EVIL

DISCLAIMER: This is not my definitive theodicy. Theodicy should be lived, not just thought, so my theodicy is constantly being updated and refined according to my human experience. This is merely a record of my theodicy as it was when I was 17 years old. It is expanded from a set of notes for a talk I gave at my school's Philosophy Society entitiled "Does Western Civilisation Really Exist? -A Fresh Look at the Problem of Evil.

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- Philosophers divide evil into two sorts: Moral evil, evil done by man, and natural evil, evil that lies outside of man’s influence. It has been said that the twentieth century showed us the most horrific moral evil, witnessing the Holocaust, the Communist regime and Rwandan genocide amongst many other atrocities. It seems as if the twenty-first century will return our attention to natural evil: We have already seen a Tsunami, a Hurricane and most recently an Earthquake reeking havoc. But moral evil still persists, as we see from the twin towers, Chechnya, the London Bombings and so on.

-As a theodicist, it is my job to show why God can still exist, despite this evil. Note I am not trying to prove to you that God exists, I am merely trying to demonstrate that my viewpoint is internally coherent.

-I would like to start with an analogy. Consider the following propositions:

[1] Western civilisation is able to end poverty in the Third World.

[2] Western civilisation is willing to end poverty in the Third World.

[3] Poverty is rife in the third world.

Now, if you accept any two of these propositions, you must reject the other. There is a problem if you assert all three of them. Our solution to this problem, however, is not to simply conclude “Western Civilisation does not exist”. A flaw must be found with one of the propositions, usually [1] or [2]; I would suggest the latter, for the following reasons:

(This is the only time I will quote statistics, they come from globalissues.org)

-3 billion people live on less than two dollars a day.

-The combined wealth of the world’s 200 richest people is 1 trillion.

-The richest 1% of the world’s population has as much wealth as the poorest 57%.

Again, I assert, Western Civilisation is able, but not willing, to end Third World Poverty.

-Now let us consider what has been dubbed the Problem of Evil:

[1] God is able to eradicate evil.

[2] God is willing to eradicate evil.

[3] Evil exists.

Is this not similar to the previous trio of propositions?

-Of course I am not proposing that the two sets of statements are completely analogous, for Western Civilisation is neither all powerful nor all loving. I only draw the parallel for two reasons: The first is to expose the apathy of the West, but I will come back to that at the end. The second is to try and illustrate that to conclude that God cannot exist because of the Problem of Evil is only one solution to it, the atheist must give a reason why he has chosen this option over a remedying, or a reformed understanding, of the first two statements.

-And that is what I am going to try and do: Alter your understanding of God’s willingness and ability to eradicate evil to solve the apparent Problem. In fact, in my view it is not a problem at all, and with any luck I will have convinced you of this too by the end.

-I am not going to propagate any nonsense about how God has to create evil in order to create the best possible world. I believe that God chooses to create evil. I am well aware that not everybody wants a massive theological exposition, so I will outline only the philosophical trend in my argument here, but I will make the theology which ultimately justifies it available to those who want it.

-So what I must endeavour to show is why God chooses to allow Evil to be a part of his creating. My choice of word here is extremely important. It is essential to this theodicy that creation is not something that has finished; it is something that is happening right now, as we speak, this very moment. Creation will only be finished when it is perfected, at the end of time.

(By the way, this is an important criticism of Augustinian theodicy for all you L6th philosophers: If the world was apparently created perfect at its start, why did it go wrong? If the answer is because of free will, who’s to say we won’t sin in Heaven? Surely the perfection in Heaven must exceed the goodness which the Earth was originally made with…)

-Another thing that must crucially be established for this theodicy is the definition of exactly what evil is: Now remember, I am not arguing for what evil must be, I am just trying to demonstrate that this viewpoint is internally coherent. From this viewpoint, evil is defined as anything that goes against God’s intended perfecting of humanity. In the Bible it says that in Heaven there will be no suffering, bloodshed, tears etc. so we call these things, or the things that are directly linked to them, evil -they are not part of God’s intended eventual perfection.

