If God is good and powerful, how come evil exists?

July 23, 2023

The phrase Kingdom of Heaven, and the parallel phrase Kingdom of God, are together found over a 100 times in the New Testament. Since all the parables/metaphors in today’s Gospel refer to the Kingdom of heaven, it might be useful to explain this phrase and its alternative, the Kingdom of God.

Firstly, while Mathew’s gospel generally uses the phrase ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, the gospels of Mark and Luke generally use ‘Kingdom of God’. However, it is usually accepted that they both essentially refer to the same thing. The difference, scholars suggest is because  Mathew’s gospel was written primarily for the Jews and so he prefers the former phrase due to the Jewish reluctance to use the name of God,  while Mark and Luke are writing for non-Jewish audiences and so do not have this need.

However, whichever term we use, the problem that today’s gospel tries to address is one that we often face ourselves - Why do we see so much evil around us? Isn’t God in charge?. Both John the Baptist and Jesus himself spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven/God coming very soon or being here already. And yet the people of Israel were dismayed and confused as to why the results of that rule did not show in their own lives - good did not always win, and evil continued to be experienced.  

This reality of evil continued to bother Jesus’ disciples and in response, Jesus offers various parables to assure them and to help them understand. The metaphor of the mustard seed teaches the disciples that though God’s influence seems weak and small, it eventually becomes very big, and offers support to all.  The metaphor of the yeast tells us that the  word of God works in a hidden manner, nevertheless is powerful enough to eventually influence the whole.  The parable of the sower who sows seed and finds cockles (weeds) among the wheat is to explain the conundrum that despite God sowing his goodness all around to  bring about his Kingdom, yet there are people who turn out evil.   

This problem of evil, referred to especially in the last parable, is one of those eternal questions that human beings are continuously trying to find the answer to .   This problem of evil can be expressed simply in this manner: “If God is good but there is still evil, then God must not be powerful enough to stop it; or if God is powerful enough to stop evil, and he doesn’t stop it, then God must not be all-good.  Therefore God cannot be both all-good and all-powerful.”  

Different religions try to deal with this problem in different ways.  To take just two examples:  The Hindu tradition tries to explain why individuals  experience evil in their lives, with their belief in KARMA, where the evil suffered today is because of one’s own actions in a previous life.  Furthermore, as for the rest of the evil we experience, the Hindu belief is that we are living in Kali Yuga, which is the fourth and final stage of the cosmic cycle in Hinduism. It is an epoch that is characterized by moral and spiritual decline, chaos, suffering and evil.   In Zoroastrianism’s belief system, below the ultimate reality who is God, there are two competing realities - Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, the latter being a destructive spirit - striving for ascendancy over each other and so evil occurs when the latter is “winning” in a particular situation.

The Judaic tradition is similar to the Zoroastrian answer, in as much as it accepts a non-divine source for evil, called Satan or the evil spirit, but is different in that in the Judaic tradition, the source of Good IS the Ultimate God, and the rebellious/evil spirit is ‘lower’ and not as powerful as the source of good.  The parable of the sower in today’s Gospel, the story of the Temptations, and other narratives in the entire Gospel of Mathew in particular, all confirm that Jesus himself is firmly grounded in the Judaic tradition in which evil is attributed to Satan. And the parable is assuring the listener that God is still in charge, even though the enemy, Satan, does his work, and precisely because of this, eventually justice and good will prevail.

So we have a good example here of how different religions use the concepts and understandings of their own cultures and times to respond to the deepest of human questions.

Christians, while continuing to speak of Satan, and earlier even having an understanding (later quietly discarded) that the ‘ransom’ paid for our sins by Jesus was paid to Satan, gradually began to speak of “Satan’ in more and more analogical ways. As a result , aside from the liturgical references to Satan in some rituals (e.g. Baptism and the Easter vigil Mass) there doesn’t seem to be any official Church statement on an entity called Satan since the 16^th century (Council of Trent).  However, before that Council, in the 13^th century, Thomas Aquinas tried to explain evil by suggesting that evil is not an entity in itself, but the lack of something, - just like ‘darkness’ is not a reality in itself, but just the lack of light. So while we experience evil (or darkness) as realities, the fact is this evil only expresses the lack of what ought to be or could be. Consequently, evil is the result of things/people/earth not being in harmony with God’s goodness or original plan.  That was one way of dealing with it.  Not fully satisfactory!  So perhaps we should admit: “We still haven’t got  there.  We are still on pilgrimmage”.

