Reconciling a Perfect God with an Imperfect World

Years before I become a Christian, I was convinced that the Christian God was not good, and could not possibly exist on account of it. I remember, very clearly, saying to a friend of mine, “if God loves his children so much, how could he send them to hell?” I could not comprehend there being that kind of darkness within the world. I could not wrap my mind around hell, or the fact that mankind could have done anything to deserve such a fate. Some recent comments by atheist and agnostic friends of mine are echoes of my past thoughts: “People who don’t hear the gospel go to hell? That’s just not fair,” along with, “if God is real, then he must be evil, because the world is so screwed up.” It is hard for people to reconcile a perfectly good God

with a God who is also wrathful and who punishes, and it is hard to understand how humanity can deserve such divine wrath. Furthermore, when we encounter such a broken world, it is hard to imagine a perfect God standing over it.
In Hume’s work, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, his character, Philo, raises a resonating argument: if God “is willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?” In this argument there are three premises: the first being that God is good, the second being that that He is sovereign, and the third being that evil exists. All three cannot be true at once, according to this argument. This to some superficial degree makes sense. If God is able to stop evil, but yet does not, that what kind of God do Christians worship? One who delights in suffering? One who looks upon this broken world and sadistically grins? Or if He is supposedly good, but yet does not stop evil, then where dwells his power? Is He even a god at all? Well, what if one was to assume all three premises are true: that God is sovereign, good, but yet evil exists, and continue to reason from there. Then we must come to the conclusion that evil does not come from God, and that somehow evil is good. For a good cannot create evil, and a good can only stand evil if it is for good.
When one speaks of evil, one often means what man does to other man, such as murder, lying, stealing, and hatred.

Most can agree that in, most circumstances, these actions are evil, so it can be concluded that there are certain things that a person simply ought not to do. This is the foundation of C.S. Lewis’ Moral Law argument for the existence of God. Lewis argues that every person has a sense of right and wrong moral behavior, and this sense presses upon us. This is what he calls the Law of Human nature, or Moral Law. However, unlike other laws like gravity, this law can be disobeyed. In fact, despite the fact that all people are aware of this law, they constantly disobey

it.
Lewis argues that this law exists without any person putting it there, and that it goes beyond animalistic instinct. Lewis does not deny animalistic instinct, but says: “If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in a creature’s mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the two must win. But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses” (p. 10).
Therefore, according to his argument, Moral Law is beyond instincts, because it acts as a third party, helping a person to decide between two conflicting instincts. It is not necessarily that any instincts are better than others, he argues. They are all like keys of a piano. Each key, or each instinct, is correct in the right context. Moral Law tells us which keys to play in what context. He uses the example of a mother’s love and patriotism, which are, it would seem, good things. However, these are both instincts that may need to be repressed in order for people to be fair to other countries and children (p. 11).
Lewis argues that this Moral Law is the evidence that we have for God. The fact that we have something within us that commands us to act a certain way is an indication that there is a Higher Power that is good, and also wants us to behave well. Since, much of what we do is against the Moral Law, the absolutely good governing power must hate most of what we do, since we consistently disobey the laws of goodness. So, we find ourselves enemies to that goodness, and no excuses would be good enough to satisfy that goodness.
So, Lewis establishes God as the highest standard of morality. For, if He is the one who decides whether actions of man are good or bad, then He is the supreme judge. Since he gives us a guide for existence in moral law, and we consistently disobey it, then we find ourselves in the fix of not only having evil in God’s world, but also being that evil and perpetuating that evil continually. Yet, the standard of goodness still remains for us to continue to disobey. In Lewis’ words, “goodness is either the greatest safety net or the greatest danger, according to the way you react to it” (47). By disobeying the good laws, we have made ourselves enemies to it.
In this disobedience, we attempt to actually shift the Moral Law, and instead of letting God be the judge of all things good and moral, we attempt to judge. We attempt to set ourselves apart from God and his goodness and establish our own to “invent some sort of happiness for themselves apart outside of God.” This is the root of all evil, “the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy (p. 46). This is what ties back into Biblical teachings of the Fall. Man decided to create for himself a new happiness apart from God in eating the forbidden fruit, thus separating himself from ultimate goodness.
So, if God gave us the free will to either disobey or obey his Moral Code, and if the decision to disobey the moral code is the root of all evil, would God consequently be the root of all evil, being the one who created free will?

Well, one has to consider the other option, which would be almost a robotic following of the Lord by humankind. God, being the ultimate good, chooses the ultimate good for his creation, which is free will, a better choices than involuntary obedience. God chooses to be a father to his children, instead of the mastermind behind a well-oiled machine. God creating free will is a perfectly good act. It is what we did with that free will that gave birth to evil.

So, if it is by man’s choice itself that there is evil, then should they be justly punished? The most supreme evil, it would seem, is to act in outright defiance against the most supreme good. Well, if that good is eternal, then the punishment for acting against that good cannot be temporary. Thus, the failing of human endeavors and suffering cannot alone be the punishment for acting against the good. The punishment must fit the crime. Eternal crime must mean eternal

punishment.
Many would now cry out, “but I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong!” However, it is by the Moral Law that we know that humankind has repeatedly done wrong against the highest Good and will continue to do wrong against it. Everyone knows they have done something wrong. Everyone guilty. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Since people know what is good, and they continue to act against it in defiance, they have earned punishment. And as the highest good and the standard for all morality, it is God who punishes the wicked eternally for their eternal crime.
Professor of philosophy, Peter Kreeft, writes that free will is a result of God’s love, and therefore, so is hell, and that, in a way, nobody is cast into hell against their will. Rather, since man has rejected a relationship with God, they chose hell for themselves. By rejecting the eternal goodness, they must face eternal evil, and that evil in form is hell. If they wished to hide from God, then they have left his presence forever.
So, then, if it is just to punish the wicked, then how can it be just to spare the wicked? If people act wrongfully against an eternal God, how can they be eternally rewarded with salvation, as the gospel proclaims, instead of punished eternally? Anselm argues in the Proslogion that when God punishes the evil, it is according to their merits. On the other hand, when God saves someone who is wicked, it is in accordance with His goodness rather than their own merits. His mercy is born out of His own justice, and it is in the Lord’s supreme goodness that He can will good things for the wicked.
It is through this justice, God willing good things for the wicked, that God resolves the issue of evil once and for all. It is, after all, the ultimate good to overcome evil. He does through nailing his son, Jesus, to the cross. Through this, hearts are made clean and the debt of eternal punishment is saved. Kreeft says about the cross, “How do we get God off the hook for allowing evil? God is not off the hook; God is the hook. That's the point of a crucifix.”
This is how the problem of eternal evil is resolved. Although the Jesus’ crucifixion happened two thousand years ago, the eternal God was on the cross to bear the burden of eternal evil. This sacrifice is the height of all goodness, for Jesus did not deserve one second on the cross, but bore it for the sake of man. Man created the problem of evil, not God, but God fixes the problem of evil on the cross, and will permanently overcome the problem of evil when Jesus comes to redeem the earth.