Comment: Problem of Evil (3) – Religious View
Problem of suffering as seen within a religious view – will of God
Unlike naturalism, a traditional Christian religious view conceives of a conscious, eternal reality over-arching our mundane world. This reality is conceptualised as God – a God who created our transient world; who is needed to maintain it; and who is intimately involved in all its workings. As God is perceived as all-perfect, our world must have also been created all-perfect and, most importantly, for a purpose. So why do we have suffering?
Humans were created physical, like other animals, but also uniquely endowed with the ability to “find” God, a spiritual side. However God wants people to freely choose him and so gave us free-will, the ability to choose or reject God freely. So, within a religious view, people are freely able to do good or to create harm and suffering. That is the cause of “moral evil”. “Natural evil”, suffering from natural causes and suffering of other animals, is the dramatic backdrop or environment needed for true human moral growth, so-called “soul-making”.
An alternate explanation involves achieving a greater good. Like a caring parent who administers bad tasting medicine to a sick child, God has to allow some suffering to achieve a greater goods that more than compensates to associated evils.
If all this seems confusing, we need to realise that it is presumptious and arrogant to apply human moral standards and expectations to God’s will. By nature we are limited physical beings with finite knowledge of our physical existence. God’s will is infinite and so far beyond our comprehension.
So, ultimately, a religious response to the problem of evil is to suggest people were created with “free-will” so that we would willingly find God. The apparent imperfections of the world arise from the choices we freely make – good and bad – and from our inherent lack of understanding of God’s infinite motives and workings.
Alex McCullie
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