Why is there evil in the world? (Why did Jesus Christ die on the cross?) 
 
There is evil in the world.  Earthquakes wipe out hundreds of thousands of lives, over 20 million people died in the Spanish influenza plague of 1918, one-third of Europe succumbed to the Black Death.  Children are starving to death in South Asia.  Poverty, ignorance, and malnutrition afflict the majority of the human race.  Scores die in rush-hour commuter train accidents.  Children are brutalized by their parents.  Teenagers start off in a bus on a carefree picnic and end up going to their deaths.  A young woman is killed by robbers on her honeymoon.  Six million Jews are exterminated in concentration camps.  Twenty million Vietnamese are killed in a "war of liberation." Pictures of refugees fleeing from some terror fill our television screens several times a month. 

Hurricanes wipe out towns and villages.  Urban slums become jungles of crime and vice.  The environment is being thoughtlessly polluted.  Whole species of birds, animals, and fish are heedlessly destroyed.  Natural resources are wasted without reason.  Prejudice, bigotry, arrogance, and fear keep many people in subjection.  Anger, hatred, and the desire for revenge lead the oppressed to strike out against the oppressors even though those who are destroyed are frequently innocent children, harmless old people, and ordinary citizens who have nothing to do with oppression. 

Leaders are gunned down in the streets, prisoners are tortured.  Elementary freedoms and liberties are destroyed.  Indigenous cultures are uprooted in the name of a progress that turns out to be worse than what it replaced.  Schools turn into custodial institutions for the children of the poor.  The streets of the cities become unsafe.  Violence is as American as cherry pie. 

Droughts and floods combine to destroy crops, forcing up the price of food and causing something dangerously close to a world food shortage.  Unemployment and inflation threaten to tear the world economy apart.  The black lung disease kills coal miners.  Needless industrial accidents kill or maim tens of thousands every year.  Contaminated water and poisoned air lead to an increase in cancer.  "Saturday night specials" create an ever increasing murder rate.  Highway accidents, mostly caused by drunken drivers, produce more deaths each year than the dubious foreign wars which snuff out young lives at their very beginning.  Heroin addiction turns young people into hardened criminals, and alcoholism torments the families of millions. 

The great hopes of historic events like the Vatican Council are blighted by subsequent failures.  We are unjustly punished by our parents, rejected by our friends, hated by our enemies, downgraded by our rivals, weakened by the poison of envy, betrayed by those we trusted, deeply wounded by those we love. 

But the question is not why does a baby die in his crib, a young man in a napalm raid, a young woman in a gas chamber, a middle-aged man of a heart attack, a mother of cancer, a child because of the carelessness of a hit-and-run driver.  All of us are under the sentence of death; some simply have it executed earlier and more unjustly than others.  But it is unjust that we have to die.  We are the only bodily creatures made with sufficient self-consciousness to know that we are going to die and to be sorry for it.  We want with all the force that we can command to escape the sentence of death. 

Yet we shall die, and our attempts to avoid it succeed only in postponing the inevitable.  It is a bitter cruelty to be created with a hunger for immortality and then be denied sustenance.  Maybe it would have been better had we never existed. 

But we also experience good . The crops do produce food for tables.  The blue sky hangs like a velvet awning above our heads.  The heat wave breaks.  Winter passes away and the snow and ice are replaced by the flowers of spring.  The species does make slow, tortuous progress against oppression, misery, injustice, and hatred.  Most diseases are curable, plagues are controlled, polio is virtually eliminated, despots are overthrown, some reforms work.  Our children grow up and sometimes become our friends; conflicts do end in reconciliation; marriages get patched up; love does survive misunderstanding, thoughtlessness, and indifference.  Wars end, old enemies become friends, we forgive others and are forgiven by them. 

