I Don't Understand!

Why is There Evil?

Recently in Cincinnati where I live, a sweet, vibrant, smart 11-year-old girl full of life and potential and part of a large loving family was gunned down in a playground by a drive-by shooter. As our Bible study group joined with many others grieving, the question was raised, “Why? Why, Lord? I don’t get it. I don’t understand. How could anyone do such a thing?”

We try to explain evil in terms of freewill. God created us with freewill. The person (still at-large as of this writing) who killed that sweet kid used his or her freewill for evil. Maybe they are on drugs. Maybe they are in a gang. Maybe they are crazy. Maybe.

But why didn’t God prevent it? Wouldn’t it have been easy for God to at least divert the bullets into nearby trees?

Some answer that God could not stop it. Interfering with freewill is contrary to the nature of God and God cannot do anything contrary to God’s nature. God can’t lie, cheat, or interfere with the freedom of humans, angelic beings (which is why we have the satan and the principalities and powers of darkness), or nature (which is why we have “natural” disasters). Maybe.

But didn’t God prevent disasters in the Bible, calming storms, splitting seas, making nonpotable water sweet, delivering young men out of a furnace and a prophet from hungry lions? And, when we turn to the last pages of scripture, do we not see a picture of God delivering all creation from evil? If God did it back then and will do it in the future, why can’t God prevent evil now?

At some point, all our theodicies fall a bit short. They do so because we are trying to make sense of things that are utterly irrational. Evil, chaos, the satan and the forces of darkness, drive-by shootings, and childhood cancer are irrational. You cannot rationally explain what is irrational. You cannot understand illogic.

A popular answer asserts that indeed, the universe is irrational. All is random, ultimately chaotic. There is no God, or, if there is, God has nothing to do with creation now that the machine is running (amok) on its own.

Plato insisted that the universe was fundamentally rational, directed by a divine mind. If we could turn from the shadows to the light, we’d see it clearly. The Apostle Paul likewise viewed creation as rational, its head being the Messiah through whom all was created and by whom all is held together. (Colossians 1:15-20)

When children are gunned down, starved, trafficked, and enslaved, it feels like Plato and Paul were wrong. It makes no sense.

God is good. All good gifts come from the Father of lights. God never causes evil. Evil is caused by the malevolent demonic forces operating through humans who choose to coöperate with them, and by the natural forces under their control. We do not blame God for any of it. But that’s not the question.

The question is why doesn’t God stop it? Where is God in all this? Where was God when this child was murdered? Where is God when people are kidnapped, families torn apart, leaders spread blatant lies, oligarchs destroy the environment, states engage in genocide, children die of cancer, and dictators invade sovereign countries?

Perhaps God cannot. Perhaps God is not omnipotent. Perhaps interfering with freewill is contrary to God’s nature, at least during this period of history. Perhaps God has a higher purpose in preventing (some) evil in the past, promising to eliminate all evil in the future, but not intervening now. Perhaps.

After my son committed suicide, a wise friend told me, “Larry, when you’re confronted with that which you do not understand, fall back on what you do understand.”

Evil is irrational. I do not understand it. I don’t know why God didn’t protect that 11-year-old child. I don’t know why didn’t stop my son from killing himself. I don’t know why God allows dictators to destroy lives. I am confronted with things I do not understand.

All I can do, what I must do, is fall back on what I do understand.

Here’s what I understand:

God is real, good, and all loving. God is with us always. God is with the bereaved parent, the kidnapped woman, the incarcerated refugee. Where was God during the Holocaust? God was in the concentration camps, gas chambers, and ovens. God is in the homeless camps and hospital wards. God (and herein lies an essential distinction from other religions) chooses to suffer with us. God is acquainted with sorrow. God feels, shares, experiences our pain and suffering. God is perfect self-sacrificial, unconditional love. God is with us. Emmanuel.

Additionally, I understand that this chaotic state is temporary. There will come a time when there will be no more tears, no more death, hatred, war, starvation, poverty, or injustice. Somehow, some way, God is at work in this mess making all things new.

I understand that God is inviting us to participate by feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, visiting the sick and incarcerated, speaking out against injustice, and taking the side of the broken, disenfranchised, poor on the margins of society.

God invites us into the divine fellowship of suffering. Ultimately, evil is a mystery. I do not understand it. But I rest in the fact that God is Love. And that is enough.