The Unsolvable Problem of Evil – Brad Jersak
QUESTION: How do you solve “the problem of evil?”
RESPONSE: I don’t. We can’t.
To clarify for readers, the problem of evil refers to the question of how we can reconcile the reality of evil and suffering with belief in an all-powerful and all-loving God.
Unlike ‘apologists’ for faith (Christian or otherwise) who try to calculate their way to a solution and imagine they can harmonize divine goodness and human affliction, I don’t believe there is a rational solution to the problem of evil. We call such attempts “theodicies.” While God does respond to human suffering, I never see God offer a philosophical argument that solves the problem, and trying to create one leads nowhere. God never rationalizes our experience of the reality of evil (whether through natural tragedies or human wickedness). Trying to do so is the Achilles’ heel of any faith or ideology.
Following the thought of Simone Weil, I see God’s only response as an “anti-theodicy” of the Cross, where we see in Jesus absolute goodness and absolute affliction intersect, not as an explanation but as a man who bears the human condition of suffering into God’s direct experience. And the only hope I know that can endure our own experience of the problem is an experience of God that is immanent and cruciform. We can’t figure our way out of the problem of evil. We can only hope to encounter the One who shares in our suffering, not hypothetically, but as an immediate experience of the God who is immanent (near and within us) and cruciform (cross-shaped, co-suffering love).
I believe Christians rarely take this seriously. We like to imagine we have solved the problem, but then tragedy strikes and our theological math proves shallow and flawed. A notable exception is Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose integrity as a Christian presented the real problem through an atheist character (Ivan Karamazov) in his novel, The Brothers Karamazov. In one passage, Ivan argues against Christian faith with his brother Alyosha (a novice monk). And Ivan does what we should do if we’re to undergo the gravity of real-world pain: he graphically describes the suffering of children in a way that grinds our clever theodicies to fine powder. And rightfully so, Alyosha offers no counterargument. All he can do is remain silent and give his brother a kiss. That doesn’t satisfy. It’s not meant to. But it’s far better than hearing toxic drivel such as “God is in control” or “God is teaching us a lesson.” In the presence of a child in a burn unit, a cancer ward, in a casket, or under war rubble, such statements are obvious blasphemies against God and humanity.
Because of that (and especially the hundreds of images of children suffering the evils of war that I’ve seen in the last year), I hear the cries and moans of suffering children as the very deepest form of the problem of evil… even to the point of despair. I cannot get my head around it. No one can. And those who think they might muffle that folly with duct tape before it escapes their tongues.
Yet conversely, in the face of despair, sometimes my last and only hope for human existence comes through the birth, the laugh, the play, the innocence of a child. Something in us sees the Truth of Life in the face of a newborn baby and the joy of a healthy toddler. Something in us knows that for all the cruelty children in our world suffer, it is far better that all children are born, live, and then eventually suffer and die than that no child would be born at all. God even thought so of Jesus.
This might be our very best evidence that human hope (and even faith) continues to trump humanity’s perpetual battle with despair. I suspect this is true because, as a species, we continue bearing children and not simply to ensure our survival. Or rather, whether an individual or couple chooses to have children or not, children keep finding a way to be born!
All I’m trying to say here is that, for me, nothing brings me grief and despair so deeply as a suffering child, and at the same time, nothing else can retrieve my hope from the brink as surely as the life of a child. And of the two, life wins. So, in the end, I’ve settled on the idea that our heady calculations related to the problem of evil, BOTH FOR or AGAINST faith, are eclipsed by the real lives of children.
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