God and Evil

This world is a mess. If God is real, what’s his problem?

It is hard to reconcile the existence of this evil world with the existence of the God of the Bible. How do you believe in God when there is so much evil in this world? Is God evil too? (Too evil to care?) Or is he too weak to fix things? They call this field of study “theodicy” and this dilemma “the problem of evil.” It is simply the struggle to reconcile the God of the Bible with the obvious reality that his world is evil. The “problem of evil” is just this: given the reality of an evil-filled world, what is God’s problem? Is he evil or weak or fictitious?

In Genesis 1-11 (known as “the Primeval Narrative”) God “introduces.” He introduces us to himself and to ourselves and to this world. Here is a synopsis: God made it all; it was perfect; we messed it up. Mom and Dad (Adam and Eve) were put in charge of paradise, and with their first sin, paradise was lost. Human sin brought relational strife, labor pains, stubborn soil, thorns and thistles, brother killing brother, and death (mortality) for all.

Sin is contagious. Everyone caught it. So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them” (Gen 6:7). Taking the flood story at face value, God would have us know that he is plenty strong enough and plenty good enough to deal with evil. So while we struggle with “the problem of evil,” the Primeval Narrative has its own spin on the problem of evil: it is us. The solution is: we die. God is righteous enough to declare the death penalty for sin, and he is strong enough to enforce it. That’s the flood story.

So I think that the flood story contains a profound and often overlooked answer to the question “how can I believe in the God of the Bible when this world has so much evil?” The flood story says: “Here is what happens when an omnipotent God asserts his righteous justice on an evil world.” (Let us all be glad that it happened only once).

But what about God’s love? How does God’s love have any relevance if the problem of evil is “us” and the solution is “dead us”?

Noah and family emerge from the ark, Noah offers a sacrifice, and “the LORD said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease’” (Genesis 8:21-22).

Here is the love. Despite the fact that people will be just as evil after the flood as they were before, God makes a promise: “I promise not to do that [that flood thing] again.” He promises to preserve this sinful world by withholding our well-deserved judgment. If people are still evil, it is an outrageous promise! Until you factor in the love. God has a love-plan.

God’s love-plan is stated in the first words following the Primeval Narrative. God picks a man named Abraham, and speaks to him the words that prove to be the Bible’s thesis statement: “in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12:3).

The introductions have been given; the stage has been set; an outrageous promise has been made. Now the love story really begins.