Is God Responsible for Evil?

It's been argued, "If...God is responsible for all the good then you must admit he [sic] is also responsible for all the bad in this world (either by causing it or allowing it)...when it comes to natural disasters like tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, etc. Where was God in Auschwitz? Where, after all, was God in the Gulag? Where was God when the Khmer Rouge slaughtered 1.7 million Cambodians? Where was God during the Armenian holocaust? Where was God in Rwanda? Where is God in Darfur? For that matter, where is God when even one innocent victim is being murdered or raped or abused?"

As will all my blogs, what follows is my opinion based upon my religious upbringing and my study of Catholic Church teachings (plus a dose of common sense).

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Those are excellent questions. Is God responsible for evil? If not, does God allow evil, and if so why?

Is God responsible for evil? This one is easy. Absolutely, positively not. God only creates good. It is man, through his willful (i.e., free will) disobedience to God, who allowed evil to enter this world. Satan already ruled a kingdom of evil (Hell) and, through trickery and deception, expanded the realm of evil to this world.

Does God allow evil? This one is easy as well, but more difficult to accept in faith. The answer is yes, God allows evil to exist that mankind might be the better for it. That requires some thought and some leaps of faith.

Without the ability to choose evil, man has no free will. God gave man free will. Man allowed disorder, both man-made and natural, to enter this world in the The Fall (original sin). From here we can branch into two types of evil -- man-made and natural.

Man-made : Why does God stand by and allow genocide, war, murder, rape, etc? It is because man has free will that some men choose to use their will to control others. God "allowed" his own people (Israel) to be subjugated for years under the Egyptians before delivering them out of Egypt. God heard their cries -- He did not ignore them. God chose the specific time and place for the appearance of the deliverer for a reason. That reason is not fully disclosed to us. God allowed his own Son to be imprisoned, tortured and then nailed to a Cross. He allowed His own Son to die a horrible death. Why?

Free will. Jesus had it the same as we do. Jesus could have passed on the "cup" set before Him. Satan tried to win Jesus over three times in the desert. Jesus laid down His life (no one took it) for us. What loving father or loving mother would not step in front of a bullet meant for their child? In the same manner, Jesus (God Incarnate) stepped in front of a Cross for us -- to save us.

Natural disaster : Why does God allow the evil of natural disasters? Tsunamis, earthquakes, disease (e.g., cancer), pestilence, etc. St. Thomas Aquinas stated that from every evil action (both man-made and natural) God can extract a measure of good. Whose fault was it that the man cured of blindness in the Gospels was born blind? This is/was a natural disaster for that man (albeit on a smaller scale than listed above), but if God wasn't responsible what purpose did it serve, if any. Perhaps the purpose was "to show the glory of God in the blind man's healing." Why did God allow a young woman named Anne Sullivan to go nearly blind from a childhood fever? Ask Helen Keller. Ask the countless millions of blind and/or deaf persons who owe their educations -- their lives -- to Anne, Helen and those who followed. "To the glory of God!"

So, why does God allow tsunamis, earthquakes, disease (e.g., cancer), pestilence, etc? We may not be able to reason it out as clearly as we can in the example of the blind-man's or Anne Sullivan's blindness, but we must make a leap of faith that God can and will extract a good from these evils. God gives each of us a Cross to bear in life -- but never more than we can handle (although sometimes we may feel we are overwhelmed by ours).

In bearing our Cross, we achieve some good through God's graces. Perhaps not for ourselves, but for someone else. How many lives can we save (have we saved) in our sufferings?

Pray for those afflicted with heavy Crosses. Pray that God will ease their suffering and grant them the power to display "the glory of God" in their lives.