God is Metal

The problem of evil asks why the world is like it is if God is good. There are two common approaches to it. The more common one rests mostly on emotion. There is a less common version, though, that starts with Christian theology and asks hard questions. Is it any more convincing?

When most people bring up the problem of evil, it usually goes something like this: “Why does God allow evil in the world?” Maybe they’ll be more specific: “Why does God allow innocent people to suffer?”

However they phrase it, the basic complaint relies on an idea of right and wrong they have to explain:
“Why does God allow evil?”
“What is evil?”
“Letting innocent people suffer?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
-sputtering-

Their argument basically boils down to “I don’t like the way the universe runs, so God doesn’t exist.”

More sophisticated atheists, though, will phrase the problem of evil differently, more carefully. Their argument is essentially: “The universe doesn’t work the way it would if the God you believe in existed, therefore the God you believe in doesn’t exist.”

That’s a fair accusation. If Christians say “God loves everyone”, shouldn’t we have to explain why he lets bad things happen to people?

But why do we say “God loves everyone”? We get that from the Bible. What else does the Bible say about God?

God ...
cursed the ground,
killed everyone in a flood,
used a famine to get the Patriarchs into Egypt,
pummeled Egypt to educate the Jews,
used the Jews to punish the Canaanites (et al),
used the Philistines (et al) to correct the Jews,
used Assyria and Babylon to punish the Jews,
sent Jesus to suffer for our sins,
promised Christians no better treatment than Christ,
and plans to bring judgment on the wicked.

The same Bible that teaches “God is love” also teaches all of this. This doesn’t match the modern picture of God as a doddering old man who just wants everyone to have a good time. He is good, but he is not safe; “he’s not a tame lion.” God is metal.

Imagine a child arguing with his mother: “A mother is supposed to make her child treats, give him toys, and tuck him in at night.” Well, yes, mothers do that, but that’s not the full picture. A mother also makes her children eat healthy things they don’t like, makes them do things they don’t want to do, and punishes them when they don’t obey. He’s not going to get anywhere by distorting a mother’s love. Nor do we get anywhere by distorting God’s love.

Here's the thing about this version of the problem of evil: It only exists in the Abrahamic religions. The primitive pantheons don't care about people. The pantheist gods don't even know we're here. Cthulhu thinks we'd make a nice sandwich.

The only religious tradition that says God loves everyone also says God tends to use floods, famines, plagues, and invading armies as tools to achieve his goal — which is to rescue us from the world we screwed up. And in the process of doing that he got down in muck and suffered with us.

In the end, all this argument really says is, "If I were God, I wouldn't run the world this way." But we're not God, and we don't really know how we'd run the world if we knew what he knows.

So this other problem of evil doesn't stand up against who God really is: sovereign, loving, holy, and just. And also kinda metal.


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