Any Christian worth his salt must come to grips with the fact that these things happen -- in God's world. They make it difficult, if not impossible, for many people to believe in God.
At the same time, there is a counterproblem which must be faced by those who refuse to believe in God because of the problem of evil. If there is no God, there is no "problem" of evil. That is, if we live in a purposeless and meaningless universe, we have no right to expect that decency and right and truth should prevail, and that baseness, suffering, and evil should not. There may be things that we do not "like," but we cannot claim that they "ought" not to be, or that they constitute a "problem." They are simply "the way things are," in a morally neutral universe.
Notice, therefore -- and this is what makes it really tough for the Christians -- that the more firmly you believe in a good, loving, and powerful God, the more vexing does the problem of evil become. If there is really such a God, why is evil so powerful? And if you take the New Testament seriously, you have the even worse situation that the very Son of God himself seems powerless against evil. Evil executes him. The higher your conception of God, the worse the problem. If there is no God, the problem ceases to exist as a "problem"; if there is a God, the situation seems intolerable.
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