“God will make all things right.”
I’m not exactly sure where in the Bible this is said but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. This seems to be another instance of trying to placate those who suffer now with the promise of something better in the future.
How, exactly, will heaven and hell “make all things right”? Let’s say someone murders my wife. Will knowing that the murderer is going to hell and that I’ll see my wife in heaven after I die really make up for all the agony and loss I’ll feel during my lifetime? And what if my wife wasn’t a Christian? And what if the murderer converts in jail? Then I’m in heaven with the murderer and my wife is in hell! How is that “making all things right”?
Future reward cannot “make right” present suffering. Future reward really amounts to compensation; and compensation is not justice. It can make the suffering bearable or give the suffering the illusion of meaning but it cannot “make it right.”
The problem with this attitude is that, in the end, we still have no reason for our suffering. To say that we will be compensated in the future does nothing to explain why we are suffering right now. This is precisely why Christianity has such a hard time with the existence of evil. All the answers are that “everything will work out in the end.” But that is not a real answer. It does not address the real issue.
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Future reward cannot “make right” present suffering.
I agree completely.
N.T. Wright, in his online discussion with Bart Ehrman, made the claim that God had some sort of long term plan that involved Jesus and that this somehow explained away human suffering. Try telling that to the people who suffered over the centuries before this “long term plan” came to fruition. That is just nonsensical gobbledygook, as far as I am concerned.
The only way I could reconcile the problem of evil with the existence of God was by rejecting the notion of Divine omnipotence.
Thanks for reminding me about the Wright/Ehrman discussion. I read some of the initial posts but need to go back and revisit it. And I can’t find the link right now but will post it here when I do.
“The only way I could reconcile the problem of evil with the existence of God was by rejecting the notion of Divine omnipotence.”
Very courageous of you! And very insightful. Many Christians are so implicitly stuck with God’s omnipotence that the idea of rejecting it never crosses their minds. They just can’t see that as an option and so they are stuck with malformed solutions that don’t do much to address the issue.
Traditional Christian philosophy frames the problem of evil in terms of the “best possible world” doctrine. The type of evil that you are discussing is the so-called “moral evil” (as opposed to metaphysical evil) which is caused by man exercising his free will and voluntarily turning away from the laws of God, or possibly acting out of ignorance.
In either case, God allows such evil to exist because ultimately, the best possibly world can only be achieved when man has free will. If God had created a perfectly good world, and made man absolutely good, this would have left no room for human freedom, which would have been less than morally perfect thing for God to do.
Furthermore God cannot be the cause of evil, although he does allow it to exist. Philosophically speaking, evil does not exist, but is rather a “privation” or lack of goodness or substance.
I’d recommend dusting off Aquinas’ Summa Theologica for proof. For lighter reading, check out The Phiolosphy of Evil by Paul Siwek, SJ.
Please check out a related post on this issue.
Also, a comment about the “best possible world” doctrine. What does that say about heaven? If Satan and his demons are to be bound forever and we will be in heaven as perfect creatures, then the conclusion is that, in heaven, we will not have free will and, therefore, will not be morally perfect.
Furthermore, if Lucifer sinned while in heaven, what is to prevent it from happening again, even after Satan is bound forever?