffering which stems from the problem of evil.” (5)

Additionally, The ‘greater good’ advocates that there is a purpose for suffering that
fits into God’s perfectly orchestrated plan for us - some sort of a ‘bigger picture’
and that this plan transcends all transient thought and the human mind. William
Rowe, an eminent philosopher, goes on to use the scenario of a fawn dying slowly
and painfully in a bushfire to illustrate his point. He theorised that the death of this
fawn could not possibly lead to any ‘greater good’ and could definitely have been
prevented;

“In the light of our experience and knowledge of the variety and scale of human
and animal suffering in our world, the idea that none of this suffering could have
been prevented by an omnipotent being without thereby losing a greater good or
permitting an evil at least as bad seems an extraordinary absurd idea, quite beyond
our belief.” (6)

The main issue with Rowe’s idea and rationalisation is the assumption that we
could, within the limitations of our human knowledge and existence, confidently
conclude that there is no greater good that could come of a situation. Several
analogies have been used to try and demonstrate this, one by Rowe himself:
 “Being finite beings we can’t expect to know all the goods God would know, any
more than an amateur at chess should expect to know all the reasons for a
particular move that Kasparov makes in a game.” (7)

If we cannot fathom the minds of some of the more intellectual of our own kind,
how can we possibly expect to comprehend the mind of the supremely divine God
- who opened the eyes of Job and likewise opens our eyes to His bewildering,
mysterious and unfathomable ways every single day? Diogenes Allen explicates
that an understanding of natural evil only comes from accepting that humans are a
small component of a large multi-faceted universe, the functions of which are
beyond our control and limited perspective.

The Standard for Evil

Now, I would like to explore how the standard we subconsciously use for good and
evil is God and that without Him, there would only be subjective opinion on what
evil is. For this point however, I have found that no one can say it better than Peter
Kreeft who eloquently elucidates,

“If there were no God, there would be no absolute standard of good. Every
judgement presupposes a standard. And that’s true of our moral judgments, too.
What is our standard for judging evil to be evil? The most we could say about evil -
if there were no God - was that we, in our subjective taste, didn’t like it when
people did certain things to other people. We wouldn’t have a basis for saying an
act was ‘bad’, only that we didn’t like it. So the problem of human evil exists only if
God exists. As for natural suffering, that poses what appears to be a more difficult
question. We see an innocent child suffer, say from an incurable disease. We
complain. Understandable. We don’t like it. Understandable. We feel it is wrong,
unfair, and shouldn’t happen. Understandable, but illogical, unless you believe in
God! For, if you do not believe in God, your subjective feelings are the only basis
upon which you can object to natural suffering. OK, you don’t like it. But how is
your not liking something evidence for God not existing? Think about it. It’s just
the opposite. Our judgments of good and evil, natural as well as human,
presuppose God as the standard. If there’s no God, there’s neither good nor evil.
There’s just nature doing what it does. If nature is all there is, there is absolutely no
need to explain why one person suffers and another doesn’t. Unjust suffering is a
 problem only because we have a sense of what is just and unjust. But where does
this sense come from? Certainly, not from Nature. There’s nothing just about
nature. Nature is only about survival. What, in other words, does it mean for
suffering to be ‘unnecessary or wrong?’ Your private standard means nothing. My
private standard means nothing. We can talk meaningfully about suffering being
‘unnecessary’ or wrong only if we have an underlying belief that a standard of
right and wrong objectively exists. And if that standard really exists, that means
there is a God.” (8)

A Theistic Response with a Pastoral Message

Suffering does not contradict the love of God because out of it you will. reap
blessings and benefits which you will come to realise once, and only once, you
have gained the understanding of the meaning of pain and suffering.
One of my favourite quotes, by G.K Chesterton, goes like this,

“When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but
in heaven’s name to what?”

Chesterton is simply saying that through adversities and difficult times in our lives,
we may become complacent and turn our backs on God; yes, we become lazy, even
in communication with the sovereign God, our Lord, Shepherd and above all,
Loving Creator. We turn our backs on Him but without a new, meaningful goal or
purpose, without a new path to undertake.

Furthermore, we can gain a deeper understanding of the, believe it or not, triviality

of the suffering we endure in this present life through Saint Macarius of Egypt who
expresses succinctly and beautifully,

“For, however great the afflictions we suffer, what are they compared with the
promised future reward, or with the grace of the Holy Spirit that visits souls even in
this present life, or with the deliverance that we have received from the obscurity of
evil passions, or with the enormous debts we owe because of our sins? As St Paul
says: 'The sufferings of this present life are not worthy to be compared with the
 glory which shall be revealed in us' (Rom. 8:18). Hence we must patiently endure
everything for the Lord's sake, like brave soldiers dying for our King.” (9)

In the unassailable words of Peter Kreeft,

“Moreover, the believer in God has an incomparably easier time than the atheist
psychologically as well as logically in dealing with the problem of natural
suffering. If you accept that a good God exists, it is possible to also believe that
this God somehow sets things right, if not in this world, then in the next. For the
atheist, on the other hand, no suffering is ever set right. There is no ultimate
justice. The bad win and the good suffer. Earthquakes and cancer kill. End of story.
Literally. If nature is all there is, how can a sensitive person remain sane in a
world in which tsunamis wipe out whole towns, evil men torture and murder
innocent victims, and disease attacks people indiscriminately? The answer is: it’s
not possible.”

Will you find comfort in Richard Dawkins’ ‘The God Delusion’ or Sam Harris’
‘The End of Faith’? Is this really how you want to live? Ultimately, to denounce
the existence of God because of the problem of evil is a logical fallacy to begin
with and also an existential problem because it leaves you naked from inside, being
barren of any hope, comfort or consolation.
Reference List

1. Mackie, J.L. “Evil and Omnipotence Mind”, New Series, Vol. 64, ‘No. 254.
(Apr., 1955), pp. 200-212.
2. Lewis, C. S. 1. (1944). “The Case for Christianity”, New York: Macmillan.
3. Plantinga, Alvin (1978). “God, Freedom, and Evil”, Eerdmans.
4. Hippo, Augustine (426). “The City of God”.
5. Hick, J. (1978). Evil and the God of love. New York: Harper & Row.
6. Rowe, William L. “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism.”
American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 16, no. 4, 1979, pp. 335–341.
JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20009775.
7. Rowe, William L. “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism”,
American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 16, no. 4, 1979, pp. 335–341.
JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20009775.
8. Kreeft, Peter (1986). “Making Sense Out of Suffering”
9. Egypt, Macarius (1782). “The Philokalia”, vol. 3