Category Archives: Evil, Pain, and Suffering

In Heaven, Will We Be Aware of Bad Things on Earth?

How can we enjoy Heaven if we are aware of all the evil that persists on earth? This is a good question, and Randy Alcorn, in his book Heaven, offers a biblical answer. Alcorn believes that believers who are in Heaven right now are aware of what’s going on down here on earth. He reasons that

God knows exactly what’s happening on Earth, yet it doesn’t diminish Heaven for him. Likewise, it’s Heaven for the angels, even though they also know what’s happening on Earth. In fact, angels in Heaven see the torment of Hell, but it doesn’t negate their joy in God’s presence (Revelation 14: 10).

Abraham and Lazarus saw the rich man’s agonies in Hell, but it didn’t cause Paradise to cease to be Paradise (Luke 16: 23-26). Surely then, nothing they could see on Earth could ruin Heaven for them. (Again, the parable does not suggest that people in Heaven normally gaze into Hell.) It’s also possible that even though joy would predominate in the present Heaven, there could be periodic sadness because there’s still so much evil and pain on Earth.

What can we learn from passages about Jesus in Heaven?

Christ grieved for people when he was on Earth (Matthew 23: 37-39; John 11: 33-36). Does he no longer grieve just because he’s in Heaven? Or does he still hurt for his people when they suffer? Acts 9: 4-5 gives a clear answer. Jesus said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” When Saul asked who he was, he replied, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”

Doesn’t Christ’s identification with those being persecuted on Earth suggest he’s currently hurting for his people, even as he’s in Heaven? If Jesus, who is in Heaven, feels sorrow for his followers, might not others in Heaven grieve as well?

An objection that might be raised at this point is Rev 21:4, which says, ““He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” How do we deal with this verse?

Alcorn reminds us that there are two Heavens described in Scripture, the present Heaven where all who have departed reside right now, and the eternal Heaven, or the New Heaven and New Earth, which will not arrive until after Christ’s second coming. Rev 21:4 is clearly referring to the eternal Heaven, or the New Heaven and New Earth.

It’s one thing to no longer cry because there’s nothing left to cry about, which will be true on the New Earth. But it’s something else to no longer cry when there’s still suffering on Earth. Going into the presence of Christ surely does not make us less compassionate. . . .

Christ’s promise of no more tears or pain comes after the end of the old Earth, after the Great White Throne Judgment, after “the old order of things has passed away” and there’s no more suffering on Earth. The present Heaven and the eternal Heaven are not the same. We can be assured there will be no sorrow on the New Earth, our eternal home . But though the present Heaven is a far happier place than Earth under the Curse, Scripture doesn’t state there can be no sorrow there.

So how is it that those in the present Heaven can bear the burden of witnessing all of the evil and suffering still taking place on earth?

[P]eople in Heaven are not frail beings whose joy can only be preserved by shielding them from what’s really going on in the universe. Happiness in Heaven is not based on ignorance but on perspective . Those who live in the presence of Christ find great joy in worshiping God and living as righteous beings in rich fellowship in a sinless environment. And because God is continuously at work on Earth , the saints watching from Heaven have a great deal to praise him for, including God’s drawing people on Earth to himself (Luke 15: 7, 10).

But those in the present Heaven are also looking forward to Christ’s return, their bodily resurrection, the final judgment, and the fashioning of the New Earth from the ruins of the old. Only then and there, in our eternal home, will all evil and suffering and sorrow be washed away by the hand of God. Only then and there will we experience the fullness of joy intended by God and purchased for us by Christ at an unfathomable cost.

Where Is Suicide the Most Common?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 


Most people get this wrong, really wrong. Malcolm Gladwell, in his latest book called David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, shares a bit of knowledge that is well worth pondering. Speaking of human feelings of sadness, happiness, and deprivation, Gladwell writes the following:

Our sense of how deprived we are is relative. This is one of those observations that is both obvious and (upon exploration) deeply profound, and it explains all kinds of otherwise puzzling observations.

Which do you think, for example, has a higher suicide rate: countries whose citizens declare themselves to be very happy, such as Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Canada? or countries like Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, whose citizens describe themselves as not very happy at all?

Answer: the so-called happy countries. . . . If you are depressed in a place where most people are pretty unhappy, you compare yourself to those around you and you don’t feel all that bad. But can you imagine how difficult it must be to be depressed in a country where everyone else has a big smile on their face?

