I see that this is going on right now, and it's very tragic.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a98253640d75
I used to be a Christian. I attended church regularly, believed God existed and prayed regularly. But I never gave it much thought when tragedy struck that God wasn't doing anything.
Now that I'm a non-believer, I wonder how Christians go about reconciling the problem of evil?
If God loves everyone and can do anything, then he must not know about catastrophes
If God loves everyone and knows everything, then he must be incapable of doing anything about catastrophes
If God can do anything and knows everything, then he must not love the victims and their families enough to want to do anything.
How do you reconcile it?
The problem of evil... big topic, and many will say its a complicated one, i dont know if i'm being cocky or pretentious, or simply that God gave me some understanding, but
i dont see it as that big of a problem. here's why:
God from the beggining, created Mankind to his image, ie bearing God's nature, and that's a nature of creativity and free will. Just like God can do as he wish, and just like he can create, so we can create from nothing (poetry, music, etc.) and so we have free will. Also, God can love... well God is all love, and like so, for us to be able to truly love, we need that mentioned free will too; as you see free will is pretty important for us bearing His image. Because we need to be free and to have free will to Love, that means that the contrary MUST be true, a computer saying "I love you" isnt loving you, since that is hard coded, the computer cant REALLY decide, so creating us only with the power to "Love" but without being able to despise, hate, and abhor, its not trully creating us with the power to love. Because of this God HAD to create us with the choice for evil, only then can we truly experience and give love.
Why God doesnt act on evil?
well, he certainly does, from a top down perspective, he will end all evil at some point, however, that will be at the end of times, at that point, everyone would have chosen between Him (Love, good, charity, abnegation etc) or not (disobedience, hate, self righteousness), so then God can have an earth full of truly free individuals that chosed to love, with no longer a need or a temptation to sin, and remembering what sin cause, those people wont sin, as it has no incentive and only causes death.
why doesnt God act NOW?
well, he certainly does, to a point, a life of hate, evil, and so on brings about self destruction, brings no true joy, and certainly will bring shallowness (for the more extreme sin, not for the run of the mill atheist that is still a lovely person otherwise)
Its true that some people are allowed to do much evil, just like Hitler did and that could be for a number of reasons... 1, God could have used hitler as the prophecized punishment for israel for going astray... thats controvertial, but its a position... whereas, my "solution" is quite simply, here on earth, if God were micromanaging everything, killing that guy, or dropping a heavenly piano on someone just before raping, although cool, it would sink the world into a state of fear, not love. we would comply with God from fear of getting an anvil dropped on us from above, and not from love. we would give money out of selfishness, not out of charity, and so on.
For short, God micromanaging everything would be more a dictatorship than rather than a utopia
Why does God allow tragedy?
in this case it depends... it could very well because God knows that something worse could come later, or simply because He knows that person has reached its peak weather understanding or whatever, it could be because a miriad of reasons, but i really think its always for the better.
An abusive father can create a hatred towards abuse by the child and be a blessing, or simply again, God doesnt want to create such a dictatorship and must allow for our free will to be let loose. it all comes down to:
for us to be able to love, enjoy, bless and be happy, the alternatives of hatred, dullness, curse, and sadness must exist. This becomes quite apparent in well off countries, where people take for granted things like running potable water, or having days off as well as medication, schooling, phones, etc. and become bored even when having so much more entretainment than the happy kid playing with a stick in the middle of subsaharan africa.
Finally it becomes even more apparent when such priviledged people see what others live though, and that comparison makes them happier and more thankful, even if nothing changed
TLDR:
God wanted us free and able to love
if we truly love, we have to be able to not love, but quite the contrary too
if God were to micromanage everything on earth, we'd be afraid, not in love with Him
