While it is evil that tortures human bodies,
it is the problem of evil that torments the human mind.
Henri Blocher
The Old Testament judge, Gideon, asks: “But if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?” (Judges 6:13). I found this question particularly acute during the graveside service for my son nearly twenty years ago. As family and friends gathered around the freshly dug grave and as the simple, wooden coffin was lowered into the vault, I was overwhelmingly confronted by the ever-persistent question of why. That profound and perplexing question reminded me of the abnormality of life as we know it. In the normal process of things, children bury their parents (as I had done) and not the other way around.
But life is not normal.
About the same time that my son died, three other young people in the church of which I was the lead pastor died in tragic and seemingly nonsensical accidents. One was a young Rwandan who had immigrated to the United States along with his family. Though he and his family had come to America to flee danger, danger found him. He was crossing a street with his bicycle when a careless driver hit him broadside and fled the scene of the accident. I’ll never forget standing by his bedside in the Intensive Care Unit—touching his hand and praying with his grief-stricken mother—as he took his last few desperate breaths before passing through death’s door. Several months later, a newly married young lady from our church was crossing a street in Seattle when another inattentive driver ran over her, killing her instantly. Then, only months later, one of the closest friends of our oldest daughter was killed in a tragic head-on collision while she was driving to her elementary school where she taught underprivileged children. She is buried only a few yards from my son.
Four young lives snuffed out in the space of fifteen months. Why?
THINKING RIGHTLY ABOUT GOD
One of the first prayers I heard as a child was: “God is great, God is good. Let us thank him for our food.” However true and full of childlike faith, the first part of that prayer highlights the conundrum posed by evil and suffering in the world. After all, if God is great would he not be able to prevent evil and suffering? And if God is good, would he not be willing to prevent evil and suffering? Or maybe God is not so great and good after all!
Put in more personal terms, if God is all-loving and perfectly good, he must have wanted to protect my son. And if God is all-powerful and sovereign, he must have been able to protect my son. Yet my son died at the hands of inattentive hotel owners. Did God plan the death of my son by carbon monoxide poisoning? Or did he merely permit it to happen? Furthermore, whether or not it was part of God’s planned or permissive will, he most certainly could have prevented it, could he not?
Why didn’t he?
Yes, God is great, God is good, let us thank him for . . . even the evil in the world that brings about so much human suffering? The answer to that question depends largely upon how we define these two foundational pillars of God’s character—his greatness and goodness.
Avid readers all have books that are part of a top ten list of favorites. In my younger years, one of the most important books (apart from the Bible) that fashioned my view of God was A.W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy. His initial chapter is entitled “Why We Must Think Rightly About God,” and his opening line has remained deeply imbedded in my mind and heart particularly in times of suffering and difficulty: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
Why is this?
The answer is straightforward. The way we think about God goes a long way in determining our feelings about God. For example, if we believe that an all-powerful and all-good God is somehow the primary cause of the evil that enters our lives, then our view of God’s providential care will necessarily be shaped by this perspective. That is why, since my son’s death, I have wrestled intensely with understanding just how God’s all-powerful and all-loving character interacts with the reality of evil and suffering we all experience. Of course, if God is not both all-powerful and all-good, then he is not the God we would want to believe in anyway. But for the sake of clarity, I’ll explore these two aspects separately.
GOD IS GREAT
Undeniably, the Bible teaches that God is great, i.e., omnipotent. The descriptive word itself comes from two Latin words—omni, “all,” and potens, “powerful” —and means that God is able to do all that he decides to do in conformity with his holy character and will. Jesus himself said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).
But herein lies the problem. If with God “all things are possible,” then why does he not put a stop to such senseless suffering in this world? Why did he not stoop down and shield my son from the deadly, toxic effects of carbon monoxide in his hotel room? Or was such suffering intended all along as part of God’s larger, mysterious plan that cannot be thwarted?
