Faith and the Problem of Evil
- Galatians 4:1-4
We ought to have a faith in God that helps us in the face of evil. Edgar S. Brightman, a prominent Theologian at Boston University during the 1920’s had a significant impact on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., thinking concerning the evil of segregation. In his work on Moral Laws he made a distinction that became central to King’s notion of the moral need to protest against segregated codes, especially by means of civil disobedience. Brightman’s insightful thinking is what enabled him to capture the mood of an American audience during that period, who no longer believed the world was getting better. Brightman understood that a social gospel call for a better social order along was not enough, and as he would say, “for as much as we need a new social order we need God more.”
“Modern Christianity needed the social gospel,” he declared, “but it also needed to make God intelligible and credible.” For this to happen, Brightman believed the clergy needed to do more theological preaching, more interpretation of the fundamentals of religion in terms intelligible and helpful to our age. And so you will find in some of his earlier works on Religious Values, an attempt to make God more intelligible and credible for a world having experience the evil and horror of two world wars. You would see an attempt to deal with the problem of evil. A problem that essentially says, “If God is all-good, and all-powerful, then, why does evil exist.” Again, in Religious Values he asserted that “the deepest reality is good” and that natural evil can exist in a good world. It could exist because it was an aspect of the best possible world. He would even go so far to say that even those evils that seem completely fruitless must play some role in God’s work of creating a cocreative community of moral people.
Although his theology caught the mood of an American audience that no longer believed the world was getting better, he found himself driven to confront the existence of what he called “surd” evils in creation and history—evils that serve no good. And though he was committed to the notion that God is good, he struggle to reconciled a classical view of God as all-good and all powerful in the face of “surd”—evils that serve no good, which cause him to conclude, that God is all-good, but not all-powerful. Could it be, that the view widely held today that we determine what is “good” and “evil” is really the fruit of the conclusion, that says “God is all-good but not all-powerful.”
We need however, not a faith that simply say God is all-good, but a faith that has the power to help us to understand what it means to be human when confronted by evils and suffering. We need a faith today that has more than an answer but the power as to how a person can cope and muster the courage to keep living when their humanity is undermined or deemed worthless. Such a faith in God is fundamentally concerned with how we can be empowered to confront death, dread, despair, disappointment, and disease. It’s a faith that understand that evil must be named and unmasked if it is to be overcome, and so the tragic must be wrestle with rather than simply accept it as the destiny of the way things are.
It must be a faith in the goodness and power of God that can give you the power to be a truth-teller in an America that attempts to avoid and ignore pain.
I think Cornel West have the right image for us this afternoon in describing our beloved country, when he says, America is a hotel civilization . . . obsessed with comfort, conveniences and contentment. He used the image of a hotel, because a hotel is “a fusion of the home and the market” that makes you feel at home if you have the cash to pay.” When you leave the room everything is dirty, yet when you return it is clean. In a hotel you are shielded form the evil and the unjustified suffering in the world and do not hear the lament and the cries. America is a hotel civilization because it doesn’t like to talk about evil [and] the legacy of white supremacy and poverty. And because America tries to evade pain, truth-tellers are needed who will force the nation to confront pain.
So how does the text, Matthew 6:13 or the parallel text in Luke 11:4 empower us to deal with the problem of evil? What light does Jesus instructive prayer to the disciples reveal about dealing with the problem of evil? We know that whatever faith one has it must be tested if it is to grow strong. Life demands it. We also know that the possibility exist for us to be brought into a test so severe our faith can’t stand up to the strain. Certainly, faith under such stain could lead to moral disaster; and bring discredit on the name of God. Therefore what can we gleam from this text about a faith in God today, willing to come face to face with the probing question concerning the problem of evil; if God is all-good and all-powerful then why does evil exist?
There are a total of six petitions in the Lord’s Prayer. The six petition “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil,” reflect the ambiguity in Jewish talk of “testing.” It can have both the negative sense of “temptation” and the positive sense of “proving”—reflecting the common experience of trying situations, which depending on the response of the person being thus tested, can be either negative (in that it is destructive of relationship) or positive (in the sense of maturing character).
That God provides such test is a common thought in the Jewish scriptures and that faith or faithfulness is demonstrated by such trials. But the ambiguity is reflected elsewhere in the New Testament, particularly in James (1:12) which says: “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. (KJV),” and James (13-14) “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. (KJV);
This six petition here shows full assurance of this ambiguity. It does not hesitate to attribute testing to God, while at the same time expressing an understandable anxiety lest the outcome of the testing be negative. It is a prayer of conscious and confessed human weakness; it makes no pretense of confidence in its own strength and commitment; rather it expresses an unconditional abandonment to the will and grace of God.
