Explanations for Evil

An article in The Wall Street Journal notes that “Some American soldiers returned from Afghanistan bearing scars or missing limbs. Others have wounds invisible to those around them, or even to themselves.”

The article highlights the story of Tyler Koller. Raised in a conservative Christian home, Koller joined the Army at the age of 18, and his first deployment was with Bravo Company. In his Army days, the fire in Koller’s belly was stoked by belief in his mission and faith in a just and loving God. He’d gather his squad to say a prayer before they stepped out of the wire to go on patrol, and he wouldn’t ever say a cuss word, even though his fellow troops used to offer him money to say the F-word out loud. “No way,” he’d say. It would be an affront to the Lord and to his mother, who raised him in the Pentecostal church.

Koller wasn’t physically broken in Afghanistan, but something did happen to him. Like many men and women who went to Iraq and Afghanistan in over 20 years of war, he suffered a moral injury. A soldier heads to a war zone with a carefully tuned moral compass that parents and preachers and teachers and friends have helped to calibrate.

But in a combat zone, soldiers see, hear, and do things that aren’t aligned with the true north of that moral compass. Koller saw horrible things in Afghanistan: the killing of American and Taliban soldiers but also the inadvertent maiming of children. He learned of bacha bazi, a slang term for the sexual abuse of young boys by corrupt Afghan policemen.

“The faith that I had went away,” Koller said, though “I have hope in my heart that there’s a higher being out there.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is a negative illustration, but it can raise questions around suffering or the problem of evil. What does your sermon text or biblical theme say about how to maintain your faith in the midst of suffering and evil?

How do you make sense of the problem of pain and the wonder of beauty occurring in the same world? If you’ve ever had the privilege of visiting the Louvre in Paris, you probably braved the crowds to get a glimpse of the statue of Venus de Milo.

Millions have been captivated by the woman’s physical beauty displayed in stunningly smooth marble. They’ve also been disturbed by seeing her arms broken off. Somehow the damage done to her arms doesn’t destroy the aesthetic pleasure of viewing the sculpture as a whole. But it does cause a conflicted experience—such beauty, marred by such violence.

I doubt if anyone has ever stood in front of that masterpiece and asked, “Why did the sculptor break off the arms?” More likely, everyone concludes the beautiful parts are the work of a master artist and the broken parts are the results of someone or something else—either a destructive criminal or a natural catastrophe.

We need a unified perspective on created beauty and marred ugliness that can make sense of both. The Christian faith provides that. It points to a good God who made a beautiful world with pleasures for people to enjoy. But it also recognizes damage caused by sinful people. Ultimately, it points to a process of restoration that has already begun and will continue forever.

Novelist Mitali Perkins was raised in a Hindu home, where her father taught his children that God was a divine spirit of love. But when her friend, Clayton, was killed in a car accident involving a drunk driver, Mitali’s eyes were opened to a world of suffering. What kind of God would allow this? She grieved for her friend and put aside God for the rest of high school.

College engaged her in different philosophies and world religions. The first assignment in her humanities course was to read the Book of Genesis. She read it eagerly but was left scratching her head. “Did my Christian friends really believe this stuff?”

During her junior year she studied in Vienna and began reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. A dorm buddy also gave her a copy of the New Testament. Mitali joined a few students in travelling to Russia during midwinter break. As they toured prisons, cemeteries, and churches with their history of massacres and torture she felt overwhelmed by evil. “How could God—if God existed—leave humanity alone to endure so much?”

She writes:

One afternoon, they headed to the world-renowned museum the Hermitage. Again, many of the paintings depicted Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. As our group was about to leave, the museum official pulled me aside. “What are you thinking about so deeply?” he asked in a low voice. I was surprised into telling the truth. “A loving God. Human suffering. How can both exist?” He said, “You are at an intersection of choice. Either you decide that Jesus is the Son of God, or you turn your back on him forever. You must choose.”

When we returned to Vienna, I decided to go to the original source of his story: the New Testament. Soon, I was encountering a Jew with olive-colored skin, black hair, and dark eyes. This Middle Eastern man healed foreign women; he knew what it was to feel lonely and rejected. Oddly, his life and words seemed familiar. I started to realize that most of my beloved stories had illuminated the life of this man. Or was he a man? In the Gospels, he was enraging religious and political leaders by claiming a divine identity. They killed him. He let them. I was stunned.