Of course to have an all powerful God, one who can change our fate at his command, is a comforting thought and for several it means we pray to God to ask him to use that power on our behalf.  But, as I have said before, it is important to understand that ALL statements about God are analogies.  So to say God is ALL POWERFUL, and then to understand the ALL POWERFUL one as one having the ability to control everybody and everything else, would be to take the term literally, and to forget that it is an ANALOGICAL term, or ‘plant language’ as I have explained in my parable on the Planet of Plants  (see reflection “Is my relationship with the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit, Sunday June 4, 2023).  After all Jesus’ life and death clearly seems to push us to reflect on the idea that maybe God’s understanding of POWER is quite different from ours.  Wasn’t this precisely the message that Jesus tried to teach his disciples which they found so difficult to understand, so much so that that Jesus even had to shout at Peter: “Get behind me Satan” when Peter just couldn’t understand how a powerful Messiah, the Son  of God, would have to suffer and die. Or again we are challenged in our understanding of God’s power when during the story of the Temptations Jesus repeatedly refuses to use POWER as Satan understood it and wanted him to use. Or again, was God powerless when the bystanders taunted Jesus on the Cross: “… let him come down from the cross and we will believe in him” (Mathew 27:42). Or were all these and the entire Gospel story of Jesus telling us that God understands POWER quite differently from how we understand it.   This is not to say that God cannot be there for us, but like with Jesus on the cross, we might have to re-think, re-understand what this may actually mean.  In fact the metaphors of the mustard seed and the yeast that come in today’s Gospel, give us an idea of how Jesus understood the meaning of God’s power, God’s reign - and those meanings are probably quite different from our normal understanding of power.

On the other hand evil is definitely a reality that each of us faces in this world - whatever our understanding of the source of this evil, whether an entity in itself like Satan, or just the absence of good. And we must admit that there is a tendency to evil that is present in our world, and even in each of us. The kingdom of heaven therefore becomes real, only when we choose to do good (follow God’s will) rather than evil.  And when we consistently (not just sporadically) make such a choice, our lives become meaningful, more peaceful, more beautiful, whatever the evil that we experience. Therefore the “kingdom of heaven” is not so much a place, but rather a way of living, a state of being. This Kingdom is found, or could come to birth, in the inner realm of our hearts, when we choose to do God’s will, - and if we can do this, God reigns as king.  That is why when  “some of the Pharisees asked Jesus, “When will the kingdom of God come?”,  Jesus answered, “God’s kingdom is coming, but not in a way that you will be able to see with your eyes. People will not say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is!’ because God’s kingdom is within you.” (Luke 17:20-21)

First Reading: Wisdom 12: 13, 16-19 

For neither is there any god besides you whose care is for all people,
to whom you should prove that you have not judged unjustly,
For your strength is the source of righteousness,
and your sovereignty over all causes you to spare all.
For you show your strength when people doubt the completeness of your power,
and you rebuke any insolence among those who know it.
Although you are sovereign in strength, you judge fairly,
and with great forbearance you govern us,
for you have power to act whenever you choose.

Through such works you have taught your people
that the righteous must be kind,
and you have filled your children with good hope,
because you give repentance for sins.

Second Reading: Romans 8: 26-27

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes[a] with groanings too deep for words. And God, who searches hearts, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Gospel: Matthew 13: 24-43

He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?” He answered, “An enemy has done this.” The slaves said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” But he replied, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’

He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’

He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’

Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. This was to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet:

‘I will open my mouth to speak in parables;I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.’

Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, ‘Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.’ He answered, ‘The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!