#4: The presence of evil: How can there be a God when there is evil?

A friend of mine posted from a news source today about how the Catholic church had not only an awareness of abuse that was going on in its own ranks but seemed to shuffle its priests around in an effort to conceal it from the public.  The report highlights the activities of a priest that was hard to read at times in its depiction of (what I believe) is pure evil.  

You know, there are a thousand different things I could write in this space to illustrate the level of evil that exists in the world - right now warplanes are firing rockets on its own citizens because a single dictator is out of touch with reality . . . 

But it is the ordinary evil that is the most terrifying to me.

When I say 'ordinary evil,' I mean the priest that leads the eight year old altar boy into a back room while they wait for the child's parents to pick him up from church.  I think of the visit I paid to a fraternity in my days at PSU watching a frat boy put his hands up someone's dress while she was heavily drunk.  Evil is not so much on the scale of the Nazi regime . . . evil is evident in the emotional torture an abusive husband puts his wife through.  This evil is present in the life of a teenage girl who I sat across from at the diner telling me that her father calls her a pig and a whore.  Evil is getting young 16-18 year old girls addicted to crack so that they perform sexual acts for profit on street corners, on DVDs and magazines.  You will pass those victims today at the mini-mart magazine stand . . . some of you will see them on your computer screen tonight.  

So we don't have to sift through headlines to see that we swim in evil everyday.  Evil takes what it wants.  Evil uses people as props.  Evil obeys its own appetite.  Evil has no concern for the other person or the greater good.  Evil is everywhere.

So if evil is everywhere . . . where is God?  How does He let that happen?  How CAN he let that happen?

For those of you who think, you must have wrestled with this question at some point - "how can there be a God in heaven if there is so much evil on earth?"  Isn't the presence of evil evidence that either:

1. God is powerless against evil (in which case the God designation is questionable).

or

2. God is indifferent (in which case WHO WANTS TO FOLLOW THIS DEITY?)

Both are unacceptable answers to the question . . . that is why I think there is a third way - no silver bullet of faith, but at least a step in the direction of getting an answer.

First, the only encouraging thing to me in the whole mess is that we agree that evil is evil.  If you really think about it, the sense of justice we have is a candle of hope.  If we are just animals with a larger brain case, when would the idea of 'right' have entered the picture?  Right should just be that which leads to survival - regardless of how it affects others.  We should be okay with animalistic instincts like eating our young or incest . . . how animals conduct affairs should be okay with us if there is nothing outside of our instinct.  

But somehow, there is an idea of right and wrong that very few of us reflect consistently. Where did that come from?

And this has nothing to do with social contracts, Rousseau was wrong.  We don't create good and bad to benefit ourselves.  Like C.S. Lewis said - right and wrong are not the keys on the piano that we play for our benefit - it is the music on the sheet that tells which keys to be played.  Where did this music come from?

We grieve the disgusting acts of evil people precisely because we have a sense of what the right should be.  It is more than shaking our heads and agreeing it is wrong - it makes us sick to think of people that abuse power over the innocent.  That passion is more than instinct, it is hope of something greater inside of us.

So what?!  I'm so glad that at least we can grieve injustice - why can't God?  Or at least if God can see that there is evil in the world, then why does it still exist?  Which one of us wouldn't instantly vaporize the priest who abuses children?  Or what if that girl on the pages was your little girl and some creep was baiting her with addiction so he could make money off her body - which one of you wouldn't consider inflicting serious harm . . . or worse?

So why wouldn't you?

As people who count ourselves enlightened, the best thing to do is to let justice take place . . . in time. 

Even we as humans know that justice is a process . . . that it takes time and that wrong is eventually made right.  And I think the assumption is that because we don't see justice happen that God is asleep at the gavel.  In the same way that a court case may drag on for years, we grow impatient with the idea that we have to trust in a God who sees all things and is in the business of setting things right.  Why doesn't He do something NOW?

And this is where it gets really challenging and some of you are going to walk away . . .

If we live under a God of grace, not only is the timetable going to be insufferably wrong before the guilty get their due, but the guilty are going to be shown grace.  Grace is not something we can be cavalier about.  Grace - favor given to those who don't deserve it - is available to all of God's children . . . even the pedophile.

To be honest, it makes me sick.  I want the pedophile to pay.

That is why I believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God - no one could make this stuff up.  Grace is scandalous.  It is in some ways sickening (except when it is applied to me).  And in matters of justice it can make God seem like He is indifferent . . . but God leads with His grace and that is why evil still has its day.

For now.