The freedom of evil

The Bible presents creation as something originally good. Evil does not appear as part of a defective plan of God, but as a consequence of the rupture caused by sin and the creature's turning away from its Creator. God created human beings with freedom because true love cannot be forced. And freedom, although it is a gift, also makes it possible to choose against the good.

This helps to understand moral evil in particular: violence, injustice, abandonment, lies, selfishness, and so many other things that are born from human decisions. Small choices can open paths that produce consequences much greater than we imagined. We cannot always see the entire chain of events that a decision allows, but our actions have consequences.

This, however, does not mean that every tragedy is the direct result of a specific sin. We live in a broken world, where people are also struck by events they did not choose. An accident can happen, illness can arise, a storm can destroy a house, and loss can arrive without warning. There is a cause for the event, but that does not mean we will have an explanation capable of answering all our “whys”.

The Bible itself shows us that not all suffering can be reduced to a simple relationship between guilt and consequence. There are mysteries that remain beyond our understanding.

Distant from pain

“Jesus wept.”
John 11:35

Perhaps one of the most profound answers of Christianity to the problem of evil is not an explanation, but a person. God did not watch human suffering from afar. In Jesus, He entered our history. He felt hunger, fatigue, rejection, abandonment, and pain. He wept before the death of Lazarus and, subsequently, faced death itself.

God did not remain distant from what hurts us. On the cross, Christ experienced suffering, injustice, and abandonment in a way that surpasses our understanding. God is not a God indifferent to human pain. He is the God who draws near to it, enters into it, and, in the resurrection, shows that death and suffering will not have the final word.

Therefore, when someone asks: “If God is good, why is there so much evil?”, the Christian answer does not need to be pretending that pain is small or that we can explain every tragedy. We can acknowledge that there are great things that we do not understand and, even so, remain confident in the character of God, who is greater than them.

Pain can generate questions, but it does not prove that God does not exist. Suffering can shake our certainties, but it does not mean that the Lord has abandoned His creation. Often, precisely in the place where we cannot understand what is happening, we are invited to trust in the One who remains with us.

In the midst of chaos

“Keep watch! Be always alert!”
Mark 13:33

We do not control everything that happens around us. We cannot prevent every accident, foresee every loss, or understand every event. But there is a reality that sustains the Christian: the grace of God.

Those who live by grace receive a sustenance they do not deserve and could not produce on their own. The Lord's mercy often acts in ways we do not even perceive. Perhaps there are deliverances we will never know happened. Perhaps some situations that seemed small prevented much greater consequences. We cannot claim that every avoided tragedy was directly a specific divine intervention, but we can trust that God remains sovereign and merciful even when we cannot see His hand.

And healing does not always happen the way we expect. Sometimes, God heals physically. Other times, He sustains the heart to endure what was not removed. Sometimes, He restores a circumstance; other times, He transforms a person in the midst of it. The presence of God does not necessarily mean that nothing bad will happen, but it means that evil does not have to have the final word on our story.

Therefore, prepare your lamps and keep them lit. We do not know when the night will come, nor what events we will encounter along the way. But we know in whom we can trust. The Christian hope is not in a life without losses, but in a God who remains with us in the midst of them and promises a reality where suffering will finally come to an end.

Perhaps we will never know why something happened. Perhaps some questions will remain unanswered until the end of this life. But we can know who God is.

Evil does not make God less good. The existence of pain does not erase His presence. And what we cannot understand does not need to stop us from trusting.

Because, if God is the source of all good, our hope is not in understanding every shadow, but in remaining close to the Light. And, even when we cannot see the path, we can continue walking with the One who never ceased to sustain us.