Why does God permit evil and suffering to exist? If He was real, wouldn’t He do something about it? Why do bad things happen to good people? There is something that just makes sense about the problem of evil. Why didn’t God help me when I was hurting? If there really is a God, why did He allow that person to be abused? Why did He allow the baby to die? Why didn’t He cure my dad of cancer? And then you reason, "If there was a God, He would have. So there must not be." This is the atheist’s conclusion.
Atheism is the belief that God (with "God" understood as defined by theism) does not exist. One helpful way to formulate the problem of evil is to postulate three statements which a Christian theist must accept:
(1) God is all-powerful,
(2) God is perfectly good (i.e., loving), and
(3) Evil exists.
These statements are in tension, without question. How can an all-powerful, loving God stand by while evil exists ("evil" understood both as the harmful moral choices we inflict on one another or ourselves, and also as the suffering that comes our way through the natural realm, like through disease)? The atheist would argue that these three premises are inconsistent with one another, forcing us to reject the existence of God.
I should point out that the atheist’s solution is not the only improper way to resolve the tension between these three statements; you could keep God, but simply argue that He is not good. Or claim that He is not all-powerful; He would like to help us, but can’t. Or you could argue that evil is an illusion. These solutions are not compatible with biblical Christianity, however.
If it is reasonable to believe that God has a morally sufficient reason to allow evil to exist, then there is no contradiction between His existence (as indicated by premises 1 and 2) and the existence of evil (premise 3). (Let me apologize ahead of time to philosophers who might look for a more rigorous defense of a free will theodicy; my goal here is to provide clear answers, not comprehensive ones.)
To the three points offered earlier, we should therefore include the following premise:
(4) The possession and use of free will is a morally sufficient reason for God to allow evil.
If it is reasonable to hold this premise, then this effectively eliminates the problem of evil. There is no logical contradiction in premises (1-3) anyway, either expressed or implied. To get a contradiction you need to be able to prove that God could not have a morally sufficient reason to permit evil. How could you prove something like that? In contrast, the Bible offers the following insights to support the idea that the possession and use of free will necessitates that God allow evil to exist.
1. God’s original plan for humankind included the free ability to disobey Him (Gen. 2:16-17), and face the consequences, both with regard to the natural order (Gen. 3:18-19; Rom. 8:20-22) and interpersonal relationships (Gen. 3:15-16; cf. Gen. 4:1ff.).
The choice to sin (and receive the consequences) was part of God’s original plan, and this suggests that beings created with this capacity (to choose good or evil) are better than beings created without it. The fact that evil is a consequence of free decisions made by someone other than God removes His direct responsibility for the decisions and their consequences. So the answer to the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people," is ultimately rooted in the decisions of people who choose evil. Some of these things bring suffering directly on others (as in the case of abuse), and others indirectly, and even unintentionally (as in Adam and Eve’s decision in the garden, which has resulted in a creation filled with natural evils, but similarly when we pass on, for example, the genetic disposition to alcoholism, or inadvertantly model abuse tendencies to our children).
Other questions come to mind, of course. Could God have made people who would never have chosen evil? Even if He could, how might it serve His purposes better to create people who would fail? Answers to these questions are really not supplied in scripture, though prove interesting discussion material at small gatherings of your Christian friends. It’s at least possible, though, that a universe where people would use their free wills to choose evil, and require God to respond to their failure by sending Jesus Christ to provide a solution, might bring Him greater glory than a universe without free will (populated with robots who always do what is right).
2. God will (and must) remove all evil in the world, but He is intentionally allowing it to exist for the present (2 Pet. 3:7-9; cf. Rom. 8:18-19; 2 Cor. 4:17).
These passages suggest that by withholding His judgment on evil, God is providing a time period (a moratorium) for people to use their free will to trust Him. So God is unhappy with evil; God is unhappy with our suffering, and with the evil things we do to one another. But when He acts against it directly, people’s freedom will be removed (sinners will no longer be able to choose to sin, but the time for faithful people to use their wills to choose Him will also reach an end).
3. God’s plan (including the present existence of evil) ultimately works out to the greatest good (Rom. 8:28), particularly with regard to the eternal state of His children (Rom. 8:29). In time, all evil will be removed (Rev. 21:3-4).
Thus, the problem of evil is a temporary problem. The tension between the premises will be resolved, in time. In the meantime, God’s forbearance allows people the chance to freely submit themselves to His will, and this is (apparently) the greatest good of all. At least, it is reasonable to think so.