Consistent secularists and atheists must conclude suffering is random, a matter of luck or power. Hinduism says suffering is deserved because of actions in a previous life. Buddhism says suffering is caused by your cravings for and attachment to material things. Only Christianity says the problem of evil is real.

After college, I spent a semester interning in Washington, DC. One day I went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. It’s a dark experience where you’re confronted with the tragic deaths of 6 million Jews, 2 million Poles, 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war, and many others during World War II. As you walk through the museum, you’ll be shocked and disgusted by the radical nature of evil.

For Christians, this raises one of the hardest––if not the hardest––question to answer: Where was God during the Holocaust?

This is the problem of evil. It can be stated in a few ways but one of its most popular formulations goes like this: Christians believe God is all-powerful and all-good, yet evil exists in the world. Therefore, either God isn’t all-powerful (or else he’d prevent evil), or he isn’t all-good (because he has the power to stop evil and doesn’t).

Too many times, people think one response will answer the problem of evil. But what we actually need is a thick, multifaceted approach. A single answer doesn’t satisfy, because the problem of evil is too complex. A multipronged approach, however, can help us reckon with evil in the world.

Human Freedom

Christians believe in human freedom. God created us not as robots who do whatever he wishes. We’re not programmed to act in certain ways, though because of Adam and Eve’s fall we are all born with sin in our nature. If we don’t affirm human freedom, then we must affirm that God made a world where our choices don’t matter. We have freedom to choose good or evil. God made Adam and Eve good; when they chose to rebel against him, their decision resulted in moral evil, which results in God’s judgment. We’re responsible for our actions, and these actions are still part of God’s sovereign plan (Acts 3:17-18). However, because we are free, atrocities like the Holocaust aren’t God’s fault but the choice of human beings who turned from God and rejected what he calls good.

Part of answering the problem of evil is rightly defining evil. Evil isn’t a thing––it’s the deprivation of a thing, the corruption of a good thing. God didn’t create evil; he created things good, but we corrupt his good creation.

While this answer is partially satisfying, it still raises questions. Human freedom explains moral evil, but it doesn’t fully explain natural evils like wildfires, tsunamis, or earthquakes. Did humans cause those? It also raises the question of why God would make a world with so much suffering. The animal kingdom experiences much suffering. Have you ever seen an injured animal in the wild and wondered, How could God allow this to happen if he’s good? It seems like he could have designed a better plan.

Dark Spiritual Forces

Another explanation for evil involves acknowledging the existence of dark spiritual forces. God created not only human beings with freedom but also spiritual forces who rebelled against him and were cast down to earth out of heaven.

If your theology accounts for the fall of spiritual beings, you can assert that natural evil began when evil began. As many theologians throughout Christian history have attested, all evil cannot be pinned on the human fall alone; the fall of angels is also culpable for the origin of natural evil.

Satan is known as the prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2:2). The book of Job tells us that Satan came before God and asked if he could torment Job. Then fire fell from heaven and consumed Job’s livestock (Job 1:16), and a great wind came on the earth, striking the four corners of the house so all his children died (vv. 18–19). Dark and fallen spiritual beings have great power in this world and can cause havoc. Therefore, part of the answer to the problem of natural evil is that the dark spiritual forces are causing chaos all over the world.

Yet this explanation still raises questions: Why did God let the angels fall? Why does God let it continue? Couldn’t he fix it all right now? Aren’t some instances of natural evil excessive and disproportionate?

Greater Good

God allows evil to occur for the greater good, even though we can’t always see the greater good. While this explanation is often hard to accept, it is a principle we see play out over and over again in Scripture.

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