When I was a young child, my sister and I used to enjoy staying at our grandmother’s for a couple of weeks in the summer with our older cousins Jimmy and Teddy. One day I was told that one of Grandma’s windows had been broken. I wasn’t worried, though, because I hadn’t broken it.
When dinnertime came, Grandma brought out a delicious dinner. Then she turned to us and said, “When the person who broke my window confesses, we can eat.” Then she turned to my cousin Jimmy and said, “Jim, when you are ready to confess, we can all eat.” She then turned and left.
Teddy began prodding Jimmy. “Come on, Jim. Just confess already so we can eat.” Jimmy refused, adamant that he had not broken the window.
After some time Teddy leaned over to my sister and I and said, “I bet a squirrel broke that window, but I’m going to confess so we can all eat.”
We thought Teddy was a hero!
Many years later we were reminiscing about old times and recalled that day. Then Teddy confessed, “You guys know that I was the one who broke that window all along.”
Blaming God?
What happened here? My cousin Jimmy was falsely accused. When things go wrong in our world, who is usually blamed? God.
Sometimes people blame God directly. At other times people ask, “God, why did You let this happen? If You are good, why is there so much evil in this world?” Where is God when we cry out in suffering? Does He hear our prayers?
As one philosopher frames the problem of evil: “Life is outrageous. Hardly anyone will deny that conclusion. Outright tragedy, pain, injustice, premature death, all of these and more waste us away. No explanation seems quite able to steal our anger, hostility and sadness.”1
Evil is even worse than we think. And God hates it more than we do. But if God hates it and God is all-powerful, why is there evil, and so much of it?
This world looks like a war zone because it is one, but the ultimate war is largely unseen, invisible to us among celestial creatures.
Free Will and Evil
Many atheists point to this problem of evil as the reason they do not believe in God. If God is good, He should not want any evil to occur, and if He is all-powerful, then He must possess the power to stop all evil. How, then, could there be evil (and so much of it)?
One potential solution to this problem is known as the free will defense. Put simply, evil is the result of creatures misusing free will. God grants creatures free will for some sufficiently good reasons, and, tragically, some creatures have misused that free will, resulting in evil.
In a previous article I wrote about the fact that God does not always get what He wants. Why? Because God has granted creatures free will, and creatures often misuse that free will. Why, then, does God give free will? Because it is required for a genuine love relationship, and love is the greatest value in the universe. Whether or not creatures misuse their free will to do evil, then, is not up to God.
Yet a simple free will defense is not enough to answer the question of why there is so much evil in this world. For example, it seems as though God could prevent many kinds of evil and suffering without undermining anyone’s free will. For example, it seems God could prevent many instances of suffering caused by disasters (e.g., a plane crash) by a well-placed message of warning (or in other ways) that would not undermine anyone’s free will.
There must be more to the story.
Cosmic Conflict: The Wheat and the Tares
Jesus told a parable of “a man who sowed good seed in his field” (Matt. 13:24). What kind of seed? Good seed. “But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares [noxious weeds] among the wheat and went his way” (verse 25). When the grain sprouted, “the tares also appeared. So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ ” (verses 26, 27).
That sounds very much like the question people ask today about God. Didn’t God create the world entirely good? Why, then, is there evil in it—and so much evil?
Notice the landowner’s reply: “An enemy has done this” (verse 28). We do not have to guess who this enemy is. Later Jesus explains this parable to His disciples and identifies the enemy as “the devil” (verse 39).
Jesus’ words in this parable provide an answer to the problem of evil in only five simple but profound words: “An enemy has done this.”
But to this answer the servants ask further, “Do you want us then to go and gather them up?” (verse 28). In other words, if an enemy has sown these tares, why not just uproot them?
This is similar to another question people often ask today, Why doesn’t God simply uproot evil now? “No,” the landowner replies, “lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest” (verses 29, 30).
Somehow, prematurely uprooting the tares would result in much wheat also being uprooted—it would result in an overwhelming amount of collateral damage. To avoid this, the tares must be allowed to grow together with the wheat temporarily. Evil must be allowed to run its course for a time so God can finally eradicate the tares once and for all in a way that won’t uproot the wheat also.