If he was telling the truth, then this was God submitting to the four enemies of humanity—pain, grief, evil, and death—in order to destroy them all. The Cross was where a loving God and the suffering of humanity could finally be reconciled.

One snowy evening in Vienna, I made my decision. I would follow Jesus as God. I would quietly try to do what he did and said. I wrote to my friend to thank him for the New Testament and shared my decision to follow Jesus.

Bit by bit, I also fell in love with the church, and ended up married to a Presbyterian pastor. In the American church, I still sometimes feel like an outsider. But I know from the Bible that the global church belongs to one person: Jesus of Nazareth, the author of faith, the defender of the outcast, the healer of the brokenhearted. All blood is the same color: Red, like his, spilling lavishly from the Cross at the perfect intersection of human suffering and divine love.

Job, Epicurus, Augustine, C.S. Lewis, and other famous thinkers wrestled with explaining why an all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful God would allow suffering.

Amid the pandemic and its 6.4 million reported deaths (as of August, 2022), the Pew Research Center surveyed 6,485 American adults—including 1,421 evangelicals—in September 2021. They were asked about how they philosophically “make sense of suffering and bad things happening to people.”

Among the survey’s main findings:

7 in 10 American adults agree that suffering is “mostly a consequence of people’s own actions.”

7 in 10 agree that suffering is “mostly a result of the way society is structured.”

8 in 10 believe—either in “God as described in the Bible” (58%) or in “a higher power or spiritual force” (32%)—yet say most suffering “comes from the actions of people, not from God.”

7 in 10 believe human beings are “free to act in ways that go against the plans of God or a higher power.”

5 in 10 believe God allows suffering because it is “part of a larger plan.”

4 in 10 believe Satan is responsible for most of the world’s suffering.

Less than 2 in 10 say they have doubted God’s omnipotence, goodness, or existence because of suffering.

On the unusually cold morning of January 28, 1986, the Challenger space shuttle blew apart 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts on board. But according to some conspiracy theorists, six of the seven crew members still live among us.

Some of the examples are:

Captain Richard “Dick” Scobee, is now the CEO of a Chicago marketing-advertising company called Cows in Trees.

Pilot Michael J. Smith is professor Michael J. Smith of the University of Wisconsin.

Mission Specialist Judith Resnik is a professor of Law at Yale Law School.

Payload Specialist (and “Teacher in Space”) Christa McAuliffe now only uses her first name, Sharon. She has an almost entirely different face than that of Christa’s, and is an adjunct professor at Syracuse University College of Law.

Payload Specialist Gregory Jarvis is the only person that the conspiracy theorists believe died, because they couldn’t identify a double for him.

The facts have repeatedly shown that Challenger tragically fell from the sky due to an O-ring failure after the ship was launched in unsafe temperatures.

In a recent article in Popular Mechanics, Professor Marta Marchlewska at the Polish Institute of Psychology explained the cause for such conspiracies. “People who say that astronauts are still alive refuse to accept that bad things accidentally happen to good people. So, there's someone behind the disaster or it simply did not happen.”

The author of the article then summarizes: “A conspiracy theory tames the great chaos around us, which is the likely explanation for these implausible ideas. It’s easier to blame the imagined secret machinations of influential people, serving dark agendas, than admitting life can be a cruel beast."

Possible Preaching Angle:

People are tempted to believe a lie when the truth challenges our false beliefs. People want to believe that good things happen to good people and bad things to bad people. People want to believe they we are able to be good. But none of that is true. But, as followers of Christ, we have something far more trustworthy to tame the great chaos around us.