-Now, if we go back to the Problem, we see that it is usually phrased in terms of God being willing and able to get rid of evil, but you may have noticed I am taking it back a step, asking “why did God create evil in the first place?”

-My answer is, simply, that evil fits into God’s plan. Creation is something that is happening until it is finished, when time ends. Until then, God allows things to exist within his creation that are opposed to its intended perfection, but he always uses them to push creation towards that final destination of perfection. I will again use an analogy, not to prove my point but illustrate it. In order for a car to move forwards there must be resistance from the road. If the road is, say, very icy, then the road does not provide any resistance for the tires to grip against so there is no forward motion. This is an Iranean idea; evil is used for good. In the case of moral evil God allows us the opportunity to sin and do wrong in order to facilitate our spiritual growth. Natural evil is also used in such a way as to move creation towards total goodness.

-Now, I am not going to pretend that I know how every instance of evil is used for good, if anything because I am not omnipotent. I am just as outraged and shocked by Auschwitz as anyone else -I think it of paramount importance that the theodicist does not become disconnected with the suffering he is arguing about. But remember -and I will keep saying this- I am only trying to put forward an internally coherent viewpoint. The system of thought that I am defending holds God as both omniscient and omnipotent. We have to assume that he knows best, that his plan is completely perfect. After all, he’s God. I believe that while we can only have faith that the plan is perfect as a whole, occasionally God shows us how in a particular instance he uses evil to play a part in the music of his creation.

-But how can we maintain this, I have found comes the most common retort, when so many that die because of natural evil have not had the chance to become Christians? Surely I would say that these people are going to hell? The same goes for those who live “good” lives but are not Christians.

-This objection basically arises because of our American friends taking a slightly simplistic approach to eschatology. The current trend in North American theology is to stress fiery destination of unbelievers. Consequently, America evangelism can quite commonly consist of literally telling people that if they do not repent of their sins and submit to God right here and right now on Earth then they will burn in Hell for all eternity. As I took great pains to try and explain to my Philosophy class, this is a very simplistic way of looking at the Bible. I must be careful here, as many people would accuse me of propounding a heresy, but I believe that this American understanding is completely flawed. In the Bible, more than we are told about Heaven or Hell, more than we are told about God’s anger, more than we are even told about spreading the Gospel, we are repeatedly told that God is fair, and that his ways are just and true. This is the chief principle to acknowledge: God is fair, God is fair, God is fair. One more time? God is fair. With respect to those who die without hearing the Gospel, the Bible also says “each will be judged according to the law that he has known”.

-And yet, you might object, a problem still presents itself. Even if evil is used for good, it is still an injustice that the evil has been allowed to exist at all. Why not just create instant perfection, with no need for evil? This is what I feel the Problem of Evil must inevitably be reduced to, and I would even argue that it is a more serious problem than the one originally outlined. Again I must stress that the Christian who claims to know every reason for why things are the way they are and to fully comprehend the divine plan is not only extremely arrogant but also a fool. However, there are two points I can make in response to this objection.

-The first is to highlight that Christianity is unique amongst the religions of the world in that it teaches that GOD SUFFERS. God suffers, but not just in the abstract disconnected sense of longing for us to turn to him: God actually becomes man and suffers the same pains that we do, and indeed worse pains. In fact Christians believe that Christ suffered more than any one else on Earth ever has or will, not only because he endured one of the most brutally tortuous modes of execution, but also because he suffered in Spirit, bearing the punishment of all of our sins. In our suffering we actually share in Christ’s pain, and we know him more intimately because of it.

