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EXCERPT
THE CATHOLIC THING
The academic and apologetic answer to
the problem of evil is correct. God, who is
infinitely good and complete in Himself,
created the world and the beings within it to
share in His love. All that He created is,
unlike Him, finite and subject to change; the
intellectual beings made in His image possess
freedom through which they have the power to
choose the good. But change can cause
destruction, as with natural disasters and
diseases; freedom can be misused to inflict
evil on others. God permits evil to happen
only because He can bring a greater good from
it.
This is a rational argument. But given
the haunting force of evil, this argument
requires firm faith to be truly accepted.
Those without faith stand befuddled at best,
angry at worst, as they watch evil unfold or
endure it themselves. Twenty years ago, the
Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald, a
nonbeliever, wrote that attributing good to
God but giving Him a pass for evil seems like
“double standards of a kind that would make
even affirmative action look just.”
A major ingredient to forming a firm
faith is a proper understanding of God, who
cannot be understood as just another person,
or even a super person, subject to the same
judgments, or double standards, that we are.
He is fundamentally other than what we are.
When we judge Him by human standards –
including asking why He did not intervene to
halt an evil – we make a huge category mistake
akin to judging dogs by human standards.
Should a pet dog that attacks and kills a
human being be read his rights, placed in
jail, assigned a lawyer, forced to wait months
for a trial, given a selection of fine
clothing for the occasion, and allowed the
choice of whether to testify on his own
behalf?
To us, the fact that God allows evil
seems absurd, contradictory, unjust, cruel,
tyrannical. But God inhabits a realm beyond
our comprehension. Acknowledging this fact is
not giving Him a pass; it’s recognizing the
reality of who and what He is.
God’s being includes His omniscience.
To Him, unlike us, the past, present, and
future comprise a single moment. He knows the
good that will follow an evil before the evil
occurs; we have to wait and wonder whether
that good will ever come, and even speculate
what that good may be. “Under our condition of
mortality,” St. Augustine writes in the City
of God, “we cannot observe the whole design
[of the universe], in which these small parts,
which are so disagreeable, fit together to
make a scheme of ordered beauty.”
Perhaps the greatest challenge of
faith is failing to trust that God is the
loving Father that He has revealed Himself to
be. When things don’t break our way, we
quickly can succumb to the pernicious
temptation of cutting God down to our level.
“Let us reduce God to our own image, in the
image of man we weakened Him, petty and
sniveling we created Him.”
Then it is easy to blame God for our
problems and indict Him when He doesn’t come
through. The indictments generally fall along
three lines: He doesn’t exist, He doesn’t
care, or He is vindictive.
None of these conceptions is true. The
importance of the academic argument that
describes God’s nature and how evil coexists
with Him returns with force here. It can
rebuild the trust – the faith – we have lost
if we are willing to wrestle with it
seriously.
The argument doesn’t have visceral
force; it cannot heal wounds or take away
pain. Yet it can help us to heal spiritually
by guaranteeing that, despite how awful things
may be, God has to be in control; He has to be
with us; He has to have a plan for the
situation, even if we don’t see it.
When faith fortifies reason,
especially the Church’s theological reasoning,
reason can, perhaps unexpectedly, fortify a
faith, wavering and challenged, and in need of
a boost.
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