Fr. Paul D. Williams, Jr., Saint Joseph's, Dalton Georgia
St. Teresa of Avila was the greatest mystic in the history of the Church, and the first woman to be declared a Doctor of the Church, meaning that the Church considers her writings among the finest examples of true Christian doctrine and her life to be a model for us all. Well, the story goes that she was riding in her carriage one day, going from one convent to another, when suddenly she was thrown off, slammed rudely to the ground, and deposited in the middle of a mud puddle. She looked up to the heavens and said, “Lord, why did you do this to me?” And God answered her, “This is how I treat all my friends.” And St. Teresa replied tartly, “Then, Lord, it is not surprising that you have so few.” (Kreeft, Making... p.15)
All of us, it seems, even Saints, wonder why God allows evil and suffering. In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of the reality of the existence of evil and sin and suffering in the world, that the weeds will coexist with the wheat until the harvest at the end of time. Indeed, just looking at all the evil and suffering in the world is evidence of the truth of what Jesus said. Innocent people die at the hands of murderers everyday, be it in war or on the streets. Good, faithful people, even children, get diseases and suffer and die. Hurricanes, droughts, earthquakes kill thousands of people, seemingly indiscriminately. But it’s not just the suffering out there, it’s the everyday suffering which especially bothers us, as the Gospel says, all too often even households and families are divided against each other.Sometimes, it seems, God doesn’t play fair, and even those who pledge their love for him suffer. Indeed the Psalms lament, “Why do the wicked prosper and the just suffer?” Tough delimna we have here. If God exists, as we believe; and if he is all-good, as we believe; and if he is all powerful, as we believe. Then, how can evil and suffering exist? Either he doesn’t exist, he isn’t all good, or he isn’t all powerful. After all, if he was truly God, he could have simply never allowed the enemy to plant the weeds and we could live in a perfect world. Yet we, as Christians say that he is all of those things.
So, how do we understand this problem? First, we need to understand what evil is. There are basically two types of evil: physical evil, and moral evil. Physical evil results from a disharmony in the world of nature. Moral evil results from disharmony in the human soul, sin.
But it is important to realize what evil is not. It is not a thing. It does exist, but it is not a positive reality that exists on its own. There seems to be a common belief today that good and evil are co-eternal, that one cannot exist without the other. As if there will always be good and always be evil, and we are destined for an eternal struggle, as if the Devil is the opposite of God. But that is not the Christian belief. Instead, evil is best understood as the lack of a good that ought to be. In other words, evil is a privation, a lack, a loss of some good that was supposed to be there. In this way, evil always refers to a good, like the weeds in the Gospel that can only grow up in the middle of the wheat, but not apart from it, preying on the good, as it were.
But, why does evil exist? Couldn’t God have created the perfect world where there was no evil, no suffering? Yes, he could have. But he didn’t. Why? For two reasons: first, physical evils exist because he chose to create a world which, as the new catechism says, is in a “state of journeying to its ultimate perfection” (CCC 310), so that there will always be physical evils - privation, lack - as long as creation has not reached that fulfillment. And the second reason is this: moral evils exist because God respects the freedom of his creatures – true freedom means to choose among the many goods that God has given us, but it also contains within it the ability to misuse that freedom and choose evil. Moreover, this freedom gives us the ability to truly love, because love involves the denial of ones own desires for the sake of another. Only a free person can do that. (CCC 311) So, God does not cause these evils, but they are a permitted consequence of true freedom.
And there’s the problem, why does God permit evil? Couldn’t he redirect the hurricane, protect the innocent, and cure the sick? Well, the answer lies in the Gospel parable today where the wheat is taken from the harvest at the end of time and the weeds are thrown away and burned. For God in his power and goodness, can draw good out from evil, by allowing the wheat to coexist with the weeds, he allows the wheat to reach maturity, to reach its fullness.
St. Thomas Aquinas explains it this way (CCC 412), “God permits evil in order to draw forth some greater good.” And Saint Augustine said, “For almighty God, because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself.” In other words, evil doesn’t have to exist, but God permits it because he can draw good from it.
So, the ultimate answer to the problem of evil is not a thing, but a person, the person Jesus Christ. For from the greatest moral evil ever committed – the rejection and murder of God’s only Son, caused by the sins of all people – God brought the greatest of goods: the glorification of Christ and our own redemption. By taking on our humanity and embracing our suffering and confronting our evil, Jesus gives us two things: meaning to our suffering, and consolation through our suffering. Though he healed the sick and expelled demons, he never promised to free us completely from evil or suffering, but he did promise to show us its meaning, and to help us through it. Because of this, no one can ever look at God and say, “You don’t understand my pain, my hardship, the crosses I have to carry.” Because he does understand it, for he bore the greatest cross in the world, the Cross of Calvary, out of love for us and to save us.
By facing evil and enduring suffering with perseverance, patience, and charity, as Jesus did, we identify ourselves with our him, and his sufferings become ours, and ours become his. And what does this accomplish? Our own salvation and the redemption of the whole world.
You know, of all the answers out there to the problem of evil and suffering, Christianity is the only one that confronts it head on. Some would try to get rid of suffering by denying the existence of God and therefore removing all meaning from our lives. Others would try to deny suffering by eliminating people who suffer. But Christianity looks at the reality of suffering and finds its meaning in light of God’s love and the Cross.
And this Gospel parable which shows us of God’s infinite patience with the world, allowing the weeds and the wheat to coexist so that he might draw good from it, also tells us how we ought to view the world around us. In the world of souls, the bad seed, the weeds, can become good wheat, through repentance and conversion and God’s grace. Through patient and consistent love, we prepare ourselves and those around us for that true kingdom of perfection, the Kingdom of Heaven.