-The second point goes the most distance towards consoling us about evil being allowed to exist. Remember -I’ll say it one more time- I’m only trying to show that this approach is internally coherent, not make you believe in any of the religious beliefs it relies on. The point is expressed particularly well in the work of Karl Barth (if you want to pigeonhole this theodicy, you can call it a neo-Iraneo-Barthian approach). Basically, though Christians join with the rest of humanity in crying out in protest against the suffering they endure, the Christians also have the future of perfection in Heaven to look forward to. This is not just a vague hope in some “happily ever after”. Let us examine what Heaven really means to the Christian.

-Heaven is that intended perfection of which I have been speaking that all of creation is heading towards. Heaven is fully realised at the end of time and the end of space, when creation is finished, and when creation joins with Christ through the power of what he has done on the Cross. Heaven is a concept not fully comprehendible to the human mind. Heaven so brilliant, so wonderful, so PERFECT that it will not only make us forget the suffering we endured on Earth, it will remove all its scars and effects to the extent that it will be as if it has never happened. This is an enormous concept, but one must try and grasp it as much as one can. The Bible says that in Heaven the Church will be joined with Christ as a bride to a bridegroom -we will become completely unified with God in the totality of our beings. If God is perfect, there can be no iniquity, pain, anguish, or anything negative in him. We will be transformed to the extent that our memory and experience of suffering will be completely overcome in God’s goodness.

-And yet still you might argue that because suffering has still happened on Earth, even if it’s pain is completely dealt with in Heaven, an injustice is done. In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, one of the brothers asserts that even if there has only been on instance of pointless suffering in the whole of the history of the world, God is unjust. But remember, I have endeavoured to explain how, though we don’t always see how, evil always serves a purpose. Furthermore, we must again remind ourselves of what Heaven is. The Bible says our true nature is eternal. Our existence in Heaven is eternal, not infinite, but eternal. This means that our ecstasy in Heaven will not be infinitely more marvellous than anything experienced on Earth, Heaven is not just Earthly pleasure multiplied manifold, Heaven is only a completely different scale, indeed it transcends all scales, beyond our comprehension. I believe that this will not only compensate for our comparatively miniscule sufferings on Earth, it will change us to the effect that those sufferings will have never have taken place.

Reality Talk:

Last SpringI gave a talk at Reality. If just for the sake of having something to put on on this Philosophy/Theology blog, here it is, in full (for the Stowites, Reality is the youth group I attend in Oxford).

321 GO...

A reading from The Revelation of Saint John, Chapter Two, beginning to read at the first verse:

Rev 2:1 Write this to Ephesus, to the Angel of the church. The One with Seven Stars in his right-hand grip, striding in the middle of the seven golden lampstands:

Rev 2:2 "I see what you've done, your hard, hard work, your refusal to quit. I know you can't stomach evil, that you weed out apostolic pretenders.

Rev 2:3 I know your persistence, your courage in my cause, that you never wear out.

Rev 2:4 "But I have this against you: You have forsaken your first love!

Rev 2:5 Do you have any idea how far you've fallen? Turn back! Recover your dear early love. No time to waste, for I'm coming to you quickly, and I will remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

Right, first of all I should thank the leaders for the privelege of being allowed to speak tonight, and Rob for some excellent advice. I should also pray that everything that I say will be what God wants me to say. Now that I've done all that, let's move on.

Tonight I really wanted to do a talk about Philosophy and Theology, and defending your faith in intellectual argument. Now I'm sure that talk would have been very interesting and exciting, but as I was composing it in my mind I felt that I was being called to talk about something far more fundamental and, fortunately, important.

As this is the first real talk like this that I've given, I've written everything down. One day I pray I'll be confident enough to talk from a set of notes, but for now you'll have to make do with a trembling zombie who refuses to make eye-contact. If I do start shaking, that's a good sign. If I faint... well, that's probably God's way of saying he wants me to stop talking. I've tried to keep things short, but I’ve got a fair amount to say, so I’ll talk fast.

Basically, what I want to do tonight is get you to think about a question: When you get right down to it, what's being a Christian all about? What's the point? if you like. What's our faith based on? Well, OK, that's more than one question, but they're basically all asking the same thing, so I'll phrase it in the clearest way that I think I can: What's at the heart of Christianity?

