Biblical Text

You can read Genesis 1.1-2.3 here.

You can listen to the scripture passage here.

Sermon Video

You can watch the sermon video here.

Sermon Transcript

[Note: The actual sermon will differ somewhat from what I had typed.]

It was a hilarious movie-moment back in 2012, when the first Avengers movie was released. As a family, we had already gotten hooked onto the MCU. That’s the Marvel Cinematic Universe for the uninitiated. During the final extended battle, The Hulk and Loki confront each other. Loki begins to say, “I am a god, you dull creature and I will not be bullied” but is cut short when The Hulk picks him up, slams him repeatedly onto the floor, and walks away saying, “Puny god.”

The title of my message may have raised some questions for some of you. Why are we starting this year by responding to a 4^th century BC Greek atheistic philosopher? How should his thinking be relevant to us twenty four centuries after he lived? What wisdom could an ancient atheist have for us who believe in and trust the God and Father of Jesus of Nazareth? And where is Jesus in all this?

Today, on the first Sunday of 2021, which we hope will be at least a few shades better than 2020, we also are starting a new sermon series. Given how devastating 2020 was for many people around the world, we are starting the year with a series on the Problem of Evil. We will address the matter from a number of angles because evil presents itself to us in multiple forms. We will not be trivializing evil, but will treat it with all the seriousness it deserves, while remaining biblically grounded.

As most of you probably know, I am responsible for the preaching schedule at Christalaya Koramangala. Last year, when I was thinking about the plan for this year, I was led to consider the issue of evil and the problems it raises for people of faith. At that time, I did not realize how appropriate this series would be. Late in 2020, we heard that the investigations into Ravi Zacharias had revealed that he had engaged in sexual misconduct. 

Ravi had died earlier in 2020 and a couple of months after his death, some women accused him of sexual misconduct. To the credit of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, they hired an independent private firm to conduct the investigation into the allegations. It must have come as a big shock when we heard that the interim report indicated that Ravi had indeed abused his power and sexually abused some women who worked at two spas co-owned by him.

I wish to acknowledge that Ravi’s work has touched numerous lives. Many people in the world are Christian today because of his work. And many of them are probably quite shaken with these revelations. Such behaviour is shameful and sinful and reflects poorly on Jesus whom we represent. It is damaging to the victims and we should condemn such behaviour in our leaders. I bring this up here not only because we are beginning a sermon series on the Problem of Evil. 

Rather, my reasons are twofold. First, I wish to be very clear that these actions were sinful and abusive and inexcusable in any person who claims to represent Jesus to the world. Jesus was sinless and did not abuse anyone and we who represent him should strive to this goal daily especially if we are leaders.

So second, I wish to charge you with the responsibility of keeping me on the straight and narrow. 

Being your pastor, I am in a position of authority. It is very easy for a sinner like me to slip into sinful, abusive practices. And so I charge you to let me know if I am abusing my authority in any way. And if I do not listen to you and mend my ways, I charge you to bring this to the notice of the other leaders in our congregation – Uncle Ken, Uncle Ricky, Caleb, Paul and Santosh. The last thing we want as a congregation is for our witness to the world to be sullied by an abusive pastor.

Before I begin with the main part of the sermon, I need to make a very strong disclaimer. For as long as we can remember, humans have struggled with the problem of evil. One of the earliest books in the bible is the book of Job, which deals with the problem in considerable depth. So I don’t think that I can, even in whatever additional years God will give me, resolve the problem of evil. Many minds, much greater than mine, have wrestled with the issue and have proposed solutions.

But despite the keenness of their minds, none of the solutions has settled the matter and with each atrocity we wrestle anew with this especially potent challenge to the idea that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God. All I can say is that I will present the matter as I see it and will propose a solution that allows me to maintain a genuine trust in the God revealed in and through Jesus. I will be more than happy to wrestle with the matter with any of you.