We compare ourselves to the people who immediately surround us. Our feelings of sadness and happiness are relative to our locale.

This is why we should believe people who are desperately poor compared to modern, western standards, but who claim to be happy. They aren’t lying; they really are happy. Likewise, we should believe people who are fabulously wealthy, but who say they are miserable. They aren’t lying; they really are miserable.

This observation proves that there is no magical standard of living or standard of material wealth that guarantees happiness. Once a person has basic food and shelter, his feelings of happiness are more dominated by the people around him than the absolute value of his biweekly paycheck.

Steve Jobs and the Problem of Evil

In Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, we get a few paragraphs explaining Jobs’ thoughts about Christianity. Isaacson explains:

Even though they were not fervent about their faith, Jobs’s parents wanted him to have a religious upbringing, so they took him to the Lutheran church most Sundays. That came to an end when he was thirteen.

In July 1968 Life magazine published a shocking cover showing a pair of starving children in Biafra. Jobs took it to Sunday school and confronted the church’s pastor. “If I raise my finger, will God know which one I’m going to raise even before I do it?” The pastor answered, “Yes, God knows everything.” Jobs then pulled out the Life cover and asked, “Well, does God know about this and what’s going to happen to those children?” “Steve, I know you don’t understand, but yes, God knows about that.”

Jobs announced that he didn’t want to have anything to do with worshipping such a God, and he never went back to church. He did, however, spend years studying and trying to practice the tenets of Zen Buddhism. Reflecting years later on his spiritual feelings, he said that religion was at its best when it emphasized spiritual experiences rather than received dogma. “The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it,” he told me. “I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don’t. It’s the great mystery.”

From this brief report, it appears that Jobs was flummoxed by the problem of evil at the age of thirteen. He wanted to know how God could know that children were starving to death and not do anything about it.

Anyone who has read this blog or other Christian blogs knows that not only do Christians have reasonable solutions to the problem of evil, but that every other worldview fares much worse when dealing with this problem.

Buddhism, Jobs’ chosen religion, lays evil at the feet of human desire. If humans wouldn’t desire anything, then there would be no suffering. The goal of Buddhism is to teach its adherents to suppress all of their desires. That is what the Buddha attempted to do.

Jobs, like most Buddhists, doesn’t really get this. You could hardly imagine a person who had more desires than Jobs. His desires to change the world through technology, to perfect computer and phone designs, to control the user experience, are all what he’s known for.

It seems that for Jobs, Buddhism was a way for him to justify dropping acid and pursuing spiritual experiences. All of the more fundamental teachings of Buddhism were ignored by Jobs, as far as I can tell, and he certainly never came to grips with Buddhism’s answer to the problem of evil.

Sadly, it seems clear that Jobs never really gave Christianity a chance. That’s unfortunate.

Why Is There Human Pain and Suffering?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world?  Some people blame God, or they claim that because there is so much pain and suffering, God must not exist.  The Bible, however, disagrees.

Genesis 3 makes it clear that mankind was to live in perfect peace in paradise on earth.  It was the disobedience of Adam and Eve, the representatives of the human race, which introduced pain and suffering.  Without their sinful act, the world would still be paradise.

It is not God’s fault that humans suffer.  He gave our ancestors a clear choice and they chose poorly.

Can God Use Evil?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Although God is not the author of evil, he certainly allows it. Humans routinely commit evil acts against each other. We have been sinning against God and our fellow men ever since Cain killed Abel. Given all this evil, what does God do about it?

Because of His omniscience (all-knowingness) and omnipotence (all-powerfulness), God can take the evil deeds of human beings and produce a greater good. That is exactly what he did with Joseph in the Book of Genesis. Even though Joseph’s brothers committed the evil act of selling him into slavery, God used their evil to ultimately save their family from starvation and thus preserve the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The ultimate example of God taking evil and producing good is the death and resurrection of Jesus. No greater evil has ever been perpetrated than the murder of God’s innocent Son on the cross. Yet, no greater good has ever been produced than Jesus’s atoning sacrifice for the sins of mankind.

Can God use evil? Yes, he can and he does. In both the story of Joseph and the death and resurrection of Jesus, we see God bringing a greater good out of the evil deeds of human beings.

Why Are Christians Antifragile?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Author Nassim Taleb’s bestselling book, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, teaches a fundamental lesson. Life is about making oneself antifragile to the random and chaotic events that characterize human existence.