John Oliver, the host of the satirical news show, HBO's Last Week Tonight, was interviewed by Terri Gross on Fresh Air. Gross asked, "Did you go to church a lot when you were growing up?" Oliver responded:

I did until I was, like, 11 or 12, and I just didn't believe in it. There were too many … there were some bad things happening then and I just didn't care. I just didn't feel like there were any answers I liked coming from the church I went to … There were kids at school who died and my uncle dying was really devastating to me, and I just didn't feel like … when you ask like a hard question and you were kind of brushed off with, "Well, you know, it's God's will." That kind of knocked me out. If that's true then I want nothing to do with this. But you just can't say that it's God's will for these kids at school dying for no reason. That's just not a good enough answer. You've got to wrestle with it a bit more than that.

In his book No Country for Old Men, award-winning author Cormac McCarthy has one of his characters, Sheriff Val, explain why he returned to his childhood belief in a real devil. The Sheriff said:

I think if you were Satan and you were sitting around trying to think up something that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics. Maybe he did. I told that to somebody at breakfast the other morning and they asked me if I believe in Satan. I said well that ain't the point. And they said I know but do you? I had to think about that. I guess as a boy I did. Come the middle years my belief I reckon had waned somewhat. Now I'm starting to lean back the other way. Satan explains a lot of things that otherwise don't have no explanation. We're not to me they don't.

Editor's Note: No Country for Old Men is also a movie, but this quote was taken from the book, not the film.

NPR (National Public Radio) journalist Scott Simon has always avoided using the word "evil" when covering terrible events around the globe. He claims he was "of a generation educated to believe that 'evil' was a cartoonish moral concept." But then he watched, with his daughters, some of the sickening images from the chemical weapons attack in Syria in April 2017 that killed scores of people, many of them children. Simon writes:

We watched in silence. I've covered a lot of wars, but could think of nothing to say to make any sense. Finally, one of our daughters asked, "Why would anyone do that?" I still avoid saying "evil" as a reporter. But as a parent, I've grown to feel it may be important to tell children about evil, as we struggle to explain cruel and incomprehensible behavior they may see not just in history. … but in our own times.

I've interviewed Romeo Dallaire, commanded U.N. peacekeeping forces in Rwanda in 1993 and 1994 when more than 800,000 Tutsi Rwandans were then slaughtered over three months. Dallaire said that what happened made him believe in evil, and even a force he called the devil. "I've negotiated with him," he told us, "shaken his hand. Yes. There is no doubt in my mind ... and the expression of evil to me is through the devil and the devil at work and possessing human beings and turning them into machines of destruction. ... And one of the evenings in my office, I was looking out the window and my senses felt that something was there with me that shifted me. I think that evil and good are playing themselves out and God is monitoring and looking at how we respond to it."

William Friedkin directed the 1973 movie The Exorcist. It became one of the highest-grossing films in history, was a major pop culture influence, and was labeled by critics and voters as one of the scariest movies of all time. But in an issue of Vanity Fair, Friedkin admitted that he had never witnessed an actual exorcism. So Friedkin, who considers himself an agnostic, traveled to Italy and watched a real exorcism. When he returned to the U.S. he showed the video to two of the world's leading neurosurgeons and researchers in California and to a group of prominent psychiatrists in New York.

After watching the video, Dr. Neil Martin, chief of neurosurgery at the UCLA Medical Center, said:

There's a major force at work within her somehow. I don't know the underlying origin of it … This doesn't seem to be hallucinations … It doesn't look like schizophrenia or epilepsy … I've done thousands of surgeries, on brain tumors, traumatic brain injuries, [etc.] … and I haven't seen this kind of consequence from any of those disorders. This goes beyond anything I've ever experienced—that's for certain.

Dr. Itzhak Fried, a neurosurgeon and clinical specialist in epilepsy surgery, seizure disorder :

It looks like something authentic. She is like a caged animal. I don't think there's a loss of consciousness or contact … I believe everything originates in the brain. So which part of the brain could serve this type of behavior? … [But] can I characterize it? Maybe. Can I treat it? No.

Friedkin was surprised by the neurosurgeons' response:

They wouldn't come out and say, "Of course this woman is possessed by Satan," but they seemed baffled as to how to define her ailment … I went to these doctors to try to get a rational, scientific explanation for what I had experienced. I thought they'd say, 'This is some sort of psychosomatic disorder having nothing to do with possession.' That's not what I came away with. Forty-five years after I directed The Exorcist, there's more acceptance of the possibility of possession than there was when I made the film.

