Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. Today, we are going to be talking about a somewhat different topic, the problem of evil. And I think that the topic is an extremely important topic overall and one of the biggest issues for Christians and non Christians alike today. I've done a lot of thinking on the topic of the problem of evil, but in general, it doesn't seem to fit in all that much directly with this podcast. However, the the particular angle of today's episode in dealing with the problem of evil, I think does have a little bit of overlap with non violence.

So I decided to kind of throw this episode out there and we'll see where it goes. So let's go ahead and dive on in. Christians have tried to work through the problem of evil for millennia and the problem lies in the clear observation that evil exists in our world and it exists in what seems to be pretty great measure. At the same time, Christians proclaim that their God is a perfect, omnibenevolent, omniscient and omnipotent God. If God created the world, then it seems like it should be perfect because God is perfect.

The existence of evil must then disprove that either God is not all good, He's not all knowing, or He's not all powerful. In response to this problem, Christians have come up with a number of answers known as theodicies. A theodicy is really just kind of a hypothetical possible answer. And this is really important to understand because a theodicy doesn't claim to be the answer, it only claims to be a possible explanation. And I think that's pretty fair because the claim of the problem of evil or at least the way that it's wielded by a lot of atheists is that the existence of God and evil together are impossible.

In order to stop a universal statement like this, like impossible, can't be at all, right? In order to stop a universal statement like that from success, you only need to show that there's at least one plausible alternative. So we recognize this all the time, if somebody makes a universal statement, a universal negative, like, you never do anything nice, right? All you have to do is provide one example and that refutes this whole never thing. I actually kind of turn this around and use it as well when I'm driving to kind of help calm my anger.

If someone pulls out in front of me and seems to be in a hurry, my natural thought is usually that they're just a jerk who has no possible reason for being in such a rush. But when I'm gracious and can think and calm myself, I can pretty quickly think of a multitude of reasons why someone might be in a legitimate hurry. Maybe their wife is going into labor, maybe there's a medical emergency, maybe they're being chased by assassins, maybe they're an undercover police officer trying to get to a scene, or trying to get to their relative who is on their deathbed, maybe they're late for work. And of course, some potentials are more likely than others, and some we would view more legitimate as others too, more legitimate than others. Because being late for work, maybe that's your fault and it's not justified for you to cut me off, but trying to get to your dying relative's deathbed, we might say would justify you being in a hurry and potentially cutting me off.

Nevertheless, knowing that there are multiple reasons, multiple explanations for why I was cut off helps me to think graciously and give the benefit of the doubt to aggressive drivers. Of course, when we're talking about the issue of God and the problem of evil, there are many more complexities here. How could we really know all of the intricacies of who God is, how the world works, and all that goes into these things? But at the same time, this isn't just like getting cut off in traffic. Our belief about the existence of God and which God exists, if at all, it's important.

So coming up with a few plausible theodices is helpful for us in that it can allow us to move past or to put on hold the problem of evil and look at the rest of the cumulative case for the existence of God. A theodicy might not be a fully satisfactory answer, but it's a sufficient one to allow us to reasonably believe in the God of Christianity while simultaneously acknowledging the existence of evil. So with that understanding behind us, I want to briefly look at two major theodices put forth in modern Christianity. The first main theodicy is the free will theodicy as popularized by Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga essentially argues that free will is a priority of a loving God who wants His creatures to genuinely love and not be robots.

And that in any world where free will exists, sin will inevitably arise. And that seems to make sense to me. God doesn't want robotic love and relationship. And if those things are even possible together, I suppose he could implement them, but it seems intuitive that robotic love isn't really love at all. So planting, I would say that in any world where free will exists, at some point in history, somebody would eventually screw it up and sin, and sin would enter the world in any world where free will exists.

So evil and genuine love for God and for others go hand in hand. You can't get free will without the inevitability of evil. And free will is so valuable, love, free love is so valuable that God is willing to allow evil in order to have creatures who love. Now we could go down all sorts of other rabbit trails and argue that God would seek to create the best possible world with the least amount of evil, non gratuitous evil, and God might create a world where the most people would come to know Him. But those types of of things and nuances, that moves beyond the scope of what we're doing here.

