[This blog post is here just to help google find good resources for answers on the problem of evil.]
‘If God is all-wise as well as all-powerful, he could conduct a selective judgment of everybody individually, eliminate the bad, and leave the good. Then why doesn’t he?’
I found this question from the book “Christianity: Opium or Truth” by David Gooding and John Lennox. It is freely available for download at www.myrtlefieldhouse.com
Here is the answer to that question, also from the book:
Well, suppose he did. Suppose he intervened today and destroyed all bad and sinful individuals everywhere throughout the world without exception. Where in fairness would he stop? And how many would be left? Where would he draw the line between the bad and the good? And who are the bad people anyway, and who are the good? ‘Get rid of the capitalists’, say the communists ‘and you will have a good world of good people.’ The capitalists, of course, say the opposite. And bringing it down to the personal level, what would God have to say to each one of us?
And there are other considerations. Let’s imagine two men who are selfish, cruel, given to bad temper and violence, to lies and treachery. One man is a private citizen and has little power; but his evil behaviour blights his wife’s life, breaks up their marriage and does his children serious, if not irreparable, psychological damage. The other man is the dictator of his country. He has immense power, and because of it his evil behaviour leads to the suffering and death of thousands. What would the first man have done, if he had had the same power as the second? Which, therefore, is at heart the worse man?
According to the Bible, God’s verdict on us as individuals is in fact that we have all sinned, I, you and everyone else. Judged by God’s absolute standards we are all bad; not all to the same degree, but all to some degree. None of us is guiltless (Rom 3:10–20, 23).
But God is not only just, he is compassionate and merciful…
[Go ahead and download the book to find answers to some of your most important questions about life…]
I also found another answer to that kind of question. This one is from a video required for us to be watched by Dr. Joel Arnold as an assignment in our Apologetics class at BJMBC. This statement was said by Timothy Keller:
[Christianity is] the only religion that says God came into this world and suffered excruciatingly and identified with us and suffered along with us. Assuming that Christianity is true for a second, we still don’t know what the reason for suffering is. God doesn’t tell us. But now we know what the reason for suffering isn’t.
1. It can’t be that he doesn’t love us.
2. It can’t be that he can just snap his fingers and let it all go away and still have us.
In other words, if he loves us enough to suffer for us then he must have a good reason for allowing it to go on. It can’t just be that he’s remote and doesn’t care.