Luckily for you, the answer to this question is simple, monosyllabic and -dare I say it- obvious. You see the clue is in the name: Christ-ianity. Not Churchianity, or doing-nice-things-ianity or even Godianity! but Christianity. Christ is at the heart of Christianity. So that's it. End of talk. You can all go home safe in the knowledge that I have successfuly told you that Christ is at the heart of Christianity. Wow, thanks a lot, Luke. Surely we've known this all along?

Or have we?

Let's get our teeth into the Bible and go a bit further into who exactly Christ is. Right, we've got four Gospels which we basically base everything we know on, (with a bit of help from the rest of the Bible, the Holy Spirit and experience). These tell us that he was God made man, and lived on Earth about 2000 years ago, until he was crucified. He is the Son of God, our saviour from sin, and He is coming back for us one day, possibly sometime soon.

But who is this Jesus Christ to me, today?

If I wanted to be really cheesy this would be the moment where I would play some vomit-inducing song where the word love is repeated again and again, but I won't. Not least because I don't own any songs like that. What I'm trying to say is that what is active or maybe should be active in our lives is the Love of this Jesus Christ.

Listen:

1Jo 4:12 It is true that no human being has ever had a direct of vision of God. Yet if we love each other God does actually live within us, and his love grows within us towards perfection.

1Jo 4:13 And the guarantee of our living in him and his living in us is the share of his own Spirit, which he gives us.

1Jo 4:14 We ourseleves (this is John speaking) are eye-witnesses to the fact that the Father did send the Son to save the world.

1Jo 4:15 Everyone who acknowledges that Jesus is the son of God finds that God lives in him and that he lives in God.

1Jo 4:16 So we have come to know and trust the love God has for us. God is love, and the man whose life is lived in love does, in fact, live in God, and God does, in fact, live in him.

That's from 1 John, Chapter 4, in the J.B. Phillips New Testament translation, which, incidentally, predates the NIV and is, in my opinion, unbeatable as far as translations go.

Now, did you get all that? Christ is in God and God in him. God is love. By the way, the greatest thing we can do is not worship or pray, or help the poor, or evangelise: The greatest thing we can do is live in God and God is love! It is God's love which inspires us to worship, pray, help the poor, evangelise and do all the other things God wants us to do.

And here we are at the core of what I want to say. We do all of these things because of Christ's love. If we do them for any other reason, and here's the scary part, we are not actually doing anything of worth. Want to know why?

Listen:

1Co 13:1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

1Co 13:2 If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing.

1Co 13:3 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

Those verses, from The Message this time, have to be the most read out verses from the Bible, along with the ones that come afterwards, which we'll look at in a mo. They get read out at practically every Christian wedding, or at least all the ones I've been to.

Why do you think that is? I'm sorry to be so depressing and, well... like me, but in my opinion these verses would be far more appropriate at a funeral. This is because while the love that Paul is talking about is mirrored in the love a man has for a woman, it is also bigger than that. It is the sort of love that we should measure our entire lives against, and so when looking back on someone’s life that’s what you should do. If someone has lived their life in this love, they’ll be a good person to emulate. So before I carry on, let me just clear something up.

Carl Jung said "Language, in its origin and essence, is simply a system of signs and symbols that denote real occurences or their echo in the human soul." Love is just an empty word. The letters L-O-V-E strung together on their own have no power. What matters is the spiritual reality that they represent. Unfortunately, Satan has distorted their meaning, because of the sheer power of what they represent. Nowadays love can mean anything from what you pretend to have for the girl you want to get into bed to how much you like a certain telly programme. You know, you’ve all heard people say “Oh I love the OC”, or “I love the Simpsons”. So what sort of love exactly are we talking about here?

