A young man depressed from failure to pass an exam jumped from an apartment building and fell on a father of a family entering the building, both died. Many felt deeply about the death of the head of a family who died in such a way. This news appearing on the internet received many comments and the greatest number of responses resonated: "There is no God." A moral professor of one of the Catholic seminaries gives an answer to the readers in Bible & Life magazine.This comment leaves us with deep anguish. Those who commented, no doubt felt, if there was a God this would never have happened. What God would allow a happy father of a family, without fault, to die in this preposterous way?
Of course, these incidents that take away the breath of believers along with non-believers are not something we see only in modern times but have been expressed both within and outside of the church for centuries past. Atheists use this reasoning to deny the existence of God and criticize religious believers. This is one of the basic arguments of the atheists and can be summarized in two ways.
Since God is all powerful, knows all, and can do all, why does he not prevent these injustices and pain of his creatures? Secondly, if God was truly all good why in the world does he allow those he loves to suffer as so many do in life? Especially with natural disasters and accidents where so many innocent people are injured and die—why doesn't he do something? Why the silence? These thoughts also enter the thinking of believers.
The attempts to understand why an almighty, all-knowing, and loving God permits evil is called Theodicy which means justifying God, as if this is necessary, but it is a part of theology a desire to find answers to human questions. The oldest and traditional answer was to humbly understand our human limits—infinite God's plans and mysteries, finite human mind is not able to grasp. At the end of time, all will be clear and in the meantime, we try to make daily wise choices. We can easily see how the avoidance of an intelligent responsive argument to the atheists' doubt would be received.
There is a need, first of all, to distinguish between two kinds of evil: physical evil and moral evil. With moral evil we can respond with the argument from the freedom of the will and each person must answer for the pain that arises. An example would be our indiscriminate development by which we are destroying our environment and the results are global warming. The resulting natural calamities are our responsibility—we need to change our lifestyle.
But the answer is not that simple. Why do I and my family have to suffer from these calamities when I have done nothing to bring it about? Why does God let the world run by the laws of nature?
What would happen if God ignored the laws of nature and entered in to prevent the calamities? The connection between cause and effect is broken and the development of science and culture, and the acts of virtue cease.
However, a person may respond why did God make such a universe in the first place? Theologically we say that God made us to cooperate in the creation. The universe is not a finished masterpiece. We are to participate in its development. Rather than sheep grazing on the grass would it not be better to have the security of a fence and the owner giving the sheep water?
If life ends with death than all the pain is for naught. But if we are made for another life, meaning changes. Our evil acts will be judged and in the face of natural disasters, we have eschatological hope. In life, for a Christian, no pain lacks meaning.
