On Evil: Preliminary Thoughts

 The subject has bedeviled Christianity from the time of Augustine and Judaism from the writing of Genesis, which purports to solve the problem. Lewis and others too easily invoke the myth of the Fall to explain how a good God could create a world so full of evil as ours, who can claim to love all people, created in his image, and yet consign some to hell for all eternity, like a father who claims in court he loves all his children but beats half them with sticks. 

As always I start with the idea that either we have the story wrong or that we have God wrong--or, better, completely. With Paul we should say now we see in part, then we shall see face-to-face. 

But that is a poor answer for those who have to live this faith or give it up.

I cannot solve the problem that has bedeviled the best theologians from the beginning. I can offer my thoughts.

As for evil, I must suggest that once death enters into the equation, all evil enters in. You can't say "I accept death but not the exposure of children to deadly heat and deadly fire. I know that the children do not deserve these evils. But neither to any of us who never asked to be born deserve death. The principle is the same. The one gives us just a starker manifestation.

But, you may reply, isn't it too much? A parent who can't afford to heat the family home in winter will not refuse blankets. The unheated house is terrible, but if the situation can't be avoided, the minimum must be the limit. The world may be necessarily imperfect, but we don't need mosquitoes. 

I have to turn this around. Knowing that morally speaking once any degree is allowed in all degrees are allowed in (the same accusation can be leveled at the minimum of suffering as the maximum, morally speaking), we have to ask why any is allowed in, the purpose must be for soul-making.