This parable is one of many biblical depictions of the cosmic conflict between Christ and the devil, “the great dragon” and “serpent of old . . . who deceives the world” (Rev. 12:9). In this conflict, God often gets blamed for evil. But the devil is actually the one who sows the seeds of evil in this world—the enemy “ruler of this world” (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11) who wages war against God’s kingdom (see, e.g., Rev. 12:7-9).
Of this, the former atheist C. S. Lewis once wrote: “One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe—a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death and disease, and sin. . . . Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong. . . . This universe is at war. . . . [And] it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living part of the universe occupied by the rebel. Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is.”2
Scripture depicts this as a real conflict—terribly real, though often unseen, in which you and I and the entire world are embroiled. This conflict is between God’s kingdom of unselfish love and the domain of darkness of the devil and his demonic horde (see, e.g., Rev. 12:7-10; cf. Matt. 12:24; 25:41), who are fallen angels who rebelled against God’s government (cf. 2 Peter 2:4; Col. 1:16, 17).
In His infinite wisdom God knows this is the most preferable way to bring about the best good for all concerned—so that love can flourish unabated for all eternity.
The Nature of the Conflict
But how can this be? How could anyone be at war with God, who is all-powerful? The conflict cannot be one of sheer power, because if the conflict were one of sheer power, no one could be in conflict with God. God could just overpower them. The conflict must be a conflict of a different kind. In fact, as Scripture portrays it, this is not a conflict of sheer power, but a conflict primarily over character, caused by the devil’s slanderous allegations against God—a conflict over who will be trusted and what will be believed about God’s character in which the enemy slanders God’s character as his strategy to usurp God’s rule and the worship that belongs to God alone (see Gen. 3).3
A conflict over character, however, cannot be settled by sheer power. Unless God is going to take back creaturely free will and control our minds (which God would never do—He does not take back His word or break His promises or otherwise do anything contrary to love), He cannot root out the devil’s slanderous allegations and deceptions by force.
Think about it: If somebody says you’re corrupt and you try to put down that allegation with power, that will only make it worse. You can defeat that kind of allegation only by a demonstration of your character.
The only way for God to root out evil, then, is by a demonstration of His character of love—showing the devil’s allegations to be false. This He does via the cross and beyond (see Rom. 3:25, 26; 5:8). For now, we see that there is much more going on in this world than meets the eye. This world looks like a war zone because it is one, but the ultimate war is largely unseen, invisible to us among celestial creatures.
Good News Amid Darkness
But there is good news. The devil has only “a short time” (Rev. 12:12). Through His victory at the cross, Christ legally has defeated the devil’s slanderous allegations, and even now He works in the heavenly sanctuary and one day soon will return to fully uproot the devil’s kingdom once and for all.
Why does God not do more in the meantime? Well, first, we should recognize that God is doing far more than we realize—all the time. Second, to put it briefly, there are factors and parameters (or rules) in this cosmic conflict that God abides by because there is no preferable way for Him to end the conflict once and for all in a way that will not uproot the wheat. In His infinite wisdom God knows this is the most preferable way to bring about the best good for all concerned—so that love can flourish unabated for all eternity.
There is much more to say about this, but only so much can be said in a brief article such as this one.4 For now, I leave you with a simple question: If we know the evil in this world is ultimately traceable to the work of the enemy such that this world is a war zone, how should we live and how can we stand?
In short, we are called to live according to Paul’s counsel in Ephesians 6: “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand” (verses 11-13). After describing the armor of God, Paul instructs Christians to be “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints” (verse 18).5
1 John K. Roth, “A Theodicy of Protest,” in Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, ed. Stephen T. Davis (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2001), p. 18.
2 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2001), p. 45.
3 See, further, John Peckham, “Liar, Liar: The Devil’s Strategy of Deception and Slander,” Adventist Review, April 2024, pp. 32-35.
4 For much more on the problem of evil, see John C. Peckham, Theodicy of Love: Cosmic Conflict and the Problem of Evil (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), chaps. 3, 4.
5 On prayer in the midst of this cosmic conflict, see John C. Peckham, Why We Pray: Understanding Prayer in the Context of Cosmic Conflict (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2024).