We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Why Did God Allow Evil?
Is it possible to force people to love? Powerful people may be able to force others to do just about anything. Through psychological or physical torture, they may succeed in forcing them to curse their own children to deny their faith. They may even succeed in forcing others to act and say loving things to them. But no one can force another person to actually love them.
But God created us, someone might respond, so he need not coerce us to love him. He could simply create us with an unquenchable desire to love him. In this case we would choose to love God simply by virtue of how we were created. I suggest that this supposition also conflicts with our experience.
Consider this analogy: Suppose I were able to invent a computer chip that could interact with a human brain in a deterministic fashion, causing the person who carries the chip to do exactly what the chip dictates without the person knowing this. Suppose further that I programmed the chip to produce “the perfect wife” and inserted it in my wife’s brain while she was sleeping. The next morning she would wake up as my idea of a perfect wife. She would feel, behave and speak in a perfectly loving fashion. Owing to the sophistication of the chip, she would believe that she was voluntarily choosing to love me in this fashion, though in truth she could not do otherwise.
Would my wife genuinely love me? I think not. Proof of this is that I (and hopefully all husbands) would eventually find this “love” unfulfilling. I would know that my wife was not experiencing these loving feelings or engaging in this loving behavior on her own. In reality, I would simply be acting and speaking to myself through this sophisticated computer chip. My wife’s behavior would not be chosen by her, so she would not really be loving me at all. She would become the equivalent of a puppet. If I want love from her, she must personally possess the capacity to choose not to love me.
If God desires a bride made up of people who genuinely love him (see Jn 17)—who do not just act lovingly toward him—he must create people who have the capacity to reject him. He must endow agents with self-determination. They, not he, must determine whether or not they will love him and each other. And this, I submit, explains why God created a world in which evil was possible. If love is the goal, it could not be otherwise. God chose to create a world in which evil is possible only in the sense that he chose to create a world in which love is possible. The possibility of evil is not a second decision God makes; it is implied in the single decision to have a world in which love is possible. It is, in effect, the metaphysical price God must pay if he wants to arrive at a bride who says yes to his triune love.
—Adapted from Satan and the Problem of Evil, pages 54-55
Image by RocPX via Flickr
Category: Q&A
Tags: Evil, Free Will, Love, Problem of Evil, Satan and the Problem of Evil
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will, The Problem of Evil
Related Reading
Theo Graff Podcast: Featuring Jessica Kelley
We have a special treat for you today. T. C. Moore is a great friend of ReKnew and he’s recently started a “Jesus-centered, hip hop flavored, geeky, theological, kingdom exploration” called the THEO GRAFF PODCAST. He’s published four podcasts so far and you’ll want to listen to them all when you get a chance, but we wanted…
God is Different Than You Think
The revelation of “[a] God humiliated even unto the cross,” as Pascal put it, flies in the face of what most Jews of Jesus’ time, and of what most people throughout history, have expected God to be. In this light, we can discern the thematic centrality of the cross in Jesus’ many teachings that reverse…
Hearing and Responding to God: Part 1
A reader contacted Greg asking about making “right decisions” assuming an open future and in light of the fact that God seems to rarely speak clearly. In this first response, Greg acknowledges that even with the best of intentions, our decisions can have outcomes that are unexpected even to God! How can we move forward…
If every effect has a cause, how can there be free choice?
The most common argument given in defense of determinism is that it’s implied in the nature of causation. Every event has a cause, and this cause accounts for the event being the way it is. This cause must itself have had a cause that accounts for it, and so on ad infinitum. Hence, everything must…
Evil, St. Augustine, & the “Secret” Higher Harmony
The problem of evil constitutes the single most difficult challenge to Christian theism. Volumes upon volumes have been written with the express purpose of rationally reconciling the belief in an all-good and all-powerful God with the reality that life is frequently an inescapable nightmare. Indeed, it is not overstating the case to claim that no…
The Extremity of God’s Love
In response to questions he has received about whether Jesus was actually separated from the Father on the cross, Greg fleshes out his perspective on this. The love that unites the Trinity is the very same love that resulted in the separation of the Father from the Son. This separation actually expresses the great love…