Sandy Hook Massacre - Where Was God? (Part 3)

 

Many of us are still reeling from the recent Sandy Hook Massacre. The murder of 20 five and six year old children along with six of their teachers as caused many people to ask questions about God; how could he have let something like this happen?

The Bible says that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, which means that he must know how to end evil and suffering and that he is able to do so. The Bible also says that he is perfectly good which means that he surely would want to end evil and suffering. So, how could he let such an unthinkable horror happen? Clearly he could have stopped Adam Lanza. Why didn’t he?

In my last two blog posts I discussed what has been called the theological or philosophical problem of evil. In sum, skeptics of religion say that it is impossible to reconcile the Bible’s claims that God is all-knowing, all-powerful and perfectly good with the continuing presence of evil and suffering in the world. The horrible events at Sandy Hook shine a spotlight on what is a continual problem. If God really is as the Bible describes would have the knowledge and ability to end suffering and would certainly want to do so. The undisputed fact that he does not end evil and suffering can only mean that either the Bible is wrong - he is not able to end evil and suffering, which means he is weak - or he chooses not to end evil and suffering when he could, which makes him a monster.

This is a difficult problem. That’s why it’s been called the Achilles Heal of religion. I’m not, in this blog post, going to attempt to provide a wholly satisfying answer to the problem. And, I’m not, here, going to suggest how to help someone suffering from the effects of evil. My purpose here is to answer the philosophical issue. A good resource for someone looking for practical help in dealing with suffering is the book The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis.

To defeat the skeptic’s argument against God based on the existence of evil we don’t need an answer for every instance of evil and suffering. After all we are not God and as the Bible tells us, his ways are not our ways. We will never fully understand why God does what he does. To defeat the argument against God all that is required is to see that could be good reasons for allowing evil. The argument against God hinges on the assertion that a good God with the ability to eliminate evil and suffering would always want to do so. All we have to see that God could have a good reason for evil. So, is there a good reason for evil?

Theologians and philosophers have suggested a number of possible good or beneficial reasons for the existence of evil. In this blog post I’m only going to consider the two reasons that most often put forward to explain evil.

            God wants men and women to have free will, to be free to make choices choose good over evil. If people are compelled to do good contrary to their free choice they are, at best, merely robot-like going through the motions of doing what is right. At worst they would be dishonest.

If that is true, that people must have the freedom to choose good, then they must also have the freedom to choose evil. Otherwise there is not real choice. C. S. Lewis put it this way, “The freedom of a creature must mean freedom to choose: and choice implies the existence of things to choose between.” It is from this ability to choose between good and evil that all instances of actual evil have come.  Pain and suffering, all of which result from evil choices, are then a necessary consequence of the freedom of choice that God has given to people. In order to have a world in which men and women are able to make choices of true significance then there must be evil, and if there is evil there must be pain and suffering. There is no other option. God has determined that freewill for his creatures is a morally sufficient reason for the existence of pain and suffering. Thus, the argument that an all-knowing, all-powerful and perfectly good God would never permit pain and suffering is defeated.

No pain – no gain. That’s the basic idea of seeing evil as necessary for personal growth. None of us is fully developed. We all need to grow. Suffering can give us opportunities to show courage as we face it without fleeing. When we see others suffer our hearts can grow in compassion and kindness and we can learn to care for others. The pain and suffering that comes from evil can provide these and many other opportunities to grow and become better people. Of course going through pain and suffering is not pleasant, but it is necessary for our good. God uses evil to mold us into better people. This, some say, is a sufficiently good reason for God to allow evil and the argument that God would never allow evil is defeated.

 

Admittedly, many people will find these arguments to be not very satisfying. They do not take away the pain we feel because of evil. They don't tell us why in the specific case of Sandy Hook why God thought it was a good thing to let Adam Lanza carry out his horrible, murderous plan. However, the thoughtful person will see that the mere existence of evil does not mean that God cannot exist or that he cannot really be all-knowing, all-powerful and perfectly good. There can be beneficial reasons for the existence of evil.