What we are talking about is the Love (with a capital L) of CHRIST. Paul uses a different word for Christ's love, "agape", to distinguish it from other types of love. I won't go too far into this language thing as I’m told it 's not everyone's cup of tea, but if anyone's particularly interested in this go and read "The Four Loves" by C.S. Lewis.

So what makes the love of Christ different from other love? Well, Christ's love is infinitely bigger than any human love, and is beyond our understanding. I know this because it tells us again and again in the Bible, indeed

Rom 8:39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(That’s Romans 8 v39 in the KJV.)

This love is no more evident than at the Cross of Calvary, where Christ took on all of our sin and submitted to death. Do we believe he did this because he had to, or to make himself feel good, or to prove a point? No, he did it out of love.

Most of you will have tasted something of this Love, and its effects, in your lives. But isn't it easy as a Christian to lose sight of this Love? Where is the Love in those arguments you keep having with your parents? Where is the Love in the look of disgust you gave that person the other day? There wasn't enough love in the first draft of this talk, I can tell you that, and there isn't going to be much love in the room if I don't finish it in about LOOK AT WATCH. Some people actually do what's thought of as "good works" the entire time, but they do it more out of duty or self-importance, or to impress people, than out of love.

Are you beginning to see what I'm saying? So many people in Britain today dare to call themselves Christians when to them being a Christian means that they sit for an hour in a cold building once a week, occassionaly take part in some charity fair and mumble the odd prayer sometimes before they drift off into a comfortable, dreamless sleep. To so many people Christianity is an accessory which they keep in their handbag next to their phone and their money. They might wear it on their wrist like an anti-racism or make-poverty-history bracelet, but are they wearing it on the inside?

I know somebody who occassionaly helps out at a Soup Kitchen for the homeless which is linked with her Church. If I asked her why she did it, she would probably say "to help people", or "for the Church". She certainly wouldn't say "because of the Love of Christ". These are the sort of Christians who do good in the community for the sake of doing good in the community. I have heard them refered to as SMOs -Sunday Morning Only Christians. They are about Christendom over Christianity. They are about works over love. We need to exercise the gift of discernment in order to spot them, as they can be disguised as very good, caring, Godly people.

You may be able to see that I'm sort of juggling two ideas here: The first is the person who calls him or herself a Christian and tries to do good things, but doesn't do them out of love. The second is the Christian who knows about Christ's love, but doesn't always have an easy time of practicing it. Chances are some of both types of people are here tonight. I can tell you that at least one of the second type is.

The church in Ephesus, who we heard about at the start, are an example of a church who had "forsaken their first love" -they were going through the motions without love at the centre of it all.

Now, listen to this passage from Revelation Chapter Two again, only with a few minor changes:

Rev 2:1 Write this to Oxford, to the Youth of the church: The One with Seven Stars in his right-hand grip, striding in the middle of the seven golden lampstands, says:

Rev 2:2 "I see what you've done, your hard, hard work at the Besom project and Soul in the City, your refusal to quit. I know you can't stomach evil, that you weed out sin and false teaching.

Rev 2:3 I know your persistence, praying 24-7, your courage in my cause, setting up CU's in your schools, that you never wear out, you come and meet together saturday after saturday.

Rev 2:4 "But I have this against you: You have forsaken your first love!

Rev 2:5 Do you have any idea how far you've fallen? Turn back! Recover your dear early love. No time to waste, for I'm coming to you quickly, and I will remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

Now, I'm far from saying that nobody here has their priorities right and that nobody here is putting the love of Christ first in their lives. God knows, perhaps I've just been blowing a lot of hot air and everyone here feels completely spiritually sorted. But no matter what we feel, each of us, including me, needs to be asking ourselves the question "why am I doing this?" Try and be asking of everything that you do "what is my reason for doing this?" For example, if one of your Non-Christian friends asked you "Why do you go to that dingy little basement every saturday night instead of coming and getting wasted with us?", what would your answer be?

Would it be

"Because loads of attractive people go there." ?

Would it be

"Because I hang out with my other friends there." ?

