Years ago, C.S. (Clive Staples) Lewis wrote a very helpful little book with this title. In it he reviewed the major “explanations” or “justifications” usually given for the presence of pain in human experience. In philosophical/theological contexts this reality is usually called “the problem of pain.” Aside from the usual and/or obvious possible explanations for the existence of evil in the world, such as fate, accident, and “the Devil”, the conversations usually come around to how and to what degree God’s will factors into the picture.
Traditionally Christian thinkers have tended to focus on the various ways in which God’s omnipotence can be seen to work within the framework and patterns of human existence and history. To my way of thinking all such efforts ultimately fall victim to the contradiction between human freedom and divine sovereignty. Simply put, this conundrum seems to me to be irresolvable. These two options nullify each other. Either God is in complete control, in which case our decisions ultimately must be forced into the divine pattern, or we human beings do have some control of our own lives and destiny, in which case God is not in complete control, and thus is not all-powerful.
In my view Alfred North Whitehead, in his book Process and Reality, offered the most satisfying answer to this dilemma by simply acknowledging up front that either God has allowed human beings a significant degree of freewill or by natural means they have acquired it. In any case, what we have to deal with is a world in which God’s will does not always prevail, one in which our human decisions and actions actually make a difference in the outcome of events. We can and must work together with God to help make the divine will become a reality. When this does not come about, for one reason or another, suffering and downright evil may well occur.
Some of the factors involved in this dynamic are worked out by Edwin Lewis in his book The Creator and the Adversary. Lewis suggests that the pivotal move, both on God’s part and our own, is to be able to realign or reinterpret the factors in our various conflicting situations so as to enable them to result in positive rather than negative results. The Quakers actually organize workshops to help train folks to find creative ways to frame and develop potentially evil situations so as to be able to transform them into positive outcomes. Lewis offers the creative illustration of how the placement of the keystone at the top of the archway is used to hold the structure up by forcing the leaning stones comprising the top of an archway, remain stable, while gravity, the negative force, seeks to destroy the archway. The placement of the keystone actually cements, as it were, the overall strength of the archway.
Here gravity that seems to be a negative, or “evil”, force is transformed into a creative, positive force. A more graphic illustration of this creative-type response to a potentially “evil” situation can be found in the Danny Glover character’s response to a potentially tragic situation in an early scene wherein he is called to tow a customer’s stalled car in the film Grand Canyon. The driver of the car is harassed by a gang of thugs who obviously want his car. Glover begins by hooking the car up to his tow-truck and then informing the gang that he has to ask for a “favor” of them. “I ask you let me go my way here because once the car is hooked up to the truck it’s my responsibility.”
The gang is befuddled by Glover’s announcement and do not know how to act. The leader makes it known that he has a gun, but by asking a “favor” of them Glover has placed them in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable situation. The dynamic of the situation has been switched on them and they are unsure about what to do. Finally, they get back into their own car and leave. Here was a potentially dangerous, even “evil”, situation transformed by a creative, yet friendly act into one in which the evil has been dissipated. Without Glover’s creative twist of the situation there might well have been mortal combat.
The above remarks are meant to apply to what is often called moral evil and do not apply very clearly to what we call natural evil, things like earthquakes and the like. To be sure, the line between the sort of pain caused by the former and the latter seems to be rather quickly eroding. The recent earthquake disaster in the Middle East would seem to be a clear case of natural evil, unless one wants to extend God’s will to cover such events, as some Christians and Muslims are wont to do. To discuss the pain caused by this sort of evil would take us far beyond our current purview.
In cases of moral evil, we need to find ways to bring creative action to bear on potentially evil or painful situations so as to transform them into creative and positive ones. These situations do not need to be explained, but rather to be met with creative thought and action.