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Is God Dead?
This week, we find ourselves continuing to work our way through what God has to say about evil and suffering and possible reasons why he allows them to exist. We have previously looked at what the Bible says about evil and suffering as punishment for sin, as a consequence of other people’s sin, and as an outworking of the fallen angels’ free will manifest in all sorts of natural evil, including disasters and disease.
However, the Bible also speaks of the necessity of some evil and suffering bringing about “a greater good.” Most all of us can think of pain and suffering that we endured only to come later to realize that the suffering brought about a particular state of affairs that could not have been otherwise discovered. This line of argument is often called the greater good defense and is one of the five categories of possible reasons why God allows suffering and evil to exist in the world to bring about God’s desired ends.