In simple terms, a person’s life is characterized by fragility if unforeseen, random events cause exponentially more harm to the individual, the stronger the event is. Fragility is nonlinear in a negative direction. For example, if a person was faced with a minor financial setback (a loss of $1000), he may respond negatively to that setback, but not suffer a complete breakdown.

If, however, that same person lost all of his wealth at one time, and he did have a complete breakdown, went into a deep depression, maybe became suicidal, then that person is fragile to wealth. The fragile person, when hit with a disaster, implodes.

In opposition to fragility is antifragility. A person’s life is characterized by antifragility if unforeseen, random events cause exponentially more benefit to the individual, the stronger the event is. Antifragility is nonlinear in a positive direction. For example, if a person was faced with a minor financial setback (a loss of $1000), he may respond mildly negatively to that setback, just as the fragile person.

If, however, that same person (who is antifragile) lost all of his wealth at one time, he would respond quite differently than the fragile person. Rather than spiral into self-pity and depression, the antifragile person would benefit greatly from the pain caused by this loss.

Although the Bible doesn’t use the word “antifragile,” this concept can be found in many places. In his letter to the Philipians the apostle Paul rejoices that because of his “chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.” Paul sees that his suffering is good for him and those around him. Paul adds that “to live is Christ and to die is gain.” In this classic verse, Paul teaches that even death will bring him great benefit, not loss.

In Romans 8, Paul reassures believers who are suffering that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” In other words, every time time something bad happens to the Christian, God makes it work ultimately in her favor.

James counsels, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” Trials bring great benefits to the believer.

Likewise, Peter reminds us that “even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed.”

The follower of Jesus, then, is truly antifragile. Whatever life throws at us, we are guaranteed to benefit from it, if not in this life, then the next. In fact, it seems that the more severe our tests here, the more potential for rewards – nonlinear in a positive direction.

Not so for those who don’t know Christ. For the unbeliever, for the person who has no hope in Christ, his life is ultimately fragile. When things go wrong, there is no benefit, only meaningless pain and suffering. The fragile life is characterized by pain avoidance at any cost. Death is the end and there is no possible benefit from it. The fragile nonbeliever hangs on for dear life, literally, with only the abyss ahead of him.

What Explains the Existence of Objective Evil?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Objective evil exists.  When we observe the world around us, we realize that there are many things about the world that should not be, things that are wrong.  When we see a child abused, we immediately know that it is evil; we know it is wrong, that it should not be.  When we see thousands die in an earthquake, we know this should not be.  We know it is wrong.  There is no doubt that there is evil in the world, that there are things that should not be.

So, any worldview which claims to explain all of reality had better have a good explanation of how this could be true.

How does atheistic naturalism explain the existence of evil? Naturalists must look to evolutionary biology to explain why humans believe there is evil in the world.  They reason that evolution has caused human beings to have negative feelings or emotions about certain aspects of the world because those negative emotions have somehow helped the human species to survive in the past. We feel badly about children being tortured because our genes are programmed by millions of years of natural selection to make us feel that way.

Notice that naturalism can say nothing about whether torturing children is really and ultimately wrong, or that thousands of people dying in an earthquake is really wrong.  Why? Because for something to be ultimately wrong, there must exist a standard of what is ultimately right, a standard that tells us what the world should be like.  In other words, evil presupposes that the world has purpose.

On naturalism, the world just is the way it is.  The world has come to exist in its present state by the operation of physical forces and sheer chance.  There is no ultimate purpose to the world, and thus there is no way that the world should be.

Evil reduces to each person’s feelings about what they don’t like, which is determined by evolutionary biology and our environment.  Naturalists believe that statements like, “It is wrong to torture children” really mean nothing more than “I have negative feelings when children are tortured.”

Christian theists, on the other hand, recognize that there is an ultimate purpose to the world, that there is a way the world should be.  Purpose for the world is given by the mind of God.  God tells us through his words in the Bible and through the natural world he created, what his purposes are.

Christians know that torturing children is really and ultimately wrong because we know that God did not create children for the purpose of them being tortured.  Children were created so that they could be loved and come to know God.

We also know that in God’s original creation, human beings were not supposed to die in earthquakes.  That was not his purpose for human beings.  So when people die in earthquakes, we can confidently say that those deaths are wrong, that they are evil, that they should not be.

