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How does Christianity explain good and evil? How does Christianity uniquely address the problem of suffering? What tools are we given in the face of suffering?
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12 Replies
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God is good. When God created mankind, He believed that He would remain their god. But God gave mankind free will and mankind chose to be their own god. Thus the birth of evil. Christ is the best example of understanding suffering. His death on the cross represents mankind’s need to suffer in order to find meaning and peace in their lives. I used to be in a profession where I had the chance to deal with people who were suffering. You may find this rather simplistic, but I often asked them to imagine that they were arriving at the “Pearly Gates.” Saint Peter asks the person first in line, “On a scale of 1- 10, how much joy did you have in your life?” The person responds, “Oh a 10 definitely. I never suffered over anything.” Saint Peter responds, “Then you need to go back. People learn a great deal from suffering.” Another person steps up to the door and is asked the same two questions. She responds five for each question, and the gates open to receive her. I then asked my client the same two questions. In other words, suffering leads to finding meaning in life. Sometimes my client was able to see value in suffering. Christianity gives us suffering to lead to wisdom but we are usually too busy being our own god. God cannot speak to us under these circumstances. By the way, apparently the most common response to the question asked of non-believers is “If God exists, then why is there so much suffering, like the Holocaust?” I read the most wonderful response to that question recently: God says, “Nobody can see what horrors I have saved the world from because they can’t see what never happened.” Christianity leads us to meaning in life, and meaning helps us deal with suffering.
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God is fully the embodiment of good. His creation, the earth and human experience, was created as good. But through sin it has been corrupted and brought evil into the world. We require redemption through the person of Jesus. The Psalms, Job, and Lamentations have given us the “skill” as the lecturer refers to it, of lament in the face of suffering. We do not always see the bigger picture, or the ultimate good that will result, but all things work together for the good of those that love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.
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Christianity says that, although God is all-good and all-powerful, man himself had chosen to sin. This had plunged the world into a state of fallenness, so that there is now natural evil, human evil, and supernatural evil in the world. Evil brings injustice and suffering often. But this world has been definitively redeemed by Christ, and God is still working to bring his kingdom. In the meantime, for every evil that occurs, God has sufficient reason for its occurrence. In the end, there will be a culmination of restoration to justice and good.
For now, the Christian, knowing he has a good and powerful God as Father, has the tool of lament to cope with suffering. He cries to his God, and his God hears. His woeful situation can be offered to his God with hope.
#apologetics
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Mark 10:18 Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.
When Adam & Eve fell in the garden evil entered into the world. Yet our God is sovereign, and his loving grace had a plan for the redemption of mankind where we were created in the image of God. Evil has been stalking humanity ever since the garden as a lion ready to devour its victims. Good is the light of Christ, which shines into the darkness, bringing the love of Christ to a dying world.
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Suffering is part of the human condition all the way back to the original sin. God gives us the tool of lament for suffering. “Christ’s absolute suffering on the Cross for the redemption of us is the lament of all laments.”