Pain, Suffering, and Evil – This Christian’s Perspective
The existence of pain, suffering, and evil is perhaps the most popular argument that the atheist has against the Christian religion. At its core is the question, “If God is good then how could a good God allow…(fill in with latest tragedy)?” The assumption is that since a good God would obviously not allow such things that there must not be a God at all. It is a sincere question and deserves sincere analysis and attention. As a Christian I think we need to be prepared to make our best apologetic (argument for one’s beliefs) when this question is brought up by our non-believing friends. But perhaps more importantly, I think Christians owe it to themselves to give ample thought to this issue to be able to come to some sort of understanding within our own minds and hearts, lest we doubt our faith in God when, inevitably, pain, suffering, or evil lands on our own doorstep. I’m going to develop my own arguments over the next few paragraphs. I am a lay person who claims no authority or special knowledge. I am writing this for myself to organize my own thoughts on the matter. By no means is this meant to be an exhaustive treatise, but rather an introduction. The reader may or may not share my own perspective and, honestly, my own perspective will undoubtedly change over time as all honest and well-reasoned perspectives may. But regardless of the arguable minutia, I am comfortable with the overall structure. I am comforted by it.
I will separate the subject matter into its three components, tackling pain first, thereby leaving suffering and evil for later. Theologically, some Christians argue that pain came as a result of the fall of man, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s commandment. Continuing with this line of thinking, prior to this moment pain was not part of the natural world. As a biologist, this seems farcical on the face of it. But what if indeed the days of Genesis were distinct 24 hour periods as some argue. In Genesis God created birds and sea creatures on day 5 and then land animals and humans on day 6. With this interpretation there isn’t much of a problem with pain being introduced at the moment when Adam took his infamous bite of the apple. We’re talking only a handful of hours of existence. But what if, as I would most ardently argue and as every scientific observation asserts, our planet is 4.5 billion years old, and what if there is evidence of microbial life going back as far as 3.2 billion years? What if the proper interpretation of “day” in Genesis (yom being the original ancient Hebrew word) is a “long but finite period of time?” In this interpretation, is it at all reasonable to think that pain was finally introduced to all of creation a mere 100,000+/- years ago when man finally came on the scene? That would be biologically absurd. Let’s develop this a bit further.
When we look at the totality of animate life, the vast majority of species experience pain or something akin to it. Certainly, all mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles do. John Lennon tried to get us to imagine a life without religion, saying it’s easy if you try. Perhaps it is. But try to imagine a world without pain. It’s actually quite impossible. Complex life could not exist without it. In this pain-free world your child reaches out and touches the hot stove. There is no reaction, no pain, just searing flesh. In the real world the pain causes a reflex and the child withdraws his hand with relatively minimal injury. With no pain, his hand would be destroyed, burned to the muscle or to the bone. Infection would likely set in, perhaps travelling up the arm and eventually killing the child. This simple example can be extended and broadened to all of Animalia demonstrating the necessity of pain merely to survive daily life. Pain may not necessarily be good but it is goodly necessary.
So they ask how a good God would or could allow pain. Simply, they are not thinking through the issue. I would argue that it is a good God who designed pain into the system, for without it the organism could not survive. I don’t like pain but without it I can never know its opposites, pleasure and joy. Without it I cannot take proper action to avoid it or minimize it or tend to the causes of it. In short, pain is part of life and to wish it away and question God because of its existence shows nothing more than human wishful thinking. And if one’s Biblical interpretation disagrees with my position I would say we need to look again at that interpretation. If the book of the Bible, God’s special revelation, is inerrant, which I believe it is, and if it appears to disagree with the book of nature, God’s general revelation, then either our interpretation of one book or the other is erred. We have changed our interpretations of both books constantly throughout history. In the case of nature we call this science. In the case of the Bible we call this theology. I believe that the book of nature strongly supports a need for what we call pain. As I later develop my discussion of suffering the need for pain in this creation becomes even greater.
