I want to bring the problem of evil to
the discussion about Matthew 6:25-34.
The problem, How could an all-good
and all-powerful God allow suffering, evil, and pain in the world?
certainly applies. Not only does an
all-good and all-powerful God seem to allow hunger, he seems to do so after
saying he wouldn’t. I turned to three
books – The Problem of Pain by C. S.
Lewis; God, Medicine, and Suffering
by Stanley Hauerwas; and, Evil and the
Justice of God by N. T. Wright – with my question – Was Jesus wrong to promise that the Father will feed and clothe
us? – and looked for help to answer
it.
I will limit myself to two helps from each book.
How does Lewis help? One, to claim that God can do the impossible we need to understand what “impossible” means. Impossible miracles are possible for Jesus because there is nothing logically inconsistent about an all-powerful God having the ability to manipulate what he created. God cannot, however, do the logically inconsistent. For example, God cannot create a free creature and then eliminate all elements of choice from creation. Freedom would not be part of the creature’s attributes.[1] Two, a good deal of pain is caused by human evil.[2] God uses his goodness and power to end human suffering, though. This began with the death and resurrection of Jesus, which is how he responded both to evil and to a damaged creation. It is a slow-going response, but it continues today. Perhaps God sees that this is the only workable solution.[3]
Hauerwas contends that we should not try to answer the problem of evil because any answer we can come up with does nothing to help us know God better. Instead, Christians should live lives that “manifest God’s glory” so that we can accept that God is silent in some cases.[4]
What is Hauerwas’ contribution? One help is in his consideration of Walter Brueggeman’s The Message of the Psalms. He suggests that it is impossible to understand evil if we ignore the fact that it is connected to society’s power structures. Our question, then, should be What power structure is acting in a way that makes us question God’s existence?[5] Another help is the clear call for Christians to acknowledge the existence of pain. If we ignore it, we are acting faithlessly. Acknowledging pain, however, begins to point to God’s provision of a response to injustice. We must lament the existence of pain and evil because lament is a “cry of protest.”[6]
Wright argues that we will not solve the problem of evil in the present age, nor is it our responsibility to do so. Instead, we should demonstrate God’s future age to the world today.[7]
He helps, first by suggesting that we
imagine. We need to imagine what the New
Earth will be like; a world with vibrancy, with freedom, without slavery,
without corruption. We then begin to
live as if we live there now.
Imagination guides our journey until the New Earth is here. We are part of the solution to the problem of
evil.[8] Wright also helps by defining the problem in
a slightly different fashion than Lewis or Hauerwas. The problem includes acknowledging both that
evil exists and also that that we do not know how to respond to it in an
absolute way.[9]
[1] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, page 16-17.
[2] For
the sake of easy discussion, let us not look for one-to-one causal links of
evil to pain, which are not always appropriate or always present. Lewis gives no indication that such a link is
possible.
[3] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, page 72-73.
[4] Stanley Hauerwas, God, Medicine & Suffering,
xii-xiii.
[5] Stanley Hauerwas, God, Medicine & Suffering, 44.
[6] Stanley Hauerwas, God, Medicine & Suffering, 83.
[7] N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 11.
[8] N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 118,
128.
[9] N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 30.
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