The Problem of Evil and the Goodness of God

I want us to think about the problem of evil, summed up here in Epicurus, 4th century philosopher. Follow along with me and then I’ll kind of unpack it. “Either God wants to abolish evil and can’t, or He can, but doesn’t want to, or He can’t and does not want to, If He wants to, but cannot, He is impotent. If He can and does not want to, He is wicked. But if God both can and wants to abolish evil, then how comes evil in the world?” Okay, 11:45. I’ll help you think through this one. All right.

The Problem of Evil

Basically, what you’ve got is when the problem of evil, this is a problem involving three different concepts. Three concepts. Number one, the greatness of God. Number two, the goodness of God. And number three, the presence of evil. How do those three go together? How can God be great? How can God be good? And how can there be evil in the world? That’s what we’re looking at. That’s what we’re asking. How do you put those three truths together? This is the mystery we’re looking into. The greatness of God, think about it this way, if God is great, then He is able to prevent evil.

So if God is really great, then He would stop evil from happening. If God is really good, then He will not permit evil to occur. He’s able to do it, so why doesn’t He do it? He would do it if He was good. And you’ve got the presence of evil. And evil, we understand really in two different ways. You’ve got natural evil that exists and by that I mean natural disasters, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis.

You’ve got natural evils, disease, sickness, AIDS, cancer, these sorts of things. Natural evil exists. And then you’ve got moral evil that exists. Talking about, now in a sense, all evil is traced back to the entrance of sin into the world. But we’re talking about moral choices and actions of people sometimes caused by us. We bring evil or suffering on ourselves many times by the choices we make or caused by others, things that are done to us that are wrong, but that bring evil or suffering to us.

Where Is God Amidst This Evil?

And this is the danger here. I don’t want in any way to think that I am glossing over the depth of this issue. Six million Jews exterminated in the Holocaust, 40 million people infected with HIV, literally tens of millions of people who have lost their lives in communist regimes in the 20th century. Almost a million Hutus and Tutsis slaughtered in Rwanda. Hundreds of thousands of people will die this year of starvation. Millions suffering from malnutrition. And it is a question that we need to ask in the midst of all this, where is God? And I don’t want to in any way appear to treat the weight of this issue lightly.

Insufficient Answers

We need to wrestle with this. If we don’t wrestle with this, we’ve not wrestled with the realities of who God is or what this world is like. Starts by thinking about some insufficient answers. This is where I’ll go back to atheism. Atheism is an insufficient answer because in the end, it has no basis for good and evil.

Evil does not exist when you take atheism to its philosophical end. This is where I want you to think about it with me. The existence of evil actually points us to the existence of God. People say, “Well, how can there be all this evil in this world and there be a God? Obviously if there’s so much evil, then God doesn’t exist.”

Actually, the existence of evil points us to the existence of God, because if there’s evil in the world, then that means there’s good in the world. If there’s good and evil in the world, that means there’s a measure by which it’s judged that which is good or evil. And that as we talked about earlier, can only come from a moral lawgiver. That morality difference between good and evil points to the one who would show us that difference, moral lawgiver. And so the existence of evil actually points us to the existence of God.

On the other hand, atheism, if God doesn’t exist, then good and evil don’t exist. You don’t have this morality. You don’t have the subjective basis for moral values. What basis would you? And I want you to listen to this quote very closely from Richard Dawkins. He’s an avowed atheist. Listen to what He says, “In a universe of blind physical forces,” just let this soak in, “and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precise to the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no other good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA,” in other words, evolutionary processes, “neither knows nor cares. DNA just is and we dance to its music.”

Can you imagine? Can you imagine telling the victims, the families who lost moms and dads and children in concentration camps like Auschwitz? Well, those tormentors were just dancing to the music of their DNA. When tragedy hits, or murder strikes a family, child is murdered.

Well, that murderer was just dancing to his DNA. The atheist’s answer to the problem of evil is nothing short of repugnant. It’s not sufficient. It’s a dead end answer. And yes, yes, Christianity, and the picture we’re looking at is not an easy one to reconcile God’s greatness, goodness, and evil. But to go the route, well then God doesn’t exist, is far worse, far worse. There’s much more to answer there than Christianity in the Christian worldview has to answer.

Christian science says evil is illusory. Illusory, in other words, diseases for example, they’re just an illusion. New age. Evil is the result of ignorance. The more knowledge we have, the more awareness of the world. That’s the answer. Dualism posits that God, or good and evil, are two forces equal in power and opposite in purpose. Dualism, which basically this idea, there’s this battle between good and evil, kind of a Star Wars type thing going on in the world and there’s no guarantee that good is going to reign in the end. Fatalism we’ve talked about and process and open theism. We’ve talked about God hates evil, but He has no power to do anything about it.

