Omnipotent or Omnibenevolent

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" - Epicurus 341-270 BCE

I don't think there is a single, simple answer to this question which will satisfy everyone. However, I think there are a few useful approaches to this which are certainly valid.

First, I think some of what we label evil is not really evil. There are so many things which we fear, things we don't understand or simply can't control, and we often label these things evil when in fact we are condemning only our shortcomings. Death is the prime example: on what grounds should a Christian really be concerned about death? Certainly evil can cause death, but the issue then is not death itself but what brought about that death. If we really live a life of faith, trusting in God to see us through each day, then we can give up so many things that make us anxious, stressed or angry.

Second, I think a great deal of what we call evil is simply humans pushing the constraints of the environment we were made to fit in. Overpopulation is really the biggest portion of this in my opinion. Take for example earthquakes. If humanity continued to exist as hunter-gatherers, how much would we realistically be affected by earthquakes? Very, very little. In theory a tent could fall down and kill someone, but it would be fairly unlikely. Earthquakes kill people because in order to cram an inordinate number of people and stuff into a small area you have to build up, and that means there's heavy stuff to fall down on you. So many issues we run into are only problems because we have tried to live far beyond the functioning principles of the world given to us. It's as though we're building a sand castle on the beach right up against the water and then are angry when the tide comes in and destroys it. If we simply built it farther away, it'd be fine.

Third, and now I'm going to start getting a little deeper, I think the largest chunk of evil is a matter of choice. While I know many people feel this answer is just an easy way to escape the problem at hand, that it is almost cliche, I can't deny the intuitive sense that it makes to me. What makes us fascinating as creatures is precisely that we can make choices, and that those choices have real ramifications. If evil did not exist as a choice, then there is really no choice being made. There is much more power in choosing to do the right thing when the wrong choice is a clear option than when all the choices are basically the same. Choices where each option is basically the same are mundane: what should I eat for dinner, do I want to sweep the floor or do the dishes first, etc. There are decisions involved, but the consequences of those decisions are minimal. As beings made in the image of God, we hold the power to help shape the future of the universe. While God certainly has preferences on how we do that, to deny us the choice to commit evil is to take back the very gift that makes us unique.

Fourth, and somewhat related to choice, how we choose to organize ourselves socially, politically and economically may have a great impact on evil. Consider for a moment the issue of farm subsidies. Certainly, it is a great injustice that children die by the thousands each day due to starvation. The problem is, how do we fix this? One option is to provide large quantities of food to areas with high rates of malnutrition at particularly low prices through subsidizing farming. This ensures cheap food to countless people who might otherwise starve. However, this also may (and does) take the place of consuming locally grown crops. Given that most countries which suffer from substantial starvation problems are predominantly agrarian, the inability of farmers to sell their crops because cheap US grown food is available can have dramatic impacts. It may, in fact, drive them out of business, forcing them to also rely on imported food to survive. It is estimated that if the US were to end farm subsidies, global food prices may rise up to 15%, reducing access to affordable food well beyond its current levels. Not only is this a great example of the difficulty of policycrafting, but a fantastic example of how politics, culture and economics collide to produce a variety of evils no matter what choice is made.

Finally, while Epicurus' quandry is very well phrased, it relies on a number of questionable assumptions. For instance, what if the phraseology is based on an inherent semantic error? It's formulation is grammatically correct, but what if talking about evil in this way (or God in this way), is inherently nonsensical at some level. Noam Chomsky once used the phrase "Colorless green dreams sleep furiously" to illustrate the problem of semantics. The sentence is structured correctly, with each component following the rules of grammar. However, it still doesn't make any sense. Multitudinous metaphorical notions may be generated in an attempt to extricate linguistic value from it, but in reality, it means nothing. Something that is colorless cannot be green, nor does the notion of color generally apply to dreams, nor can dreams sleep, nor does one typically think of applying the term furiously to sleeping (fitfully and furiously are by no means synonymous). Perhaps our understanding of evil, while somewhat intuitively sensible, is in actually much more like this sentence: structured correctly, but lacking in substance. Perhaps, as a completely distinct assumption, Epicurus assumes that there is no value in the presence of evil. While I certainly believe evil is to be minimized or overcome, perhaps it is in that minimizing or overcoming that we find our purpose and our meaning, thus making evil an important part of developing a sense of what is good.

Personally, I find most of the common explanations for evil to be less than ideal, either because they don't really explain evil in any real way, or because their explanations create implications which open up avenues to wholly new options for evil. For instance, the free will argument only works to explain away evil if one also assumes that God does not in fact know what choices we will make (see my earlier post about the nature of time and the meaning of "in the image of God"). Otherwise, God is still responsible for evil, just in a much more devious way. Without denying foreknowledge, one is simply saying that God knew from the beginning that all these evil things would happen and just kept going. The "greater good" argument does perhaps have some merit, but not only does it fail to explain evil at a smaller scale, it can actually be used to endorse a plurality of evils if they may result in some positive outcome.

Evil exists: this fact is difficult to deny, particularly from the perspective of Christianity. What is necessary to understand is that evil cannot win the day. Faith, hope and love abideth, and all stand in defiance to the evil of this world. If we live with these, we may walk through the valley of the shadow of death and yet fear no evil. Such is our calling.