So there is a struggle between good and evil going on in the world.  It goes on in the physical cosmos, in the world community, in human society, within our own personality.  Evil seems much the stronger of the two, but it has not yet carried the day.  Good is remarkably resilient.  It always seems endangered, threatened, close to rout, yet it manages to survive and even to win victories.  The outcome of the battle between good and evil remains in doubt, but evil, for  all its ugly power, has yet to succeed in driving good from the earth and from the human condition.  Good survives, sometimes just barely, but it survives nevertheless. 

Yet does not evil win the final battle against the particular good that is in us?  Is not all our struggle for growth, for trust, for love, no matter how generously waged or how successfully accomplished, finally cancelled out in the nothingness of death?  Perhaps slowly, perhaps quickly, perhaps easily, perhaps with excruciating pain, we will die.  Our friends will offer sympathy at the wake, prayers will be mumbled over us, our cold body will be put into colder ground, and dirt will be heaped on top of us.  In a little while only a few people will remember us, and then we will be completely forgotten, as they too follow us to the grave.  What purpose was served by our love? 

But we are not sure.  The sun sets only to rise again, nature dies in the autumn only to revive in the spring, hatred sometimes leads to reconciliation, love grows through conflict that is resolved; animals and plants die, but their substance is absorbed by other living creatures.  Good survives by turning the apparent victory of evil into a victory of its own.  ". . . Birth and Death [are] inseparable on earth;/For they are twain yet one, and Death is Birth," says Francis Thompson. 

We experience death and rebirth often in our own lives.  We pass the test, we overcome the fear, we break through the barriers of shame and timidity, we make progress against our inflexibility and defensiveness, we learn from our mistakes.  In fact, we discover with time and experience that progress and growth in the human condition-whether it be personal or social-is always accomplished through a series of deaths and rebirths.  In the psychotherapeutic experience in particular, we learn that we can only rise to the new man-the more free, more open, more confident, more authentic self-by dying to the old man, that narrow, anxious, fearful, defense-ridden self.  We become more human and society becomes more just only through death and resurrection. 

Such insight does not solve the problem of evil, because in the nature of things it is not a problem to be solved.  To set up evil as a problem which, if solved, will legitimate the existence of God is both to misunderstand the question and to load the dice against any but the agnostic answer.  Agnosticism is conceded in the phrasing of the question.  Even if the problem of evil is not solved (and it cannot be), the "problem" of good remains.  How account for evil if there is a God?  But how account for good if there is not? 

So the real problem is the war in heaven (and everywhere else, of course) between good and evil.  Whoever wishes to look calmly and coolly (if such be possible) at the full dilemma must face the existence of good and evil or, more precisely and less philosophically, the mystery of life and death.  What is ultimately baffling is not death but life.  The most pointed and most poignant question is not why we die, but why we live at all. 

The Christ experience does not reveal to us any rational, metaphysical solution to the problem of evil.  It does not explain why there is evil in the world; it surely does not pretend that there is no evil or that it can be glossed over easily.  The Christ event reveals to us merely that evil is not ultimate and good is; death does not have the final word, life does.  And hence we live, not dominated by the fear of death but filled with the expectation of life.  This is revealed to us through the mystery of the cross and resurrection of Jesus. 

Like all humans Jesus was deeply involved in the struggle between good and evil, between life and death.  He preached life, forgiveness, joy, love, the Good News.  He was misunderstood, envied, harassed, hounded, hated.  His friends expected a temporal kingdom despite clear indications that the kingdom of God was not of this world.  He was a healing presence, yet the crowds expected spectacular signs and wonders which he would not give them.  He taught the fulfillment of the promise Yahweh made to the Hebrews, yet the leaders of the people feared and envied him. He came to bring life, indeed "life more abundant," yet he spent the last year of his life "on the run" to escape those who would kill him.  Finally he bravely went up to Jerusalem to confront those who wanted to destroy him, won all the points in direct argument, was betrayed by a friend, treacherously arrested in the dark of night, deserted by his friends, convicted on trumped-up charges, tortured and beaten, and then executed by a cruel death reserved for rebels and slaves. 

