The Emotional Problem of Evil

Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of a two-part series on the problem of evil. Read Part 1 here.

“Why did this have to happen?” That was my eight-year-old son’s question this past Tuesday when I picked him up at school. The question was immediately followed by retching sounds as he vomited into the double-walmart-sack serving as an improvised barf-bag; this was his third puke of the morning. “Buddy, it’s just a part of life” was my immediate response, reminding me of the immortal words of Benjamin Franklin: “Nothing is certain except death and taxes.” One could easily add “suffering” to his list.

While we might chuckle at this morbid sentiment humorously expressed, the gravity of our situation can be emotionally crushing. From stomach bugs to death, the volume of human suffering on this planet is truly incalculable.  Honest seekers struggle with the immensity of pain and the presence of sometimes overwhelming suffering; they wonder how a benevolent being like God could allow this state of affairs. Our children are exposed to internet skeptics who wield these experiences as a supposed “defeater” for the truth of the Christian worldview, and the emotional weight of the “argument” is potent.

As believers who trust in the sovereign love of an all-good and all-powerful God, how do we think clearly and consistently about suffering? As parents, how do we wade into these waters with our children so as to draw out their honest questions, but provide them with a biblical foundation to “take every thought captive in obedience to Jesus Christ?”

Steel Manning the Issue:

If you want your child to be able to “take a punch,” you certainly don’t want to downplay the power of a real punch in training. Considering their frame, you help them build up a tolerance to increasingly more difficult strikes until they can weather the kind of real blows they may experience in the real world. Sheltering our children from the reality of evil in the world is akin to pulling our punches in training; the moment they step into a real fight and experience real blows, they will crumble. That doesn’t mean we just start slugging them with our own personal stories or world events without discernment, but it does mean being honest and vulnerable. 

Facing the Facts

One example from the last century, that of the Second World War, provides ample gut-wrenching reminders of the suffering caused by human moral evil. Conservative estimates place the total death toll at over 57 million men, women, and children, while many contend that the number is closer to 70-85 million. Block Four’s infamous “hair chamber” at Auschwitz preserves literal tons of human hair shaved from holocaust victims; this hair was industrialized by the Nazi’s, and used to fund their war effort. Dr. Mengele’s depraved experiments on infant children haunt us to this day. One such story recounted by survivor Ruth Eliaz describes how the SS officer ordered her breasts bound so that he could study the decline of her nursing infant. Each day, Mengele would take meticulous measurements of the child’s starving, deteriorating body, while Ruth was forced to watch her baby waste away. Eventually, Ruth made the decision to end her baby’s suffering by administering a lethal sedative smuggled to her by another Jewish prisoner. To make it even worse, other than a mock trial held in Jerusalem, Mengele was never brought to justice. He escaped to South America where he lived to an old age, eventually dying in 1979 of a stroke while enjoying a swim in Brazil. 

The suffering caused by human choices is bad enough, but we also have to contend with natural evil: tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis, plagues, diseases, floods, fires, miscarriages, and the list goes on. Furthermore, the animal kingdom is replete with examples of apparently unmitigated suffering. Take a moment to google the reproductive practices of the New World screwworm or the human botfly, but prepare yourself to need a double-walmart-sack

Logical vs. Emotional:

The Problem of Evil is really two separate but related issues: the rational problem and the emotional problem. For a brief primer on the forms the rational problem can take and an overview of the historic Christian response, click here. Spoiler alert: as logical problems, the arguments fail. However, unsound as the arguments may be, that doesn’t eliminate the icky, sick feeling we get when confronted by real evil and suffering in the world, nor the sense that “surely God could have done this better!” when we are in the midst of our own dark night of the soul. 

The Goal: Biblical Faith

When we discuss the rational problem of evil, our main concern is demonstrating that there is nothing logically incoherent about an all-good and all-powerful God creating a world with pain, suffering, and evil. On the contrary, the existence of evil actually implies that God exists! At Worldview Academy we take students to Hebrews 11 and encourage them to possess the faith prescribed by God. Biblical faith is trusting in what God has revealed and promised. Thus our main concern in this article discussing the emotional problem of evil is to answer the question: “Given the state of affairs in the world, what has God revealed that can help us trust His heart?”

The Logic of Emotion

Framed “logically,” the emotional problem is really the feeling that the amount and kinds of suffering on earth make God’s having satisfying reasons seem improbable, and furthermore, such a God as would allow this state of affairs seems to lack compassion and care for us as individuals. When we take our children to an unpleasant doctor’s appointment that involves poking, prodding, and needles, they look to us for two things: the confidence that Mom and Dad know that all the unpleasantness is really for their good, and the comfort in knowing Mom and Dad are present and care about their discomfort. Our responses are thus biblical teachings that increase the probability of God having good reasons to allow suffering and evil, and demonstrate His compassionate care. Pat answers like “God’s ways are mysterious” while containing a grain of truth, fail to satisfy the deep need we each feel to know that the Good Shepherd is indeed a good shepherd and not a masquerading masochist. The truth should not only comfort our hearts, it should lead to a deeper trust and wonder at the sovereign goodness of the Creator. 