Evil requires a different analysis. Traditionally, evil can be divided into two types, the natural type and the man-made type, aka moral evil. Let’s look at natural evil first. The term natural evil is man’s label for the seemingly bad things that happen as a result of natural occurrences. Examples of this might be earthquakes, typhoons, lightning strikes, tornados, tidal waves, and then there are the diseases caused by viruses, bacteria, parasites, etc. Not too many years ago there was a massive tidal wave that hit Southeast Asia, killing an estimated 250,000 very unlucky folks if I remember correctly. It is completely understandable how these people’s families might ask how God could allow this to happen. It might also be perversely understandable how some people might interpret such happenings as God’s punishment for the bad behavior of the afflicted. But are either of these good interpretations? I think not. So-called natural evil is our anthropomorphic or perhaps self-aggrandizing label of the forces of nature that we don’t like. We love the rocking of the sea on a day cruise as long as the waters stays calm. A rain storm is nice to hear as long as the winds are reasonable. Counting after a lightning strike to judge distance is fun with your kids as long as several seconds pass before the clap of thunder is heard. The truth is that these forces, like pain, are necessary for you and I to exist at all. For example, for earth to have the resources necessary to support life more complicated than bacteria, let alone support an advanced technological civilization, it needs a variety of cycling and recycling systems. Without tectonic activity many of the gems, minerals and metals that we rely heavily upon would be buried so far below the surface that we would not have access to them. Also part of this cycling system is having a stable water cycle which requires water in all its forms; gas, liquid, ice, snow, sleet, frost, and clouds. The movement and cycling of water requires wind, temperature variations, atmospheric pressure changes…in short, weather. Without this very unique and finely tuned stable water cycle, once again, you and I would not exist. There are nearly countless similar examples where forces which we refer to as natural evil turn out to be utterly necessary for complex life to be possible.
Looking into diseases, bacteria are necessary for the processing of materials into their constituent components for recycling into new living creatures. Perhaps more primordially, bacteria fix inorganic nitrogen into nitrogen-rich chemical resources that plants and animals can then use. Without these bacteria, no multicellular life would exist at all. In addition, you are I require just the right bacteria in our gut for digestive health, immune health and the absorption of vital nutrients. Viruses, believe it or not, control global bacterial overgrowth thereby keeping our planet earth from being covered by a massive blob of bacteria. Viruses are partially necessary for the initiation of rain (I know it sounds bizarre), and are to a significant degree responsible for human genetic diversity. Once again, we cannot even exist without our microscopic companions. Yes, there are germs that cause disease but the vast vast majority range from vital to beneficial to neutral.
In short, natural evil is not evil at all. It is nothing more than the regular interplay between humans and the natural world. God does not let it happen or make it happen. He set it up and then…it just happens. Although He could stop it, change it, manipulate it, alter it, and the Bible states that He has in times past (miracles), why would or should He without great need on His part for His plan? Why should He stop a tornado just because I chose to live it its path. Why should He protect me from this germ? What makes me so special compared to the other 7-8 billion people alive today, let alone all the billions of souls that came before me? Although we are all precious to Him, none of us are more precious than any other, despite our seemingly innate reluctance to let go of ego and self-importance. I don’t want a God who plays games like the gods of Rome and Greece, punishing and rewarding based upon favors and favoritism, love and jealously, paybacks. I want a God who has set into motion a world in which we can live, love, thrive, and eventually die, a God who will let me chose to or not to have a relationship with Him and who will love me just as much regardless of my choice in this matter. He will not reward me because I think I’m more faithful or righteous than the next guy, nor will He punish me because of my brokenness. I don’t have to go through life wondering what I did wrong to deserve this, or wonder what I did right to deserve that, like believers in the so-called prosperity doctrine do. It’s not that I did or did not deserve anything. It is simply life. The natural world is going to happen to me and eventually it will consume my body and recycle its parts just as it has done with billions of lives before me. I must thank God for natural evil.
