Have you ever had someone ask this to you? Have you ever asked this question yourself? I can answer "Yes" to both, and in both cases, answering the question is difficult. But I will do my best to offer a little insight I have picked up over the last few years. Again, I don't claim to be an expert. I'm just offering my take on the idea of evil/harm/bad things happening/etc.
The notion of evil existing in a world created by a loving God has baffled people for a long time, and I can imagine that countless arguments have tried to make sense of it. Some people blame God for allowing bad things to happen, believing that if God was really loving, God would have stopped evil from happening. Others feel that God allows bad things to happen so that we can learn from our experiences or so that we learn to rely solely on God. Some believe that God causes bad things to happen as punishment for wrongdoing or sin. Then there's the other side - the side that blames evil on the devil, Satan, or sin. From this standpoint, evil is something that 'gets a hold of us' and causes us to do things that are wrong.
But, I want to throw out the idea of our freedom of choice. God allows us to make choices - both for good and for ill. I can imagine that often times God's heart breaks because of the bad choices we make and the evil we cause in this world. Yet, God "allows" evil to continue, because God wants us to figure it out and imitate the character of our Creator - that of unconditional love.
I recently defined evil as anything that keeps us at a distance from God and each other. Thus, evil arises when we fail to realize the boundaries of our humanness. It arises out of an imbalance of will and desire, and stems from unreasonableness. Yet, in the midst of our brokenness, it is through the unexpected conduit of our humanity that God’s justice will be materialized in the world. God wants us to figure it out!!! Justice involves the equal distribution of both benefits and burdens (See Acts 4.32), and is not merely a response to the ‘fall’ of humanity. And, justice should not be viewed from a default setting of scarcity, but should represent the overabundance of God and the distribution of God’s superabundant blessings. In other words, justice should highlight God’s ‘too much’ rather than humanity’s ‘too little.’ When we ‘live’ justice, we honor the image of God and others, as well as foster it in ourselves. We need to be just because God is just.
However, as humans, we are destined to make mistakes and hurt others. Yet, our failures can become opportunities for God’s transformational grace. God’s grace not only allows us to forgive, but also reveals the need for restitution as part of the healing process. Evil has a hard time standing in the face of forgiveness, and its power (that we give to it) is lessened when we focus upon God’s ways rather than on revenge. The Torah shows us that restitution is an essential element in maintaining social justice (Exodus 22), and the story about Zacchaeus in the Gospel of Luke notes that after one’s heart is changed (after forgiveness), one makes amends for the wrongs (evil) committed.
Furthermore, when we ‘live’ justice, we recognize that no ‘givens’ exist in the world. When we acknowledge that everything is a gift and that God is the giver of all gifts, we are better able to appreciate who we are and what we have. In other words, when we receive God’s gifts through the superabundance of God rather than through the allocation of limited worldly givens, we are less likely to focus upon that which we deem we lack. This approach allows us to paint our circumstances and situations into God's whole story, so that we do not completely accept nor reject certain conditions, circumstances, or stories. Instead, if we place them into God’s life of abundance, renewal springs forth.
No entirely human method can adequately reconcile the contrasting issues of evil and God’s justice. We must allow God to inject divine realities into our human condition so that we can better understand evil in the light of God’s justice. If we choose to develop virtues and habits that shape our decisions, we are offered glimpses of God’s justice in the midst of a wounded world. God sees the big picture and does not wish for evil to occur. But when it does, God works through evil and weaves it into the overall story of love and grace.
Until next time...
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