But I would like to state that I wrestle with the issue from a perspective of faith. I trust Jesus. I know that he will not turn his back on me. I know that he loves me. And so, when I am faced with this soul crushing challenge to his love and faithfulness, I try to understand how the evil around us can fit within the context of that love and faithfulness. I can walk alongside any of you as you wrestle from this perspective – the unshakable confidence in Jesus, his love and faithfulness. 

So let us begin. In the early fourth century, the Christian apologist Lactantius wrote a treatise called De Ira Dei or The Wrath of God, which was directed against the Stoics and Epicureans of his day. It is he who provides us with the earliest evidence of the Epicurean Paradox, also known as Epicurus’ Trilemma, which Lactantius stated as follows: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?”

In the 18^th century the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume popularized Epicurus’ Trilemma. It is important to observe that Hume only had access to Christian documents such as the writings of Lactantius for, in Europe, and yes, I’m counting Scotland as a part of Europe, only the Christians were truly wrestling with this problem. So, even for his attack on Christianity he had to rely on the trustworthiness of the Christian writers. The irony is simply delicious.

Our task for today is to address the question posed by Epicurus’ Trilemma, “Then from whence comes evil?” Epicurus presents us with some possibilities. Either God is not all powerful. Hence, he does not have the power to prevent evil, which explains why there is evil. Or God is not all loving. Hence, he does not desire to rid the world of evil, which explains why there is evil. The assumption is that, if God were all powerful and all loving, then there would be no place for evil.

Before we proceed to answer Epicurus’ question, we need to distinguish between three kinds of evil that we are faced with. The first is natural evil or evil that arises from the forces of nature. We can think of earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and the like under this category. Second is the evil of animal suffering or evil that arises from the order of nature. The death of a gazelle when it is hunted by a tiger or the death of a seal when hunted by a polar bear fall in this category. 

Then there is the matter of moral evil or evil that arises from angelic or human agency. What we classify as crimes, such as theft, murder, and rape, fall under this category. And with respect to angelic activity, the evil of demon possession would be classified here. Here I need to say a word about the second category. In the past, Christian thinkers have not included this category because there is the assumption that prior to the events of Genesis 3, there was absolutely no death. 

However, it is important to note that the text of Genesis 3 only speaks of human death. It says nothing about animal death. Also, the fossil records indicate that there has been life on earth for millions of years. If nothing died, that is not even fruit producing trees, the planet would have been overwhelmed with vegetation in a very short period of time. Rather, it is likely that the prey predator relationships are not something introduced by human sinfulness but simply the way life works.

So back to the problem of evil. In the text that we read, we saw that, when God had completed his work of creation, he declared what he had created to be ‘very good’. The Hebrew word translated with the word ‘good’ is טוֹב (tov), which occurs a total of 559 times in the Old Testament. The word is almost always translated as ‘good’ in the English translations. Now this is a perfectly acceptable translation, the problem is with the English word ‘good’.

You see, ‘good’ now has such extremely strong connotations of being the opposite of ‘evil’, in a moral sense that we find it difficult to understand it in any other ways. However, the primary meaning of ‘good’ is ‘something to be desired or approved’ or ‘something having a high standard’. These meanings are not moral in nature. So I could say that the Mona Lisa is a good painting, meaning that it has a high standard of artistry and is something to be desired. 

I could say that lowering carbon emissions is a good goal to have, meaning that it is something to be desired and something that would set a high standard for human societies. There is no moral side to this. 

And indeed, we should expect this. When God first says something is good, it is right after he creates light. This cannot, in any scheme of interpretation, carry a moral meaning. 

It simply means that, after creating light and dividing the day into periods of light and darkness, it was now ready for the function God was going to give it. It had a high standard and was something that God approved of because of this. So when God finished his work of creation and said that what he had created was very good, he was saying that the universe he had created was optimally suited for the purpose for which he had created it. It was ready to function as designed.

So really, our understanding of the goodness of creation boils down to how we understand the claim that creation was optimally suited for its purpose. And then, of course, we have to ask what its purpose was and is, for, without knowing the purpose, it would be impossible to determine what is optimal. Let’s consider an example. If I were to ask you, “What causes earthquakes?” most of you would readily answer with reference to the movement of earth’s tectonic plates.