We're just talking about possibilities, just blanket theodicies. So the Free Will Theodicy provides one possible explanation for how God and evil could exist in the same world. But of course, I have some problems with this theodicy. First, God seems to clearly intervene in the will of others, whether that's the hardening of hearts, even if it's only at the end of a process, like with Pharaoh, or blinding the eyes of the religious leaders, it seems like God kind of does some tweaking with free will. You know, in fact, when you pray for your friends to have favor with a potential employer in order to get a job, or for God to work in the heart of someone you want to be saved, you're really praying for God to, in some respects, whether directly 100% or indirectly 10%, you're asking God to mess with somebody's free will.

You're having God intervene and give different feelings or emotions or stimuli to evoke emotions. Asking God to do something that messes with what an individual's choice would otherwise have been. And all of that brings into the discussion the question of what is the will anyway and what does it mean to manipulate the will? Like, is gods appearing to Saul on the road to Damascus manipulating Saul's free will? Now maybe you say that God knew how Saul would freely respond, but then you also have to ask if this God wants all men to be saved, then why doesn't God miraculously appear to more people like He does to Saul?

Something seems a bit off about God's selectivity in terms of how much he speaks and opens himself up and appears to people. Some people and not others. So, I've got a number of problems with the free will theodicy. It just doesn't seem to play out in the real world because God does seem to manipulate people's free will. It doesn't seem to be above His manipulation.

And at the same time, God refuses to intervene in the will across the board in accordance with what seemed to be His desires, like having people come to know Him, His choosing to appear to a select few and not to more seems problematic. And that brings us to a second theodicy. The second theodicy is the soul building theodicy. This theodicy says that experiencing evil is vital for us in order to develop us into the creatures who can dwell with God forever. Satan obviously fell while being in the presence of God, so fall, the subsequent experience of sin, and loving redemption from that sin is what makes us fit for heaven.

The fall essentially, and redemption are essential to our ability to live in heaven sin free forever because that experience with sin and the extent to which God is willing to sacrifice and love helps us to perpetually make the decision to stay in heaven or the new heavens and new earth. It's almost like the idea that life is a purgatory of sorts. It's a purging fire which provides us with the knowledge of how terrible sin is and in contrast, how loving God is. Of course, there are some significant problems with this theodicy as well. How is it that an infant who never experiences or knows life, evil, and love is transformed into a creature fit for heaven if the soul building theodicy is the correct way, if we need life of hardship and sin and redemption to essentially make us fit for heaven.

And if you argue that the infant can view the torment of sinners and the love of God and others without its own experience of sin, then evil seems to become gratuitous. Wouldn't we only need one person to experience evil and death and harm and all of that stuff and redemption? For all of us to be able to then immediately be taken to heaven with God and use this one person as building up for our soul. Beyond this, we clearly leave the world in different states. No matter how long I live, my life will not meet the suffering or goodness of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Yet I am told that when I die, I will immediately be in the same state as Saint Francis was upon his death. Immediate glorification, it's at least what the Protestants tend to teach. So on Evangelical thinking, my transformation to be fit for life in the presence of God has no correlation whatsoever to my experience of suffering or my doing of good in love on earth. And this is one reason why I stopped being so hard on the Catholic doctrine of purgatory because purgatory makes a lot of sense in some ways. Kind of recognizes from this soul building sort of theodicy that that we are in different places and sanctification is, is more is further along in some of us than in others when we die.

My other problem with this theodicy is that it's behavioristic. One of Catalina's professors used to say that we won't sin in heaven because we'll know how stupid it is. And this guy's very into free will, he's against Calvinism and all that, and so he says, look, when we're in heaven, we're gonna know how stupid sin is and we're just not gonna do it because of that. And it's why we can't stab our own eyes out, we just know that it's stupid. However, in one of his presentations on evil, which is is awesome by the way, I really I really like this professor but I just disagree with him on this.

But he talks about how evil in the world is restrained because people know there will be ramifications for it. More people would rape and kill if there wasn't a fear of the state. Now, he uses this to combat the feel good position of many secularists today who say that humanity is basically pretty good. And the professor points out, he points to hundreds of atrocities throughout history and he argues that these atrocities aren't inhuman, it's what humans do. And the only reason there isn't more of this is because of fear of consequences.

