God and evil

A USUAL question many people ask is, If God is good, is

goodness himself, if he is truly omnipotent and provident, why is

there evil? It’s definitely a very complex question that is hard to

answer. In fact, the Catechism recognizes this.

             “To this question, as painful and mysterious as it is,”

the Catechism explains, “only the whole of Christian faith can

constitute a response.” (Compendium 57) It hastens to reassure us that

“God is not in any way—directly or indirectly—the cause of evil. He

illuminates the mystery of evil in his Son Jesus Christ who died and

rose in order to vanquish that great moral evil, human sin, which is

at the root of all other evils.”

  

            Then in the next point, it says: “Faith gives us the

certainty that God would not permit evil if he did not cause a good to

come from that very evil. This was realized in a wondrous way by God

in the death and resurrection of Christ. In fact, from the greatest of

all moral evils (the murder of his Son) he has brought forth the

greatest of all goods (the glorification of Christ and our

redemption). (Compendium 58)

  

            We also know about the story of Joseph, the son of Jacob,

in the Old Testament who was sold by his own brothers out of envy but

who later became a prominent man in Egypt. When that dramatic reunion

between him and his father and brothers took place, the brothers were

very apologetic for what they did to him and expected to be duly

punished.

  

            But Joseph, with utmost magnanimity, the magnanimity of

God, simply told them: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it

for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many

lives.” (Gen 50,20) Once again, the divine principle that God knows

how to derive good from evil finds its proof.

             It’s important that when we consider the very many

different forms of evil that can come to us and that we see around, we

should immediately have recourse to our faith and not stay too long in

our merely human estimations that are usually based on our emotions

only, our prejudices, our sciences that cannot fathom the many

mysteries in life, etc.

  

            We should not waste too much time lamenting and

complaining, and worse, drifting towards the loss of faith. We need to

go to our faith as soon as possible, and there find some refuge for

our troubled souls.

  

            But for this to happen, we need to practice some emotional

and intellectual humility, otherwise that faith cannot shed its proper

light, and we would be held captive by our limited ways of

understanding things. We cannot deny the fact that our emotions and

our intellectual pride can easily dominate the way we think and react

to things.

  

            We have to find ways of embedding this attitude in the

people and in our culture itself. We should not be too afraid when

some forms of evil come our way. We just have to ask: “Lord, what do

you want me to learn from these?”