Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his unfailing love is eternal and his faithfulness is to all generations.
Psalm 100:5 Author’s translation
We are told that people in their twenties are leaving the church in unprecedented numbers. (Is it possible that all those millions that we put into entertaining youth ministries were wasted?) We are told that one of the chief reasons for this loss of faith is because of the problem of good and evil. Archibald MacLeish in his play based on the book of Job entitled “J.B.” had one of his characters say it this way, “If God is God he is not good; if God is good he is not God.” Supposedly a good God would not allow a world in which bad things happen.
Please forgive me, but I grow a little impatient with all this. It is not as though someone just discovered that this is a problem. It has been recognized for at least 3000 years, if we accept that King Solomon was the one who originated what is now called the book of Ecclesiastes. And before that was the book of Job. The wonderful thing about both of these books is that they provide no answer to the question. Basically, they tell us that there is no simple answer, but that there is plenty of evidence that there is a Creator who is profoundly beneficent.
So, the issue for us is this, will we “hold up” God, refusing to grant his existence until he explains, in terms we can comprehend (!) what is going on in the world? Or will we say, “I have good reason, looking at this wonderful, beautiful, complex, tightly-organized, profoundly life-affirming universe, to believe that there is a Creator and that he is good.” Then when we add to that the Scriptures which tell us that, wherever evil has come from, God has taken it into himself and given back love, why do we disbelieve? Is it not because belief will demand some things of us that we don’t want to give, and so the so-called problem of good and evil offers a convenient excuse? Faith requires that we suspend our desire to decide right and wrong for ourselves, and that, it seems, is too high a price for many a young person and not a few older ones, as well
Called To Be Transformed 