Truth Unites - Christianity and the Problem of Evil: The Story That Helped Me

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

Gavin Ortlund explores how Christianity responds to the problem of evil by showing, through Joseph’s story and ultimately Jesus, how God can bring good out of even the darkest suffering.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

In this video, let's address the single greatest objection to the Christian faith, and that is evil and suffering. If you have an all-powerful and an all-loving God, how can he allow not just evil and suffering to happen, but so much of it and the seeming randomness of it, which is where it really strikes us at an emotional level so often? Let's just look at one particular resource that Christianity offers that we see in the good news of Jesus that I want to draw out of the Bible from the story of Joseph at the very end Genesis when he's speaking to his brothers. He says, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.

I believe there's comfort here that can function like a blanket to your soul. May this video bless you, even if it doesn't address everything. This is a pastoral video. But let me start by referencing a scene in the novel Les Mis. I love this story. This is a scene. It's not in the 2012 musical. It's in the 1998 movie, though. Jean Valjean, the convict, is sitting at the table, speaking to a bishop talking about the 19 years he spent in forced labor just for stealing some bread and the bishop says yes men can be unjust and Valjean responds men or god it's like he's saying people didn't do this to me god did this to me and i look back at the original book by victor hugo which goes into more detail about this man's story and it's very tough he was before he

went to prison for 19 years, he was a good man, but he's sort of poisoned over those 19 years. It changes him. It says, you know, during these 19 years, he doesn't hear one kind word. He doesn't receive one kind glance from someone. People hurt him over and over, and his soul sort of shrivels up. There's one chapter that's describing his suffering, and it uses the metaphor. Human society is like a boat sailing through the ocean at night. and Jean Valjean is thrown off the boat into the ocean. And he's sinking down into the water, calling out for help, calling out to the boat, calling out to God, saying, God, where are you? Why won't someone help me?

And the hours are going by. No one is answering. He's getting tired. The boat sails away, and God doesn't answer him. And he begins to drown. And the last sentence of the chapter is, the soul going downstream in this Gulf may become a corpse who shall resuscitate it. and that's the end of the chapter. It's one of the most vivid images of suffering that I have ever read, and I think everybody can relate to that experience or will be able to relate to it at some point

where you feel like you're drowning and you're crying out to God and God doesn't answer. And for both the believer and the unbeliever, I think we can all come together to acknowledge the emotions of this. You know, this is, I think, the toughest experience on the journey of faith. And it's, again, both intellectual and personal. When I'm reading the story, I'm feeling in my heart, too, like, why doesn't somebody help Valjean in the water there, even knowing that's a metaphor, so that his soul doesn't shrivel up? And we feel that at times in life. You know, the brutal reality is we go through things in this life, or we feel the same question, like, why doesn't God do something? And there are no cheap and easy answers to that, but I will say in my own life, and I'm offering the spirit.

this video in a pastoral spirit. It's really kind of a sermon here. Nothing has helped me more than the story of Joseph. This story in the book of Genesis, last 14 or so chapters in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, gives us a gospel framework for understanding evil and suffering. And the simple message it teaches us is that God can use evil for good. God can use evil for good. Boy, that is tricky. This is a difficult doctrine, easy to misapply, and it's only a partial answer, not a full answer to the problem of evil. It's just one resource in the toolkit, but it's such a comfort to us. I think it's worth taking some time to develop. Let's just draw out two responses that this truth calls for.

Trust and hope. Think of this like a two-point sermon. First, when we know God can use evil for good, it calls us to trust. So let me just start by reminding us of the big picture of Joseph's story. You may recall from Sunday school or something like that. Others of us, this may be new. But Joseph's life is really like a parable of good coming out of evil. It has this kind of down-up pattern.

Back in chapter 37 of Genesis, God gives Joseph dreams about all the good that he's going to do through Joseph's life. Here in chapter 50, what I read earlier, Joseph looks back and says, God did good through my life. But in chapters 38 to 49, there is a long arc of suffering. Just like Valjean having 19 years of forced labor, Joseph had closer to 39 years. First, he's sold into slavery by his own brothers, but then God is with him and he rises up to prominence in Potipher's house, but then he won't sleep with Potipher's wife, so she has him thrown into prison. But God is with him there and he gives him help interpreting dreams. But then he helps someone get out of jail and says,

don't forget me, and then he's forgotten. And eventually, he's finally remembered. He finally comes up into prominence in Egypt and he becomes basically the number two person under Pharaoh. So you have this kind of up-down pattern. I think one of the worst moments is in chapter 40. He interprets the cup bearer's dream. You might remember this. And he thinks, oh, great, I can get out of prison and then the cup bearer forgets about him. So he's just stuck there again. And it probably will bring emotions for Joseph like drowning in the water and the ship is sailing away and you're saying, God, what are you doing? You know, how many times? Oh, I love to think about this story. My sister shared with me many years ago when we were going through a time of suffering. You should study the Joseph story.

