It defies all logic, doesn't it?

Over the past week I've seen and read several attempts to answer the question of why evil exists in the world and how God can be good if He allows such tragic things to happen.  If we normally understand God to be loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful, the problem of evil seems to require at least one of those three attributes to be false.  Reason seems to dictate that if God foreknew twenty-eight people, including twenty children, were about to be killed and He had the power to stop it before it occurred then He cannot be loving because He did not stop the murder.  Or He is loving and all-knowing but was not powerful enough to stop it.  Or He is loving and all-powerful but He did not know it was going to happen ahead of time.  Something has to give, right?  Yet God's love, omniscience, and omnipotence are at the heart of his divinity.

It's worth recalling that in the Garden of Eden God created a tree called "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil".  "And the Lord God commanded the man [Adam], saying, 'You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.'" (Gen 2:16-17)  Shortly thereafter, the serpent Satan tempted Eve by distorting God's command and making her distrust God's motives: "But the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'" (Gen 3:4-5)  Yet, as soon as Adam and Eve ate from the tree their eyes were opened and they indeed knew good and evil.  Now we all know evil.

This is a case study in how Satan works.  He tempts us to distrust God.  He sows distrust in our hearts and minds by undermining God's good intentions in order to destroy our faith in God.  We are justified by trusting God (faith) (Romans 5:1) precisely because distrusting God is the root of all sin in the world.  This is the front-lines of spiritual warfare.  Tragedies like what occurred in Newtown, Connecticut are used by Satan to sow distrust in the hearts and minds of people.  They give us all opportunity to distrust God by tempting us to diminish his divinity or deny His divinity altogether by saying He doesn't exist.

So why does God allow such bad and evil things to happen?  I do not offer an answer tritely.  It is a hard and difficult question.  But I feel compelled to grapple with it.  Indeed, we all must deal with it at some point whether consciously or subconsciously.  And though it is a difficult question, I believe the Bible answers it.  So I will offer one reason which I believe is shown over and over again throughout the Bible:  God allows evil things to happen because God's faithfulness is most clearly displayed when his children have faith in him under the worst imaginable circumstances.  God allows suffering because God's faithfulness is most clearly revealed when his children have faith in the midst of their suffering.  This is evident throughout the Bible, but perhaps none more clearly than with Job.  God allowed Satan to inflict Job with immense suffering simply because Satan accused Job of having fake righteousness.  God asked Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?" (Job 1:8)  Satan responded, "Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face." (Job 1:9-11)  So the Lord told Satan, "Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life." (Job 2:6)

After Satan brought punishing suffering upon Job and his family, Job's own wife played the role of faith-destroyer.  She said to Job, "Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die." (Job 2:9)  Still, even after God permitted Satan to kill Job's children, steal his possessions, and inflict him with devastating sickness, Job's response was "Though he slay me, I will hope in him;" (Job 13:15a)  I hope you will meditate on those words, at least briefly.  "Though he slay me, I will hope in him."  Job understood the sovereignty of God.  Satan may have been the one inflicting Job, but Job understood that nothing could happen to him unless God's sovereignty permitted it, and so Job attributed his suffering to God's will.  Yet he never cursed God or blamed him of wrong.  Instead, he blessed God. "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." (Job 1:21)

How do you hope in the one who is slaying you?  How do you praise the one who is taking from you?  It defies all logic, doesn't it?  It does, unless your hope is not in the temporary things, but in the eternal things.  God is so faithful even if he slays us today, he will still fulfill his eternal promises to us.  As Peter encouraged us, "let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good." (1 Peter 4:19)  We may very well be slayed, but that doesn't invalidate the promises, nor the One who promised.  Only God can take a tragedy Satan meant to destroy faith and use it instead to magnify God's faithfulness.

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

'For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
    we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.'

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:35-39)