Dr. Jamie Aten, a cancer survivor and a Christian who researches how people respond to trauma, wrote in The Washington Post in which he urged trauma survivors to "make meaning of your experience." Here's what Aten wrote:

Most of us operate from what some researchers refer to as a "just" worldview. We tend to believe that if we are good, good things will happen. It's difficult, then, to make meaning when bad things happen to us.

I went to the doctor for tests because of shooting pains in my leg. I never dreamed it was from a mass sitting on a nerve bundle in my pelvis. It was difficult for me to wrap my head around what had happened. Thoughts like, "Wasn't I a good person?" plagued me. A colleague of mine deployed to help with a relief agency after Superstorm Sandy, and she met a man whose roof had been blown away by gale-strength winds. This man surprised the relief team with an optimistic quip: "Sometimes you have to lose the roof," he said, "to see the stars." There is a man who knows how to find meaning in loss.

My colleagues and I have interviewed and surveyed disaster survivors about their views of God in the wake of catastrophe. We have found that you can have two people who go through almost identical losses, with one believing God saved them, while the other believes God is punishing them.

Remember, they went through the same disaster. But in a forthcoming volume of Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, we found that the person who doesn't find positive meaning is likely to struggle a great deal more. I encourage you: Even in the worst moments, look for the stars.

The Washington Post ran a controversial op-ed piece titled, "As a psychiatrist, I diagnose mental illness. Also, I help spot demonic possession." The subtitle read, "How a scientist learned to work with exorcists." The author, Richard Gallagher, is a board-certified psychiatrist and a professor of clinical psychiatry at New York Medical College. Dr. Gallagher wrote:

For the past two-and-a-half decades and over several hundred consultations, I've helped clergy from multiple denominations and faiths to filter episodes of mental illness—which represent the overwhelming majority of cases—from, literally, the devil's work. It's an unlikely role for an academic physician, but I don't see these two aspects of my career in conflict. The same habits that shape what I do as a professor and psychiatrist—open-mindedness, respect for evidence and compassion for suffering people—led me to aid in the work of discerning attacks by what I believe are evil spirits and, just as critically, differentiating these extremely rare events from medical conditions.

Is it possible to be a sophisticated psychiatrist and believe that evil spirits are, however seldom, assailing humans? Most of my scientific colleagues and friends say no, because of their frequent contact with patients who are deluded about demons, their general skepticism of the supernatural, and their commitment to employ only standard, peer-reviewed treatments that do not potentially mislead (a definite risk) or harm vulnerable patients. But careful observation of the evidence presented to me in my career has led me to believe that certain extremely uncommon cases can be explained no other way.

So far the article has generated nearly 3,000 comments, mostly from people whose worldview does not permit the reality of demon possession or even the existence of demons.

On his 39th birthday, poet Christian Wiman was diagnosed with an incurable form of blood cancer. He wrote frankly about the agonizing effects of his illness and the treatments.

I have had bones die and bowels fail; joints lock in my face and arms and legs, so that I could not eat, could not walk … I have passed through pain I could never have imagined, pain that seemed to incinerate all my thoughts of God and to leave me sitting there in the ashes, alone.

When the diagnosis came, Wiman was a rising star in the literary world and the editor of a prestigious poetry publication. Though Wiman confessed his Christian faith had "evaporated in the blast of modernism and secularism to which I was exposed in college," the diagnosis started a journey that ultimately led him back to God. It wasn't a particular doctrine that drew him back to the faith, but Wiman found a friend in the suffering Messiah.

I am a Christian because of that moment on the cross when Jesus, drinking the very dregs of human bitterness, cries out, "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me." … The point is that God is with us, not beyond us, in suffering. I am a Christian because I understand that moment of Christ's passion to have meaning in my own life, and what it means is that the absolute solitary and singular nature of extreme human pain is an illusion. I'm not suggesting that ministering angels are going to come down and comfort you as you die. I'm suggesting that Christ's suffering shatters the iron walls around individual human suffering.

In the face of brutal, isolating pain we don't really want answers. We want a person. At such times there is simply no substitute for the presence of Christ.

