When Theodicy Is Evil

“Theodicy,” a fancy word that every Adventist should know, tackles a question that every Adventist should ask (and surely has): If an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good God in heaven loves us so much, why is there so much suffering here on earth?

The great controversy metanarrative is a theodicy, a freewill theodicy (different types exist). Lucifer, with some angels, abusing the free will necessary for love (forced love is not love), rebelled in heaven. Expelled (Rev. 12:7-9), he then caused Adam and Eve to abuse the same free will that he had, but only here on earth. Ultimately, God will make all things right, and in a manner so that every rational intelligence in the cosmos, including Lucifer and the fallen angels, will acknowledge God’s goodness, grace, and justice in dealing with evil.

But still, how fair is it that, through our blood, through our sweat, through our tears and our suffering, God will resolve the issues—all the while He remains safely ensconced in heaven, continuously worshipped and praised by the angels and the “principalities and powers in the heavenly places” (Eph. 3:10), et al.?

Not quite. On the cross, Jesus had “borne our griefs and carried our sorrows (Isa. 53:4). The word “sorrows,” from macav, appears in 2 Chronicles 6:29, which says that “each one knows his own burden and his own grief [from macav].” In other words, though the numbers stun us (millions killed here, millions there), in all of the earth’s population through the millennia, not one person has ever suffered more macav than any individual, alone, can suffer. Except Jesus, who on the cross bore all the world’s macav. So crucial, then, was the freedom required for humans to be able to love, that—knowing beforehand that our freedom would lead Him to suffer corporately what every human can know only individually—God gave us this freedom anyway.

To justify evil—or to try to by explaining it—is an evil itself.

However, God Himself suffering because of evil still doesn’t explain evil. In God, Evil, and the Limits of Theology, Karen Kilby wrote that theologian Jürgen Moltmann viewed God’s suffering as “a source of comfort to those in Auschwitz.”[*] Really now? I wonder how much comfort Moltmann’s famous “crucified God” gave to the father in Auschwitz who watched his wife and children leave in a cloud of smoke?

The book of Job isn’t particularly helpful here either, at least as a theodicy. Sure, it reveals the great controversy, which provides a framework, a context for our miserable world. But who, having read the book of Job, leaves satisfied with its answers about evil and suffering? Despite the “happy” ending, would Job have declared: Oh, yes, Lord, now I fully understand the reason for the death of my 10 children. It makes such perfect sense. Thank You?

Or maybe the book of Job gave no good answers for evil because there are no good answers, and any theodicy that seeks them, or rational explanations for evil, is itself deluded. To logically explain evil, or to give a good reason for it, is to justify it, and who wants to do that?

Or what? Oh, yes, Jesus, now I know why my wife and three children, hiding in a bomb shelter during the Allied firebombing of Dresden, were baked—baked!—alive. Yes, it makes perfectly good sense now that You have explained it all to me. Of course!

That’s sick. Better there be no reason for that family to be cooked alive than there be a good one. (If there were a good one, I’d shudder to know it.) Theodicy is the justification of God, as revealed at the cross, and not of evil; on the contrary, to justify evil—or to try to by explaining it—is an evil itself.

[*] Karen Kilby, God, Evil and the Limits of Theology, p. 108, Kindle Edition.