In Theory

God, according to the Bible, has done, or demanded that be done, many things that most of us would normally consider evil. So why should we expect him to support fairness or provide protection to anyone? Everything actually happens by chance. Like it or not, life is just a big crapshoot. There is no divine justice. Bad things can happen to anyone.

Jerry Parks

Member, Humanist Association of Orange County

Let’s be honest. The only reason we can discuss this question theologically is because we do not have a kid in pediatric ICU or a parent on a respirator. Theology goes out the front door in the face of tragedy.

Christianity has theological answers, of course. The answers always include the element of human choice. There would not have been, for example, as much damage in New Orleans’ 9th Ward if people weren’t living there (human choice) or the dikes of the Ward were made as strong as in other places (human injustice). But such answers do not bring hope or houses to the 9th Ward. When you are suffering, do the reasons why you are suffering matter?

I think the best answer brings no comfort to those who are not suffering, but tangible help to those who are suffering. When Jesus dies on the Cross, he is making the statement that God is with those who suffer, that God’s own heart is filled with grief, and God will suffer personal loss in order to reduce the pain and suffering of others. God cries with us. God rages with us. God hurts with us. And one day, God promises that suffering will be redeemed. God promises this on His Son’s empty grace.

Pastor Mark Wiley

Mesa Verde United Methodist Church

Costa Mesa

Evildoers do not always receive their just punishment, and good people may suffer horrendous misfortunes. This is the mystery of unmerited pain and undeserved suffering. When Job confronts this challenge, God appears to him with an indictment of Job’s ignorance: Because Job knows so little about the physical, natural world that Job can see and experience, how can he presume to fathom the mystery of God’s eternal plan, in which light and darkness, pleasure and agony, intermingle? Job was never told the reason he suffered, but, ultimately, he learned that he did not need that information or knowledge. In being visited by the all-powerful and all-wise Creator, Job became convinced that though he could not discern the reason did not mean there was no reason.

In his lack of understanding he could have concluded there was nothing to understand. Instead, he concluded that though what he wanted to understand was beyond his understanding, it was not beyond God’s understanding.

Rabbi Mark S. Miller

Temple Bet Yahm

Newport Beach

Too many people have lost their faith because of evil. I believe, instead of asking why God “allows good and innocent people to suffer” while letting those who have committed horrific acts slide, we should reexamine our theological beliefs.

My understanding of God has changed throughout my life. A major reason for this was the death of my father, a young man of 43 years. I do not see God as a puppeteer who holds the strings of humanity, winning ballgames, starting wars and blessing some people with cured cancer, while cursing others to die of AIDS.

I do not subscribe to the belief that all things happen for a reason as a part of some divine plan. I had to ask myself this very question at 14: “Why did my dad die when other people lived?” Reading Rabbi Harold Kushner helped to lead me to change my theological beliefs regarding an omnipotent God.

At that point, I could not believe in a God who thought it better for me to learn a lesson from the experience of watching my father die rather than live to see his grandchildren simply so I could be a better person. That was not a God I wanted to know and, the truth is, it was not the God I knew. I believed then, as I do now, that God is with me — each of us — always: during moments of deep pain and moments of exhilarating joy, in the darkest nights and even the mundane days.

Therefore, I do not think that God favors the religious or ignores the evil. I think that life happens, and God responds in the only way God can through love: that emanating force that calms fears in the face of death, illness or evil; that empowering energy that gives strength, courage, wisdom and hope; that transformative sustenance that lives in the human spirit. God’s presence is powerful enough.

The Rev. Sarah Halverson

Fairview Community Church

God created us to love Him, and love requires a choice to be valid. So He gave humanity four choices (the 10 came later) in the beginning to prove their love: take care of the earth, take one day a week to rest, have lots of babies (you have to like a God who includes these in His top three), and finally not to eat from one tree.

When our first ancestors decided to eat from that tree rather than love God, they began a chain reaction. Those first ripples of rebellion have become tidal waves of famine, war, disease and destruction.

In order for the love to be real, the consequences of choosing not to love must also be real. Scripture tells us that the rain falls on the good and the evil alike. Now rain can be one man’s blessing and another man’s curse. It is all a matter of perspective.

A true believer isn’t so short sighted as to view divine justice as an immediate event, but looks ahead to eternity and finds peace in God’s timing, knowing that even in our waiting for justice, we can learn to be more like Jesus who “endured the cross and suffered the shame for the joy set before him.” The joy set before Jesus was a relationship with those who would believe in His message and love Him.

Ric Olsen

Lead Pastor, The Beacon

This greatest problem for religious faith is called “theodicy” from the Greek words meaning “deity” and “justice.” It wants to know what a good God is doing to confront manifold evils in this world, which hide us from God’s love. In “Absolute Truths,” Susan Howatch writes, “God never wills suffering, but works always to redeem it. It changes life but may not permanently diminish it, that’s up to the sufferer.”

Christians stand before innocent Jesus’ unjust suffering and realize there is nothing so dark or so obscene that our gracious God cannot turn to good. The love story of the Gospel forces us to abandon the perspective of spectator, in which the “problem of ‘theodidy’” is posed. Together we are to stand before the cross and pray, and then act by serving others who Jesus calls “friend.”

(The Very Rev’d Canon) Peter D. Haynes

Saint Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church

Corona del Mar