A few years ago, CNN published an article titled "Why I Raise My Children without God." Instantly it went viral. The author, a young mother named Deborah Mitchell, listed several reasons why she shielded her children from learning about God—most of them variations on the problem of evil. Mitchell argued that a loving God would not allow "murders, child abuse, wars, brutal beatings, torture, and millions of heinous acts to be committed throughout the history of mankind."

The classic Christian answer to the problem of evil is that God created humans with free will—and they have made a horrific mess of things. This is called the free-will defense, and it acknowledges the tragic reality of sin and suffering, while at the same time affirming human dignity. It portrays humans as genuine moral agents whose choices are so significant that they alter the direction of history, and even eternity.

Having rejected the Christian answer, what did Mitchell offer as an alternative? She proposed a materialistic worldview in which humans are completely determined, without free will. "We are just a very, very small part of a big, big machine," she intoned, "and the influence we have is minuscule." We must accept "the realization of our insignificance." Is that meant to be an appealing alternative to Christianity? That humans are little machines trapped in a big machine? That their actions are insignificant? Mitchell claimed that her materialist view leads to "humbleness." But it is not humbling; it is dehumanizing. It essentially reduces humans to robots. More importantly, it is not true. There is no society without some moral code. The testimony of universal human experience is that humans are not merely little robots.

This quote highlights how Jesus, in his suffering and death, stands in solidarity with any human being who suffers, especially the poor, the forgotten, and the powerless:

It's important to note that [according to the world's standards] Jesus' death was an obscure one … [In the world's eyes] Jesus dies like a migrant worker who suffocates in a freight container, like a garbage-picker caught in a slide, like a child with an infected finger, like a beggar the bus reverses over. Or, of course, like all the other slaves ever punished by crucifixion, a fate so low, said [the Roman philosopher] Cicero, that no well-bred person should ever even mention it. Some people ask nowadays what kind of a religion it is that chooses an instrument of torture for its symbol … The answer is: one that takes the existence of suffering seriously.

Editor's Note: Christ's death was completely planned and purposeful, not random or accidental. This quote merely highlights that at the Cross, Jesus completely identifies with the agony of the migrant worker, the garbage-picker, the unknown child, the beggar, the slave, and every other human being who has ever lived.

Stephen Fry, English actor and comedian, is a committed atheist. In response to the question of what he would say to God upon death, he stated, "I'd say, 'Bone cancer in children? What's that about? … How dare you create a world to which there is such misery that is not our fault. It's not right, it's utterly, utterly evil.' Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain? That's what I would say."

In response to the interviewer's second question, "And you think you are going to get in, like that?" only served to fuel his fervor. "But I wouldn't want to," Fry insisted. "I wouldn't want to get in on his terms. They are wrong." He continues, "Now, if I died and it was Pluto, Hades, and if it was the 12 Greek gods then I would have more truck with it, because the Greeks didn't pretend to not be human in their appetites, in their capriciousness, and in their unreasonableness … they didn't present themselves as being all-seeing, all-wise, all-kind, all-beneficent, because the god that created this universe, if it was created by god, is quite clearly a maniac … utter maniac, totally selfish. We have to spend our life on our knees thanking him? What kind of god would do that?"

Editors Notes: See this thoughtful response to Fry's comments from Krish Kandiah.

In 1986, a Christian worker named Steve Saint was traveling through the country of Mali when his car broke down. Stranded and alone, Steve tried to rent a truck, despite warnings that he wouldn't survive in the Sahara Desert. After he failed to find a truck, in his fear and discouragement, Steve's thoughts ran to his father, Nate Saint, a former missionary in Ecuador. When Steve was only five, natives speared to death his dad and four other missionaries. Now, thirty years later, Steve found himself questioning his father's death. Steve reflected, "I couldn't help but think the murders were capricious, an accident of bad timing."

When Steve asked some locals directions to a church, a few children led him to a tiny mud- brick house with a poster on the wall showing wounded hands covering a cross. A man in flowing robes introduced himself as Nouh Af Infa Yatara. Nouh started sharing with Steve about his faith in Christ. After becoming a Christian, his family disowned him. His mother even put a sorcerer's poison in Nouh's food at a family feast. He ate the food but suffered no ill effects.

