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Theology exploration, Apologetics, Doubt and Asking the hard questions - Series

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Theology, Apologetics, Doubt and asking the hard questions

2 Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 3 For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4 So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. - James 1:2-4 NLT

Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it. - 1 Peter 3:15 NLT

Starting this series to (1) encourage and confront doubts and (2) be able to answer questions about faith when challenged by others.

Recap and foundation for the topics to come

  1. 2025.08.17 Building a Firm Foundation - Series
  2. Many theological questions don’t have single objective answers. This is also how the landscape of many different denominations came to be.

todays question: “the problem of evil” - why would God allow so much suffering?

  1. If God is indeed all powerful and all loving, how come there’s so much suffering?
  2. How can God allow both moral evil (like murder) and natural evil (suffering from disasters)?

If a friend were to challenge you with this question, what would you say? Would you even force to defend it?

The three most common answers are:

  1. Free Will
  2. For the Greater Good (Soul-Making)
  3. Theodicy of Inscrutability and Best Possible World
    (There are more, if you are interested)

Human Free Will

This is the most common.

  1. God permits evil because He values free will as a greater good
  2. Love requires freedom to choose - both to love and to reject love

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. - Galatians 5:13 NIV

After all, we are made in the image of God.

(26) Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” - Genesis 1:26 NIV

For the Greater Good (Soul-Making i.e. Character development)

  • Original Disruption
    • When Adam and Eve eat from the tree of Knowledge, Sin did not only come to man, but into the entire world.
  • Soul-Making
    • is the idea that God allows evil because it leads to greater goods (virtues) that would not otherwise be possible. (Like courage, compassion, perseverance etc.)

This goes well together with the free will argument before.

Theodicy of Inscrutability and “good enough” World

This goes well together again with the point before.

  • “Theodicy of Inscrutability”, states that we humans can not make sense and comprehend of all the reasons why God made things - the world, in the way they are.
  • And the world we live in, may be the best possible, or close to best possible, that we can have, if we want to keep our freedom (free will)
  1. Can we trust the Bible?
  2. Commonly named reasons for God
  3. Why would God allow so much suffering?
  4. Is Christianity the only way?
  5. Science and Faith
  6. Trinity, the Nicene Creed, etc.
  7. (Mehr Ideen sind willkommen)

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