And you would be mostly right. However, since 1900, earthquakes have killed more than one million people. Earthquakes account for more than half of all deaths caused by natural disasters. So we might be forgiven if we conclude that earthquakes are altogether evil.

Back in 1912, when Alfred Wegener first proposed the theory of continental drift, it was ridiculed as a nonsensical theory. It took more than half a century for his theory to be accepted.

But not only is plate tectonics a robust and thriving theory, listen to what noted geologist Katherine Huntington has to say: “Understanding plate tectonics is a major key to understanding our own planet and its habitability. How do you make a habitable planet, and then sustain life on it for billions of years? Plate tectonics is what modulates our atmosphere at the longest timescales. You need that to be able to keep water here, to keep it warm, to keep life chugging along.”

So the natural process that causes most deaths worldwide and that we would have, until about 5 years ago, considered a natural evil, turns out to be an essential process for the existence and sustenance of all life on earth. 

In like manner, until recently, forest fires were viewed in a solely negative light until we discovered the essential role such fires play in actually maintaining a vibrant and thriving forest ecosystem.

It is as though we humans were in a room, looking out at the world through a peephole and drawing wide reaching conclusions about what is beneficial for life and what is not. With so many examples from past discoveries, the hubris of humans in assuming we know what is beneficial for us and what is not is quite surprising. I mean, we can’t even decide if fats in food are good for us and yet we claim to be able to fully understand all the benefits and dangers of natural processes.

So, if it is true that earthquakes and forest fires are essential for life on earth, could it be that the natural processes we most fear have some life sustaining purposes? I’m not making a claim here. Just raising the possibility that we don’t know the full picture about many things.

But in that case, we still need to ask about the purpose for which God created such a world. The first chapter of Genesis is quite clear about this, but we need to read it carefully.

Six times in Genesis 1 we read that God declared something is טוֹב (tov). And in all cases, it comes when God has prepared or commissioned some life-sustaining activity. In other words, the Genesis account tells the reader that one of the main reasons for which God created the world was so that it could be a life sustaining world. Please note the word ‘sustaining’. God has created plants and animals with the ability to propagate themselves. But we still have to discuss his reasons.

In other words, “Why did God even bother to create this universe?” Most perspectives on creation fall short here precisely because they are unable to give a coherent picture for why God would create. One theory that does provide some insight is the two-stage kenotic theory proposed by Physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne. According to this theory, God’s ways are always two-staged with a developmental phase preceding a matured phase. 

We see this in the two stages of Jesus’ work – a first Advent, which we just celebrated in Christmas, and a second Advent that we await. We see it in God’s people – first defined ethnically in the Jewish people and now transcending ethnic definitions in the Church. We see this in the schema for life itself as presented to us in the bible – this life lived in a corruptible body that will die followed by a life lived in an incorruptible body not subject to death.

If this schema is true, then this life we live right now is a training ground of sorts for the life to come. Somehow, in this life we are developing perspectives and skills required for the life to come. Humans, more than any other species in this world, are able to learn from their efforts. Even when we fail, we can learn. Hence, it is we who have tamed fire and use it to cook our food and warm our homes. It is we who have diverted our rivers to water our crops and wash ourselves.

There is the saying, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” So let’s consider a hypothesis. Suppose God wanted to have a never ending relationship outside of himself. The love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit was so pure and delightful that they wanted to spread it beyond the Godhead. But he did not want this to be a stop-gap measure that would last only a short time. After all, that would only bring him back to the original state. 

And so somehow he had to guarantee that these creatures that he would create would become willing, loving partners with him for an unending duration. Now, if these partners were to be able to love, they had to be free to hate. And if they were supposed to join God willingly, they had to be free to rebel against him. Coercion of any sort on God’s part would have removed the ability of these creatures to love and to join him willingly. And so God sets his creatures free to hate and disobey.

