by J. Edwards (17th August 2023)
I have been struggling with the problem of evil, lately. It’s come to the fore as a result of reading about the crucifixion of Jesus in the four Gospels. I kept asking, ‘Why? Why was it necessary for the most perfect man who ever walked on Earth to suffer this most cruel and agonizing death? Some theologian would say it was necessary for our ‘salvation,’ to reconcile a fallen human creation with a loving God. But couldn’t God have found another way to do that, rather than by offering Himself to die on the cross. It wasn’t only the crucifiction that was bothering me. It was also the whole problem of world-wide human suffering in our own day. We have the war in Ukraine, the ongoing suffering following the war in Iraq in 2003, and the conflict in Syria after that. Then we have all the refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, the Middle East and Africa seeking new life in Europe, many of them dying in the attempt, not to mention victims of violence, war, injustice, terrorist bombings and shootings the world over. I do have a tendency towards feeling depressed, and when I consider life as it is for so many people today, I have been asking myself, ‘What on earth is the point of it all? Why did God create a world in which so much suffering could affect so many people?’ And I haven’t even mentioned climate change. The answer came to me when I was out for a walk one evening. I realised that I needed to look back behind the cross, to the origins of humankind. It seemed to me that in the beginning, God’s plan and purpose was to create a being which would of itself be capable of doing good. A being who could love, to the extent that s/he would sacrifice herself, if need be, for those whom she loved. A being moreover who would, like God, be capable of creating beauty in terms of music and art, architecture and design. A creature who would enhance God’s creation by bringing love, joy, beauty into it, by the way s/he lived and by what s/he did. But in order for that to happen, human beings would have to be given the ability to choose between good and evil, to choose whether to be selfish or unselfish, to be cruel or to be kind. Human beings were designed to create a good world, but in order for that to happen, they had to be given the ability to choose the opposite, to unleash forces that could destroy the planet and millions of its inhabitants. And so, we had Hitler, Stalin, Putin, to name but three. And just part of the explanation of the suffering of Jesus on the cross is that here is God taking responsibility for that and in so doing demonstrating in the clearest possible way that God’s response to the brutality of a cruel world was to accept that cruelty himself, in the body of a human being. Yes, ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.’ So much flows from this. But I will mention here, just two points. 1). To quote a phrase from a prayer of an African child, ‘Lord Jesus, I know that today, there will be nothing that will happen that you and I can’t handle.’ If Jesus could die on the cross in order to break the power of evil to rule the world, this Jesus who loves me and in whom I trust, will enable me to cope with whatever life brings here on Earth, and finally will bring me to himself when my time comes to depart. 2). Paul, to quote him again, said, ‘As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.’ (1 Corinthians 15:22). Just as humankind came into being by God, so this same God has authority to reconcile to himself all who have lived (regardless of what they believe) in a way that is acceptable to Him. (See Matthew 25, the parable of the sheep and the goats). This could lead on to a debate about heaven and hell, and who will be sent to the latter etc. I would recommend C. S. Lewis’s book, ‘The Great Divorce’. He suggests that ‘hell’ is simply a place that’s available as a dull alternative for people to escape to, people who feel that they feel unable to stand before God, because it would be too painful, so they would prefer to get away from God to a place where they can exist without having to experience the pain of His presence. In response to this, our aim must surely be so to live in the light of God’s grace on Earth, that we shall, by God’s grace, be enabled to stand before God in heaven.
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