Atheist Question #1: Why does an all-loving God allow suffering and evil in the world?
The number one question asked by atheists.
If you’ve spoken to atheists about religious beliefs before, you might have encountered this question. It’s the first question asked by many who are struggling with God.
This question is also sometimes asked as a sort of “gotcha” as part of a debate or argument against the existence of God. If God really does love people, the atheist argues, he shouldn’t allow evil to exist or people to suffer. We all see evil and suffering everywhere we look around the world. Therefore, God doesn’t exist.
Let’s look at this piece by piece.
Is Evil Really a Thing?
First, we should notice that this question contains a hidden assumption right up front. Specifically, if God doesn’t exist, what does “evil” mean? “Good” and “evil” are words associated with a moralistic worldview, but if God doesn’t exist, if materialism is all there is, then there’s no objective basis for any moral construct. What we call “good” and “evil” are just social strategies for getting ahead in life and propagating your genes to the next generation. And who is to make a moral judgement about such social strategies. Indeed, in such a world, there are only effective and ineffective social strategies.
As an example, Genghis Khan slaughtered roughly 40 million people, but about 1 in 200 men in the world are descended from him. So, was he evil or just very effective at winning in the Darwinian, “survival of the fittest” contest that must be the way an atheistic world works? If an atheist is going to be self-consistent, the proper response isn’t that Genghis was evil, but rather that he was supremely effective.
“Okay, wait a minute!” the atheist will cry. “You’re a Christian, and you do believe that good and evil exist, and you agree that there is a lot of evil in the world. So, how can God allow that?”
If we’re going to assume that evil does exist, that it’s not merely a fiction in a materialistic world, the question is a reasonable one. The Christian says that God is infinitely good and that he wants good things for his human creations, so why does he allow evil and suffering to persist?
Where Does Evil Come From?
The first thing we need to understand is what “evil” really is and where it came from. Let’s go back to the beginning, or very nearly so… Genesis 1, verse 26.
26 Then God said, “Let us make man[a] in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
What does this section tell us? Among other things,
God made humans in his own image. This is important. Every human that has ever lived was stamped with the image of God. This means there is value and worth in every human; we all bear the “makers mark.” Further, it means God gave us free will, an ability to make our own choices, just like him. We are not robots, controlled by God, but autonomous beings who can make our own choices. And specifically, we can choose the same things God does, or we can choose other things.
After humans were created, everything was good. In fact, verse 31 says it was “very good.” Evil was not part of the creation.
Now, let’s slide over two chapters and take a look at Genesis 3.
3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You[a] shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,[b] she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
In these verses, we see humans rebel from God and the introduction of sin into the world. The short definition of sin is doing or thinking anything contrary to the will of God.
So humans, with the help of Satan, in the form of the serpent, introduced evil into God’s “very good” creation by not believing God and by disobeying his clear directive to avoid eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
That singular act of disobedience, that act of sin, corrupted the whole creation and consequently evil and suffering are now commonplace. To this day, all the descendants of Adam and Eve, which is to say all of us, are born with that “original sin” inside us, still bearing the image of God and having freewill, but slaves to the sin that came from the original disobedience.
On the great cosmic scoreboard, God is credited with creating a “very good” universe and humans are credited with working with Satan in creating evil and polluting the universe with sin. It’s not something we should be proud of.
Does God Have the Power and the Desire to Eliminate Evil and Suffering?
The next thing to realize is that God can, in fact, eliminate evil and suffering from the world. There is no question of either his capabilities or his willingness to do so. In fact, he has come pretty close to doing so before. In Genesis 6:5-8, the Bible says:
5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
And so, without recounting the whole story, God eliminates much of the evil and wickedness from the world… by eliminating all but one family from the world.
Notice a few things in this passage:
“…every intention of the thoughts of [Man’s] heart was only evil continually.” Don’t let anybody tell you that people are “basically good.” It’s not true. We’re sinners to the core and left to our own depravity, we would do evil constantly.
God doesn’t like evil. It “grieves” him.
God considered throwing everything away because there was such great evil in the past.
But he decides to keep Noah’s family. Noah “[finds] favor” with the Lord and in subsequent verses is obedient when the Lord tells Noah to build a huge ark.
The rest of humanity, those that did not find favor, and all the land-dwelling animals are destroyed.
From this, we should note that the elimination of evil has a huge cost. Ultimately, to eliminate evil, God must eliminate sin. Where there is sin, there is evil, so for evil to go, everything sinful must go, too.