Only then could they love and obey. Why would God do such a thing? One thing we humans find very difficult to handle is power. We saw this in the case of Ravi Zacharias. As the first Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He was obviously not thinking of the biblical God, who willingly shares his absolute power with his creatures. Sharing of power is in the very nature of our God and we see this right from the first chapter of Genesis.

In the first chapter of Genesis, God commissions his creatures to continue his work of creation because he has given them the power of creating life within themselves. The trees will produce fruit that will contain seeds leading to more trees. And similarly with the animals and humans. When a baby is conceived and born it is one more occasion in which humans have, by obeying God’s initial commission, joined him in the ongoing creative task of making this world flourish.

But this is a risky business. By creating creatures who were free to love and obey, he was creating creatures who were free to hate and disobey. And that is precisely what happened. Before God created this world and all the corporeal creatures in it, he created the spiritual creatures – angels, powers and principalities. These too were free to love and obey him and, therefore, free to hate and disobey him. And at some point in time, some of these spiritual creatures rebelled against God.

This was how evil originated. It was when God’s free creatures turned their backs on his ways of love and partnership and tried to do things through coercion and domination. 

A similar thing happened with humans. The first humans were told not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Remember what we learned about the Hebrew word טוֹב (tov). It refers to the ability of something to function optimally.

Humans wanted the wisdom that only God possesses – the wisdom of knowing what the optimal approach to any situation is. However, as our inability to determine whether fats are good for us or not indicates, our minds are puny and cannot even comprehend fully the mundane matters of our existence. How then would we be able to determine the optimal approach to larger, more complex situations? Though being infants, we think ourselves mature, to the detriment of everything around us.

When I was young, my dad used to often repeat a proverb that I later discovered was an Arabian proverb. It goes as follows: “He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool; shun him. He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a student; Teach him. He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep; Wake him. He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise; Follow him.” Humans believe we are wise when in fact we are fools.

We think we know a lot and act like we have immense wisdom when the reality is that we are simply too proud to admit that we are ignorant. Jesus indicated this during his crucifixion when he said, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” This is the root of all human evil. Everyone acts, thinking, at least in the moment, that what they are doing is the wise course of action. 

Jesus indicated this too when he said that it is not what goes into us that pollutes us but our words and actions, which reveal what is in our hearts, that is, what we are truly convinced about. We say things we think are wise words. We do things that we think are wise actions. At least in the moment when we speak and act, our true convictions are revealed. I may have said or done something that I later realized were hurtful and sinful, but in the moment I believed what I did was wise.

But it does not have to be sinful words and actions. I can relate even as a teacher. A student may come to me with some issue. Perhaps she did not understand what I taught. Perhaps he wants a study plan. And I would give the student my advice, thinking that it is the best advice when, in fact, because my perspective on the situation is narrow and limited, whatever advice I may give might be sub-optimal at best and detrimental to the student at worst.

Every hour, one student in India commits suicide because the education system, the school, or the parents make them believe that their worth is determined by their marks and grades. Every hour, five people worldwide take their lives because of unemployment – a situation that was severely exacerbated during the year that just ended. One in four women and one in seven men are victims of physical abuse at the hands of an intimate partner.

Thousands of species have gone extinct because humans acted out their wisdom and destroyed the habitats of those creatures. Within decades of discovering how to tap into the massive amounts of energy in an atom, humans had designed, deployed, and detonated Little Boy and Fat Man over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the mid 1860s, the Austrian Augustinian monk, Gregor Mendel, conducted meticulous experiments that led to the discovery of his laws of genetic inheritance.

However, in a few decades, people like Joseph Mengele, the Nazi Angel of Death, and Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, had developed the ethically deplorable science of eugenics in their attempt to rid the world of those they considered unwanted. While they differed in their definition of who was unwanted and in the methods they employed, both agreed that society included unwanted people, the removal of whom would lead to a better society.

All these are examples of how humans act in evil ways because of our ignorance and our ubiquitous inability to recognise our ignorance. But please note that I am not saying that, because evil that originates in humans has human ignorance at its root, the solution is more knowledge or better education. As the wisdom of the saying “knowledge is power” indicates, even our quest for knowledge is motivated by a desire to dominate – a motive at odds with those of the loving, partnering God. 

