By Cleveland Glass 2/12/05
We live in a world that is racked with evil, suffering, and pain. One cannot turn on the evening news without hearing of murder, rape, theft, war, hate crimes, epidemics, diseases, natural disasters, and a host of other problems. At any given moment thousands of human beings are suffering from some form of affliction whether it be naturally induced or caused by fellow human beings.
If the world was created by all-powerful, all knowing, all present, and all loving God, as defined by Christianity, where did evil and suffering come from? How did it originate? Is it possible for a perfect God to create an imperfect universe? These are questions that have perplexed philosophers and theologians for thousands of years.
The presence of evil and suffering in the world implies that, if there is a personal God, either he is loving, but not all-powerful, or he is all-powerful but not loving, or he is neither loving nor all-powerful. For certainly an all-powerful God can abolish evil at any given moment; in fact, if he is perfect, would he have ever allowed evil to come into the world in the first place?
Christians try to get around the problem by saying
that evil didn’t come from God, but it was created by beings who were
originally made perfect and given the power of free will. However,
this is a contradiction. It is impossible for a perfect being, whether human or
divine, to make a choice that leads to imperfection. In addition, if God is
“all knowing” then he has perfect foreknowledge, and he certainly knew prior
to creating such beings that they would some day make decisions that would lead
to evil and suffering. This, in effect, makes God the author of evil.
To illustrate my point, if I created a human-like robot, with free will, and I knew prior to creating it, that it had an imperfection that would eventually lead it to murdering a human being. Does that not make me responsible for murder? Yes, indeed. In fact, I am a murderer. By the same logic, if from the very moment that God created man, he knew that man would sin and thus bring evil into that world, does that not make God responsible for sin? Yes!! In fact, God becomes a sinner.
And, to add injury to a logical insult, evangelical Christians believe that God is going to eternally punish beings that use their free will to disobey him. Of course, God has the power to merely utter a word and cause all disobedient beings to disappear out of existence, but instead he chooses to torment them eternally in the flames of hell. Is this behavior consistent with God’s attributes of love and perfection?
Why would an all-loving God create even one fragile being whose free will would destine it to eternal suffering? If God has perfect foreknowledge he could’ve created only the beings that he knew would use their free will to obey him; that would’ve spared us all from an enormous amount of pain and suffering.
In conclusion, in order to be logically consistent, Christians must take away God’s omnipotence, and allow him to all loving, or vice verse, but they can’t have it both ways.
Copyright © Cleveland Glass 2005