Why Does God Allow Evil?

The previous post was about the nature of evil and what it is. But there's a more pressing question that a lot of people have agonized over, myself included. 

How could a good God allow evil? Why do bad things happen to good people?

The short answer is: free will. The long answer is slightly more complicated. 

Let me ask you this: do you act differently when your parents are around? Or do you act differently in public than you do in private? For most people, the answer is yes. 

A lot of people wonder why God doesn't make himself obvious all the time. Doesn't he want people to know he exists? But what they don't understand is that God doesn't want people to be sure he exists if they want to act as if he doesn't. 

I've heard many atheists make the argument: "If God revealed himself to me and proved to me that he was real, I'd become a Christian. I'd do all these good things. So if he's real, why doesn't he show himself?"

But don't you see? God doesn't want people to do what he wants out of fear. He wants people to do what he wants because they agree with him that its the right thing to do. 

Tim Keller calls this "The Divine Conspiracy". He wrote a book on the topic. Basically, God wants to be a parent hiding in the next room listening to their child play by themself. And in order to do that, God has to create a universe that operates largely on its own. The universe has to be fairly self-sustaining so that he doesn't have to constantly interfere with it to get it to work. That means the universe must operate according to its own laws unless interfered with. That's what we call "physics". 

In Luke 13 in the Bible, Jesus talks to people about a tower that fell down and killed the people nearby. Jesus asks "What do you think they did to deserve that? Nothing. The tower just fell down." Sin wasn't involved. It was just a structural weakness in the tower. Jesus is saying that the universe sometimes operates according to a set of laws independent of God's direct influence.

Now, God can interfere with physics. He just chooses not to most of the time. Physics is the rule. God is the exception because he's the one that made up the rules. He can change them whenever he wants. 

So the long answer to the question is: Bad things happen to good people because things happen to everybody, and some of those things are good and some of them are bad. 

I can't tell you how much of a relief this was to me when I first heard it. For years, I thought that every bad thing that happened to me was either because God was upset with me or because God was trying to get my attention. Every stubbed toe, every belly ache, every sunburn. I thought God was punishing me for something and I didn't know why. I was scared and in pain, because I thought I was letting God down. 

Praise be to God. One day I realized that sometimes you just stub your toe. Sometimes you just hit your foot the wrong way. I still remember the day that happened. It was like the world was new. I remember, I smacked my foot into a brick step on the way to class, and I laughed out loud for joy. 

What you need to realize is that God's work is not to make Earth as comfy as he can. God wants people to go to Heaven. Of course God cares when people suffer, but he's fine with them suffering for 0-80 years if it means they end up with 1000 x ${\displaystyle \mathrm{\infty }}$ years of perfect, unending love, joy, happiness, and peace. 

But God also respects when people want to be separate from him. For whatever reason, God thinks that free will is worth preserving even if it means dealing with the awful, indescribably disgusting, horrid cruelty and injustice that humans visit upon each other. And though I haven't always, today I agree with him. Whether we like it or not, that's the course of action he's chosen. And he's not known for being wrong.

God respects you enough to let you make your own choices, even if that means separating or hiding himself from you. God bless you.