How can a loving and powerful God allow the deep and profound suffering that seems to pervade life on earth? What is the real fabric of this world given that there are so many instances of evil? Since there obviously IS evil, is there still room for a good & gracious God?
According to a fully scientific worldview, most examples of evil, theft, assault, rape, murder, gang behavior, and social power struggles, are TOTALLY NATURAL so long as they offer satisfaction to the self. Biological drives lead the behavioral way. In order to preserve, satisfy, or advance the self, there is no 'sin' that is not allowed in the name of 'survival of the fittest', no psychology that is deviant so long as it serves its owner's survival and advancement. The advancement of the self and its progeny is the only standard of success. Group organization offers some buffer to deviant individual drives by containing them within a social contract that requires consequence for action that injures another. But as we witness daily, significant occurrences of these transgressions still occur because the natural behaviors of individuals has not been altered.
The other category often referred to as evil are natural disasters and diseases. These are not only explicable, but as ordinary and anticipated as the tumult of nature playing out its surrender to force and chaos. It is simply the illustration of mechanism tumbling upon mechanism. A materialistic world is a world glued together by meaningless cause and effect relationships. Chaos is the only constant with the drive towards entropy ever plodding onwards and only marginally stayed by the mechanisms of organization, complexity, and life.
So where is the problem? Suffering at the hands of these 'evils' is explicable, and even necessary, in the world because the self is immersed in a chaotic place and wholly responsible for itself, its progeny’s, or sometimes its society's survival and advancement. Anything that comes in conflict with that goal must be dispatched! Action as it is carried out to that end does not 'matter'. It is not problematic in a moral sense when it falls into the categories of preservation and advancement.
And this is the world that God created. The science describing this natural condition is describing nothing less than the handiwork of God. Its reality cannot be ignored or denied nor can God's relationship to it be severed unless one asserts atheism.
And to that end, suffering at the hands of evil -and evil itself- only ‘matters’ qualitatively if the extent, the entirety, of the human experience is contained between birth and death, as the atheist contends. If that were fact, then it would indeed matter very much the manner in which one encountered their demise, or the quality with which they experience their days. But regardless of suffering, the fittest must survive, while the demise of the unfit remains the 'natural order'.
Contrarily for the theist, there is far more to the story of God's sovereignty than the time that elapses between birth and death. We exist only partially in the universe God created. Suffering within its (the physical world's) framework is wholly minimized and negated by the glory that one becomes immersed in when one transcends the physical. Earthly life and conflict is not a final statement, not primary, so the manner in which it is engaged or dispatched is only able to be genuinely understood from the perspective of hindsight.
And for the Christian, there is an additional dimension. The God a Christian follows is a suffering God, a God who confronted and was consumed by the world at its worst. Jesus, was created to heal those who suffered and then to suffer an excruciating extermination himself. He told his followers that his demise was imminent and reiterated that death and suffering were to be expected. He explained that life in this world was going to include inherent conflict with evil, but that it was only a passing phase. Jesus was a willing sacrifice of socio-political 'survival of the fittest' because he knew that his ultimate survival was not dependant on humans or nature but was entirely dependent on his spiritual transcendence into the reality of God.
And he taught a different message than 'survival of the fittest.' He named the meek, the oppressed, and the suffering as those who were farthest along the path towards being spiritually fit. He demanded a social order that was not focused on the advancement of the self, but on the love of those who needed most and were most difficult to love.
The follower of Christ is therefore present in and around, but aware of being wholly transcendent of the suffering of this world. This physical world is just a tent, the physical body is nothing more than a shell... its ailments are of no eternal consequence. Ultimately Christ is therefore a triumphant God.
The life experience of the Christian includes tangible tastes of this glory, so it is anecdotally enforced as well as doctrinally encouraged. These experiences of God in life lead towards growth, redemption, and eventual eternal understanding of the 'big picture' of that individual's thread in God's tapestry.
So what then is the quality of God’s presence in this world? Actually it says something quite unexpected, that the real philosophical problem is not evil at all. The illogical condition of the world is not the natural condition of selfishness, rather it is selfLESSness! God presents a much needed problem of good! You see, Darwinism/ materialism cannot explain agape...charity... sacrifice...or valour. There is no biological instinct to selflessness towards a stranger, no 'herd' that would leap to protect its predator should the opportunity arise. And yet the human experience is riddled with as many tales of redemptive grace doled out from within the ranks as there are horrific examples of depravity. How and why, I ask of the atheist? How does the fittest survive to spread its progeny when it lays down its own life for another? Where is the biological impetus to love the contagious, the depraved, the ostracized? A God-less world simply cannot produce these things.
So where is God in this world? God is visible in the world through the defiant actions of God’s people - defiant against the natural condition of this world. The world is a horribly turned-around place, depraved, violent, unsafe. But each day God reaches into the lives of many through the venue of unexpected grace, truth and love. These things are supernatural. These things are Godly. People serve as God’s portal into this place, turning on its head the natural way, and replacing it with a higher standard of being.
Is God still both good and powerful? Yes - but the standard of goodness is not human. And the standard of power is also not selfish. The sovereignty of something other than our selves present NOT to serve our selves is a very difficult, almost impossible thing to understand....because it is so entirely unnatural.
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