The real threat is not the trial but given in to the destructive power of evil. The test is that crucial test of the disciples’ faith which, without divine strength, would prove too intense for them to resist. When Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane and exhorted the disciples to “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation, he was saying ‘Keep awake, and pray not to fail in the test. This suggest that the petition in the Lord’s Prayer means, ‘Grant that we may not fail in the test. And any child of God, who are willing to trust God, not for some things, but for every thing and all things, may use this petition as a prayer for grace and power to keep them from falling when their faith is challenged by a supreme test.
Such watchfulness and vigilance in prayer is essential in a twilight civilization such as ours. America as a twilight civilization–is an American Empire adrift on turbulent seas in a dark fog. And the challenge (or test) of faith in America is whether it will continue to deny, evade, avoid various forms of evil in it midst. This challenge will test the nation’s maturity; immaturity denies pain and focuses on comfort whereas a mature approach wrestles with the nightside of American life, understanding that all of life is interconnected and interdependent.
And so it is that the night-side of black urban ghettos life is not marginal to American life, but rather impacts all Americans. America can no longer dodge consideration of suicide rates and poverty by pointing to America success. The impoverish gangsterization of urban youth; the alienation and marginalization of the sickest and most vulnerable demands that if a Christian faith has any power for America at all it must confront and speak to America concerning the evil in its midst. If people are suffering and dying in your midst, and if humanity and citizenship is constantly undermined, then a nation that claims to be democratic must have something to say about it. Because democracy itself is all about struggling with evil and unjustified misery and with the question of what it means to be human.
In this modern or postmodern moment we are in, we need a modern people, with a modern faith, intelligible, and credible, able to affirm that God is all-good, and all-powerful as it compel a postmodern America to confront its problem of evil. And if “Modern” means to have “the courage to use one’s critical intelligence to question and challenge the prevailing authorities, powers and hierarchies of the world; then African Americans are the most modern people of all.
We can learn from the crucibles of our own faith experience what this sixth petition of the Lord’s Prayer has meant in the face of evil. It has taught us in the fires of persecution what it means to be human and modern. that to be human and modern is to encounter honestly the inescapable circumstances that constrain us, while mustering the courage to struggle compassionately for one’s own individuality and for a more democratic and free society. It has taught us that the reality, absurdity, and incongruity of evil must be confronted, and pain must be named if it is to be overcome. Evil cannot be destroyed, but it can be pushed back and held at bay.
As a modern or postmodern people of faith, we have constantly reinvented ourselves to preserve meaning by fighting against the persistent claims of deficiency or inferiority, exclusion, and double consciousness.
When we consider this sixth petition “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” in the context of Jesus ministry, specifically, the Garden of Gethsemane and Calvary. We see a Jesus who was prepared for the winding up of the old age and the breaking in of the new—because of a faith that was dependent on God for everything, so that when he cried in prayer, “nevertheless not my will, but thy will be done,” heaven supplied power to not shrink from the supreme confrontation with evil. We see in the context of Gethsemane and Calvary, the powerful coming of the kingdom of God. The transition from the old to the new would involve unprecedented tribulation, the birth pangs of the new creation, which would be a test too severe even for the faith of the elect, unless God intervened and cut it short.
Going back, then, from our Lord’s admonition in Gethsemane to the problem petition we are considering, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” we may conclude that in the context of Jesus ministry its meaning was “Grant that we may not fail in the test”—“Grant that the test may not prove too severe for our faith to sustain.” Understanding that the time of trial which will show whether we are truly his followers or not may come upon us at any time. Those who have confidence in their ability to stand such a test feel no need to of the petition, “lord lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” But those who know that their faith is no more reliable than that of Peter and James and John may well pray to be saved from a trial with which their faith cannot cope, if the trial is inescapable, to be supplied with the heavenly grace necessary to endure it. “Grant that we may not fail in the test.”
Finally, my brothers and sisters a faith anchor in a petition of total dependence on God to not lead us into temptation, but to deliver us from evil, is a faith standing in a rich tradition. A tradition wherein the examination of the reality of good and evil is based on the Garden of Eden. That story is not a description of a historic event in which human being first committed evil. No, the story is about “the beginning” in the sense of principle of our being, which is God’s intention for us to live in community and our resistance to God’s intention.
In fact the Old Testament is a testimony of the tenacious effort of the Jewish people to create genuine community among themselves and with their neighbors. It is an account of how difficult it is to achieve genuine community. But it is also a testament to the fact that once the illusion of our ego center perspective is penetrated by the reality of good and evil and God intention that we find our good in communal life is recognized, the struggle to realize a just community, in which we shall be in love and charity with our neighbors, cannot be abandoned.
The story insists that God has not abandoned that intention. And if God’s children are to strive to be faithful to God intention for community, then they to must have a faith that know that God has the power to keep them from temptation and shrinking back when confronted with the supreme test.
The story implies that to find our well-being, we too must have a faith that has the power to keep us from following the way of those seducers, captains, kings, and rich people who seek to get their own way by force and money. For the great temptation of power and wealth is to override whatever limits our desires and wishes because they frequently give us the means to do so.