This problem is accentuated for those who claim that omnipotent means omni-controlling. A corollary of God’s omnipotence is God’s sovereignty, which is the exercise of God’s power to rule over his creation. However, particularly since the time of Augustine in the fifth century, many have understood God’s sovereignty in terms of a divine blueprint encompassing meticulous, exhaustive control over every detail of our human existence.[i] Evidently, such a behind-the-scenes, directing cause is a type of all-encompassing divine blueprint minutely controlling everything that happens, including evil. Citing Ephesians 1:11 as a proof text that God “works all things according to the counsel of his will,” two contemporary evangelical co-authors boldly state that this doesn’t simply mean that “God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those who love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects for his glory (see Ex 9:13-16; John 9:3) and his people’s good (see Heb. 12:3-11; James 1:2-4).” They go on to explain further:
This includes—as incredible and as unacceptable as it may currently seem—
God’s having even brought about the Nazis’ brutality at Birkenau and
Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Rader and even the sexual
abuse of a young child: “The LORD has made everything for its own
purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil” (Prov. 16:4, NASB). [ii]
Unfortunately, similar statements can be found throughout the publications of popular authors writing from this perspective—statements that unequivocally impugn the character of God by attributing evil to God who “is light” and in whom “there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). That is why I have come to believe that a blueprint view of God’s sovereignty inevitably leads to wrong thinking about God’s relationship to evil and suffering. We need to be far more zealous for the holiness of God than for a misconstrued concept of the sovereignty of God.
Such a perspective of God’s greatness (all-powerful = omni-controlling) along with a firm belief in his innate goodness inevitably lead to the conclusion that there must be a divine reason for everything that happens in life. This conviction is at the root of the many pious stock-and-trade answers that are sometimes offered under the guise of encouragement to those who are suffering, statements like: “God intended this to build your character,” “Providence writes straight with crooked lines,” or “Your suffering fits into God’s mysterious plan in a way you just can’t see right now.” Admittedly, as to the later point, God is not obligated to explain himself to you and me. Such biblical passages as Proverbs 25:2 (“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter”) and Deuteronomy 29:29 (“The secret things belong to the Lord our God”) make this clear. However, to say that God is not obligated to explain himself is not to immediately classify as mystery all apparent contradictions between our understanding of God’s character on the one hand and the reality of evil and suffering on the other. While the complex conundrums must be explored, outright contradictions must not be accepted.
In other words, is it God’s will that gives power to sex offenders and holocaust perpetrators who inflict unimaginable suffering upon others? Did God will the death of my son through unintentional homicide? Did God will the tragic circumstances surrounding the death of the three other young people in our church? Does God will every form of suffering that enters your life?
In my own process of grappling with these questions, I needed to further clarify just what I meant in that prayer I learned as a child: “God is great, God is good.” Yes, God is great (all-powerful). But must God’s omnipotence be equated unequivocally with exhaustive control, a type of deterministic blueprint that is the primary cause of all that happens in the universe, including evil? Or does the Bible present a different perspective of God’s sovereign omnipotence?
As a child, I was enamored by the few puppet shows I witnessed. The little figurines on stage appeared so real, so alive, and their graceful movements and humorous interactions left me transfixed. Of course, what I didn’t see were the invisible strings and hidden puppeteer meticulously controlling the entire scene. Though some may disagree, the metaphor of God as “puppet master” describes well the blueprint conception of divine sovereignty. From this perspective, God exercises hands-on, exhaustive control over every detail of our existence, including both good and evil, “pulling the strings” (so to speak) of his marionettes on the stage of life. They appear to be acting on their own, but in reality their every move is directed by the puppeteer hidden from view. In other words, no matter how “free” we may consider ourselves to be, the omnipotent God is behind the scenes exercising absolute, unimpeded, and unabated control over every thought, action, word and circumstance of life. Absolutely nothing escapes God’s preordained, predetermined script that serves as his blueprint. As composer and conductor of all that transpires from the beginning to the end and over everything between, God ordains and orchestrates life on planet earth and throughout the universe down to the minutest details.
An alternative and (I believe) more biblical metaphor of God’s sovereignty is that of chess master. From this perspective, the beauty of the Creator’s supreme sovereignty is not seen in “pulling the strings” in every detail of our lives, but rather in the profoundly and majestically wise way in which he is able to fulfill his ultimate purposes for humanity and the cosmos all the while respecting the self-determining choices of both angelic and human beings. We would consider a chess player to be insecure to the degree that he needed to meticulously control every move of his opponent in order to win the match. To the contrary, a chess master’s confidence is derived from his ability to anticipate the possible and probable moves his opponent may make as well as his own responses to these moves. Indeed, there are certain non-negotiable aspects of God’s redemptive plan that are determined beforehand and are irrevocable and unchangeable. The divine Chess Master, however, takes into account not only the certainties of his redemptive plan, but also the incalculable number of probabilities and possibilities that are inherent to the dignity of self-determining human beings created as the image of God. Just as a world-class chess master wins to the degree that he is able to foresee and then outmaneuver the moves made by his opponent, our all-wise God is able to foresee and outmaneuver every decision and action by free moral agents so as to inevitably and most assuredly accomplish his eternal purposes.
