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God's role in evil
Relationship between ethics and Christianity
The suffering of job
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The existence of famine, war, disease, and other distasteful aspects of humanity pose a tough, insistent question as to why God chose to create evil. As an infinitely powerful creator, surely a morally perfect God can and should create a world where evil does not exist in the first place. To propose otherwise seems to paint God as a malevolent being who apparently takes joy in watching the chaos. Bernard Leikind (2010) is a physicist who published an article that paints a representation of the mystery of evil as seen by most non-believers. In his article, Leikind uses the Old Testament biblical figure Job to support a malevolent God who just as easily gives as he takes away. He references Job 38:1-4 (NIV):
Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?
This certainly does not reflect a caring and compassionate God as he seems to lord his shifting favor over Job. Leikand (2010), a self-professed Humanist, ends his article with this thought, “Here is what I believe: Each of us is responsible for the private and public meanings of our own lives…we can’t rely on supernatural powers to help us.” Atheists use this concept in the form of several academic arguments to combat belief. This particular argument is called the “This is not the best possible world” argument.
Another popular argument strongly tied to the mystery of evil revolves around a former Christian, Bart D. Ehrman (2008). Although Ehrman is certainly not the cr...
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... that God is omnipotent in that he can do what he wants, when he wants, how he wants. He possesses the potential, the power to do absolutely anything without exception. However, there are many things that God will choose not to do because of his morally perfect nature. This does not negate his ability to do anything, only reinforces his benevolence in restraining from being immoral. Because of his love of us, he created man with the ability to choose between what is good and evil for himself, without hindrance or interference. This act of free will, results in consequences of both physical and spiritual weight, which is why God defines what is right and wrong and encourages us to do what is moral. There is a beauty, a sense of pleasure in teaching and investing into someone and having that individual succeed, regardless of the mistakes and challenges along the way.
In his essay, "The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: a Theodicy," Peter van Inwagen alleges a set of reasons that God may have for allowing evil to exist on earth. Inwagen proposes the following story – throughout which there is an implicit assumption that God is all-good (perfectly benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient) and deserving of all our love. God created humans in his own likeness and fit for His love. In order to enable humans to return this love, He had to give them the ability to freely choose. That is, Inwagen holds that the ability to love implies free will. By giving humans free will, God was taking a risk. As Inwagen argues, not even an omnipotent being can ensure that "a creature who has a free choice between x and y choose x rather than y" (197)1. (X in Inwagen’s story is ‘to turn its love to God’ and y is ‘to turn its love away from God,’ towards itself or other things.) So it happened that humans did in fact rebel and turn away from God. The first instance of this turning away is referred to as "the Fall." The ruin of the Fall was inherited by all humans to follow and is the source of evil in the world. But God did not leave humans without hope. He has a plan "whose working will one day eventuate in the Atonement (at-one-ment) of His human creatures with Himself," or at least some of His human creatures (198). This plan somehow involves humans realizing the wretchedness of a world without God and turning to God for help.
...n the world. Job questions what god is really doing for him. Then god talks to job in question form about the creation of the earth. This shows that jobs is very small compared to god, so small that he cannot even being to understand some of the the things god is telling him. Chapter 38 proves to job that humans are far below the power of god then in chapter 42 job quickly shames himself for the previous things he said.
If God is powerful and loving the humankind, then why does He permit evil as well as suffering in this world? Various answers had been offered by many Christian philosophers and many victims of suffering, but there was not a lucid answer that could settle this argument permanently. God uses malicious acts of this world to rise up His own people and remind them that there is an opportunity that they can posses their eternal life. Literature, especially biblical literature has exploited this biblical nature to its fullest in various types of forms, including the play J.B. by Archibald MacLeish. In the play J.B, Archibald MacLeish reanimates and modernizes elements taken from the story of Job to come up with his own response to the ultimate question which has been asked by countless generations, “Why do the righteous suffer?” Throughout the play, Archibald MacLeish delineates the sudden corruption of J.B and his family, his calmness despite the helpless pieces of advice from the Three Comforters, and his unusual ending in order for God to test if one’s will and faith are strong enough to rebuild oneself after an irrational decadence.
Carus, Paul. "The Philosophical Problem of Good and Evil." The History of the Devil: With 350
He wants to find a way to justify God’s actions, but he cannot understand why there are evil people who “harm the childless woman, / and do no good to the widow,” only to be rewarded with long, successful lives (Job 24:21). Job’s friends, say that God distributes outcomes to each person as his or her actions deserve. As a result of this belief, they insist that Job has committed some wrongdoing to merit his punishment. God himself declines to present a rational explanation for the unfair distribution of blessings and curses. He still suggests that people should not discuss divine justice since God’s power is so great that humans cannot possibly justify his
It also follows that God, not as benevolent as could be hoped, prefers the maximization of good (2) as opposed to the minimization of evil (1). This is disquieting for the individual who might be the victim of suffering a “greater good.”