Christian theism makes sense of the fact that objective evil really exists in the world.  Atheistic naturalism does not.

Does the Existence of Gratuitous Evil Prove That a Good God Does Not Exist?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Although most philosophers of religion have conceded that the logical problem of evil (i.e., an all-powerful, all-good God cannot logically exist if evil exists) has been effectively answered by theists, there is still a battle over the evidential problem of evil. The problem for theists, as stated in the evidential argument, is that an all-powerful, all-good God could do a lot more to reduce the gratuitous evil in the world, and since he does not, it is more rational to believe that he does not exist.

David Baggett and Jerry Walls write that for the anti-theist to make the case that “there are far more sufferings than are morally justified, he needs an argument that a good God would not create the actual world.” Can the case be made that it would have been better for God not to create the world than to create the actual world we live in? Baggett and Walls think that it is doubtful.

His case would require more than showing that there are many instances of excessive sufferings, which seems true, but that there are more and worse of those than there are countervailing or parallel goods overall. And the case of whether there are depends on the evidence for Anselmian theology. To the extent that independent reasons exist for such theology, we have more grounds for doubting [the anti-theist’s] insistence that we’re rationally constrained to give up theistic belief.

Anselmian theology holds that God is the greatest conceivable being – all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect in every way. The anti-theist must show that this particular conception of God fails to explain how the world could contain the evil it does. Baggett and Walls argue that it

is plausible to think that there would be a great number of occasions during which God would not intervene to stop people from exercising their wills in terrible ways if he went to the trouble of creating a world featuring such freedom. By parity of reasoning, the case is similar with a world of stable natural laws, assuming that God saw its creation as valuable enough to effect in the first place.

Assuming that God sees value in creating a world of meaningful freedom and stable order, it is doubtful that he would intervene often to thwart people’s evil expressions of freedom or disrupt the natural order unless the overall balance between goods and evils in the world began to tip in the direction toward evils.

But how can there be any counterbalancing goods in the face of evils such as child torture? Aren’t there simply some evils which are so gratuitous that there can be no possible ultimate justification for God allowing them? For Baggett and Walls, gratuitous suffering does not entail ultimately unjustifiable suffering.

Consequently, we accept that a good God wouldn’t allow suffering for which there aren’t morally sufficient reasons, but we reject the notion that . . . problematic gratuitous sufferings are simply to be equated with ultimately unjustifiable sufferings. The distinction between gratuitous suffering and ultimately unjustified suffering may rest on how much value we place on certain intrinsic goods.

The anti-theist must

genuinely leave open enough room for the intrinsic good of God’s allowing the actual world to “play out.” If [the anti-theist] can’t accommodate this actual world, his concession to the potential value of free will amounts to very little. He insists that, even if God went to the trouble of creating a world with free will and stable natural laws, he would not allow a world like this one, even though creating a world with traits like physical laws and meaningful free will introduces the possibility of great suffering. This is, needless to say, a highly ambitious claim, and one we find unpersuasive.

Although in principle reason does rule out some things for a good God—unconditional reprobation, a command to torture children for fun, and certain qualitative and quantitative evils—the claim that this world belongs in that category is far from obvious, to put it mildly.

God has created a world with free will and stable natural laws, and therefore great suffering may occur and does occur. The anti-theist, to persuade us that God would not create the world we live in, must somehow show that God has insufficient moral reasons for allowing the evil we see around us. It seems impossible to ever demonstrate this, given the Anselmian God, and so the evidential argument from evil fails.

Do People Become Atheists for Only Intellectual Reasons?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

In Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian, Russell quotes the famed philosopher John Stuart Mill writing about his father’s road to atheism.  In the previous post, we looked at the transmission of atheism from one generation to the next.  Today we look at another insight from Mill’s quote.

My father [says John Stuart Mill], educated in the creed of Scotch Presbyterianism, had by his own studies and reflections been early led to reject not only the belief in Revelation but the foundations of what is commonly called Natural Religion.  My father’s rejection of all that is called religious belief was not, as many might suppose, primarily a matter of logic and evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still more than intellectual.

He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness.  His aversion to religion, in the sense usually attached to the term, was of the same kind with that of Lucretius: he regarded it with the feelings due not to mere mental delusion but to a great moral evil.