Now I 100% agree with Doctor. Jones here, 100% agree. Outward compliance out of fear has no correspondence with a pure heart. Just because other people don't kill people because they know they'd get caught for it, doesn't mean they haven't murdered. They've murdered in their hearts, for sure.

But then, what does that say about Doctor. Jones' view of heaven and why we won't sin there? We won't sin because we have the intellectual knowledge that it's stupid. But if the experience of evil in this life and the scene of the damned in hell are what keep us choosing God forever, could we really say that such an intellectual basis for perseverance has any connection to a change of heart? So we're gonna have a bunch of genocidal maniacs up in heaven, it's just they know how stupid it is to commit genocide that they're not going to.

That just doesn't seem to work. So much for theodices, Well, obviously this is a complex issue and either of these theodicies could be right and I could be missing some things. Regardless of whether they're both right or both wrong, I think it's important that we have theodicies available to us on the table that get us to think about things in a way that helps us to put evil into perspective. Well, I think about the problem of evil a lot, and after I poke holes in all of these theodicies, I'm not just the type of person who wants to leave it at that. So in this episode, I want to contribute a theodicy that I think is uniquely positioned for the nonviolent to be able to use, and I think it highlights a strength of it.

Now it's not gonna answer, it's gonna have its own holes, it's not gonna answer everything, and it's not gonna be 100% satisfying, but I think it's one more facet that we can put into problem of evil. So as I propose this new theodicy, please keep in mind that it's not a panacea for the problem of evil, it's just a contribution to the discussion. I called the new theodicy the enemy love theodicy. It's not very creative, hopefully, can come up with a better name in the future, but at the moment, the enemy love theodicy. I love the words of Jesus in Luke six twenty five through 36, and that's gonna be kind of the foundation for this theodicy.

So let me read those words right now. Jesus says, But to you who are listening, I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.

Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.

And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back, then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High because He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful just as your Father in heaven is merciful. I want you to notice a few very important things about this.

First, we are called to love our enemies and that's a hard enough concept to accept. But check out the second point, we are to love our enemies because that's what God is like. The basis, the foundation, the reason for us being called to love our enemies is because that is what God is like. It is the parallel passage in Matthew five in which the peacemakers are called the children of God. God loves His enemies and His children will too.

This is difficult for us to grasp and we try to make it figurative metaphor all the time. But God really does love His enemies and He tells us to as well. He died for us while we were in our trespasses and sins and while we were His enemies. We only love Him because He first loved us. Thank God that He died for His enemies or we could not now be called His friends and His sons and daughters.

We could go back and see God's love for His enemies all throughout the Old Testament as well. God gave Egypt Four Hundred Years before they were judged. He waited four hundred years before judging the child sacrificing, bestiality loving Canaanites from whom Rahab was saved. He sent a missionary to one of, if not the most violent and evil cultures in the ancient Near East when he sent Jonah to Nineveh and had the Ninevites repent. And in the prophets, God talks about bringing all nations to Himself.

God loves His enemies. And for some reason, it's a hard concept for God's former enemies to stomach. Now I wanna read another passage to you which I'm sure you're familiar with, but I want you to listen carefully. Isaiah 55, eight through nine. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways, declares the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Now we're used to hearing that in the context of mysterious doctrines like the Trinity. You know, God's ways aren't our ways. But I'm not going to take personal liberty to evoke this passage out of context. Instead, I'll let the author provide the context for God's ways.

Let's read Isaiah again, but this time put in verses six and seven. Listen very carefully because the context is provided here in the verses. Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake His way and the unrighteous man His thoughts and let him return to the Lord and he will have compassion on him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts nor are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. God's mysteriousness here is not invoked in relation to some esoteric doctrine of free will or the Trinity. It's invoked in light of a much more practical and tangible, yet even more profound and mysterious doctrine. The doctrine of enemy love, love of the wicked. The Jewish people in the Old Testament just couldn't get that.