In a world of chaos, he who lives, lives by his own laws and values. Who is to say that the death of millions is any worse or better, for that matter, than injuring a cockroach. And in the case of an existing power in the form of God, who is presumed to be all which is good, presiding and ruling an organized universe, why then does evil exist? The prosaic response of “without evil, there is no good” no longer holds any validity in this argument as the admitted goal of good is to reach an existence without evil. So even if a God does exist, I think it is fair, at this point, to say that he is the embodiment of both good and evil. And if humoring those who would answer the previous question with the response that there can be no good without evil, then can we assume that evil is simply a subsection of a defined good? Or perhaps even a good thing? If it is essential, those who chose the side of evil are simply abiding by good values. In the case of a world ruled by Chaos, evil is a non-existent word or value, rather. The system upon which a person’s actions are judged also disappears leaving nothing but an instinct for natural survival as basic and primary as the life within the forests which we tear down to build our houses.
There is so much evil in the world such as: murder, child mortality, torture, rape, assault and more. So how can there be an all loving God if these things are constantly happening? In this paper, I will be arguing that there is in fact no such thing as an all loving and all powerful God due to Evil. When I think of an all-loving God, I think of God as someone who would never allow a child to be kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed. I think of God as someone who would not allow anything bad or evil to happen in this world.
God is the source of evil. He created natural evil, and gave humans the ability to do moral evil by giving them a free will. However, had he not given people free will, then their actions would not be good or evil; nor could God reward or punish man for his actions since they had no choice in what to do. Therefore, by giving humans choice and free will, God allowed humanity to decide whether to reward themselves with temporary physical goods, and suffer in the long run from unhappiness, or forsake bodily pleasures for eternal happiness.
The Book of Job shows a change in God's attitude from the beginning to the end. At the beginning of the book, He is presented as Job's protector and defender. At the end He appears as the supreme being lecturing and preaching to Job with hostility, despite the fact that Job never cursed his name, and never did anything wrong. Job's only question was why God had beseeched this terrible disease on him. I intend to analyze and discuss the different roles God played in the Book of Job.
In the beginning, God created the world. He created the earth, air, stars, trees and mortal animals, heaven above, the angels, every spiritual being. God looked at these things and said that they were good. However, if all that God created was good, from where does un-good come? How did evil creep into the universal picture? In Book VII of his Confessions, St. Augustine reflects on the existence of evil and the theological problem it poses. For evil to exist, the Creator God must have granted it existence. This fundamentally contradicts the Christian confession that God is Good. Logically, this leads one to conclude evil does not exist in a created sense. Augustine arrives at the conclusion that evil itself is not a formal thing, but the result of corruption away from the Supreme Good. (Augustine, Confessions 7.12.1.) This shift in understanding offers a solution to the problem of evil, but is not fully defended within Augustine’s text. This essay will illustrate how Augustine’s solution might stand up to other arguments within the context of Christian theology.
It is perhaps the most difficult intellectual challenge to a Christian how God and evil can both exist. Many of the greatest minds of the Christian church and intellects such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas spent their entire lives trying to solve this problem, and were unsuccessful (Erickson, 2009, p.439). However, this dilemma is not only an intellectual challenge, but it is emotional. Man feels it, lives it. Failing to identify the religious form of the problem of evil will appear insensitive; failure to address the theological form will seem intellectually insulting. This conundrum will never be completely met during our earthly life, but there are many biblical and philosophical resources that help mitigate it.
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher working in the late seventeenth century and has been considered “The greatest member of the idealist school of German philosophy” (Aquila 1989). Kant’s work regarding evil especially that covered in his work Religion has received more attention since the start of the twenty first century than it did in his time (Hanson 2012). This rise in attention could be accounted for due to a wider search for answers in regards to “evil”. Previously unimaginable events that have occurred in modern times from the Holocaust to the 9/11 atrocities, make us question morality and ourselves as a human race, leading to questions such as, “are the people responsible for these crimes normal?” “Are these people born evil?”
more than evil is capable of what seems to be good. More often in the story, God
Job was a man with everything. He was rich in wealth, family, and land. At face value, Job had it all, and his faith in the Lord was deep. Meanwhile, in Heaven, a debate was taking place. The devil concluded that Job was only a faithful man because he was blessed by the Lord, and if Job has nothing, he would turn his back on God. God gave permission to the Satan for him to take everything from Job in order to test his faith. Eventually, after all of Satan’s destruction, Job was left at the side of the road, ill and without family, wealth, or even shoes on his feet. Upon discovering Job in a ditch by the road, Job’s three friends ponder how Job ended up in this circumstance. They concluded that Job must have done something wrong since that was only the logical reason why all those bad things were happening to Job. When Job confront God about all his misery, the Lord simply responded about where was Job when the universe was created. The question that God proposes heavily implies that there is so much more to God’s rationale of allowing misery to happen than we could ever know. God’s ways and wisdom are much higher than our own. God gifted humanity with free will. It is through our own free will that misery occurs. Suffering occurs on the hands-on other humans who inflicted said suffering. The Hutus murdered the Tutsis not out of a loving action towards God, but out of self-love. They loved their own positions of power and lives so much that they would willingly murder a group that threatens it (even if the threats are not real). Yes, God allowed the genocide of the Tutsis to occur, but not out of zealousness for disaster. God was pained by the death of each and every Tutsi, every single one created in the loving image of God. But if God prevented every single action of sin, would humans really have free will? God loved us so much that he wanted us to willingly love and