Would it be

"Because I can worship and pray to my God there." ?

Or would it be

"Becasue of the overflowing Love of Christ which sustains and envelops me." ?

Here’s the bottom line: The Love of Christ is at the centre of the Christian faith.

Lots of questions are so much more easily answered when you remember this:

Why are you helping out at the Soup Kitchen?

Because of the Love of Christ.

Why do you go to church?

Because of the Love of Christ.

Why do you pray and read your Bible and sing songs?

Because of the Love of Christ.

I believe that when we get together and study God's word like this, it should affect us, and it should affect the way we live our lives somehow. When someone does a talk, whether it's me, anyone else from "the Yoof", the leaders or some special guest, it shouldn't be just so that a few catch phrases or interesting points float around in your head for a while and then get kicked out by something else. Something should happen.

After all, it's all well and good me telling you all this wonderful stuff about the Love of Christ, but what does that really mean to you, in your life? How do you apply it to the way you live? The way to apply this lesson is quite simply to live in Christ's love. You can do this by asking yourself that question "why am I doing this?" throughout your day. If the answer is not "Out of the Love of Christ", stop doing it! Even what seems a mundane or silly action can be justified IF and only if it is really being done out of the Love of Christ.

Like

Why am I going to bed?

Because of the Love of Christ, who wants me to be well rested for the day tomorrow, the better to serve him and live in his love! He loves me so much that I might even dream marvelous or prophetic dreams while I sleep!

It is the Holy Spirit, who will of course be living in you if Christ's love is in you, that helps us to discern whether an action is being done out of love or not. That same Spirit will help you to fight the temptation to act out of something other than the love of Christ. You can also, of course, pray. If you do these things you will begin to live with a more loving attitude, doing things out of love rather than anything else.

So how will you know when you are living according to Christ's love?

Listen:

1Co 13:4 Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut, Doesn't have a swelled head,

1Co 13:5 Doesn't force itself on others, Isn't always "me first," Doesn't fly off the handle, Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,

1Co 13:6 Doesn't revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

1Co 13:7 Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.

1Co 13:8 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit.

Maybe you are living the perfect life, completely rock solid in the Love of Christ. Well actually, if you think that's you, I'm sorry to inform you that nobody in this room, or even on this planet, is doing that: We are fallen; until Christ comes back we are only on the road to perfection, we are not yet perfect in His love. Did you catch that bit in 1 John earlier? "if we love each other God does actually live within us, and his love grows within us towards perfection." So many translations have "his love is made perfect in us", which is actually misleading, as in the Greek it's "being made". God's love is being made perfect in us, it hasn't been made perfect in us.

So maybe you're on that road to perfection and need more of Christ's love in you. Or maybe you didn't come here tonight because of the Love of Christ, you came because you were invited by a friend or you came here to meet or make friends. Maybe even you don't believe in this Jesus Christ and his so-called wonderful Love, in which case I implore you to simply look around you and see it active in the lives of so many people. Whatever you think, brothers and sisters, just pray. Pray that you will truly live in and practice the Love of Christ, that you will be asking yourself that question “why am I doing this?” throughout your day. I will be praying this for myself and all of you, and also I will be praying that you will be "transformed by the renewing of your minds" by what I have said.

You might say "but you're just giving a silly little talk", you don't get to transform my mind". Nevertheless, if everything's gone according to plan, I have simply been a lampstand God has used to shine His light on His scripture, illuminating it by the power of His Spirit. He's going to be doing the renewing, not me. And so I would say to anyone brave enough to volunteer to do a talk: Remember, you are doing this talk to simply let God shine His Light, through you, onto His Word. But also remember, that’s a good reason, but by now I hope you know what the main reason should be.

Why have I just given this talk?

Because of the love of Christ.

Right, this will be my Philosophy/Theology site. Funderful. Content to follow.
(P.S. Enupnionia = from Greek for "dream" --> "dreamland")