Anybody ever heard of that book When Bad Things Happen To Good People by Rabbi Harold Kushner? This is a man who lost his son and his grief drove him to begin to question his faith and he basically came to adopt the idea, the belief that God couldn’t have done anything about it because He would have if He could. He writes, and this sold half a million copies more than that, “I can worship a God who hates suffering, but cannot eliminate it more easily than I can worship a God who chooses to make children suffer and die.” And you feel the weight of the issue here. But basically he’s cast out the omnipotence of God at this point and say, “Well, God couldn’t do anything about it. If He could have, He would’ve done something.”

The Biblical Answer to God and Evil

So what is the biblical answer then? I want you to think about it in three ways. The greatness and the goodness of God. Greatness of God, goodness of God, and the presence of evil. First of all, the greatness of God. God over evil. The goodness of God. God behind evil. And the presence of evil, and God amidst evil. I want you to think about it on all three levels, God over evil, God behind evil, and God amidst evil. Let’s start with God over evil. We are going to fly through this, because we’ve talked about how God is sovereign over all things. But I just want to remind you, He’s sovereign over all of these things. He’s sovereign over evil nations and rulers. God is sovereign over demons and evil spirits.

Mark 5, the demons come running to Jesus and this demon possessed man and they bowed at His feet. He’s sovereign over them. Listen to this, Martin Luther, you remember this hymn, “And though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us. The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him. His rage, we can’t endure for low His doom is shore. One little word will fell him.” God is sovereign over demons and evil spirits. God is sovereign over temptations we face. God is sovereign over suffering and persecution.

That’s good news for our brothers and sisters in the world. Satan does not have the last say in their persecution. God does. God is sovereign over natural disasters. Satan is not the ruler of the wind and the waves. God is the ruler of the wind and the waves. God is sovereign over sickness and disease. Satan is not sovereign in our diseases, God is. God is sovereign over death. The Lord’s will, we live. Satan does not determine whether we live or die. God does. He’s sovereign over the whole picture. So God over evil. Second, God behind evil. Now we’re getting to His goodness. Is God good? Is God powerful? Yes, the scripture teaches, yes, He is omnipotent, He is great. He is over evil.

Is He good? God behind evil, God relates to sin variably. Meaning He relates to sin in different ways at different times. Watch how scripture lets this unfold, shows us this. Sometimes God prevents sin. This is a picture you’ve got in Genesis 20. He’s preventing sin from happening. Keeping your servant from willful sins.

Sometimes He permits sin. He lets it happen. Romans 1 says He gives us over to ourselves, leads to sinfulness. He permits sin. Third, sometimes God directs sin. This is the picture we saw in Genesis 15, Acts 3. The picture is God directing sin for good. He directs sin. Sometimes God limits sin. This is the picture in Job 1:12 when Satan comes to God wanting to confront Job and God says to Satan, “You can do this but you can’t do this.” He limits sin. “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.” So He limits the effects of sin.

All of these things, God does at different times. But in scripture, and we’re looking at what scripture teaches. In scripture, God never directly causes sin. He never directly causes sin. And this is key. These are the truths that we hang our hats on. The mystery is how they go together, but these are the truths that we hang our hats on.

God Does Not Cause Sin

God never directly causes sin. He never sins in scripture, never sins in scripture, and He is never blamed for sin in scripture. We’re going to get to that in a moment. But God is never the one who is tempting us to do evil. That’s what James 1 teaches us. He’s never the one that’s sinning. He is completely holy, completely good. All the attributes we’ve talked about with His goodness, He is all of those things and He’s never blamed for sin in scripture.

So how then, does God relate to good and evil? And what we need to see in scripture is that God relates to good and evil asymmetrically meaning He relates to good and evil in different ways, in different ways. He relates to good in a different way than He relates to evil, according to scripture. Let’s think about good. God is behind good in this way. All that is good is under His sovereignty. We’ve talked about that and you’ve got scriptures that are listed there. All that is good is under the sovereignty of God. And this is important to remember, Ezekiel 33, there, “It doesn’t take delight in the death of the wicked.” All that is good is under His sovereignty.

And then second, all that is good is morally chargeable to Him. All that is good is morally chargeable to God. When scripture talks about that which is good, it all goes back to God. Every good and perfect gift is from above, from God. Romans 3, you look at verses 9—20, it talks about us and us as evil. There is no one righteous, not even one. There’s no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away. They’ve together become worthless. There’s no one who does good, not even one. It says, “There’s nothing that is good in us. All The good is from God.”

All Good Comes From God

Anything good in us comes from who? God. He is the one who is infinitely good. And so all that is good is morally chargeable to God. In other words, it comes directly from God, primarily from God and any good we do… Can we do good things? Yes, but only through God in us. We’re secondary.

