THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D.

The problem of evil is a recognition that it is impossible to explain how an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good God allows suffering to exist. This is the greatest challenge to the belief in a theistically conceived God who appears, in the Bible or rabbinic literature, just as it is present in Christianity and Islam, as a caring, loving, responding God. The prophet Jeremiah gave voice to this question when he stated, “ Why does the way of the wicked prosper?” (Jer. 12:1). Similarly ,the Psalmist had to admit this unfortunate state when he stated, “I saw the wicked at ease.” (73:3).

The Greek philosopher Epicurus (3^rd cent. BCE) had already recognized this dilemma  stating that if  evil exists in the world – and it does in the form of suffering of the innocent- it must be because God is either not all-good, or not all-powerful to eliminate it.  But that goes against the view of God in many of the western  religions. In our time, after the Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews and after the attack on Israel in Oct. 2023 when more than a thousand Israelis were butchered by Hamas criminals out of Gaza it is difficult to talk about a God who is viewed as caring and loving. A modern writer puts the problem thusly: “If God is God, He is not good. If God is good, He is not God” (MacLeish, J.B. p.11)

What do the defenders of theism say about this dilemma? Some argue that free will makes it necessary for  evil to exist. Others take refuge in a definition that evil is simply the negation of good. Some even  claim that in the world to come there will be no evil, much to the despair of the sufferers in this world for actions they did not commit. And there are others who give up and say that God is suffering along his creatures. But this is hardly a consolation to the people who are in pain for nothing. One ancient Rabbi (Yannai, 3^rd cent. CE) gave up and stated, “It is not in our power to explain the wellbeing of the wicked or the suffering of the righteous” (PA: 4: 1).

I prefer to deal with this problem by asserting, like the 17^th century Jewish philosopher Spinoza who taught  that evil cannot be ascribed to God.  God stands for the only substance that exists, and that is nature which is neutral.  If something goes wrong with us ,it is because we are in the wrong place and in the wrong time, and also because we don’t always know how nature really operates. We are still discovering its foibles. There must be a physical reason for evil . It is not caused by God who acts not with free will but with necessity.  God does not cause you to be sick. It is simply because we are  imperfect human beings who are limited by the conditions of our being.

I can live with that. Can you?