When Steve asked Nouh why he was willing to pay such a steep price for following Christ, he simply said, "I know God loves me and I'll live with him forever." But Steve pressed, "Where did your courage come from?" Nouh explained that when he was young, a missionary gave him books about Christians who had suffered for their faith. Then he added, "My favorite was about five young men who risked their lives to take God's good news to people in the jungles of Ecuador. The book said they let themselves be speared to death, even though they had guns and could have killed their attackers!"

Utterly shocked, Steve said, "One of those men was my father." Now Nouh felt stunned. "Your father?" he exclaimed. Then Nouh told Steve that God had used the death of those five brave missionaries to help him, a young Muslim who had become a Christian, hold on to his faith.

Possible Preaching Angle: Steve realized that if God could plan the death of his own Son, he could also plan and use the death of Steve's dad, Nate Saint, to accomplish his sovereign purpose—including reaching one young Muslim for Christ and orchestrating this God-ordained meeting of two men at the ends of the earth.

More people point to the problem of evil and suffering as their reason for not believing in God than any other—it is not merely a problem, it is the problem. A Barna poll asked, "If you could ask God only one question and you knew he would give you an answer, what would you ask?" The most common response was, "Why is there pain and suffering in the world?"

John Stott said, "The fact of suffering undoubtedly constitutes the single greatest challenge to the Christian faith, and has been in every generation. Its distribution and degree appear to be entirely random and therefore unfair. Sensitive spirits ask if it can possibly be reconciled with God's justice and love."

Richard Swinburne, writing in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, says the problem of evil is "the most powerful objection to traditional theism." Ronald Nash writes, "Objections to theism come and go. … But every philosopher I know believes that the most serious challenge to theism was, is, and will continue to be the problem of evil."

You will not get far in a conversation with someone who rejects the Christian faith before the problem of evil is raised. Pulled out like the ultimate trump card, it's supposed to silence believers and prove that the all-good and all-powerful God of the Bible doesn't exist.

John Lennox (an author and professor of mathematics at Oxford University) tells a story about touring Eastern Europe and meeting a Jewish woman from South Africa. The woman told Lennox that she was researching how her relatives had perished in the Holocaust. At one point on their guided tour, they passed a display that had the following words written on it: Arbeit macht frei" (or "work makes free"). It was a mock-up of the main gate to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. The display also had pictures of the horrific medical experiments carried out on children by the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. At that point of their tour, the Jewish woman turned to Lennox and said, "And what does your religion make of this?"

Lennox writes:

What was I to say? She had lost her parents and many relatives in the Holocaust. I could scarcely bear to look at the Mengele photographs, because of the sheer horror of imagining my children suffering such a fate. I had nothing in my life that remotely paralleled the horror her family had endured.

But still she stood in the doorway waiting for an answer. I eventually said, "I would not insult your memory of your parents by offering you simplistic answers to your question. What is more, I have young children and I cannot even bear to think how I might react if anything were to happen to them, even if it were far short of the evil that Mengele did. I have no easy answers; but I do have what, for me at least, is a doorway into an answer."

"What is it?" she said.

I said, "You know that I am a Christian. That means that I believe that Yeshua is the messiah. I also believe that he was God incarnate, come into our world as savior, which is what his name 'Yeshua' means. Now I know that this is even more difficult for you to accept. Nevertheless, just think about this question—if Yeshua was really God, as I believe he was, what was God doing on a cross?

"Could it be that God begins just here to meet our heartbreaks, by demonstrating that he did not remain distant from our human suffering, but became part of it himself? For me, this is the beginning of hope; and it is a living hope that cannot be smashed by the enemy of death. The story does not end in the darkness of the cross. Yeshua conquered death. He rose from the dead; and one day, as the final judge, he will assess everything in absolute fairness, righteousness, and mercy."

There was silence. She was still standing, arms outstretched, forming a motionless cross in the doorway. After a moment, with tears in her eyes, very quietly but audibly, she said: "Why has no one ever told me that about my messiah before?"