The Problem of Pain: Part 2

How the World Answers the Problem of Evil

Every system of thought has a way to explain the tension between a powerful creator and the reality of human suffering. To understand why the Christian view is unique, it helps to see how other common worldviews try to answer this question:

• Atheism takes a purely physical approach. It simplifies the problem by saying that God does not exist. To an atheist, evil is not a spiritual problem. It is simply the cold, natural law of nature—the survival of the fittest.
• Buddhism and movements like Christian Science say that evil and suffering do not actually exist. They argue that pain is just an illusion in our minds.
• Liberal Theism tries to protect God’s character by making Him less powerful. It suggests that God is very nice and has good intentions, but He is not strong enough to stop bad things. He cries with us, but He cannot help us.
• Taoism believes that the universe itself is divine. It argues that good and evil are equal, opposite forces that balance each other—like the famous idea of yin and yang.

While these ideas might sound interesting, they do not give real comfort or a good explanation for the deep anger we feel when bad things happen.

The Original Blueprint

The Bible offers a completely different explanation, starting in the first pages of Genesis. Chapters 1 and 2 describe a God who creates a universe of perfect order, beauty, and peace. After looking at everything He made, Genesis 1:31 says that "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good." There was no cancer, no violence, no broken relationships, and no sadness in that original plan.

This brings us to a common and important question: If God’s world was so perfect, why did He put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the middle of the Garden? It is easy to look back at human history and blame the tree for all our problems. But the truth is, the tree was not a mistake in God's design. It was an essential proof of God's love, because it gave Adam and Eve human dignity and true freedom.

True love and real relationships cannot exist without a choice. If God had programmed human beings to automatically obey Him like robots, we would not be children made in His image. We would just be biological machines.

"The tree in the garden was a monument to human dignity. Every single day our first parents walked past it, they had a real opportunity to worship God by choosing to obey Him. It was a clear reminder that their decisions mattered."

The Consequence of the Break

The tree gave Adam and Eve the freedom to make their own choices. If they ever decided they were unhappy with their partnership with God, all they had to do was eat its fruit. God refuses to force anyone to love Him, serve Him, or stay with Him against their will—not in the Garden of Eden, not in this life, and not in the life to come.

However, a serious rule of reality applies to us just as it did to them: We are completely free to choose our actions, but we are completely powerless to choose the results of those actions. Tragically, our first parents chose to break their partnership with God. They decided they wanted to define good and evil on their own terms. When they ate from that tree, human sin entered the world. The human race has been suffering the growing consequences of that choice ever since.

Evil is not a physical object or a cosmic monster created by God. It is simply the absence of good—the intentional choice to reject God’s perfect design.