What is interesting in this quotation is James Mill’s reason for becoming an atheist.  It wasn’t about primarily “logic and evidence,” but about a moral problem – the existence of evil.  For Mill, the existence of a morally perfect and infinitely powerful God is impossible given the evil in the world.  Here is a classical way to state this version of the problem of evil:

1. If God is all good, he would destroy evil.

2. If God is all powerful, he could destroy evil.

3. But evil is not destroyed.

4. Therefore, there is no such God.

How do theists respond to this argument?  Christian philosopher Norm Geisler offers the following solution in his Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (I’ve greatly abbreviated his solution below for space reasons):

Theism holds that even though God could not destroy (annihilate) all evil without destroying all good, nevertheless, he can and will defeat (overcome) all evil without destroying free choice.  The argument can be summarized as follows:

1. God is all good and desires to defeat evil.

2. God is all powerful and is able to defeat evil.

3. Evil is not yet defeated.

4. Therefore, it will one day be defeated.

The infinite power and perfection of God guarantee the eventual defeat of evil.  The fact that it is not yet accomplished in no way diminishes the certainty that it will be defeated.  Even though evil cannot be destroyed without destroying free choice, nonetheless, it can be overcome. . . .

Not only can a theistic God defeat evil, but he will do it.  We know this because he is all good and would want to defeat evil.  And because he is all-powerful and is able to defeat evil.  Therefore, he will do it.  The guarantee that evil will be overcome is the nature of the theistic God.

What is fascinating to me about Mill’s rejection of God is that it is not based on logic.  Philosophers of religion are virtually unanimous in concluding that the logical problem of evil, as stated above, is solvable by theists, and therefore does not demonstrate a true logical problem.

If Mill had used logic and reason, he might have discovered this for himself.  Instead, his failure to apply logic and reason to the problem of evil moved him to atheism.  In fact, as we’ve argued here before, it is difficult to even account for the existence of evil without a perfectly good God.

None of this is to deny that the problem of evil is a question that Christians must answer.  We must take this question seriously and explain how the Christian God can exist with the evil we see in the world.  Norm Geisler and many other Christian philosophers over the last 2,000 years have offered answers to this question.

We don’t know what James Mill concluded about the origins and persistence of evil, but it does look like he failed to consider logical solutions to the problem, and instead relied only on his moral intuitions.

Can We Judge God’s Intentions When People Suffer?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Bad things happen to people all the time.  They happen to you and to me, in places nearby and in places far away.  Sometimes when we see a person or persons suffering, and we don’t like their worldview, their moral beliefs, or lifestyle, we Christians do something that we need to stop doing.  We look at the people suffering and we think to ourselves, or even say out loud, “God is punishing them because they are unrighteous.”

There are infamous examples of Christians proclaiming judgment after hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes kill multitudes of people.  Those examples are bad enough, but I want to also call attention to the daily judgments we sometimes make about people who are suffering – people who we confidently believe are being punished by God because of their immoral actions.

Why should we stop judging God’s intentions in this manner?  Because we don’t know, in a given situation, what God’s intentions are.  He simply does not tell us and we need to stop acting like he does.  In addition, and more importantly, Jesus himself denies that we should judge those who suffer or die as more sinful than we are.

In Luke 13:1-5, Luke records the following conversation:

Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.  Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way?  I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?  I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

Jesus first refers to some Galileans who were killed by Pilate as they sacrificed.  He flatly rejects the idea that these Galileans are worse sinners than others because they were killed.  Jesus then refers to eighteen people who died when a tower collapsed on them.  Again Jesus denies that these eighteen were more guilty than everyone else.

John Martin, in The Bible Knowledge Commentary, explains these verses:

Jesus taught the crowds that calamity can happen to anyone because all are human. Jesus cited two common instances about destruction. The first concerned some Galileans who were killed by Pilate while they were offering sacrifices. The second concerned 18 seemingly innocent bystanders in Siloam who were killed when a tower … fell on them. Jesus’ point was that being killed or not being killed is no measure of a person’s unrighteousness or righteousness. Anyone can be killed. Only God’s grace causes any to live. This point is brought out in verses 3 and 5—unless you repent, you too will all perish. Death is the common denominator for everyone. Only repentance can bring life as people prepare to enter the kingdom.

Next time you think you can judge God’s intentions when people suffer, think again.  Remember that even Jesus refused to make these kinds of judgments.