The problem of evil: does suffering make sense?

Professor Agustín Echavarría, director of department of Philosophy at the University of Navarra, presents some arguments about the conflict between evil and faith in God.
of Navarra, puts forward some arguments about the conflict between evil and faith in God.
Pandemics, pain, cataclysms... One cannot bear so much evil. Or can one?
"All of us, at different times in our lives, have to suffer, to a greater or lesser extent.
And, finally, we all die. The question, then, is not whether we can avoid suffering or not,
but whether we suffer meaningfully or meaninglessly".

Who likes to suffer? Perhaps some poor person suffering from a certain mental illness or some unhappy person with serious self-esteem problems. The fact is that, as a rule, we do not like to suffer or to see others suffer. What is more, sometimes we say to ourselves: "This pain, this misfortune, this evil should not exist...". At the same time, we feel the opposite and think about the good: "This love, this joy should last forever". It seems to be an accurate intuition: good is living and being, while evil is the opposite. And if God is the absolute good that rules the world, how can there be evil? How can he allow it? Is it a punishment from him? A sample of his indifference towards humanity? Or a manifestation that he does not exist? Finally, in search of answers, we had this precious conversation with Professor Agustín Echavarría next to the famous well of Campus Universitario. 

And what kind of God can allow so much evil?

Sometimes there is a misconception that if God existed, there would be no evil in the world. As if God were some kind of magician who makes everything always go well, that the world is perfect and that no one ever suffers. It is a somewhat naïve or naive idea that unfortunately is sometimes shared by theists themselves, which leads one to think that belief in the existence of God is a childish or puerile position. But this is not so. That there is a God, even an absolutely good and all-powerful one, does not of itself imply that there is no evil. God, not wanting evil, even wanting to eliminate it, and giving us the means to prevent it, may have reasons for permitting it or for not wanting to prevent it in certain circumstances. Is it not so in the case of the government of human affairs? Sometimes it is necessary to tolerate or permit certain evils if one does not want to suppress greater goods. For example, if a government wants to prevent lies from existing, then it would have to suppress the freedom to express one's thoughts and ideas, and this is a greater good that a ruler should preserve. The same may be thought to be true of God and his provident government of the world.

What about diseases or cataclysms?
Can evil be neutral? 

Cataclysms, such as earthquakes, diseases, pandemics, etc., are part of the order of physical nature. In that sense, we can think that they do not in themselves represent an evil. We consider them as evils to the extent that they affect us and prevent us from certain goods, such as health, life, and so on. In that sense, they are not neutral at all, they are a real drama and cannot be minimised. It is no consolation for someone who has to suffer an illness or the death of a loved one to be told that it is part of nature. Loss is a real evil, and it is normal to experience it as such, because by nature no one wants to suffer.

The evil of suffering: what is the point of suffering?

That is an important point. There is one fact that is a fact, and that is that suffering is inevitable in this life. We all, at different times in our lives, have to suffer, to a greater or lesser extent. And eventually we all die. The question then is not whether we can avoid suffering or not, but whether we suffer meaningfully or meaninglessly. All the great philosophers have seen this as a radical choice. Either no meaning can be found in suffering, and then existence itself is absurd, or if, on the contrary, existence has a meaning, then suffering must have a meaning too, even if we are not always able to find it. Of course, the possibility of finding meaning in suffering is linked to having a transcendent perspective on existence. If this were the only life, then suffering is an absolute evil from which we must seek to escape at all costs.

On the other hand, the temptation for the believer is to want to find too much linear meaning in events, and then to interpret all suffering as a punishment or as a clear message from God, when in fact most of the time the meaning of suffering is not discovered until the end, because it is a process that we have to experience in its entirety.

Every cloud has a silver lining:
is it possible to make good out of all evil?

I believe that if one has a transcendent perspective on existence, there is no evil that is so absolute that no good can be derived from it. More so for God. But this does not mean that God uses evils as a means to obtain greater goods, as if he were some kind of Machiavellian puppeteer who instrumentalises our freedom and our suffering for ends that have nothing to do with our good. God does not want evil, because evil is a non-being, an absence of perfection, and God is the cause only of that which has some being or perfection. He allows it because he respects our nature, which is fallible. But once evil occurs, it can serve as an occasion to obtain goods that might not otherwise have been produced. We see that we are often able to do this: to bring good out of situations that at first seemed unfavourable and desolate. Much more is it to be assumed that God, who is omnipotent and provident, is capable of doing this. 

Interviewed by Danila Andreev

Agustín Echavarría on YouTube: Philosophical Theology