If this is what God does to his friends, who needs him?  If this is what he permits to happen to one who was on terms of special intimacy with him, who claimed to be his son in a unique way, why would we trust God at all?  Who wants to be the son of a father like that? 

But, as happens so often, evil did not have the final word.  The defeat of life somehow got turned into victory.  Death did not have final dominion over Jesus.  He lived and still lives.  Despite the fact that it was the last thing they expected or wanted, the friends of Jesus did encounter him once again as very much alive; they encountered him repeatedly in circumstances under which their initial doubts, suspicions, hesitations, and disbelief could not survive.  The Lord was truly risen.  They could not explain (and neither can we) exactly how it happened, but it did happen; and they had to rush forth to tell the Good News to all the world, to cast his fire on the earth.  The fire is still being cast-though in some times and in some places it has not come very close to the vigor and enthusiasm of those who encountered  Jesus in the Easter experience. 

The real question is not so much whether we believe that Jesus rose from the dead (though one cannot be a Christian if one does not believe.  What else is the faith all about?) but whether we believe that we too shall rise.  The resurrection of Jesus is a "sacrament," a dazzling burst of illumination that brings light to the darkness in which we live.  It does not solve the problem of evil; rather it tells us that in the end the greatest evil of all will lose.  Life conquers death.  My life will conquer my death.  All of our lives will conquer all of our deaths.  The hints we have that death is not final, the suspicions we experience that the resurrection experiences of our ordinary life are revelatory, the ineradicable hunch from which we cannot escape that life is stronger than death–these are confirmed, validated, ratified, reenforced by the resurrection of Jesus–it is not outside the realm of rational possibility that somehow, some way, a single man should have managed to survive death.  If that were all the faith Christianity required, one could stretch a point and make the commitment to Christianity with some feeling of rationality and common sense.  Such a rational commitment would require little further in the way of expectation of the marvelous, the unexpected, the wonderful, the surprising.  Neither would it demand of us an involvement like that of Jesus in the bitter struggle between good and evil which rages in the world. 

But that is not what Christianity is.  We are required to believe that all men will live just as Jesus did; and we are required to live just as Jesus did, committing ourselves fully and completely to the battle against evil even when we know it will win at least one cruel, vicious, arbitrary victory over us when it destroys us in death.  We battle on, because we also know that even the one inevitable victory will be reversed.  This is a profoundly optimistic belief.  It affronts common sense.  How can we believe something that sounds too good to be true? 

The demand of the mystery of the cross and resurrection also terrifies us.  Surely it is not necessary to live the way Jesus did, to serve other humans so completely and totally, to heal them so lovingly, to tolerate them so patiently, to pursue them so generously.  Surely it is not necessary to face death so bravely and confidently.  Surely it is not necessary to defy evil so contemptuously. 

But the challenge of the "sacrament" of the cross and resurrection also attracts us, fascinates us, tempts us.  It resonates with our own best hopes, our own deepest inklings, our own most intractable convictions.  It appeals to our best dreams-dreams we have whether we want them or not.  It confirms our most optimistic suspicions, it reinforces our brightest expectations. 

It probably is too good to be true.  But still, what if it is? 

If it is true, we will certainly have to change our lives.  Those who expect to rise like Jesus will have to live and die like him.  And such a life and death, such a reenactment in one person of the cosmic war between good and evil is a terrifying alternative to our present dull, complacent, mediocre life.  But we all secretly suspect, in our most reflective moments and with our wisest insights, that such may be the only really human way to live after all. 

The cross and the resurrection of Jesus tell us that what we had secretly hoped for, and secretly feared because of its demands, is indeed too good to be true, but is true nevertheless.  Its challenge follows from every one of the great mysteries: What are you going to do about it? 

