The Problem Of Evil

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

The world we live in is filled with beauty, goodness, and wonder, but it's also marred by atrocity. There's genocide, and war, and injustice, and human trafficking, and horrible things that we look at and we say, why does that exist? The world has a problem of evil. Now, there's different philosophies that tried to take care of this problem in different ways.

Some say that it's just about progress, that as we progress as human beings, we'll finally get it all figured out. Others talk about how this life is just an illusion, and it's our ability to transcend it and escape it. Others just say it's natural, and the world is what the world is. And while all of these things, I think, have some value to them, in different ways, as an explanation of what to do with evil, I find them to be inadequate.

The Christian faith offers a different story. It says that the world is good and beautiful and wonderful, but it also says that the world is corrupted. Corrupted by evil. It's poisoned by evil, and that that's a problem. But, the good news is that God has not abandoned us, rather God has come into the world, and rather than leave the world in bondage to this evil, do nothing about the problem, God has come in the person of Christ, whose life, death, and resurrection takes all of that evil on himself in the cross, where we see the political systems and the personal pride and, desire for power, all sort of come in to this reality in which Christ dies on the cross. And does evil conquer? No, evil doesn't conquer, but Easter comes. And three days later, Christ rises from the dead, proving that love conquers evil.

And that has, that sweeping change has begun, but we wait. We wait for that total reality to come. And so what I want to talk about today is as we live in this in between, as we wait for this total renewal, what is evil so that we can understand it and pay attention to it? What's it's goal? So that we can be aware when it's trying to accomplish something.

And finally, what's our work? What's our work in this interim period? Well, what is evil? Evil is, in my opinion, both a capacity that's within us, as well as a power that exists in the world. The capacity within us is the capacity for arrogance and self deception.

In the garden, the serpent comes and says to Adam and Eve, Hey, God's holding out on you. God doesn't love you. God is trying to hold things back. And rather than trust that what God has said and what God has promised is good, we see Adam and Eve try to become gods themselves. And this plays out over and over again in the world. Rather than be people who always desire what is pure and lovely and true, there's this part of us that is able to deceive and we have this arrogance.

And so we ourselves contribute to the evil, because there's a small part of it that's within us. Now, if you think that you're immune to it, I would challenge you to ask yourself these questions. Where do I feel entitled? Where might I be blaming others? And what behavior am I trying to justify? What am I telling myself? Ah, it's okay. As we explore those questions, we'll discover where the capacity for evil lies within us. Now, evil is not just within us, but it's also a power in the world. It is the dark forces that can take anger and multiply it to murder. It is the dark forces that can create systems that collapse in on themselves.

It can turn victims into perpetrators and it can turn people seeking to do good to become overly righteous. The world we live in is more than just the natural order. There is transcendent good, and there is evil, this problem that Jesus talks about has come to steal, kill, and destroy. But, the good news that John tells us is that God has not come to condemn the world, but God has come to save it. And that the person of Christ will be raised up. And in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Evil doesn't win. Love wins.

So, the problem of evil, what is it? It is both a capacity and a power. But what's it doing? What's it trying to do? And this is the thing that evil is always trying to do, it's trying to get us to distrust the love of God, to distrust the idea that love is the way.

And so for us, our work is being reminded that Christ has come and Christ has overcome. John talks about how those who come into the light, that their life is revealed and that evil doesn't come into the light. And the reason evil doesn't want to come into the light is because the light reveals it as it is.

You know, maybe for you, you hear a noise in your house. It's at night, you go down the stairs, and what do you do? You flip on the light because you want to see what's there. And when you see what's there, all of a sudden, it's no longer what you may have believed it to be. And this, of course, is why evil wants to stay away from the light.

Because what the light proves is that evil is not the strongest power. Evil is not the transcendent, the eternal, the good. Evil is a shadow of that. It's a corruption of that. And so what we always want to be asking ourselves is, where are we wrestling and lacking the faith and trust that love is the way, that love will conquer, just as we see Christ conquer?

And then what we want to do is we want to lean into that. Because we recognize that evil is a capacity within us. And so we ask ourselves, we do self reflection on that. We recognize that there's a power, there's a battle that's going on. That has already been won, but we are in this interim in between. And so we call out the noise.

We flip the lights on and say, Hey, I don't believe that evil is the greatest power, I believe that love is the greatest power. And of course, all of this sets up our work. And our work is to trust and act out of God's love. That's our work. And the way we do that is we trust that the challenges that face us as people, as communities, as a culture, as a world, that God's love will overcome those things.

We don't take that to just go sort of sit by the by and by. We take that and we say, okay, well, how can I act? How can I live in anticipation of this reality that good defeats evil, that love conquers all. And the way we're going to do that is to lean in to choose the path of love, to pursue what is pure and true and lovely and right and beautiful and give ourselves over to that, to resist our ability, within us to be arrogant and deceive ourselves and to give ourselves over to the anger and rage and malice that wants to spill out into the world to steal, kill, and destroy.

Now, you and I want to do the good work in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our schools, in our workplaces that says, I am committed, to believing that love will conquer all because in the person of christ I see God conquering evil in the life, death and resurrection

Hey, I hope that in the midst of your week that despite the moments in which evil feels like it's encroaching in on you that you're able to turn the light on that you're able to recognize that evil is trying to get you to doubt the goodness of God and you refuse to do it.

Instead, you lean into the power that you've seen in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Take care. Talk to you soon.