Question Series: “If God is good, why is there so much evil?”

This is one of the best questions you can ever ask.

Every honest person must wrestle with this dilemma. Our world is full of good, but it’s also chock full of evil. The Bible claims God is good, yet we cannot escape evil: COVID-19 surges across the globe; power-mongers manipulate politics; racism refuses to die; abuse violates dignity; children and their parents starve.

Let’s be honest: All of these things are evil. They’re not just someone paying back karma from a past life; they’re not just random events happening to random people; they’re not some cosmic balancing act of yin and yang. They’re evil.

And therein lies the first thing we have to deal with.

When we say there’s such a thing as evil, we’re assuming that there’s such a thing as good. We all clearly assume this, because without it, there’s no good or evil and the question dissipates.

When we say there’s such a thing as good, we’re assuming that there’s such a thing as an objective moral law with which we differentiate between the two. We all clearly assume this, because we all agree that these acts listed above are evil, that there are opposite good acts that should be done instead, and that it’s not hard to tell the difference. A starving child should be fed.

But when we say there’s an objective moral law, we assume that there’s a moral law giver. We all clearly assume this, because we all assume that there’s a moral…