For God So Loved the World
Even though I was only a small child, I remember the cold, fall day that I accompanied my father to a nearby cemetery. As we stood above three tiny graves, I recall the tears streaming down my father’s face and the anguish in his eyes. My father was reluctant to explain why we were there for fear that I was just too young and innocent to understand the horrid circumstances involved. He didn’t have to explain. I knew exactly why we were there. Word had already spread at my elementary school that a woman in our community had murdered her three small children just days before. It was also rumored that the oldest of the three boys was found under a pile of clothes in a coat closet inside of their small suburban home. It was speculated that he had witnessed the horrific deaths of his two younger brothers so he retreated to the closet to escape. His mother found him there and he too fell victim to such a horrific fate. Why did this have to happen? I thought God loved all little children and he was supposed to protect them. How could he allow this among such innocent little creatures? All of these thoughts raced through my head and I finally got the courage to ask my father these questions. His only reply was that they must have been very special children and God needed them in Heaven. Not satisfied with his answer, this experience haunted me for much of my childhood. Would God allow this to happen to me? I spent many years searching for answers.
I recently read Richard Swinburne’s The Problem of Evil and realized that he confirmed the answers that I had found throughout the years. He argues that God created us as free agents in an imperfect world where we can learn right from wrong and ...
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...t God takes advantage of every situation and works to bring good out of evil, life out of death and hope out of despair. I know this idea alone cannot remove heartache and pain, but I do hope it can give us the courage to keep living and the knowledge that God will not forsake us. We can triumph over evil in the midst of our suffering. We can live in the hope that there is a place for us that is just and perfect beyond this world. I can now find solace in the fact that there are three small boys from my past that are now in a place far better than this world. They have eternal happiness and joy. Perhaps my father was right after all: they are very special children.
Bibliography:
1. Swinburne, Richard. “The Problem of Evil.” The Canon and It’s Critics, a Multi- Perspective Introduction to Philosophy. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing, 2000. 575-86.
Kreeft, Peter. (1988).“The Problem of Evil.” Chapter 7 in Fundamentals of the Faith. San Francisco: Ignatius Press.
An Analysis of Peter van Inwagen’s The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: a Theodicy
As I continued to chat with my pastor that day, I really sensed the hurt in his eyes – the anger that comes from an unsolvable injustice, the tiredness of a problem. “What’s wrong?” I finally asked, “Having a bad day?” Sensing that I was truly concerned, he let the truth be told. “I talked with a woman today whose baby died suddenly of unknown causes. As we worked through her grief, she talked about how numerous friends and family, even a religious leader had patted her on the back, shook their heads and said, ‘It was God’s will.’ I find few things worse to say to a grieving parent. Saying nothing at all would be of more help.” It was obvious from our conversation that he had an understanding greater than I about God’s will, and his insight created in me a curiosity and desire to learn more.
Jackson, Shirley. “The Possibility of Evil.” Literature Reading, Reacting, Writing. Kirszner, Laurie. Mandell Stephen. 4th edition. Sea Harbor: Harcourt College Publishers. 2001. 463-474
The problem of evil is a difficult objection to contend with for theists. Indeed, major crises of faith can occur after observing or experiencing the wide variety and depths of suffering in the world. It also stands that these “evils” of suffering call into question the existence of an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The “greater good defense” tries to account for some of the issues presented, but still has flaws of its own.
The problem of evil is inescapable in this fallen world. From worldwide terror like the Holocaust to individual evils like abuse, evil touches every life. However, evil is not a creation of God, nor was it in His perfect will. As Aleksandr
It is the contention of this paper that humans are born neutral, and if we are raised to be good, we will mature into good human beings. Once the element of evil is introduced into our minds, through socialization and the media, we then have the potential to do bad things. As a person grows up, they are ideally taught to be good and to do good things, but it is possible that the concept of evil can be presented to us. When this happens, we subconsciously choose whether or not to accept this evil. This is where the theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke become interesting as both men differed in the way they believed human nature to be.