Jews in Jesus' time couldn't get it. And we who think that we're so much better than the Pharisees, we don't get it either. When you look at this passage and the life of Jesus with the lens of enemy love, you begin to realize some of its potency. You might be able to call Jesus' whole life one big theodicy of enemy love. He wasn't willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance including the wicked and the Gentiles.

The patient enemy love of God calls us to pray for all humanity. We see that in first Timothy two. And it's why God sometimes seems slow in fulfilling His promises, second Peter three. Still, we modern Christians are often no different than the exclusivist Jews of Jesus' day. We don't understand how God can save them, the wicked and those who are our enemies.

We just know that God can't possibly be as He has revealed Himself to be in the person and teachings of Jesus. You know, I have to ask myself why it is that when it comes to enemy love and forgiveness, we don't invoke the same mystery which Isaiah 55 invokes. We invoke it for the Trinity, but we don't invoke it when Jesus tells us to love enemies. Instead, we turn that teaching into metaphor and we refuse to be His children in doing that. We explain away what God must really mean rather than abiding in His teaching and standing in awe of His work.

The very work we have ourselves experienced while standing in opposition to God as His wicked enemies. Upon further reflection, and maybe that's one reason why the problem of evil is as big of a problem as it is for people today. It's hard for the wicked and for the world to imagine a God who is good because there is little God like resemblance of Him and the ones who call themselves His children. Who can possibly see God if His self proclaimed children are really just bastards, neither fashioned nor fathered in the image of enemy love, like their father is. Of course, God's patience and enemy love don't solve all the problems and arguments which arise from the existence of evil, but I think they do change the outlook quite a bit.

If we were to show our enemies the agape love of God through all circumstances, what would that do to them? What excuses would our enemies have complaining about the evil which happens to them if they would experience God's love emanating from His children who endure and forgive the evil suffered at the hands of their own enemies? You know, we love God because He first loved us in our enmity. The servant is not greater than his master and just as Jesus suffered from the depths of His enemy loving nature, so it ought to be with His body today. We are little Christs and it is the enemy love which transforms the heart.

It is not a change of heart which earns God's love. You know, a lot of times I think we get ahead of ourselves and we focus on what's going to change the world, what's going to change them, what can I do to change them? But our problem is almost always that we focus on the effects of actions and the need of others. What can we do to get atheists to believe? That's the question that we ask.

So maybe before we ask what such love might do for others, maybe we should ask what such enemy love might do to us. Maybe, just maybe, it would prepare our souls for the kingdom and make us true children of God. Okay, I'd calm down for a moment here. I I would love to just end it right there because I think that there's there's some powerful things to think about. However, I I do think that we need to tie some things together here.

You know, as I I said, I don't believe that the enemy love theodicy solves the problem of evil. It it doesn't explain its origin, and I'll link some things below that I've I've worked with and and worked on, so you can look at some of my other thoughts on on evil or resources. This also doesn't it doesn't solve the problem of natural evil, it doesn't really address that. But I think what this theodicy does is it helps us to understand two really, or several really important things. First, the depth of God's love, that He loves even His enemies.

Another thing is that it helps us to see why there is so much evil, a seemingly gratuitous amount. And third, it helps us to see how we are to live in the world and to deal with evil. And it helps us to kind of piece all of those things together and recognize that God bore evil on Himself, we were enemies, He was patient with us, we are to live the same way and evil persists for a time because God loves and is unwilling to just simply destroy everybody outright. And we thank Him for that because we are here because of God's patient love. If you have ever taken a look at the anti Nicene quotes on capital punishment, killing, defense, war, etcetera, you will understand that this is how they viewed the Christian life.

The Christian life was a life which evidenced God's enemy love. It was apparently a compelling witness as the church grew despite the hardship and difficult lifestyle of the early church. And I think this theodicy is helpful in explaining why evil persists and it's also an encouragement for us to live as children of God in our response to evil. And we can see that living in such a way was captivating to the culture of early Rome, a very violent and very idolatrous culture. Enemy love is how God conquered at the cross and it's how He conquers in the book of Revelation and it's how we are to conquer in like fashion.

That's all for now. So peace, because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.