And this story has been the dominant part of scripture in my life that has helped me. That's why I wanted to share it with you, even though this video won't get a lot of views. It's just a pastoral video. It's not, you know, going to get a lot of clicks, but you can help share it around if you think it'll help people. I just thought this would encourage someone out there. But so many times I've gone back to the Joseph story and used my imagination, especially because he's always weeping so much toward the end, which we'll talk about. But how many times must Joseph have been tempted to say, God, your purposes in my life have been thwarted, those dreams must have been false? When in reality, God is bringing about those dreams through this incredibly unpredictable process,

You know, this long arc of 39 years involving slavery and prison, and yet it didn't mean God had abandoned him. And this up-down pattern reminds me of the character of the gospel, where God uses the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus for good purposes, and the shape of that is for every single Christian. Our life has a kind of down-up pattern, a kind of cross-to-resurrection pattern. And that means, I think, in fact, I just am going to say, we will have moments of confusion like Joseph must have had, we're feeling, how do I hold together my reality and the promises of God?

What God said, and what I'm experiencing, seems so dissonant with each other. I remember seeing a T-shirt once that said, if God is in charge, he must not be paying very close attention. And while that's bad theology, it taps into an emotion that people can feel like Valjean drowning in the ocean. Some of us feel this at times. I mean, we can just be honest to say, life is hard, life is confusing. Sometimes we're saying, Lord, what are you doing? Think of it for Joseph. Picture two moments in Joseph's life. First, picture Joseph, eating his breakfast, the morning after his first dream, I'll put that dream up, and he's telling his brothers about the dream, and he's saying, basically, all of you guys are going to bow down to me.

All right? That's the first moment. Now picture moment two in Joseph's life. He's in the pit. He's shivering. They've stripped off his colorful robe. He's calling out to his brothers, and he's realizing this is not a practical joke. they really are leaving me. Oh, some of you know this feeling. When you realize it's really that bad. Sometimes it's shocking the way people sin against us. And it actually takes, it's like we have to like come to terms with it because it's so shocking. And you picture Joseph and he's saying, okay, first I got a dream and God said my brothers will bow down to me, then they chucked me into a pit.

surely he's having the same dissonant feeling of what God said versus what I'm experiencing, and he could very easily have said, well, those dreams must have not been from God, but they were from God. And the truth is, God was actually bringing about his good purposes for Joseph's life through this horrific suffering, and Joseph never abandoned God during this. He keeps trusting in the Lord. You know, the text continually emphasizes God is with Joseph, and everywhere he goes, you see, is integrity, for example, in not sleeping with Potipers' wife. You see his tenderheartedness.

You see his openness to the Lord, this trust. You know, it makes me think about how hard, sometimes people think it's easy to trust God. No, it isn't. Trusting God will sometimes take all your courage. I love the Mission Impossible movies. I think all of them were pretty good, except number two, and it's just one of those franchises that just keeps getting, how do they stay like four, five, six, all these later movies are so good. But there's a scene in number three where Tom Cruise's character is telling his wife, in my debate with Trent Horn, I mixed up Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks. I do know the difference. But he's telling his wife that she has to trust him because she can't understand, like, what are you doing? What are you fighting for? And she's saying, what's going on? Nothing about this makes sense. What aren't you telling me? And he's saying, I need to ask you for something. I need you to trust me. And she goes, okay, okay, yeah, I trust you. Now tell me what's going on. And he goes, no, no, no, no, no, no. I need you to trust me.

And it's like this sense of when you trust God, it means you may not understand. That's hard. When you feel like Valjean, and you're saying, I don't, I just, you not know why God would not answer this prayer. That email that came through with bad news, that phone call that came from the hospital, was so bad. It was so surprising. You know, sometimes suffering of life that makes us ask this question. Sometimes it's like a cataclysmic meteor hitting the earth. It's like this big jolt of surprise.

