If God is a just, omnipotent, omniscient, and loving God, He would not allow evil in the world. However there is evil in this world, thus God either does not exist, or is not just, omnipotent, omniscient or loving. This is the argument many non-believers cling to in their rejection of God. How is possible for such a God as Christians claim there is to allow such atrocities to exist on earth as murder and rape? I appreciated Howard-Snyder’s defense of the Christian understanding of why evil, or at least the possibility of evil to exist, is necessary in order for love to become a reality.

Is it necessary for evil to exist in order for us to be able to display meaningful love in our relationships with other people? This does not seem to be a necessity at first, however, without the freedom to make our own choices there can be no love. Why is this? For the simple reason that, without the capacity to choose not to love, there is no real meaning or reason to choose to love. It is simply an automatic reality that cannot be decided for or against. Without the possibility of deciding against it, the value in deciding to love someone or something is lost. Thus we see that in a weird sense of the term, evil is required before love can become a reality.

God wants us to realize how depraved we are, how incomplete our way of doing things is. We can only come to this conclusion once we understand that A) We have free will to choose evil or righteousness and B) We have chosen to do evil and finally C) The results of this decision are the depravities we see around us. Why is it necessary for our decisions to affect others though? Howard-Snyder argues that without our decisions affecting anything other than ourselves we would simply be living an illusion that lacks depth or true meaning. I want to add (indeed he also adds this later) that without free interaction between humans loving relationships are impossible. Humans are highly relational creatures. Therefore this would be disastrous and pointless.

So once it is generally understood that humanity cannot resolve its flaws through its own actions, we are to look outside of ourselves for the answer. This is where God steps in and we are able to find our fulfillment in Him. However unfortunately, because our society often does not take responsibility for its actions, we simply look at the unfairness in our world and blame the hurt and pain upon God, who if He really loved us, why can He not save the innocent from unjust hurt and pain?

These are tough questions, which Howard-Snyder addresses by stating that the only fathomable reason God could have for not saving someone from unjust harm is if there were some greater good which He could only bring about by allowing the pain and suffering in the world to continue. God has limitations too, which Christians admit to (for example the only way to redeem humanity is through the sacrifice of his only son, Jesus). Free will to love is the reason God allows sin to continue, because, as stated above, without free will, we cannot really have true love.