But man-made moral evil is difficult indeed. Man preying upon man. Certainly there was no evil in the person who was Adam before the fall. It began when Adam chose to reject God and make his own way. It showed its first real presence with Cain’s jealousy over Abel, and we all know how that ended. And here we are. Because of one man and one woman’s decision, you and I get to choose…anything. We can love. But we can also hate. We can murder. We can cheat. We can steal. We can maim. We can perform all kinds of cruelties. We can enslave. We can wage unjust war, and then we can define what an unjust war is, often unjustly. We can destroy, literally everything, thanks to atomic weapons. We have the choice, and that makes all the difference in this thing life. I believe the choice is what makes life life. God gave us the option and we chose choosing, but then we have the temerity to get mad at or question God when He doesn’t take that choice away from us just before it gets us into trouble. Or more pointedly we get angry at God when He doesn’t revoke it from the person who means to wrong us before he has the chance to do so. For example, a man walks into a store, shoots the owner to death and takes the cash from the register. The family wonders how a just God could allow this to happen. I say He didn’t allow it to happen. It happened because we can do anything. We chose choosing. Or, if you prefer, Adam and Eve chose choosing. The robber chose to kill and rob. It is an evil act. It is despicable. But how can we expect to have free will if we don’t really have free will? I think too often what we want is free will as long as our wills don’t harm us. If someone’s free will is going to harm me, then I want God to stop it. Otherwise, stay out of my business. I’ll call you when I need you. You see, in order for us to have the real choice to have a relationship with God, we have to have the free option to choose that relationship. And to choose or not choose that relationship means that God must let humans be human in all of our glorious ugliness. And our ugliness knows no bounds.
Suffering, the last of our triad, is what I would describe as the ongoing process of pain and evil. In other words, it is pain spread across the 4th dimension of time. It is when physical, emotional, spiritual, or other sorts of pains are felt over a period of time. On the one level suffering is no different from pain and evil, in that they are all merely the necessary results of the natural order. If you have pain and you have time, you will have suffering. It’s sort of a mathematical thing. But knowing that doesn’t help when it’s your child that is in the pediatric cancer ward, or when it’s you watching your Jewish parents being shot in the ghettos and death camps during WW2. The totality of suffering in this world is incalculable. It is happening every day all around us, to the person next in line at the grocery store, to a good friend you just had lunch with, and to some extent perhaps to you right now. I see suffering as the mere extension of pain and evil brought into a universe that has linear time. If we can accept that it is necessary, and I do, then the next question is does it have a purpose? I say absolutely it has a deep and profound purpose, thank God.
From the perspective of the atheist, who may also be called the naturalist or the materialist, suffering has no more purpose than does life itself. By their religion of non-religion, the universe popped into existence because that’s what universes do. It’s just physics. Then improbably, this perfect little blue planet formed by mere chance with all of its hundreds and hundreds of points of fine tuning that allow for life. After all, if the universe is large enough, then random chance must allow for a few such planets to be scattered about. And once our improbable planet set up shop, somewhere on its surface some chemicals bumped into each other and randomly became more and more organized, just as if some invisible force were stirring the pot in just the right direction and adding ingredients at just the right times, but knowing of course that no such force exists. Because of the mere forces of chemistry and physics, these chemicals developed in complexity to eventually contain within them digital information. To protect this information walls were built around these information-bearing chemicals thereby becoming cells, and then those cells started duplicating and interacting and evolving into greater and greater complexity eventually becoming multicellular life. These life forms pooled their resources to evolve further into the multicellular tissues, organs, and systems of an amazing variety of plants and animals. None of this required any intelligence or outside guidance or agency. These animals became sentient, then intelligent, and then about 100,000+/- years ago one animal suddenly became artistic and analytical and spiritual. It engaged in symbolic thought and possessed many other traits never seen before or since in any other species, humans. But since this was all a giant accident, since life has no purpose, then suffering too has no purpose, other than as perhaps some existential proof of life. After all, if this were a dream would it hurt so much? But I digress. So to the ground we must return, until the universe expands and cools and ceases to be. And then all will be done. That is the bleak atheistic outlook. Balderdash.
The atheist and I have common ground in that we both believe that suffering is interwoven into the fabric of life, that since it exists it must be necessary, that suffering is the combined forces of pain acting in the 4th dimension of time. But that is where our common ground ends. The atheist knows that suffering exists and must exist but can find no purpose in it. As a Christian, I know that God created it for a purpose and as much as I dislike the idea of suffering, I see great purpose and opportunity in it, both for God and for man. I believe that it is suffering that binds all of humanity together, and in doing so brings us to and binds us to God, and let’s God work in our hearts. Let me explain.