He’s primary. Does that make sense? Kind of, sort of? Just nod your head and just let me go on. Okay, all right, that’s God behind good. Now, God behind evil. This is different, asymmetrical, different way. Same thing here. All that is evil is under His sovereignty and I wish we had time to go back and if you go back and look at these scriptures that are listed here, you will find some very startling words. And my goal is in no way to attempt to shy away from some of what scripture teaches.

I mean you look at this picture, Lamentations 3, the very end of this one, “Is it not from the mouth of the most high that both calamities and good things come? From the mouth of the Lord most high.” Calamities and good things come. Joshua 11:20, the Lord Himself hardened their hearts towards wage war against Israel so that He might destroy them, totally exterminating them without mercy as the Lord had commanded Moses.

This is the picture, all throughout. You look at it and we know that Job, I mean God is behind what’s going on here. He’s sovereign over what’s going on here. Listen to what He says in Isaiah 45, “I form the light and create darkness. I bring prosperity and create disaster. I the Lord do all these things.” God saying I do all these things. And it entails that from God’s sovereignty. If His sovereignty is universal, then this is true. He is sovereign over all that is evil.

Second truth though, make sure I’ve got it here. Second truth, is that all that is evil, this is where it’s different from that which is good, all that is evil is not morally chargeable to God. Simply put, what we’re saying here is that scripture never charges God with evil, never charges God with evil. And the same way that God is morally chargeable for all that is good and we are secondary in the process. The picture is reversed when it comes to evil. And yes, it’s all under the sovereignty of God and under the umbrella of a sovereignty of sovereign over all. But scripture never says the blame for evil is on God. It always puts back on the blame for those who are sinning and those who are doing the wrong and those circumstances, those who are responsible for that.

Look at Romans 9, “One of you will say to me, ‘Then why does God still blame us? For who resists His will?’ But who are you, oh man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay, some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?” See the picture there? You got it both. You got the sovereignty of God, but you got man who sins. This is where we come back to remember the compatible plan of God. Remember the compatible plan of God. God is in control. At the same time, we make choices. We make choices.

Acts 2:22—24, it’s the example we keep coming back to. It’s the picture of Jesus on the cross and what happened there. “This man was handed over to you,” in the middle there, verse 23, “by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge and you with the help of wicked men put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross.” This is the ultimate act of evil in all of history. And God says, “It was all a part of my purpose and foreknowledge to happen.” He was sovereign behind it. He was behind the whole thing. At the same time, “You put Him to death,” He says. And they were responsible for putting Him to death. It goes back to the compatible plan of God in scripture we talked about earlier with the sovereign will of God. There was responsibility there. We make choices.

God Is In Control

God’s in control, God’s in charge. They’re both in scripture. They’re both there.

So scripture affirms that God is completely powerful and He is completely good. It still leaves us with obviously a very big challenge in our minds and our hearts, but it all comes home here in this last picture. God over evil, God behind evil, in a secondary way here. And it all comes down here to God amidst evil. And this is where I want you to think with me about the picture of Job, the Book of Job. This was God’s opportunity, if He wanted, to give us a philosophical treatise on the problem of evil.

This was the opportunity for God to say, Job, “I know you’ve wondered why bad things happen to good people, and here’s the answer.” And He could have engaged in a dialogue with Job. Job would’ve asked Him questions, but the reality is this, I believe is unquestionably a mystery of God. And the reason He did not do that is because Job would’ve kept asking questions and kept asking questions and would’ve never gotten to the point where, “Oh, yes, I understand this now.”

Instead of giving a philosophical answer to the question of the problem of evil, God says two things to Job. Number one, He says, “See my goodness. I am with you. I am with you.” For 37 chapters, Job wrestles with all that’s happened in his life and his family’s life. And then God comes to him, face to face, and He asks him question after question after question that remind him of the fact that God is with him. And what we see in the Book of Job is when it comes to the problem of evil, what we need is not an answer. We need an answerer. What we need is not a philosophical argument. We need a person.

If I could illustrate, just very simply, I know enough in my marriage to know that when my wife, Heather, is going through difficult times and she’s struggling, what she needs from me is not answers. She needs presence. And this is what God does in Job’s life. He says through question after question after question, “Job, I am right here with you, and not only am I with you, see my greatness. I am in control.” And that is the thrust behind all the questions God asks Job. He’s showing His power and His authority over all things. It’s the same truth that we see in the New Testament. All things, God works together for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.

God is saying, “Job, I’m with you and I’m in control. I’m in control. I’m in control.” He says that over and over again to Job and all of those questions He asks. And you go to suffering brothers and sisters around the world, and you’ll see this. If anybody has rights to wrestle with God and evil, it’s people in underdeveloped countries and especially our brothers and sisters who are facing persecution because they’re following a good and powerful God. And you go to Sudan, there’s video you saw, you go to Sudan and you spend time in war torn villages with guys who have grown up and lived in civil war, militant Muslims from the north coming down and attacking them and raiding their villages, and raping, and killing, and taking away people into camps.

