Thinking Out Loud with Alan Shlemon - Why the Problem of Evil Is Still a Problem

Episode Date: September 6, 2020

Skeptics and atheists find the problem of evil so repugnant and our solutions so hollow because they refuse to accept a fundamental reality that every Christian believes. Alan explains what that reality is in this episode, thereby demonstrating why the problem of evil is still a problem for many non-Christians.

Welcome to the Thinking Out Loud podcast. I'm your host, Alan Schleman, and today I want to talk to you about why the problem of evil is still a problem. Now, I'm specifically talking about skeptics and atheists who love to point out that God has a problem, right? They claim that there is evil in the world and that God either can't destroy that evil or that he won't destroy that evil. Now, what they reason is, is if God can't destroy that evil, then he's not all powerful. And if he won't destroy that evil, then he's not all good. So either way, this is not a God that skeptics and atheists can believe in for those reasons. Now, this is not a new challenge.

People have been raising the problem of evil as a problem for thousands of years, right? But the truth is also that there's a lot of responses. People, especially Christians, have offered a lot of responses to the problem of evil. Now, Christians have typically offered what we call a theodicy. And this is a theological explanation that tries to give a reason or a justification for why God would allow evil. So, for example, people say, well, evil is a necessary consequence of human free will. Or people will say, look, God allows evil to accomplish some greater good. And still others will say, well, you know, God is actually using evil in order to mold people

into becoming better, more virtuous, or whatever it might be. Now, non-believers rarely will find these kinds of theodicies compelling. And I'm not surprised, to be honest with you, because no matter how logical a theodicy might sound, the amount of misery is existentially too grievous to accept. I mean, they're basically wondering, well, how can a good and powerful God allow so much evil in one person's lifetime, you know, in 80 years of existence, right? It just seems like it's overwhelming.

And so skeptics find the problem of evil so repugnant and our solutions so hollow because they refuse to accept, I believe, And that is life after death. Right? Life after death. This is an essential truth that's part of a coherent Christian worldview. That's part of a coherent Christian worldview. But because believers accept this, right, they're able to find a solution to the problem of evil. It's a solution, whatever it might be, however they might justify it.

It's satisfactory. It's doable. It's believable. But because skeptics reject this truth that there is life after death, the solution to the problem of evil in their mind remains unconscionable. All right. Now, I kind of want to unpack this a little bit, right? Because Christian doctrine teaches that our existence extends past our physical death. So in other words, God's people will live forever in paradise, free from evil, free from pain, free from suffering, right?

You get the picture. Now, if you don't believe that, then the problem of evil remains what I believe to be an intractable problem. And even Christians have a hard time truly internalizing the reality of an eternal paradise after their death. But when they do, it makes a theodicy far more convincing and far more palatable, right? Let me just give you a couple examples here. So the Apostle Paul is one example of a person who endured incredible evil and suffering and pain. And in fact, in his letter to the Church of Corinth, Paul describes how he went without food, without water, without sleep, without clothes. He talks about how he was imprisoned, flogged, beaten, pelted with stones, shipwrecked three times, and received the 39 lashes on five different occasions. the 39 lashes, okay, on five different occasions. And by the way, 39 lashes is a description of getting lashed so many times that you nearly die because it's believed that if you got 40 lashes,

that would kill you, but he got 39 lashes. And that happened to him, he says, five times, right? This is 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verses 23 through 27, where he kind of unpacks all of this suffering that he endured. Now, Paul's misery, I would argue, surpasses what most people would endure even in a lifetime. Yet, in that same letter to the Corinthians, Paul describes these horrific experiences as, quote, momentary light affliction, end quote. All right, this is in Corinthians 4.17. So first of all, I want to just comment that I think it's remarkable that he describes his experience, especially this, you know, pain, evil, and suffering, as a light affliction. Okay. It's light. All right. Obviously something's going on in Paul's mind to enable him to downplay the significance of so much

evil. All right. But second of all, he describes his plight as momentary, right? Momentary. In other words, it does in fact occur only for a relative moment, right? That's true. But he says his trials produce an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, right? So I want you to notice something that Paul says here. He's comparing the evil he endures in this lifetime to a future paradise that will last an eternity, right? So you'd see Paul believed that there was life after death and that life extended for an eternity and that it was virtually paradise. And that's why he says that these momentary light affliction will produce an eternal weight of glory that is far beyond all comparison. So there's one example of Paul.

Let me give you a more modern example. That would be Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Now this guy also, I believe, shared Paul's perspective. Now he was an anti-Nazi dissident, and of course that got him arrested. an anti-Nazi dissident. And of course that got him arrested. And as probably many of you know, the story of his life and how he suffered great evil for his anti-Nazi dissidents. Okay. Well, on the last day of his imprisonment, he delivers this devotional, this homily on Isaiah 53 for a number of other people who were in prison with him, some of his inmates, right? And just before being led away for execution,

he tells a fellow prisoner as he's about to get, as he's about to, you know, be hauled away, he says to him, this is the end, but for me, it is the beginning of life. This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life. This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life. Bonhoeffer, by the way, was later stripped naked and then hanged. Now, Bonhoeffer, I would argue, understood not only the fleeting nature of his earthly life, but also of the eternal state of the next life. And even though he experienced a tremendous amount of evil during his earthly days, these harms, this misery, this evil was dwarfed by the blissful eternity with God

that would begin as soon as his physical death occurred. as soon as his physical death occurred. And I believe what Bonhoeffer understood is the truth that most skeptics and atheist non-believers will reject. Okay. I think it's almost impossible to put the problem of evil into perspective if you believe we only exist

from the cradle to the grave. Even a meager amount of evil during an 80-year lifetime can seem unfair and unnecessary. Because if our earthly existence is all there is, a theodicy will seem like a very poor excuse for a capricious God who is completely impotent to prevent evil. But as I've said here, I think the calculus changes completely when you accept the essential truth that our existence extends beyond our physical death. So that means no amount of evil, no amount of pain, So that means no amount of evil, no amount of pain, no amount of suffering in a human lifetime will ever overwhelm you if, if what?

If it's compared to an endless paradise, right? Think about this. Even if you experienced evil for 50 years during your life, how will that compare after you've lived for 5,000 years without a single tear? Or what about after 5 million years in a perfect paradise, right? No matter the evil in your life, it will dwindle into insignificance as you compare it to an increasingly longer, into insignificance as you compare it to an increasingly longer blissful existence that will stretch into eternity. Now, I get it that skeptics, that atheists, that non-believers, I get it that they reject this truth that there is a future eternal state. But if you're going

to demand a solution to the problem of evil, you need to consider the coherence of the Christian worldview. In other words, you can't presuppose a story about a God who allows evil, but then deny the story's ending. Because in that story, God solved the problem of evil 2,000 years ago. And so if we accept that solution, the only evil we will face is what we are allotted during our earthly existence and after that evil will never touch us we won't even hear it whimper because evil will be extinguished from his existence well that's all i have for you today on the Thinking Out Loud podcast. I look forward to thinking out loud some more next time on the next episode.

So I look forward to talking to you then. Bye.