Does such a perspective of God’s greatness diminish God’s sovereign power? Not at all! It rather exalts his sovereignty and matchless wisdom. The accomplishment of God’s sovereign purposes is no longer entirely dependent on determinative decrees that meticulously mandate every detail of human existence. It is rather dynamically but most assuredly accomplished through morally free agents who have the choice to willingly submit to the good intentions of their loving Creator. Yet in making this choice, God has not only made suffering possible, but he has also made it meaningful. Because of freedom, I can choose to trust God to work in such a way that evil and the consequent suffering it entails result in good in my life and in the lives of others (Romans 8:28).
GOD IS GOOD
God is great. But God is also good. That’s the rub—the delicate dance between God is great and God is good. When it comes to the conundrum of understanding the relationship of an all-powerful and all-good God to evil and suffering in the world, the last thing anyone wants to forfeit is the goodness of God. Fortunately, the Bible affirms the truth of God’s goodness time and time again: “You are good and what you do is good,” the psalmist David declares (Psalm 119:68).
Just what does the Bible mean when it speaks of God’s goodness? To affirm that God is good means that in every way God’s character and will represents the ideal. As such, God is the final standard of good, and all that he is and does is worthy of approval. However, it is precisely here that the problem begins for anyone who honestly grapples with the reality of evil and suffering in light of God’s goodness. Again, this problem is particularly acute for those who hold to (or assume) a blueprint view of God’s sovereignty. For in this case, God not only does not prevent innocent suffering, but also intentionally plans such suffering. The question is unavoidable: If God is all-powerful in the sense of exhaustive, meticulous control over every detail of life (both good and evil) and if God is all-good in the sense that all he is and does is worthy of approval, then how do we account for the continuation of such pervasive evil and suffering without impugning the character of God?
Faced with this conundrum, there is the subtle tendency to redefine the meaning of God’s goodness rather than deny it all together. In other words:
Whatever happens is caused by God
Whatever is caused by God is good
Whatever happens is (ultimately) good.
In this case, the concept of goodness is so transformed that it no longer has any meaning. Concerning this tendency the prophet Isaiah sternly warns: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:20). It might be argued that we, as humans, cannot truly understand good and evil from God’s perspective. But as N. T. Wright forcefully reminds us: “. . .there must be some substantial continuity between what we mean by good and evil and what God means; otherwise we are in moral darkness indeed.”[iii]
To avoid impugning the character of God, some suggest that God’s sovereign will is like a beautiful tapestry with a well-planned pattern. Looked at from the underside, we see a hodgepodge of many threads of varying lengths, some filled with knots and tangles and going off in different directions. But looked at from the topside, it’s an intricately woven work of art that colourfully displays the magnificent work of the Creator. While we tend to focus on the knots and tangles on the underside, someday we’ll see the tapestry from God’s perspective in all of its splendid design. From start to finish, the master weaver doesn’t merely allow certain threads, but he carefully and intentionally chooses them . . . all of them, good and evil alike. Eventually we’ll see that every intended twist and knot had its proper place in the overall design of aesthetic beauty.
Admittedly, throughout the Scriptures there are many cases where evil is turned for good. But this is quite different from saying that God brought about the evil in the first place. Does not the Apostle Paul vehemently condemn those who slanderously claim “Let us do evil that good may result?” (Romans 3:8). Evil is God’s enemy.
So the question remains on the table: Apart from denying God’s innate goodness or redefining evil in light of the tapestry of a higher good, how do we reconcile the truth that in every way God’s character and will represent the ideal with the reality of such pervasive evil and suffering in the world?
According to the creation account of Genesis 1, all that God created was good, an affirmation repeated seven times (the number of perfection) in chapter one alone. One of the good things that the all-good God created was morally free creatures (whether people or angels), able to choose between good and the opposite of good, that is, evil. In fact, such a choice on God’s part actually highlights the beauty of his sovereignty! As A. W. Tozer so succinctly states: “Man’s will is free, because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.”[iv]
God could have created androids, preprogramed to always make the right choice in conformity with God’s moral will. Yet what would be lacking is love. Where there is no possibility of genuine choice, there is no possibility of authentic love. Coerced, controlled love is not love at all. Furthermore, in order to create a world where genuine love is possible, God excluded another possibility: the guarantee of a world where his will is always done. Is that not why Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”? (Matthew 6:10). In creating moral agents with the possibility of choice, God also made evil and suffering possible.
