If God is good. . .Why is the World So Evil?

So for the second time in the last two months I have been blind-sided by the flu.  I have spent the last four days in bed, with barely enough energy to stumble across the floor.  This is not fun.  

Whenever I am physically unwell, and therefore personally inconvenienced by pain, this dark, evil world appears even darker than usual.

My first instinct when this happens is to go over to the dark side.  I will obstinately ignore any small glimmer of light in the darkness in order to indulge in self-pity over my own misery. I forget all the lessons I've learned in the past about the triumph of Good over Evil. The evil is all I can see in the present moment, and I take it very personally.

Last night, desperate for some distraction from my enforced idleness, I languished in front of Netflix. The app opened to a movie called TheBoy Who Harnessed the Wind. * The movie is based on the non-fiction novel by William Kamkwamba, an amazing young man who rescued his village from starvation by building a windmill that provided water to their crops during the dry seasons of the year.  The story is inspiring, highlighting the virtue of human resilience in the face of great evil.

Of course, I was not in the mood to notice the human resilience. Instead I watched in shocked horror as the political regime in power at the time literally ran roughshod over the starving village people of Malawi, whose subsistence crops had failed because of environmental abuse of the land caused, as usual, by human greed.

On the upside, watching the extreme suffering of these people at the hands of their evil dictator did expose my puny four-day, flu-induced, self-indulgent pity-party for the shallow exercise that it was. But it also embroiled me, once again, in the great philosophical debate of the ages.

There's no argument that challenges the goodness of a sovereign God more than the reality of the massive global evil that oppresses the innocent poor of our world. And that massive global evil has been going on, apparently unobstructed, for millennia. 

Again I ask, where is the good God I believe in and cry out to in my pain?  Is he perhaps, as Elijah claims about Baal, ". . .daydreaming, or relieving himself?  Or maybe he is away on a trip, or asleep and needs to be awakened?"  

I am playing the devil's advocate here. I love that a good God gives me the freedom to question him--to rant against evil and injustice, and even to blame him for it. I can stand before him, rooted in the reality of his great goodness and compassion, and question the Creator of the universe about how he chooses to run his world. 

I suspect it's his intent all along that each one of us, like Job, should come to this place.  It's very possible that, until we crash up against the harsh realities of evil in this world, we cannot come to know anything significant or worthwhile about our Creator.

And what if that's his greatest desire? 

That we come to know him intimately and personally?

Could that be part of the purpose of his allowing evil in the world?

This theme of the problem of pain is persistently in my face right now, so I have decided to continue with my musings, turning the last few posts into a series that continues the questioning.

Once I drag myself out of this inwardly focused, navel-gazing perspective I'm currently caught up in, I'm going to take a leisurely walk through everything in my life that has led up to my conclusion that this mysterious God is trust-worthy, and will, indeed, bring us to a good place in the end if we let him.

Next post I will write more about the humble and naive beginnings of my discovery of the good God I have come to believe in with all my heart.

I have to confess I will be writing to myself. You may not find this interesting.  You have my permission to ignore my blog until I come back up out of the pit ready to talk about things more inspiring or of more universal interest.  But I think I need to do this.

*NB:  (I disagree with the movie reviewer in this link, by the way. I thought the movie was done exactly as it should have been. Understated, humble, matter of fact, reflecting real life, without the normal Hollywood hype.)