What follows are a few biblically grounded principles that reveal God’s heart, and hopefully kickstart some great conversations around the dinner table. This list is far from exhaustive, and will only introduce the topics. As before, the goal is to express historic Christian answers that are ecumenically broad; your own theological traditions will emphasize some answers and deemphasize others. 

Principle 1: The fallen world is a result of rebellion against God.

It is no mistake that scripture begins with Genesis 1-3: the true story that explains how we got here, not only God’s creation of a universe He declared to be “good,” but mankind’s rebellion which led to its fall. We live in a universe that is in open rebellion against its Creator, and until the day we bent our knee to Christ, we were a part of that rebellion. Human “moral evil” is simply another term for disobedience to God’s commands. Also note that our rebellion has dire implications for the natural world, which we are told “groans” under its current condition.¹ In a very real sense, the state of affairs we find on earth (both natural and moral evil) is diametrically opposed to God’s desire for His creation, for it is the product of disobedience to His express commands.² God isn’t the one who needs to be justified, we are!

Principle 2: The only world in which the joys of real obedience can be experienced is also a world with the possibility of real disobedience. 

Wills are complicated things. It was my will as a father that my son experience the joy of riding his bike, so eventually I had to remove my hands from his body and let him attempt to balance on his own. He crashed dozens of times. Was it my will that my son crashed? Not directly. But my desire for his greater good is precisely what produced the situation in which he did crash. Any world with anything worth experiencing at all (love, for example) seems to entail the possibility of rebellion, therefore suffering. What if God’s desire for His glory and our good can only be satisfied in a world like ours, a world of genuine choices leading either to submission or resistance to His purposes? The late great Norman Geisler liked to say “This may not be the best possible world, but it very well may be the best possible way to get to the best possible world.” Perhaps C.S. Lewis expressed it best in Mere Christianity: “If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will – that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings – then we may take it it is worth paying.”³

Principle 3: The Good Shepherd is on His throne, and His desired end for us is eternal, not necessarily temporal happiness.

Remembering eternity is profoundly fruitful when we seek to make sense of earthly suffering. God hasn’t arbitrarily chosen a world full of suffering. He is fully sovereign, working out His purposes in the theater of human history. Even the “real harms” happen in the context of His good and sovereign plan.⁴ When Paul was standing before the Athenians in Acts 17, he spoke directly about God’s sovereign ends “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth…made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.”⁵

The One who is “from everlasting and to everlasting”⁶ sees the interconnection of all states of affairs, every human choice and every natural disaster; He is the sovereign Lord bringing about His purpose of salvation for mankind. Note that His purpose isn’t to maximize human happiness on earth. Rather, the events on earth are designed to lead to our discovery of Him. It is easy to forget that this life is but a cramped and narrow foyer into eternity. Whatever temporary suffering we experience here will pale in comparison to an eternity of experiencing the only true-soul satisfaction, communion with God. 

Principle 4: God uses the temporal evil and suffering in the world by redeeming it for His own good purposes.

“Those who understand God’s sovereignty have joy even in the midst of suffering, a joy reflected on their very faces, for they see that their suffering is not without purpose.” ⁷– R.C. Sproul

God isn’t merely passively reacting to events. In Matthew chapter 14 Jesus intentionally sends His disciples into an overwhelming storm on the Sea of Galilee. The direction was His. The storm was His. The near disaster was of His orchestration. If you look deeply at the scriptures, you will encounter the repeated conviction that suffering is to be expected,⁸ has been ordained,⁹ is a means of sharing in Christ’s affliction and thus connects our present pain with future glory,¹⁰ and even the conviction that our suffering is ultimately for our good.¹¹ We know that death, disease, evil, and pain are enemies to be defeated, but while we await their ultimate demise, God’s masterful move is to take exactly what Satan expects to be his greatest weapons and turn them into our greatest protections. 

Principle 5: God uses pain and suffering to draw souls to Himself.

A soul submitted to God is a soul that recognizes its need for God. Where there is no need, there is no room for submission. Once again we find C.S. Lewis to be helpful; in his classic The Problem of Pain, he observes that

“the proper good of a creature is to surrender itself to its Creator…[but] The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it…pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world…”¹² 

Principle 6: God is often weaving His tapestry of redemption with the thread of temporal suffering.

It is a true gift when God reveals His purposes in bringing an instance of suffering into our lives. However, we often find ourselves heartbroken and in the dark, relying on God’s character and not an explicit knowledge of His plan. 

