The P.E.P. Chronicles, Part 1

So I'm taking a class on the Problem of Evil and Suffering right now. Aka, the Problem of Evil and Pain ... P.E.P. I'm pretty sure my thoughts are going to evolve this semester, so I'm just going to record my initial thoughts now and update as things progress.

Here's what it comes down to:

We believe God is good and yet we know He allows suffering/evil to occur.

All Christians agree on that. Furthermore, they all agree that He must have a good reason for doing so, that it must bring about some sort of greater good.

The two points of contention are:

A) How responsible is He?

B) What is this greater good for which He allows suffering?

There's two main options.

Option A: He's ultimately responsible; He ordained it. We don't exactly know what that greater good will look like, but all suffering/evil is necessary to achieve it.

Option B: He's not totally responsible; He only allowed it. The greater good is freely-chosen relationships between humans and God. Suffering/evil itself is unnecessary, but the option for suffering/evil is necessary to achieve the greater good.

Obviously, these ideas have major implications. Here's some of them.

Option A:

• God's goodness is not what we thought it was.
• We don't really know what good is, or at least, not what the greatest good is.
• This greater good requires suffering/evil to be the greatest good.

Option B:

• God's sovereignty is not what we thought it was.
• We know what the greatest good is: freely chosen relationship with God.
• The greatest good does not require evil to be achieved.

Ok, now it's time for me to express my initial reactions to these ideas:

I hate the idea that evil is necessary to achieve the greatest good. I would rather be responsible for the evil in our world than God. Because one of the things I love most about God is that He is good; that He hates evil more than I do. To me, the idea that goodness requires evil destroys my trust in God's goodness. At that point, I don't care that God is sovereign. That makes me trust Him even less.

I guess what it really comes down to is whether or not I can accept the idea that the Greatest Good requires Evil.