A Reflection on the Problem of a Loving God and the Existence of Pain and Evil


You know, my pastor announced on Sunday that he was going to do a class on the subject, "If God is a loving God why does He allow evil in the world?"  Then, after the service I was talking to my pastor and mentioned having been to some pretty dark places over the past couple of years and he, with wonderful empathy, shared that he understood because he had been through some dark times himself.  But then added that he was sure his pain was nothing near the pain I have been through.  I replied by saying something about the worst thing that happens to anyone is the worst thing they have ever experienced and it hurts more than any other thing in their life, so there is no point in trying to compare our pain to someone else's.

Then as I was driving home and thinking about these two things (the class topic and my comment about pain), it reminded me of some teaching I did many years ago on the very topic of the problem of a loving God and an evil world, but also reminded me of some very powerful words that the Lord had spoken to me as I was studying and praying in preparation for that teaching.

Now as anyone who has taken the most basic course on apologetics knows, the quick and easy answer to the issue of a loving God allowing evil is that, in order for there to be free will in a fallen world God must allow for the possibility of pain and evil.  One of the rebuttals to this answer is the question, “Why then, doesn't God limit the quantity and quality of the evil men can do to each other?" Now as I mentioned above, as I thought and prayed about this question back then, preparing to teach on it, I felt that the Lord spoke to me and said, "What makes you think I didn't limit the evil men can inflict on each other?" And it was like a light went on over my head like in a cartoon. It was an epiphany.  All of these very disparate facts about the human condition started fitting together in my mind.

Like the notion that the very fragility of human life is really a limit on the evil we can do to each other. We can only inflict a certain amount of pain and injury on someone without that person dying.  Too much and they die.  That is a limit on evil.  Also, as I'm sure you all well know, they say (whoever they are) that humans have no reactive memory to pain.  While we may remember something hurting, we don’t actually feel the pain we felt.  However, if we remember something that made us happy, we become happy and if we remember something that made us sad, we become sad, and even if we remember something funny, we laugh.   But we can’t remember pain.  That is a limit on evil.

But beyond these fairly common knowledge facts, I remember the Lord speaking to me and saying, “To be sure, the worst things that are done by men to other men seem and feel like unthinkable atrocities, as they are and they grieve my heart, but in the vast infinity of my creation with all of the possibilities that exist there, there are evils and pain beyond the ability of the human mind to imagine, that I have not allowed to be a part of human experience.  I have, in fact, limited both the quantity and the quality of the evil that men can do to each other, while still allowing them the freedom of will to choose good or evil.

And so as the Lord reminded me of all this, this past Sunday, that the He had shown me decades ago, what could I say but, “Thank you Jesus!”

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