Lucas Miller | 3 November 2025
Our world is thoroughly fallen. It is no secret that evil and suffering run rampant and out of control in our world. Romans 8:22 says, “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.” The whole world has been corrupted and intoxicated with evil since the first sin. But if God is good, then why does he allow evil and suffering to exist in such abundance? If He cannot stop it, then is He really all-powerful? And if He can stop it, but does not, is He truly loving? These questions are incredibly frequent and cause people to turn away from God and become angry with Him. 1 Peter 3:15 expresses, "But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy; always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect." I believe it is essential to understand this topic.
All satisfying novels and stories have one thing in common. A plot or conflict involving a battle of sorts against good and evil. The thing that makes these stories so enjoyable is that they relate to reality. Evil obviously exists. People can’t help but be fascinated when they read a book and notice how it connects to their lives. There is no gratifying novel, I know of, where evil prevails. Even for an Atheist, it would be considered a bad ending to a story to destroy all good that exists and be left with a world governed by evil. But what makes people, even those of other worldviews, be intrigued by this battle? It seems to be ingrained into our very spirits. Evil did not exist in the beginning. Everything was created perfectly without any imperfections. Not one thing was flawed or incomplete. Genesis 1:31 says, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day.” The fact that the creation was very good in the sight of God is incredible. God is perfect. His creation was perfect. No evil or suffering. Tragically, the sin of man tarnished the perfect world. All humans are now stained with sin. Romans 3:12 states, "All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one." Therefore, ‘Good’ is the way things were created, the way things should be, and ‘Evil’ is a corruption of good.
Suffering is a result of sin. Ever since the first sin, things like pain, discomfort, disease, injury, oppression, overwork, sorrow, isolation, and fatigue have played a significant role in the suffering of humanity. Romans 5:3-5 offers us confidence: "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."
There appear to be three categories of evil. The first kind is moral evil. Moral evil is caused by humanity’s carnal nature or the flesh. Galatians 5:19-21 describes types of moral evil: "Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these."
The second is natural evil, which encompasses anything of natural cause that creates pain and death, such as floods, fires, animal attacks, tornadoes, earthquakes, and more. Psalm 46:2-3 assures us: "Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling."
The final kind of evil is supernatural evil, which is caused by evil or demonic spirits. 1 Peter 5:8 gives a warning about supernatural evil, "Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour."
But how do other worldviews handle evil and suffering? Just because they don’t uphold a biblical worldview does not mean they get to ignore the question of why evil and suffering exist. In Understanding The Faith, Jeff Myers puts it this way,
“Many who reject Christianity—and even God’s existence—because of the problem of evil overlook something very important: by rejecting one worldview, they must embrace another, and that new worldview must deal with evil and suffering as well. Because evil exists, every worldview must explain it.”
Atheists and Naturalists believe it is not a problem of evil but more a problem with evil. Because there is no meaning to life, they embrace the idea that life is tough and bad things happen. Richard Dawkins states,
“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no other good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.”
One can perceive the meaninglessness in Dawkins' words. How does one recognize evil unless one has the comprehension that the opposite also exists? The problem is not just “evil exists, deal with it,” but “we know evil exists and recognize it as evil.” C.S. Lewis describes this problem as what guided him to reject Atheism,
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line… Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was a private idea of my own. But if I did, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus, in the very act of trying to prove God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never have known it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”
The fact that we can sense evil is because we inherently know good. For the same reason, we can understand that we are injured or sick because we have experienced what it is like not to be those things. Numerous Atheists/Naturalists try to ignore the idea of evil by detaching themselves from it, similarly to Dawkins. They live for themselves and try to make their life comfortable. Many of them sincerely believe that they can help fix the problem of evil by using human reasoning to diminish the amount of suffering on earth. However, even if human reasoning actually made a difference by making suffering more meaningful, it is not an adequate answer. William Kirk Kilpatrick explains,
“What good does it do to the billions who have already passed through this life in wretchedness, that scientific humanism will one day create a world without suffering? For that matter what good does it do to those who are right now dying miserable and lonely deaths all over the world? All that a strict humanist has to say to most of the human race living and dead is “Too bad you were born too early,” and “Too bad about your suffering.” The bulk of the world’s pain is written off as a bad expense.”
So the Athiest/Naturalist approach to evil in the end might smooth out some of the wrinkles in life and add a bit of comfort. But the question of “why” is still not entirely, if even, answered.
Countless times, skeptics ask questions such as, “If God is really good, why does he not abolish evil. Either God is not good, or he is not all-powerful.” This question assumes that ‘evil’ and an ‘all-powerful God’ cannot coexist. However, the reality of evil and suffering does not contradict the omnipotence of God. He is in control of all things, including evil. Isaiah 45:7 "I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things.” Lamentations 3:37-38 "Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?"
So the next question to ask is, “Did God create evil?” It is not as much that God created evil, but more that God created the possibility of evil. As mentioned earlier, God made it possible to do evil because otherwise the meaningfulness of good would not have existed in full. Jeff Myers says in Understanding The Faith,
“For example, if God makes a world with stones in it, people might pick up some of those stones and fling them at one another. The potential evil of having stones as part of the material world becomes actual evil when misused.”
The possibility of evil existed from the beginning. If God had created the world without evil, it would have been similar to making a world of robots. Suppose you created a computer program to say “I love you.” It does not take a high level of intelligence to know it isn’t actual love. In the same way, if God designed us to love Him, without the possibility of the knowledge of good and evil, it would remove the meaningfulness behind loving Him.
Evil is not a creation. It is a thing which exists by necessity because of the existence of good. God did not create evil. He couldn’t have created it due to the condition of his character and the nature of his attributes. John MacArthur describes,
“God is all-knowing. God is all-powerful. Evil exists; therefore, God willed evil to exist. He didn’t create it; that would be impossible for him, as it is impossible for him to do any evil. But he willed it to exist.”
Because God willed evil to exist, it becomes possible for humanity to perform good and evil. While it is possible to love God and have a true, meaningful relationship with Him, it is also possible to reject God and live for selfish ambitions. The Westminster Confession states,
God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
This is such a vast and complicated subject that I cannot begin to cover all the details in its entirety. So I’ll finish with these words: In the end, the existence of evil is, as is all of creation, to the greater glory of God. Romans 11:36 says, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”