Imagine an existence without suffering or even the potential of suffering. As I’m writing this my 9 month old granddaughter is playing on the floor with her toys. In this new imaginary world without suffering she cannot get hurt. No evil can befall her. She cannot choke on something small. In short, I can ignore her. She doesn’t need me to look out for her, to wonder what she is into, to worry about her at all. Simply, she doesn’t need me. As a result I don’t need her. I don’t need to protect her. I don’t need to want to protect her. I don’t even need to love her. In fact, I don’t even need to be here at all except maybe to feed her and change her diaper. Extend this to the entire world. I argue that a world without the potential of suffering would in actuality be a loveless place where no one would need to care about or for each other. Of course as I watch her I know this is a ridiculous notion. I know that if she swallows a small toy she would suffer and perhaps die. Without supervision she could ingest a poison and suffer. There are innumerable threats to a toddler on a daily basis that I must watch out for. Her potential for any sort of suffering ensures that I attend to her constantly. And it’s not just her of course. To the extent that I can, I attend to the needs of all my loved ones in their potential of suffering. It doesn’t end there either. I hear of suffering of a neighbor or a friend and I take them a meal. There is suffering across the globe, and I send money to the Red Cross. I spent 8 years of my life and thousands of dollars to become a doctor to help strangers who suffer with a variety of health problems. The cynic might say I did it to make a good living. I will tell you that there are a lot of better ways to make a lot more money than the physical piece-work that is chiropractic. No, I did this to take care of people.
I know that there were at least three times in my life when God spoke to me and I listened. I hope there have been more. The first was when I was 16 and I responded to the alter call to accept Christ as my lord and savior. The second was when I was 17 and asked my girlfriend of only a couple weeks if she would marry me. Over 40 years later and she is still my best friend. The third was when I was 19 and decided the night before taking the Dental Admissions Test that instead of going into dentistry I would help people who were in pain by becoming a chiropractor. I didn’t show up for that test. These were all life-altering decisions that were 100% good and right made on the spur of a moment, a thing that teenagers are not always known for doing well. They were decisions made at moments when I listened to God. For those who will but listen, God speaks to all of His children to guide us to help the suffering around us. He guides us to become doctors and nurses and all the support staff they need. He guides scientists to seek cures. He leads people to teach the caregivers. He guides the unskilled to volunteer their time in nursing homes, to hold someone’s hand, to bring a meal, to pray. He directs many to commit years and decades of their life to travel to dangerous places to help bring to complete strangers clean water, food, education, medical care, and love. God uses suffering to bring His children together. It is His terrible gift that binds all of humanity together. And on the receiving side of suffering, it is when the chips are down that we most sincerely seek out God, when we work feverishly on the one thing He wants of us more than anything else, a true relationship.
This is more than theory, but it is less than helpful to the old and infirmed lying in a bed in the assisted living facility, to the mother holding her sick child’s hand, to the victim of genocide. To them this may be a useless theological discussion that will not reverse the aging process, stop the cancer, or halt the hatred of sectarianism. To those people, and we all know them, I can only remind them of Joshua 1:9 “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go,” of Isaiah 41:10 “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand,” of Deuteronomy 31:6 “Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you,” or Zephaniah 3:17 “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing,” or Hebrews 13:5 “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you,’” or Romans 8:38-39 “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord,” or lastly Matthew 28:20 “Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
God is here with us in each moment, is speaking to us, is guiding the care givers, is giving us strength and courage, is leading others to us, bringing us all together in love, and at that fateful moment when it is our turn to return home to Him, we do not do it alone. He takes our hand, speaks to us, calms us, loves us, and leads us from this creation to the next. I believe that without pain, suffering, and evil, none of this is possible, you and I would never exist. If we never exist we can never know love. We can never know God. God can never know us. Whatever His purposes, you and I would not be part of it. We would be forever the nothingness we were before we were ourselves, and therefore never know the beauty of the flower, the grandeur of the mountains, the pleasures and joys of true love, and the promised eternity of heaven. So you ask how could a good God allow such pain, suffering, and evil in this world? My God, how could he not?
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