And you feel betrayed. And it's just shocking. And it takes you years to come to terms with. Other times it's the slow, steady grind that nobody knows. And it's that depression that seems to drain life of its color. It's so hard. This life can really hurt you. This life can really take a toll on you.

like it does on Valjean, like it must have for Joseph. But the encouragement in the Joseph story is this. Here's the thing. There is no way Joseph could have seen all that God is doing. He did not know that it was through slavery, he gets to Potiphar, it's through prison he gets to Pharaoh, and it's through Pharaoh he keeps the world alive during famine. There's no way he could have known all that. All he could do is keep trusting God. One step at a time, keep an open heart. You know, I don't think Joseph became embittered like Valjean did. One of the ways you see that is not just his integrity, but the amount of weeping. If you read through the Joseph story, Genesis 37 to Genesis 50, count how many times he weeps.

I think it's either seven or eight. And there's times where, you know, the narrative is going pretty fast. Like through chapter 41, it's pretty quick. You get through slavery, prison, Potter for the dreams, all this. Then you slow down as Joseph is interfacing with his brothers and it's very dramatic. Chapters 42 to 45, these long sequences where Joseph hides his. identity. Finally in chapter 45, he sends everyone out of the room, and the Egyptians can hear him weeping from the other room. This is like one out of seven times that he's weeping. By the way,

remember in Lord of the Rings when Gandalf says, not all tears are an evil? May I just say, life can hurt you bad enough. You know, if anybody ever thinks that, you know, tears are wrong, or it's, you know, tears, you shouldn't weep that much. Life, it's like, you've probably never suffered that much. Life can really hurt you, and it hurt Joseph. But these tears, you know, you don't sense vindictiveness in his response. He's tender. He's not like Valjean, who's hardened and embittered. I actually think Joseph still has an open heart to his brothers, which is so shocking to me. It's almost crazy to hear those words come out of my mouth. I'll come back to that with what he says to them, what he basically says, you know, don't be too hard on yourselves.

Shocking. But let's just make an application point here. How do we keep trusting God when we're in the ocean like Valjean? Somebody out there might be there. How do we keep trusting God? When you feel this sense of tremendous confusion, which sometimes the saints of God feel, read the book of Psalms or read C.S. Lewis as a grief observed. One thing we need to know is this. God's good purposes in our life in Jesus Christ cannot be thwarted by evil.

Now, we need to be so careful in applying this. Believe me, I feel the pressure on this to not misdeploy this truth pastorily. When we say that God can work evil to good, it doesn't mean it's not evil. And we should hate and oppose all evil with every fiber of our being. I've heard so many Christians say, well, you know, God's sovereign, and then they like stop fighting evil with vigilance. It's like, no, no, no. This is never an excuse. True forgiveness does not deny wrongdoing. This truth is not a replacement for accountability. We should never say, well, God can use evil for good.

Therefore, we're not going to call the police. It's like, no, call the police. But the comfort we are deriving from this promise is this, ultimately, not even evil can thwart God. And if you are in Jesus Christ, if you've surrendered your life to him, you're following him, nothing can thwart God's good purposes for you. There may be moments where real evil afflicts you and it's evil, but it's not outside the scope of God's loving, fatherly, providential hands. Just like slavery and prison didn't falsify Joseph's dreams, suffering and evil in your life will not take you outside of the good purposes of God. I think

we can say that on the basis of Holy Scripture. And the ultimate reason we know this is true is because of the cross. We look to Jesus hanging on the cross and we say, even that, the worst evil that ever happened, God took it on himself. And he turned it into the greatest good. And it led to the resurrection, the prototype of heaven. And therefore, even when I don't understand why God allows something in my life, there's so much I can't say. But one thing I can conclude is this does not mean that God does not love me. it does not mean God has abandoned me, and it doesn't mean I should stop trusting in him. And so just as an encouragement for all of us, when we have those moments, as we will, one of the things we can do is we look at the up-down pattern of Joseph's life.

We look at the cross-resurrection paradigm that is stamped over our lives, and we commit our way to the Lord and say, I'm going to keep an open heart to you. I might be weeping like Joseph, but I'm not going to be hardened and shriveled up like Valjean, though even Valjean has redemption. More on that. The second thing, I think this story calls us to his hope, and this is where I want to get a little more granular about what is this good that God brings out of Joseph's life. It's not mainly just about Joseph's character, though he does seem to grow and more tender, or his circumstances or his

relationship with his brothers. In a word, it's about food. This story is about God keeping people alive during this horrific famine. And let me read to you what Joseph says right after that climactic moment in chapter 45 I mentioned, he reveals his true identity, and they're terrified, as you can imagine, and he's comforting them. He says, now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest, and God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors, here it is, so it was not you who sent me here, but God. Three times in those four verses,

