It seems like some of the realities that we experience in our world are not compatible with the existence of a God that is good. The existence of evil is presented as an obstacle that seems must be avoided or ignored in order to confirm our faith in a good God, with the heart of a father and a mother.
These two phrases are not realities that are contradictory neither to God�s generosity towards us nor to his power. They only seem like it.
Why evil?
To say that God does everything in the best possible way and for our happiness, when we are living among so much evil, produces a certain disturbance. Why is there evil?
A question as complicated as this is not at all easy to answer. To begin with, we have to point out certain presumptions that we are making when we finger God for the bad things in this world. That might be because God seems indifferent to all the evil in this world that does us harm. We seem to think that it�s all the same to Him whether we suffer or not; that he�s up there in that wonderful Heaven of which they spoke, peaceful and worry-free, while down here on earth there are so many innocent people who suffer. And we ask ourselves: How can God allow this?
To say something like this we have to have at least some feeling and sensitivity: we hurt for the suffering of others, while God remains magnificent and indifferent to all this pain. When I contemplate the evil in this world, the suffering of the innocent, it seems like I consider myself to be so �sensitive�: the pain of others affects me. On the other hand, I�m considering God as �insensitive�, because it seems like he doesn�t care nor has compassion for our world and all these sorrows.
And this all presents the evil in this world as a difficulty to understand the existence of an infinite God, all-powerful but good. If he does not intervene to solve these things that anguish us, then there appear to be two options: 1) he�s not all that omnipotent or 2) he�s not as good as they say. In either case, it�s not the God we were told of.
Is God indifferent to the suffering of man and to the acts of men?
It is this first part that has to be solved. If we had these doubts about God�s care towards men, anything else would probably fall on deaf ears. But that God who is father, that has gentle care and feelings of a mother, is not a distant God, cold and indifferent before our pain. And it is logical that it may seem this way: if we exists only because it is his will and we live within the loving acts that create us and keep us alive, then God feels all of our pains and all our needs as his own.In the same way, a mother feels the pains and needs of her sons as her own; probably more than she feels her own pain or suffering. God feels for us this way, but with even more feeling and sorrow, because his relationship with us is much more intricate, deeper and intense than that of a mother and her son. We always live due to the will of God and His caring gives us our existence in every instant.
This is also discovered in the words that Jesus uses when he tells us how we will be judged: �I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, (�) I was naked but you did not clothe me, sick or imprisoned and you did not visit me.� �When?� they asked him. �Every time you did so with one of these, my smallest of brothers, you did it with me.� (Mathew 25 31-46).
Christ speaks in first person: I was hungry, thirsty, alone� He was telling us: �When he was hungry, I was hungry. When he was thirsty, I was thirsty.� God feels the needs, the pain, the solitude of his sons, in his own heart, as if they were his. When we do wrong or right unto others, he feels as if though we were doing it unto Him.
We have the words of Jesus, God made man, to show us up to what point is God implies in our pain and suffering. God does not stay in that distant heaven, he makes himself human in order to save us. And he suffers the pain, hunger, fatigue, death of relatives and friends, injustice, disgrace, insults, torture and death, all in his very flesh.
God has not remained, magnificent and indifferent, in His heaven; he has wanted to suffer all the pain that we can suffer in his own flesh. He has wanted us to know that, no matter what happens, no matter what we may feel, He has also felt it as well. He feels with his heart of God, infinitely more sensitive than ours, only sometimes it is not easy to understand the sensitivity of God. And that is one of the reasons why he came to us as human: he wants us to know that He has a heart and human sensibility that understands us and feels intimately implied in all that we suffer.
Where does the evil in the world come from?
When we try to explain why there is evil in this world, we have to distinguish between:
1) the bad and the suffering that comes from human will: our concrete sins, and
2) the bad and the suffering of things such as death, illnesses such as AIDS and cancer, natural phenomena, such as earthquakes and hurricanes that are a harsh, but inevitable part of the nature of this world and of human nature.
Also, we need to know two things: Why this evil exists and what is the meaning that is all has, on a human way and a supernatural way.
First, we give an answer as to why this evil exists, answer that, although incomplete, is true and radical: the cause of all this evil that exists as given in this world from the beginning of time, such as pain and hunger, is the sin of man, starting from our first fathers. Here�s why:
God has made the world this way: good and worth living in. Actually, in the original plans of God, we were all free from sickness, pain, ignorance and even death. After sometime in our world, long enough to mature in love, humans would pass, without the pain of death, directly to that state of definite goodness that is Heaven. Although death and pain are natural things, and play an important role in the development and maturity of the human being, God who loves us as a mother, wanted to avoid these things.
But humans rebelled against God. That is how the book of Genesis explains to us in his first chapter. Man introduced evil into this world, against the plans and will of God. Death and evil entered this world as consequence of sin. And a great deal of the misery and evil that there is in the world today are consequence of these first sins and those that have followed to the present moment, including ours. This brings about the human freedom and the respect that God has for it, whether we choose what is right or wrong.
