A Good Reason for Evil – Part 3
This is a transcript of a commentary from the radio show “Stand to Reason,” with Gregory Koukl. It is made available to you at no charge through the faithful giving of those who support Stand to Reason. Reproduction permitted for non-commercial use only. ©1997 Gregory Koukl
So we’ve heard that God thinks that, on balance, that good is going to outweigh the evil that caused the good, or else He wouldn’t have allowed it to happen. He loves us and He is the best judge of what is ultimately good. But we tend to think that suffering is unfair. Why? We think that life is about giving us pleasure and making us happy. This view is very prevalent in Western society. Our personal happiness, pleasure, and enjoyment are the most important things in life.
That’s not what the Bible teaches at all, though. There are aspects of enjoyment, but the ultimate reason we were created was not so we can have fun and enjoy life. God’s purpose for creating us was to develop us into certain types of people who were fit to spend eternity with Him. He does that by conforming us to His image by helping us grow through the process of living in a fallen world.
The book of Hebrews tells us that even Jesus was conformed (made mature) by the process of suffering. In God’s mind, the goal of the process (ie being conformed to the image of His Son) is a much greater good than the bad of the evil that we have to put up with on this earth. The balance is definitely on the side of good.
I admit that this is not an easy issue, and part of the reason is that we bring some baggage to the discussion. Part of that baggage is that we have this idea that if God put us here on this earth and created the world for us to live in, then it seems to make sense that the greatest good is our immediate sense of personal pleasure and satisfaction. Therefore, if there is some circumstance in which we can’t have immediate satisfaction, then God must either have abandoned us, not exist, or be evil for allowing such a thing.
Last weekend I had a conversation with a young man about homosexuality. He challenged me with this point: Why would God create people as homosexuals if He didn’t want them to experience the pleasure of homosexual sex?
Now, of course, I didn’t agree with Him that God created people to be homosexuals. It wasn’t God’s design that they have this desire. But even if I conceded such a thing, why must I admit that, since one was created with a capacity for pleasure, only a mean, cruel God would allow conditions in which they’d have to say no to that pleasure?
When you think about it for a moment, doesn’t it strike you as odd that we’ve developed a view that in order for us to acknowledge God as good, He must give liberty to all of our passions? And if God doesn’t give liberty to all of our passions-if He doesn’t allow us what we want, when we want it, if He ever asks for self-sacrifice, if He ever allows a condition in which we hurt, in which we suffer, in which we are inconvenienced, if He ever allows a circumstance in which our bodily desires are not given full reign, then certainly He must be a cruel God? Isn’t that an odd view?
Do you know what kind of person thinks that way? A child. A child sees what it wants and goes to get it, and if it’s stopped, that child puts up a fuss. Say a little two-year-old child wants to go into her house wearing muddy shoes. Her parents stop her and she makes a fuss when her shoes are removed. Her parents know that there are other things more important than their daughter’s desires at that moment. She doesn’t understand it – all she knows is what she wants!
Unfortunately, we’ve bred a society that are, in many ways, like a bunch of adult two-year-olds – grown-ups who believe it’s their divine right to feel every pleasure they can possibly feel, to never encounter any difficulty, any pain, any suffering. And if they do suffer, they reason that God must be a cruel God.