In line with the above arguments regarding the perfectness of the world as it exists, as advanced by Malebranche and Leibniz, it is the opinion of this discussion that the view advanced by Leibniz is more plausible. This is because, considering the fact that God is all-powerful, He has created the conscious as the tool that directs humans to know the right and wrong, but the will of God from the beginning has been that man shall do what is right (Leibniz, 2). Therefore, the fact that bad things happen is contributed by the choice of man to ignore the conscious that defines good or bad, and instead to do against the will of the conscious. Therefore, God is no t responsible for the human actions that are directed by the humans own intellect and will (Brown, 91). For this reason, Leibniz is plausible.
God is someone who encompasses all good things which means he must be a good God, and a good God would not want evil in our world. Humans having free will is a claim brought up by Stump to show Plantinga’s “Free will defense,” to possibly answer the problem of evil. Plantinga believes the response to the logical problem of evil is, the possibility of having free will and using it for good rather than evil, is a value that has the potential to outweigh all the evil in the world. Stump revises this claim because it leaves the existence of evil mysterious and does not fulfill the entirety of the response to the evidential problem of
Phillip Pullman, a British author, once wrote, “I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are”(goodreads.com). Pullman’s quotation on the actions of man being the source of good and evil closely relate to morality, principles regarding the distinction of right and wrong or a person’s values. The question of what human morality truly is has been pondered by philosophers, common folk, and writers for thousands of years. However, sometimes a person’s ethics are unclear; he or she are not wholly good or bad but, rather, morally ambiguous.
Evil and the God of Love, Revised Edition by John Hick, Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1978 p. 275.
For twelve years I’ve tried to hide my pain and fear from you. I’ve been trying to ignore the horror stories, unknowingly blinding myself from the stories of hope. I’m not as bitter as this story may lead you to think. In fact, I am an adamant believer in the statement (overheard three years ago in the Coffee House): “God has never taken anything away from me that he hasn’t replaced with something better.”
A foundational belief in Christianity is the idea that God is perfectly good. God is unable to do anything evil and all his actions are motives are completely pure. This principle, however, leads to many questions concerning the apparent suffering and wrong-doing that is prevalent in the world that this perfect being created. Where did evil come from? Also, how can evil exist when the only eternal entity is the perfect, sinless, ultimately good God? This question with the principle of God's sovereignty leads to even more difficult problems, including human responsibility and free will. These problems are not limited to our setting, as church fathers and Christian philosophers are the ones who proposed some of the solutions people believe today. As Christianity begins to spread and establish itself across Europe in the centuries after Jesus' resurrection, Augustine and Boethius provide answers, although wordy and complex, to this problem of evil and exactly how humans are responsible in the midst of God's sovereignty and Providence.
I have felt the pain of the loss of a Sister; have felt the pain of the death of my Mother, and felt the death of my Father. I know how it feels. I experienced it. It is painful, looking at those old kind folks who bore you; who took care of you; went through all kinds of sacrifices and pains just to look after you for years and years, until one day the child stood on one’s own two feet, and then … there they are, the parents, helpless and lifeless in front of you.
In the beginning, God created the world. He created the earth, air, stars, trees and mortal animals, heaven above, the angels, every spiritual being. God looked at these things and said that they were good. However, if all that God created was good, from where does un-good come? How did evil creep into the universal picture? In Book VII of his Confessions, St. Augustine reflects on the existence of evil and the theological problem it poses. For evil to exist, the Creator God must have granted it existence. This fundamentally contradicts the Christian confession that God is Good. Logically, this leads one to conclude evil does not exist in a created sense. Augustine arrives at the conclusion that evil itself is not a formal thing, but the result of corruption away from the Supreme Good. (Augustine, Confessions 7.12.1.) This shift in understanding offers a solution to the problem of evil, but is not fully defended within Augustine’s text. This essay will illustrate how Augustine’s solution might stand up to other arguments within the context of Christian theology.