In a picturesque Swiss village full of tourists, hotels, and restaurants, a 21-year-old woman was taken to the hospital with undiagnosed stomach pain. Twenty-four hours later she was dead of a highly unusual infection.
Her parents had never shown much evidence of faith, attending church only at Christmas and Easter or for weddings and funerals. After her death, they were bitter. “We can’t believe in God,” they said. “No good God could ever permit this to happen.”
Well-meaning comforters offered remarks that were true enough but hardly a consolation: “At least she went quickly. It could have been cancer.” “Remember the bus full of children that fell into the ravine.” “A hundred years ago one child in four died before age 5.” “At least you still have another child.”
The organist at the village church was gruff: “They ought to have thought of God sooner.”
AN INTUITIVE AWARENESS
In a day when many people never think of God except to blame Him when things go wrong, the organist’s comment does make some sense. If we have not paid enough attention to God to know and trust Him, we really do not know to whom to complain — or whether we are entitled to complain.
The fact that most people do complain after tragedy shows that they have at least an intuitive awareness of God. If there were no Creator and no divine purpose to life, the sudden death of a young woman would not be the least bit surprising. If the cosmos were the blind product of “chance and necessity,” to use the words of one Nobel Prize winner, the late biochemist Jacques Monod, then the universe would be both mindless and heartless. Whatever happens, simply happens. There is no one to blame, no one to whom to appeal for relief, and nothing to be surprised about. Heartless affliction is just what we ought to expect.
The reason people cry out, as these bereaved parents did, is because in our innermost thoughts we do not really believe the universe is blind. We sense there really is a Creator. In addition, we think of ourselves as decent and deserving — so we blame the Creator for not treating us fairly. “God is not fair to me, so I refuse to acknowledge Him.”
Unfortunately, an unfocused, intuitive awareness of God, without knowing Him personally, leaves us totally bewildered by and unprepared for the suffering of this world.
TO THOSE WHO LOVE GOD
When people do know and trust God, the problem of pain and evil does not disappear. At first it may be harder to handle. “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God,” the apostle wrote (Rom. 8:28 nasb). If this promise does not directly apply to those who ignore God, what of those who do love Him, who serve Him faithfully, who in every way exemplify what Christians ought to be and do?
Sometimes it helps to think of what we learn through suffering. Even Jesus “learned obedience from what He suffered” (Heb. 5:8). But what do we learn through drawn-out, apparently pointless suffering at the end of life? What about the beloved seminary professor who contracted cancer and died after months of intense suffering? What did he learn by it, or his loved ones who watched his agony?
THE ABUSE OF FREEDOM
Philosophers and theologians refer to “the problem of evil.” Many books have been written in an effort to explain how evil can be so present and powerful in a world created by a good and omnipotent God. It would be foolish to attempt a thorough answer in these two pages, but it is possible to lay down some helpful guidelines. The two key words are freedom and Satan.
God’s Word tells us that He created the world good, but because of man’s rebellion — the Fall — it is now in an unnatural, distorted condition. Our guilty abuse of freedom has blighted it. Much if not all of the evil that we encounter, from AIDS to genocide, is attributable to this abuse of human freedom. Human evil, both individual and collective, casts long shadows and afflicts countless people who had nothing to do with causing the evil, or who may even have resisted it.
Much has been made of the dangers of secondhand cigarette smoke; there is even greater danger from what we might call secondhand sin. A careful driver can be killed in an accident caused by a drunk. A chaste adult can contract AIDS from a blood transfusion. In such cases, although the immediate victim did not sin, someone else’s abuse of freedom set the deadly chain of events in motion.
Many diseases, such as most cancers, can strike without warning and without any direct link to behavior. But if we look further into the past, we see that some sin somewhere, or many sins in many places, is the root cause. Because of Adam’s sin, and all the other sins of history, the human body and psyche are vulnerable. We cannot always avoid the consequences of evil.
THE REALITY OF SATAN
Human sin by itself explains much. But the power of evil and the way it strikes the “undeserving,” even those who sincerely trust God and try to live as He would have them live, requires a fuller explanation. The answer lies in the reality of Satan — a real and powerful adversary, one who is determined to do us as much harm as he can. Though he cannot ultimately separate believers from the love of God, he will hurt us as much as he can.
Our fallen world “lieth in wickedness,” the King James Version explains (1 John 5:19). Some modern translations personalize the text: “The whole world is under the control of the evil one” (niv). Satan’s final defeat is certain, but he still has tremendous power. He uses it against the unconverted to keep them as far as possible from faith, striking at their vulnerability and seeking to make them blame God for their hurts.
People such as the bereaved couple mentioned above are sometimes easy prey. If they knew the Scriptures, “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27 nkjv), they could more easily find the way out of bitterness to faith. But even those who know the Bible and seek to walk by faith are not beyond Satan’s attacks. Satan will do all he can to make us doubt God’s love and drive us to disillusionment, depression, and if possible, despair.
PAIN IN PERSPECTIVE
The Christian life is often filled with evidence of God’s grace, love, and mercy, but sometimes the evidence is not so clear. Though we can experience great joy in serving God, this does not eliminate the potential for sorrow. Jesus warned, “In the world you have tribulation” (John 16:33). Hardly anyone experiences a completely healthy and harmonious life. And except for those still living when Christ returns, we will all have to spend time in the dark valley of the shadow of death.
The scope of human sin from Adam to the present, the pain it caused and continues to cause, is an incredible burden. As the Lutheran theologian Paul Althaus expressed it, the burden would be too much to bear except for two world-transforming facts: first, the victory Christ won on the cross over Satan and sin; second, His impending return in glory. These truths do not solve the problem of evil or answer all of the questions it forces on us here in time, but they do put everything into perspective. Philosophers and theologians can help us deal with the problem of evil, but the ultimate answer will come only when “God will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes” (Rev. 7:17).
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Dr. Brown is professor of biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Deerfield, Illinois) and director of the Rockford Institute Center on Religion and Society.