Note that in the story of Noah, God doesn’t eliminate all the evil and sin. Noah’s family still carried sin. The elimination of all evil and sin would have required the destruction of everything.
But God “resets the board” a bit, reducing sin to a minimum level again. It’s not a full solution, but it buys the creation some more time.
Why Doesn’t God Eliminate Evil and Suffering Now?
This leads us to the logical question, “If God has the power and the desire to eliminate evil and suffering, why doesn’t he just do it?”
The short answer to that is that it’s all about the cost. God wants as many people to be with him forever as possible. Why? Because of love. He loves us and he wants us to love him. That’s why he gave us freewill, but we used our freewill to create sin. God is Holy, so he can’t stand our sin. He’s also just, so for every sin there must be punishment. Paul tells us in Romans 6:23 (ESV), “…the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
What does all that mean? It means that because of your sin, because of my sin, somebody has to die. By default, you and I will be the ones to die, to be doomed to hell, eternally separated from God. But, God also gave us the “free gift” that Paul mentions in Romans 6:23, eternal life in Jesus. In that case, we get to appropriate Jesus’s death to pay for our sin. It’s a great trade and it’s totally free. But… you have to choose it now, here on earth.
With that as background, the Apostle Peter writes about God’s motivation in 2 Peter 3.
9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you,[a] not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies[b] will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.
When Peter speaks of the “promise,” he’s referring to the second coming of Jesus. Once Jesus comes again, the time for choosing is basically done. Depending on which Biblical scholar you talk to and whether you believe in a “pre-trib,” “mid-trib,” or “post-trib” rapture, there may still be time for 11th hour conversions, but things are happening very fast at that point.
In verse 9, Peter spells out God’s motivation: he doesn’t want anybody to perish. He wants as many people to choose the free gift offered by Jesus as possible, ideally all of us. But at some point Jesus will return and the time for choosing will be over.
God will then “pay the cost” of eliminating evil and suffering… by judging everyone and sending everybody who has sinned and not taken advantage of his “free gift” to hell. There, they will be eternally separated from God.
In contrast, those that have taken advantage of the “free gift” will live directly with the fullness of God, directly with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus himself will reign over this kingdom, the Kingdom of God, forever, and there will be no evil, no sorrow, and no sin.
Jesus describes what has been going on in a parable in Matthew 13.
24 He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, 25 but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds[a] among the wheat and went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. 27 And the servants[b] of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’29 But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”
Again, we see that God doesn’t eliminate the “weeds” (evil people) because he doesn’t want to uproot the “wheat” (righteous people). But he promises that in the end the weeds and the wheat will be separated, and the weeds will be thrown into the fire and burned.
Conclusion
So, after all that, what’s the answer to the question: “Why does an all-loving God allow suffering and evil in the world?” Is it because he doesn’t care? No. Is it because he doesn’t have the power? No, he came very close to destroying the whole of creation in the past because it was so evil.
The full answer to the question is that he loves you, me, and all of us. He wants as many people to accept the free gift that he’s arranged, the only path that can make us holy and fit for heaven. And so right now, he waits and “grieves” until he’s ready.
Eventually, the time will come when God is willing to pay the cost. At that point, he will separate the wheat from the weeds and everything sinful will be consumed by fire.
This is the first of a multi-part series. You can find Part 2, here.
Today’s Prayer
Holy Father, maker of all things, thank you for loving us enough to give us free will. Even after we used that freewill to pollute your “very good” creation with our disobedience, you loved us so much that you tolerated our sin to give us time to choose the “free gift” that you had prepared for us. Give us the boldness to speak the truth of our condition and your gospel to those around us who have not yet heard it. Help them to receive it and choose it, that they might be saved from the consuming fire, too. Amen.
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This remains the single best argument against theism, and while there are answers for it, none are fully satisfying, especially to someone who just lost their 7 year old son in a car accident or whose lifelong Christian mother has late stage Alzheimers.
For anyone who is struggling with this, I highly recommend Lewis' The Problem of Pain. Pascal's Pensees also have some things to say about this as well, but Lewis is the most accessible.
"The Problem of Evil", as it is known. (Search for it.)
This is one struggle I had to take directly to God, straight out, in prayer. Reading a bunch of proof-text scriptures wouldn't help. I received an answer and I am still around, still trusting and faithful. But unanswered questions remain, matters not revealed, and I wait patiently for whatever is to come, whether those questions are ultimately answered or not.
The same is available to all who can do the same.