“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Romans 1:19-20 (Context: Romans 1:16-32)
“They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness. The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The LORD is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.” Psalm 145:7-9 (Context: Psalm 145)
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” 1 John 4:7-11 (Context: 1 John 4:7-21)
God exists, He is good, and He loves you deeply. This, which the Scriptures above profess respectively, is the central truth of our lives.
Although it is an awesome proposition, I confess to you that I do have periods in my life where I thoroughly doubt this truth. My doubt, almost always, will result from some form of emotion-driven wrestling with what St. Thomas Aquinas in his work Summa Theologica addresses as the single most potent argument against the existence of God: the problem of evil. The argument goes: 1) If God were good, He would remove evil and suffering from His creatures; If He were omnipotent (all-powerful), He would be able to do what He wished; 2) But the creatures experience prevalent evil and suffering; 3) Therefore, God lacks either goodness, or power, or both. Although I have so far lived an unfairly fortunate life with little suffering of my own, I observe and am affected by the rampant suffering that exists all around us. Loneliness, depression, anxiety, addiction, financial distress, unemployment, poverty, violence, terrorism, war, racism, persecution, abuse, betrayal, injustice, pain, sickness and disease, tragedy, broken relationships, the loss of a dear loved one…the list goes on and on and is too much to bear. Where are You God?! How could You possibly be real when in the midst of all this awfulness You are seemingly absent or powerless?! I’m tired of waiting on You or trying to understand You and I just want it to stop. Unlike what St. Thomas Aquinas addresses as the second strongest (but much weaker) argument against the existence of God (i.e., that natural science can sufficiently and more reliably explain our reality), the problem of evil is powerful because it taps into our human emotions and can shake you to your core.
I eventually, but sometimes not easily, am able to recognize that, almost always, my doubt is nothing more than a wavering emotional response. Taking a lesson from CS Lewis, I strive to weather that storm by grounding my faith in reason: knowledge that is justified with the evidence of reason (of which the method of natural science is a subset), Divine revelation (which cannot contradict reason), and authority. (Paraphrasing CS Lewis from Mere Christianity: “that is why reason is such a necessary virtue; unless you teach your emotions where they go wrong you can never be a sound human, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.”)
Brilliant people have written books on a reasoned response to the problem of evil, but my novice summation is that it centers on four points. First, evil is not a thing that God created, condones, or is to blame for. It’s a wrong choice – the choice of those that God created (the ability of which is a necessary component in any true love story) of sin and selfishness that results in physical and spiritual suffering as a consequence as natural and unavoidable as broken bones from a jump off a cliff. Second, the true intellectual wonder is not that we experience suffering, but that we have experienced any goodness at all. Third, suffering can work for the greater good of wisdom. It is not true that all things are good, but it is true that “all things work together for good to those who love God.” (Romans 8:28) And finally, we are not able to fully understand the mystery of God, or how the problem of evil and the existence of suffering fits into our reality, but we can know, in a sense that is justified by reason, Divine revelation and authority, God’s solution to the problem of evil: His son Jesus Christ. God’s love sent His son to suffer amongst us and to die for us to defeat the power and consequences of evil. The cross is God’s love-driven part of the solution to evil. Our part is to repent, to believe, and to hope in the anticipation of an eternity fully in the presence of His love, together with all the saints, without suffering. That anticipation of our God is the heart of the Advent season.
So throughout this beautiful but troublesome life, and whatever suffering you have already or will experience, be grounded in and encouraged by the truth that God exists, He is good, and He loves you deeply. Our reality is an amazing love story, and you are a main character. And if and when in any emotion-driven moment that truth seems beyond belief, or even unsatisfying, know that you are not alone in this incredible journey.
Sean McDermott
In his own words: “Sean is 5’9’’ tall and 160 Ibs, and is currently watching the series ‘This is Us’ a few nights a week with his wife Caline in bed on her iPhone.”