At the same time, please do not think that I am against the gaining of knowledge or the advancement of education. I mean, I’m a teacher! I gain knowledge all the time and hope to communicate this hunger for learning to my students. So I am certainly not opposed to acquiring more knowledge and understanding. I am all for the enterprise of learning. But I think we need to realize that the acquisition of knowledge does not guarantee the development of wisdom.

We remain creatures who are incapable of seeing the big picture. We remain creatures who, even if we were able to see the big picture, would not be able to fully understand the nuances contained in the big picture. 

So I have claimed that moral evil is a result of human ignorance, the inability of humans to perceive or process the full picture. We think we know what the optimal course of action is and, because we are ignorant, our actions result in evils that are beyond limit.

But if moral evil has its origins in human ignorance, what about the natural evils? According to Genesis 1, God’s original commission to humans was for us to exercise his good governance over creation. We were intended to explore and understand the natural processes and bring them under our benevolent God-given authority. But as soon as we rejected our role of being stewards under God, as soon as we decided that we were wise enough to do it on our own, we marred creation.

As Paul says in Romans 8, “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.” God had designed creation to flourish under the good governance of his human creatures. 

Hence, when humans rejected this vocation, creation was derailed. While, as I suggested earlier, there are processes essential to sustaining life, these processes too are not in proper balance, causing the evils that we recoil from. 

So evil, in the end, is the result of the rebellion of God’s creatures, angelic and human. And this could happen because God wanted to have an unending, loving relationship with his creatures. 

And this required a two-staged process. We are in the first stage, in which we are free to choose to love and obey God or hate and disobey him, developing the skills needed for the second, unending stage.

But you may wonder if it was worth it. Does this lofty goal of an unending relationship with his creatures justify God’s decision to allow so much evil in the world? Is so much pain and suffering an acceptable cost just for God to achieve his goal?

Let me just say that the very fact that you are asking the question is an indication that it is. You see, God could very well have created a world without pain and suffering, a world in which no creature was free to disobey his will, a world which worked as efficiently as any world could. But in such a world, there could not have been any creatures who had the ability to raise any doubt about God’s policies or question his wisdom for all the creatures would simply be automatons.

So, if we want a world in which no creature was able to disobey God, we want a world in which all the creatures were automatons. But in that case, we are actually asking for a world in which we did not exist, for we were created with the ability to debate, doubt, and disobey. You and I, as we know ourselves, are not automatons, mindlessly responding in programmed ways. We believe that we have a say in what happens and that the choices we make are real choices. 

If this is the case, then, as Polkinghorne says, we have to accept that this world has beauty and barbed wires. This world has a lot that is good intermingled with a lot that is evil. It has a lot that functions optimally and a lot that is suboptimal. 

So what do we say to the question posed by Epicurus? Where does evil come from? Does evil exist because God is powerful but malevolent? Or does it exist because he is benevolent but powerless? 

The problem with Epicurus’ questions is that they are framed for a puny god. They are framed for a god who creates without a plan. They are posed for a god who has not thought things through, for a god who has neither a real, everlasting concern for the wellbeing of his creatures nor any desire to remain in relationship with his them. To the contrary, the bible presents a God who knows that learning to love and obey him will mean that his creatures will make mistakes.

And so he creates in two-stages, allowing a stage in which his creatures learn to love and obey him, in which his creatures realize that, apart from him, they cannot act with full wisdom and in optimal ways. And so, in answering Epicurus and David Hume and all the contemporary atheists who reject a belief in God because of the existence of evil, I say, “You have a problem because you have a puny god – a god who, by your own design, is just a straw man.”

For if you stepped back and questioned your ability to reject God’s existence on the ground that evil exists, you would realize that, far from proving that God does not exist, your ability to question and your ability to recognize evil demonstrates the immense transcendence and love of the true God who has chosen to create by divesting himself of absolute power and investing a part of it in his creatures. And to him be all glory now and forever.