The Entire Thought

Evil is Hard to Understand

God inspired Peter to explain why we have to suffer: In other words, why is there evil in the world if God is in charge of everything? He says that we suffer in order to follow the example of Jesus. Nice try, but not entirely convincing.

If we don’t like God’s answer to evil in the world, consider this human response. You come home from work to discover that Susie has scribbled red crayon all over the wall. When you ask your wife how that
happened, she responds: “How dare you question the way I run this house? You don’t have to balance office work and house work. Where were you when Susie threw up on the couch? Where were you when she kicked the dog? When you do as much as I do we’ll talk crayon marks!”

Now, I am not suggesting that God and your wife are equal, or that crayon marks remotely
approach the sufferings of the world. I am simply suggesting that neither God nor your wife is actually able to explain it.

Your wife could actually go through each second of that day which led to the wall artistry. But that would take another whole day, and even when we knew the facts second by second, we still could not
experience them exactly the way she did. She could try to explain, but we couldn’t quite understand it.

God could also take us through every second of every evil in our whole life. But that would use up our whole lifetime, and we still could not experience it or understand it the way God does. In other worlds, evil makes sense to God, but we aren’t smart enough for God to tell us.

Does that mean that we should stop thinking about evil? That we should just bear all the suffering that comes to us? No, that would be to play into the hands of evil and pain. What we should do is to look at evil and suffering with cool dispassion and deal with it realistically. For instance, we often try to escape evil when we can. But not if the escape brings only more suffering. Evil is trying to tell us something. As Jung said, every neurosis is just a legitimate suffering that we are trying to escape instead of dealing with it.

Sometimes, out of exhaustion, we simply surrender to suffering. It becomes too much for us, so we numb our souls against it. We may do it with alcohol or drugs or willpower, but the effect is the same. When we narcotize our souls against pain, we also numb it against the pleasures of life. We may continue to live and work and even play, but we are dead inside.

Once in a while we get the courage to rebel against evil. And it shows. We all know people who grin and bear it or grind their way through it. Their false smiles and set jaws betray the intense effort it takes. But that very rigidity and self-control takes away the freedom and spontaneity we need to enjoy life.

If God cannot make us understand the essence of evil, God’s Word does give it profound meaning. Paul wrote: “We carry in our bodies the dying of Jesus; but we do not lose heart because our inner being is renewed while our body is destroyed.”

And Jesus himself, in intense agony, said: “If possible, let this suffering pass. But let your great will, not my small wish, be done.”

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