The problem? of evil...or the solution?
“If God is all-powerful and all-loving, how come evil exists in the world?”
--Gosh, can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that inquiry. I’m not belittling it as ignorant or stupid though, by all means it’s a perfectly logical and intriguing question. And though a lot of people conclude, “Well that must mean God doesn’t exist or that if he does, he doesn’t care about humanity”, I fear that’s the “easy way out” conclusion. But for me to claim that, I better have a good answer in return or something more satisfying than the crappy answer “because he’s God and can do whatever he wants and we should just blindly accept that concerning seemingly contradictory premises like lemmings getting ready to jump off the cliff to their deaths.”
Unfortunately I can’t answer the aforementioned question definitively. But I will try to answer it by posing a question and then investigating that said question.
“What would the world be without evil?”
Now before you jump to the obvious conclusion of, “GREAT and FANTASTIC!” let’s put things into perspective first. When I pose the fantasy situation above, I’m doing it with the presupposition that a world without evil would have always been like that. When people praise the ideal of a “peace-loving” world without evil, they’re doing it with the experience of what evil is, therefore comparing the two states of existence; one being infinitely better than the other. But this is not the point I’m trying to make, though it scratches the surface.
If God had created the world evil-less, then neutrality and apathy would be the ruling emotions of mankind. Let me take my question a little further, “If we didn’t have evil, how would we know good?” It takes two to tango folks. You can’t have your yin without the yang.
Side note: This is one conundrum that makes me doubt Judeo-Christianity very much. If man and woman (Adam and Eve) existed during pre-sin times (traditionally known as “evil-less times”), how the heck could God possibly describe that as the perfect human relationship/existence??? The answer I think is the “traditional” belief that evil didn’t exist till after the Fall is totally bogus/crap (this is already the stance of many aside from mere theological considerations). To prove that empirically (just to humble anyone that thinks otherwise), Satan existed at the time and he was pure evil (so that ends the debate of whether evil existed before the Fall). Another point to consider is God’s restriction for Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Life. Why add restrictions to a supposed “perfect, evil-less” existence? It makes no sense, unless of course there was something that could harm them (spiritually in this case). You only restrict something, or admonish underlings if there is risk of danger or threat to intended purpose. No my friends, evil definitely existed in the Garden long before Adam and Eve ate that damned fruit.
Now maybe at some point in non-time, incomprehensible to our wee little minds, evil as we know it (death, Satan, etc.) didn’t exist and God was perfectly good despite there being no alternative. How the concept of Goodness can exist without the opposition is perplexing, much like it is to perceive a north without a south or a positive without a negative. It boggles the mind to think of an actual existence without evil, as much as we want it and think we know what it'd be like; though the theory of evil could’ve always existed, giving God the means to create Good. Or has He always been Good devoid of Evil? Only a reality completely foreign to our own universe could explain these apparent paradoxes. Ok, my brain is starting to hurt. But this leads me into my next part...
The reason we all desire peace and the revocation of evil is because we know how craptacular evil is. Further, the only reason we have that desire for peace and an evil-less environment is a direct result of experiencing and knowing evil itself. (If someone never experienced evil, they'd never wish for peace, because they'd already be in it. But at the same time they wouldn't realize that they were in it and would be completely ignorant of what peace and goodness are). We’d never appreciate a “perfect” living environment without knowing how crappy a non-perfect environment can be. So you see, evil is necessary to exist as living, thinking, feeling human beings. Good and evil ironically go hand and hand as any other polar opposite does. It’s a characteristic of the nature God created. Equilibrium is the underlying process in the universe. What this conclusion also alludes to is that our world would really suck without evil. We think it’s bad now? How bout a world that has no laughter, no smiling, no pleasures, etc. Sure, there wouldn’t be any evil, but there wouldn’t be any good either. It is only through the passage of an evil time (aka “life”) that we can truly appreciate a time of no evil and pure goodness (aka “Heaven”). When God comes back to kick some @$$ he’s gonna finally do what we all desire, conquer evil. And why do we desire that? Because when you’re in a pit, you desire to get out. When you live in a world full of evils, you desire to get out....or more appropriately, someone to pull you out when you know you can’t yourself... As they say, it's not the result that matters, but the process.