That was Naomi’s situation. Naomi (whose name means “pleasant”), her husband, and her sons were driven from Israel by famine. Her husband died; Naomi married her sons to foreign daughters; her sons died. Years later Naomi finally returned to Israel with her daughter-in-law, Ruth. Upon arrival, Naomi changes her name to “Mara” which means “bitterness,” telling her old friends and acquaintances “the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.”¹³ Unlike us, Naomi couldn’t turn to the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew. Ruth became the great grandmother of King David, the maternal and paternal ancestor of Jesus of Nazareth. God was securing not only Naomi’s salvation, but the salvation of all mankind through her suffering! When we cannot see the precise ends toward which God directs the events of our lives, remember the words widely attributed to Charles Spurgeon: “God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart.”

Principle 7: God’s love for us results in hard providences designed to refine and perfect us.

Real love, though precisely what we long for, is terrifying. Scottish pastor George MacDonald observed that God “is a consuming fire” of perfect love that destroys our every unlovable deviation.¹⁴ He does this because He longs for us to be perfectly lovable. Paul is able to rejoice in his suffering because he knows that it is part of God’s sovereign plan to produce endurance, character, and hope, a hope ultimately grounded in God’s own promise and faithfulness.¹⁵ By God’s grace, mature believers are able to see more and more how the trials God orchestrates in their lives are not only good, but essential to their true joy. Suffering produces sturdiness, exposes our sources of false security, and acts as a hedge of protection from idolatry and self-reliance. What we need more than anything is to be people who depend on, rely on, and abide in Christ, with our hearts set on eternal things. Our condition is such that we learn dependence when walking through the valleys much more than when we ascend to the peaks. To paraphrase one of my favorite prayers, it is only by working backward from our certain death that we can craft a life focused on and in pursuit of eternal things.¹⁶ Praise God He loves us enough to shape us into the kind of creatures who can know Him and enjoy Him forever. He does this no matter the cost to us, and even though the cost to Him was incalculable.

Principle 8: God is not a distant dictator but a sympathetic high priest who enters into suffering.

Finally and most importantly, God’s character is most vividly revealed in how He did not hold Himself aloof from this world of pain, temptation, deprivation, torment, and death. Before He created the first star, He knew exactly what we would do with His creation and exactly what it would cost Him to redeem it. Our Lord “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”¹⁷ The author of Hebrews declares “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”¹⁸ The prophet Isaiah attributes the full gambit of human suffering to Christ’s experience: despised, rejected, sorrowful, acquainted with grief, stricken, afflicted, pierced, crushed, chastised, wounded, oppressed, and ultimately slaughtered.¹⁹ And lest we think He was protected by His divine nature, that His sufferings “were less because He was more,” remember “The more [perfect] the nature, the more alive to all that is lovely and true, lawful and right, the more does it feel the antagonism of pain.”²⁰ A bug can suffer more than an amoeba, an animal more than a bug, a man more than an animal, and the God-Man more than a mere man. His divine nature ensured He wouldn’t flinch, exposing His human nature to a degree of suffering beyond our experience.

The Two Alternatives

It is not Christian Theism alone that has to account for the presence of pain and suffering in the world. Non-Theism must account for it as well. On Non-Theism, human life is merely sound and fury with no meaning or purpose and our suffering is just a meaningless brute fact that ends when our lives are snuffed out. No eternal redemption. No eternal justice. The life of a Mengele is a life just as well lived as the life of a Mother Teresa. The sounds of our sufferings are met with echoing cosmic silence.

However, if Christianity is true, then our lives, actions, and our sufferings have incalculable intrinsic worth and are orchestrated toward God’s perfect ends. 

We are not left to stumble alone in dreadful silence; there is not one iota of our experience through which Christ did not willingly chart a path. The trials and temptations of our Master were as “full as the human cup could hold,” there is no region “through which we [have] to pass wherein we might call aloud upon our Captain-Brother and there would be no voice of hearing.”²¹

1. Romans 8:22 ↩︎
2. Genesis 2:17 ↩︎
3. C.S Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book II, Chapter 3: “The Shocking Alternative” ↩︎
4. Genesis 50:20 ↩︎
5. Acts 17:24a, 26-27a ↩︎
6. Psalm 90:2 ↩︎
7. R.C. Sproul, Surprised by Suffering ↩︎
8. John 16:33 ↩︎
9. Philippians 1:29 ↩︎
10. Romans 8:17, 1 Peter 4:13 ↩︎
11. Romans 5:3-4, James 1:2-4, Romans 8:28 ↩︎
12. C.S. Lewis,The Problem of Pain, Chapter 6 “Human Pain” ↩︎
13. Ruth 1:20b-21a ↩︎
14. Unspoken Sermons, First Series, The Consuming Fire ↩︎
15. Romans 5:3-5 ↩︎
16. Every Moment Holy Volume II: An Exhortation Making Space to Speak of Dying ↩︎
17. Philippians 2:7-8 ↩︎
18. Hebrews 4:15 ↩︎
19. Isaiah 53:3-7 ↩︎
20. Unspoken Sermons, First Series, The Eloi ↩︎
21. Ibid. ↩︎