And you look at them and look at what they live and you say, “I’m sorry this has happened.” And they will look back at you with a smile on their face and every time their favorite phrase in Sudan is they will say, “God is greater. God is greater. God is greater. God is greater.” They know this.

They know this, and you see this. The church is advancing in Sudan. It’s advancing. What’s really interesting, it’s in the New Testament and in church history, the gospel advances not in comfortability, but in suffering. You look around the world at where the gospel is advancing the fastest, most rapidly, it’s been in the middle of suffering. You look at the comfortable West, this is where Christianity has plateaued and declined.

The picture is, God shows in the middle of suffering, “I am with you and I am in control.” This is why in Acts 4, they talk about what God had did and God had done and the purpose of and His will and foreknowledge, Jesus going to the cross. They’re saying, “God, we know our persecutor.” They’re being persecuted in Acts 4. They’re having threats against their life and they say, “God, we know that you’re in control of all these things.” In other words, “We know that these persecutors are on a leash. Satan is on a leash. You are in control and we can trust in you. You’re with us and you’re in control.”

This is the picture you’ve got in Job. It’s the picture we see. CS Lewis writes, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains, it’s His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” It’s often the case Packer says, “As all the saints know that fellowship with the Father and the Son is most vivid and sweet and Christian joy is greatest when the cross is heaviest.” And Malcolm Muggeridge puts it this way, I love this, “Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction.

Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness in everything I’ve learned in my 75 years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence has been through affliction and not through happiness, whether pursued or attained. This of course, is what the cross signifies and it’s the cross more than anything else that has called me inextricably to Christ.”

And this is where I lead you to the main truth. This is what He looks like. It looks like in Job, at the cross. Jesus says these two things. Number one, He says, “See my goodness. I am with you.” This is the astounding answer that scripture gives when it comes to God and evil. It’s Jesus on a cross. It’s God taking all effects, sin upon Himself. It’s not a God distant, unconcerned about the struggles we have with evil.

God Bears Our Evil

It’s God bearing our evil. Jesus saying, “I am with you.” Are you broken brothers and sisters? He was broken. Do you feel rejected? He was rejected. We do not have a savior who is unable to sympathize with our weakness. He was made like us. He knows how we feel in the middle of evil and suffering.

He has borne it upon Himself. The cross, He says, “See my goodness, I am with you. And see my greatness. I am in control.” What do you mean by that? Well, He takes evil and suffering upon Himself, the wrath of God on sin upon Himself. And three days later He is alive. And He says, ladies and gentlemen, “Evil is temporary. Evil is temporary. And God is ultimate. Death, where is your victory? Death where is your sting?” The sting of death, the sin and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God, He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Satan, the great lover of evil and suffering is not sovereign.

God Is Sovereign

God is sovereign. He is ultimate, and that’s why Romans 8:39 can say, “Neither death, nor life, neither angels, nor demons, nor the present, nor the future, nor any powers. Neither heights, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing can, because He’s sovereign over. It’s why Corrie ten Boom could write from the depths of a Nazi death camp, “No matter how deep our darkness, He is deeper still.”

Annie Johnston Flint wrote this hymn, let me remind you before I read this hymn, this was not written by a successful Hollywood film actress. This was written by a woman who was orphaned very early in life, a woman who was crippled with rheumatoid arthritis, spent most of her life in bed, had eight pillows, cushioning her body from head to toe because her body was covered with sores for all those years. She had lost control of her internal organs, and cancer was sapping away her life. She writes this, “He gives more grace when the burden grow greater. He sendeth more strength when the labors increase; to added afflictions He addeth His mercy, to multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.”

When we have exhausted our store of endurance, when our strength has failed in the days half done, when we reach the end of our hoarded resources, our Father’s own giving is only begun. His love has no limit. His grace has no measure. His power has no boundaries known unto men. For out of His infinite riches in Jesus, He giveth and giveth and giveth again. He giveth more grace, where the burdens grow greater. This is God amidst evil. The picture of eternity is this, bring it all to bear, we will forever worship God in His greatness. He is great and we need not minimize His greatness to try to figure out how this whole evil thing works. We will forever worship God in His greatness.

Second, we will forever enjoy God in His goodness. He is good. He is eternally good for us, to His people. We will forever enjoy God in His goodness when it comes to the presence of evil. What the Christian worldview says is this, “We will never experience evil again.” Revelations 21, “There will be no more sorrow, sickness, or pain.” It will all be gone. The old will be gone, the new will come, and we will dwell with Him forever. This is the picture.