God and the Problem of Evil

Adam and Eve ... David and Bathsheba ... Exile (Judah) and Extinction (10 tribes of Israel) ... and the biggie:

JESUS AND THE CROSS!

Does God ever WILL real evil? Impossible. First and most obviously: Sometimes what we judge as evil might not actually be real evil. But does that mean that God always WILLS what we think of as evil?

Hitler and the concentration camps? The Cambodia of Pol Pot? Darfur in the Sudan? Is there "a reason for everything"? I don't think so. This popular philosophy sticks in my craw.

Is it possible that real evil is not willed by God? Of course! God never wills real evil! But freedom is part of the nature of love and life, so it is in God's own nature and the nature of the world that our will remain free. Otherwise we could not freely choose to love!

So, it is in the nature of the world that REAL EVIL, unwilled by God, happens. It happens all the time, it seems to me.

How does love respond to evil? Never with destruction or slavery. Take that, terrorists. Love responds to evil by bringing good out of evil.

We mourn real tragedy. Hurricane Sandy. Sandy Hook. Bombings in Boston.

And the Bible shows us GOD mourning real tragedy!

 "How can I give you up, O E′phraim!
    How can I hand you over, O Israel!...

My heart recoils within me,
    my compassion grows warm and tender." (Hos 11:8)

Despite the evil that God condemns in Israel, here, his love mourns the tragedy of love lost. Imagine how God's heart broke when the Assyrians actually DID obliterate the ten tribes of the Northern kingdom in the 8th century?

The point of all this can be summed up in the picture of this daffodil. I came across this

daffodil a few weeks ago while it was still in bud in my garden. A piece of debris had fallen on it and nearly crushed it. I mourned because I believed it to be ruined. But I let it lie, too sad to finish it off. Imagine my joy a week later when I noticed that it had bloomed nonetheless!

If God cares as much about daffodils as the gospels tell us God cares about sparrows, then I'm certain God did not WILL my lonely daffodil to die. (Think: the little ewe lamb of 2 Samuel 11.) But because my daffodil was crushed, it became more to me than any of the other daffodils in my garden!

I call that bringing good out of evil. There was no reason for the daffodil to be crushed. There is not "a reason for everything." But the joy I had at its blooming was greater than the joy I had over any other blossoms this this spring.

So I say, "Bloom where you're planted," but by all means also, "Bloom where you're bruised."

More eloquently, Venerable Fr. Solanus Casey reminds us to "thank God ahead of time for whatever ... we suffer ... including with all its circumstances ... our death."