by my count, Joseph says, you didn't ultimately send me here. God did. Now, let's be so careful with this. Joseph actually is not denying evil in his brothers. He does say in chapter 50, pretty bluntly, you meant evil. It was wrong. It was sin should not be tolerated. But Joseph is articulating two different levels of intentionality. In other words, Joseph is saying the same event can be used for different purposes. The human intention is evil, but God can have a purpose through that. Again, the cross of Christ is the ultimate example of this. It was sinful for the Pharisees. It was sinful for Pontius Pilate to do this horrific thing. Nonetheless, God was at work through that. This is deeply mysterious. I do not pretend to understand this. But I think we can apply this to our

souls into our lives I think we need to on the basis of scripture. Genesis 50-20 says it even more compactly. And note the purpose statement here, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. There is a bigger picture going on in Joseph's life and in your life and in my life than we can see. Remember that Joseph is the great-grandson of Abraham, and God is promised to make the offspring of Abraham into a great nation, and God is a special purpose to bless the whole world through the nation of Israel, especially through the Messiah that will come through Israel, and that's Jesus. Now, where does Israel become a great nation? Where did they first grow into a large people in Egypt? So in Genesis 46 to 50,

you get this lengthy account of all those who go down to Egypt. Jacob blesses his 12 sons, toward the end of this narrative. These will become the 12 tribes of Israel. And our passage says in verse 21 that Joseph provides for his brothers and their children. What we have here is God is keeping them alive during famine. Put it like this. Joseph's story is getting caught up into this larger redemptive picture

he could never have imagined. Humanly speaking, without Joseph going into slavery and prison, the 12 tribes of Israel die in famine. humanly speaking, without Joseph suffering, there is no Jesus. And we step back and we see that, we say, Joseph could never have seen that. On a random Tuesday in prison, ancient prison was horrific. Who knows how he suffered? But God had a larger purpose working out through the span of his life that Joseph could

truly hope in because of those dreams God gave him. And the same is true for us. When suffering strikes our lives, we are allowed to hope. we are allowed to say not only the question Lord why did you allow this but I actually find it and this is a strong challenge and I'm not saying this to someone coercively if you're in the midst of horrific suffering may the Lord be with you and may you feel seen and may God comfort you but in the garden variety things we go through I think we need to come back to this to ask not just Lord why are you allowing this but to say Lord how might you use this and to keep hoping

in God you never know what God is doing through the update pattern of our lives that we can't see in the moment. That's why this story has helped me so much. I've been showing videos to my kids and it's fun. My older kids are getting old enough. I can kind of show them, you know, favorite, favorite movies of mine. One of them is the Count of Monte Cristo. I love the 2002 version where Edmund Dantes gives the birthday toast for his son. Oh, these words are poignant. Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next, what makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into the storm and shout as you did in Rome, do your worst, for I will do mine. That is inspiring, but Edmund

Don Tess said that without a gospel framework. Where do you actually get the resources to look at evil and suffering and the darkness that comes against us and be able to say, do your worst? What enables that is the gospel. Because if you believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus and that your life is hid in him, you realize that ultimately no harm can befall me. I might suffer in this life. I might be martyred. I might die. Even my reputation might be taking me. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, just the amount of slander online and the way things go. It honestly is, I have to admit, sometimes it's a little scary to think, you know, what if, just the other day I was having to think, what if people make fake AI videos of me? And, you know,

there's malice out there and you know things can happen. And so, But with the gospel, you come back to this ability to say, do your worst. And you don't have to be a strong person to be able to say that because the truth is, that's what the gospel does. No evil can befall you. You might be killed. You might be slandered. You might suffer.

But nothing can take heaven away from you. And the suffering you go through in this life will only make it better. And God will actually be glorified as you walk with him through your suffering. And I thought, oh my goodness, when you see the gospel, you're actually able to say, do your worst to evil. Because you realize it can't touch me in Christ. It can kill me. It can make me suffer. But nothing can take away my eternal treasure in heaven. So summing up here, we said, basically, if this is true, that God can use evil for good, it means two things. It means keep on trusting, be tender like Joseph, have a lot of weeping like him, rather than hardened like Valjean,

and then keep on hoping because you don't know how your story is being caught up into God's larger redemptive purposes and history. To finish, I'll just remind you of the ultimate expression of this. We can put it like this. Genesis 37 is not the only story of an innocent man being betrayed and abandoned and sold for silver. Nothing more evil has ever happened than the crucifixion of the Son of God. It's like the lights went out in the universe. The all-holy, eternal son of God is pinned to a cross. We can't imagine the horror of it and the gleeful victory cries of the demons. And yet even that, God took and turned it for not just any old good, but for the greatest good, our salvation.

And if God can do that for Jesus and the greatest evil that's ever happened, he can do it in our lives, which gives us reason to keep trusting him. keep hoping.