Potential evil that results in actual evil carries with it the natural consequences of evil. In the same way that an all-powerful God cannot do the illogical or consistently intervene in the natural laws that he himself established, so also an all-good God will not consistently step in to alleviate the natural consequences of evil and sin in the world. In a game of chess, one player can occasionally make arbitrary concessions to his opponent by allowing him to take back a move made inadvertently or by depriving himself of a castle. But if he did this consistently, there would be no game at all. Similarly, if God were to intervene to miraculously counteract the fixed laws of nature and the inevitable and painful consequences of wrong “moves” on our part, then we would find that we have excluded life itself.[v]
There is something else an all-good God will not do. An all-good God will not
consistently alter the laws of nature every time someone faces potential harm. Nor should he. Just as God causes his sun to shine on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous (Matthew 5:4), so also both the evil and the good get sick or hurt. My hammer serves me well to drive a nail into the wall. But when I miss the nail and hammer my hand, I suffer. Could God miraculously intervene to transform my hammer into a type of super soft gel and spare me the pain? In principle, he could, just as Jesus did intervene to rebuke a violent storm on the Sea of Galilee (Luke 8:23-25), just as he did intervene to protect three of his servants from a fiery furnace (Daniel 3:1-26), and just as he could have miraculously intervened to rid the polluted air of the toxic carbon monoxide that killed my son. While a world in which all people alike suffer the same natural dangers poses problems, a world in which certain people are consistently exempt from those same dangers would cause even more problems.
Furthermore, is it not true that no matter how much God in his goodness reduced suffering in our fallen world, we would still think he did too little? Suppose we evaluated all suffering on a scale of one to ten, with ten describing the worst suffering imaginable and one representing the unpleasant yet tolerable. Let’s say that “losing your home in a tornado” received a level ten rating while your friends “mild sunburn” received a level one rating. If God eliminated level ten, would not level nine become the worst? And what if God reduced all suffering to a level three? Would not level three now seem unbearable? Any evaluation of God’s goodness based strictly on his elimination of evil and suffering will, in the end, leave us unsatisfied.[vi]
In light of God's inherent goodness, there is a final thing God will not do. He will not intervene to bring absolute justice to a world marked by the proliferation of evil and suffering until the appropriate time. God patiently delays absolute justice, not to make life miserable, but to make life possible. Sin carries with it not only physical and emotional consequences, but also spiritual and eternal consequences. If we are to continue to live with the opportunity to experience God's remedy for both, justice must wait (2 Peter 3:9; 1 Timothy 2:4).
***
Yes, what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. God is great and God is good. God never was, is not now, and never will be the source of evil as its primary cause. God stands over evil as its sovereign and against evil as its archenemy, but never behind evil as its primary source. God opposes evil, restrains evil and channels evil. God works for good in the midst of evil and even on occasion will use evil committed by free moral agents in order to judge evil. In this way, God turns evil against evil and will ultimately destroy evil. But he himself is never the source or primary cause of evil.
Only in rejecting the notion that God stands behind evil can I confidently trust him to accompany me through evil in the present and ultimately abolish evil in the future. It is this profound confidence in God’s greatness and goodness that brings deep assurance to my heart in times of suffering and loss. As A. W. Tozer has said, "We do indeed live under friendly skies. The God of heaven, though exalted in power and majesty, is eager to be friends with us!"
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[i] During the first four centuries of church history, it was the heretics, not the orthodox defenders of the faith, who held tenaciusly to a meticuloously onmi-controlling view of God's sovereignty!
[ii] John Piper and Justin Taylor, Suffering and the Sovereignty of God (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2006), 42. Emphasis mine.
[iii] N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (Downers Grove, Il.: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 59.
[iv] A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), 118 (emphasis mine).
[v] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (Québec: Samizdat University Press, 2016), 16.
[vi I am indebeted to Randy Alcorn for this insight. Randy Alcorn, If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil (Colorado Springs: Multnomah Books, 2009), 329-330.
This blog is an adaptation of chapter 2 of my book, Life with a Limp: Discovering God's Purpose in Your Pain available at LeadershipBooks.com and Amazon.com.
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