Mailbag: What about Horrendous Evil?

My question concerns, years ago when Christopher Hitchens told the true story of Elizabeth Fritzl, the woman who was imprisoned for almost 24 years I think it was, and was brutally raped by her own father. Hitchens argues that an all loving, all powerful God does not exist because something atrocious like that happened. He “invites us to imagine how she must have prayed for God to help” and no help came.

I am a follower of Christ but this does pierce my heart. How do you answer that? I know we could say “well we have free will, God allows free will” or “an atheist can’t say it was wrong because they have no standard to appeal to because there is no God.” Those answers seem alright but they still don’t sit well with me. I feel like I need something a little more.

Caleb

Hi Caleb. The story of Elizabeth is awful, to start with. No sugarcoating that. It's truly horrible, not the way the world ought to be.

On its face it seems an instance, perhaps an intractable one at that, of the problem of evil.

But let's think for a moment what it means to say it's not the way the world ought to be. That makes sense in a world that's broken, but it doesn't make much if any sense in a world that just is, a world that we shouldn't expect to be any different.

On a secular view of the world in which, ultimately, reality is made of complex collections of atoms operating according to inviolable causal laws, why expect anything to be any different from how it is? I can't think of any good reason. In that scenario, the likelihood is that everything that happens is causally determined to happen just as it does. So to say, "The world ought to be different" doesn't make a lick of sense. This isn't to say that atheists can't see horrible injustices or don't care about them or don't have the intuition that the world ought to be better. Of course they can and do, but the resources at their disposal as atheists are severely limited to make good sense of such things.

The very category of moral evil is hard to accommodate on their worldview. The world is as it is, and there should be no expectation it's anything different. 

On a Christian understanding of things, we know the world is broken. We know it's not yet the way it ought to be. We know real tragedies take place. We also know that God is in the process of putting the world right. 

I don't claim to know all the reasons why God sometimes intervenes but often doesn't to put a stop to evils sooner. There's quite a bit of mystery there. But nowhere in biblical teaching do I find a promise that God will spare us from even quite horrific things in this world. He promises to be with us, that we can trust him, but that doesn't mean we can expect him to answer every prayer as we'd like in the time frame we desire.

The point about Elizabeth is of course generalizable. Ever so many things in this world fall short of how it ought to be. But here's one line of consideration to bear in mind—though I do not even remotely pretend this is all that needs to be said. Suppose that God were to intervene every time something horrific was about to happen. Consider what seems intuitive enough: children shouldn't be mistreated.

Now imagine what the world would be like if God were to intervene every time a child was about to be mistreated. Bad and abusive parents would be stopped every time they were intent on inflicting harm on a child. Parents irresponsible in feeding their kids and meeting their needs would be stopped from doing that somehow. If a child were dropped from the top of tall building—well, either that wouldn't be allowed, or God himself would somehow break the children's falls. Etc.

My point is that the world would be a very different place. Interventions by God would quickly prove to be ubiquitous. And remember we've identified just a few examples of grievous wrongdoings in this world.

As a Christian I take heart that God is good and can be trusted ultimately to defeat the worst of evils that this broken world doles out.

As I say, there's ever so much more ground to cover. The problem of evil is a big discussion, needless to say. If you haven't read Eleonore Stump's and Marilyn Adams' books on the subject, I'd encourage it. Clay Jones has also done good work on all this stuff, as have others, but those are a few tips for further reading anyway.

Best,

Dave