'The follower of Jesus does not deny evil or attempt to minimize its power.  He believes in the cross of Jesus, and hence must face honestly and bluntly the ugliness and the strength of the evil which could do so terrible a thing to so good a man.  But he does not despair over evil and give in to it.  He believes in the resurrection of Jesus and knows that evil is not the finality.  He does not retreat into the desert to escape the incurable evil of the world, because he believes in both cross and resurrection and because he knows that, like Jesus, he must dedicate himself to the eradication of evil from the earth.  He must heal, console, teach, encourage, admonish, assist even if death will be the ultimate reward of his goodness. 

So wherever we find the sick, the suffering, the ignorant, the hungry, the oppressed, the frightened, the lonely, the homeless, we will also find the followers of Jesus.  They are there because the Lord himself has told us that it is in such places we will find him. 

The best hint of an explanation of the mystery of good and evil to be found in the cross and resurrection of Jesus is that through suffering he came alive.  The cross not only preceded the resurrection, in some deep way which we cannot fully understand but which seems to resonate well with our own experiences, it caused the resurrection.  By dying with such courage and faith, Jesus, through the help of the heavenly Father, won resurrection.  Life not only triumphs over death but somehow flows out of it.  Death is not merely a prelude to life in the new man but also a cause; this is a commonplace of psychological growth inside or outside the therapeutic process.  We can only rise if we are willing to go through death, not just as antecedent in time but also as it is precisely the liberation from fear of death that causes resurrection. 

This profound psychological insight should not be turned into a law of physical science, but humanly we know that we begin to live free lives when we stop worrying about death.  Death may then not be merely the end of life, it also may be its crowning moment; for in death all the energies and commitments of a life are focused into a single climactic moment.  We will, of course, be  afraid (as Jesus was in the Garden of Olives), but if we have lived as free men we will die as free men, and the fear will not wipe out the dignity and  the grace of our humanity.  In the moment of death we will feel the first inkling of resurrection; we have already beaten death. 

And when the good and gentle Jesus reaches out to touch our hand as he touched the hand of the son of the widow of Naim, and as he says to us as  he did to Lazarus, "Come forth," there is just the possibility that we may sit up, look around in surprise, and say, "Is this it?  Why, I've been  through this experience many times before now!" 

THEOLOGICAL NOTES 

1. We simply do not know how the physical resurrection of Jesus occurred because we were not there and Jesus did not think it was important to  go into the details.  The stories we have in Scripture, it is generally agreed, are not detailed historical accounts, much less "instant replays." They  are statements of faith.  All that we can be sure of historically is that the followers of Jesus did indeed experience him as fully and completely alive  many times after his death, despite their profound disinclination to do so and despite the clear changes to their own lives resulting from reporting  their experience.  In principle we may concede that it could have been a self-deception, but if so, its power and influence were almost as marvelous  as the event itself.  No useful purpose is served by arguing the fact of a historical resurrection with unbelievers.  We can prove the fact of the  transformation of the apostles and the fact of their belief.  What we make of these facts and whether we choose to live in the light of the mystery of the cross and the resurrection are  matters of deep personal choice and commitment which no one can argue. 

2.   A recent attempt to free God from the charge of being the "cause" of evil is the work of what are termed "process" theologians and philosophers.  They think of God as the "Great Improviser" who respects completely the freedom of his creatures (even the freedom of the forces of nature to create its own disasters), and then subtly adjusts his plans and goals so that their fulfillment will come despite and through the exercise of creaturely freedom.  The approach is interesting and persuasive, especially because it permits us to say that God suffered and died for us in and through Jesus (a traditional Christian conviction based on the custom of attributing to the divine "person" the actions of the human  Jesus).  The main weakness of this approach is that it seems to assume that God grows and even changes an idea which is not false to the scriptural data but which certainly goes against much of the philosophical and theological premises of the Christian tradition.  However, the process scholars argue that growth is a perfection and hence ought to be found supremely in God (at least in what they call the "consequent nature of God").  Whether this subtle and attractive but disconcerting approach can be reconciled with the Catholic tradition is a question which will have to be answered in the future.  A number of very respectable Catholic philosophical theologians have argued that a rapprochement between Thomistic theology and process theology is not only possible but absolutely necessary. 
 

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