The Problem of Pain - A Poor Excuse for Disbelief
Many reject the idea of God--or at least the idea of a personal, caring God--because of the so called "problem of evil."
For example, John Horgan writes:
- My main objection to this explanation of reality is the problem of evil. A casual glance at human history, and at the world today, reveals enormous suffering and injustice. If God loves us and is omnipotent, why is life so horrific for so many people? A standard response to this question is that God gave us free will; we can choose to be bad as well as good.
- The late, great physicist Steven Weinberg, an atheist, who died in July, slaps down the free will argument in his book Dreams of a Final Theory. Noting that Nazis killed many of his relatives in the Holocaust, Weinberg asks: Did millions of Jews have to die so the Nazis could exercise their free will? That doesn’t seem fair. And what about kids who get cancer? Are we supposed to think that cancer cells have free will?
In short, atheists argue that if God was good, He would not create a world in which there is evil or pain. Horgan rejects the idea that the gift of free will is sufficient to offset the pain of evil. But that is a value judgement. It is not strictly logical. It is disbelief not based on logical necessity, but rather a preference to believe, or disbelieve, based on his own feelings of what God, if He exists, would be obligated to do.
The explanation that by creating free will God allowed the introduction of evil and pain is a solid one. It may not be completely comforting, but it cannot be rejected as illogical...only as unsatisfying if one is presumptuous enough to believe that one's own value system (most specifically the ability to weigh tradeoffs between what is bad and worse or good and better) is so spot on accurate that one can be certain that it is impossible for God to be willing to allow evil in exchange for the good that arises from free will...and the many other goods that arise from creation.
But this rejection of God based on the problem of evil, at least as articulated by Horgan, also ignores at least two other key points
The value of suffering
In the Judeo-Christian concept of God's creation, suffering is not, in and of itself, evil. Instead, it can be transforming. There is suffering before birth. Suffering before creative genius. Suffering on a cross before a flood of conversions, miracles, and life enhancing faith.
Suffering is the pathway to Eternal Joy
And tied to this, suffering is passing. Even suffering unto death is but a pathway to being born into eternal life.
If God can "make up" for all the evil one suffers in this life by giving those who suffer a proportional greater joy and reward in the afterlife, which is eternal, then the argument that by allowing evil in this world God has proven Himself incompetent, uncaring, or evil, is not only short sighted, it is ridiculous.
In short, the fact that people reject faith in God because of their dismay at the evil in the world is admirable in that it shows they have compassion and concern. But it unreasonable when it creates the presumption that they have more compassion and concern than the God who allows evil in the world. The response from revelation (natural and revealed) is that God created the world good, with no evil, but in giving us free will evil entered the world, but anticipating this, God gave us suffering as a way to redeem evil and obtain everlasting life in compensation for the evils we face (and even commit).
The Meaning of the Cross Regarding Suffering
- The innocent suffer injustice
- Suffering in this life is redeemed by glory and freedom from suffering in the life that follows
- God allows those who condemn Him of injustice to unjustly condemn Him, and even endures their torture and murder