The memorized meal prayer that I prayed at my family table growing up started with the phrase “God is great, God is good.” It is a simple children’s prayer that has been prayed at millions of meal tables of Christian people. “Let us thank Him for our food. By His hands we are fed. Thank you Lord for daily bread.”
In that opening phrase of that children’s blessing exists one of the greatest (maybe THE greatest) challenge to Christianity. To put it simply, if “God is great,” and if “God is good,” why is there suffering and evil in the world. If God is all-powerful, doesn’t God have the “might” to do away with evil. And, if God is good, doesn’t God have the will to use that might to eliminate evil and suffering? Even though I didn’t know this as a child when I prayed this prayer, this struggle, or problem, has a fancy theological name: Theodicy.
For many Christians in the past two-hundred years the question of evolution was seen as the biggest challenge to Christianity and a belief in God. Charles Darwin and eventually the Scopes “monkey” Trial in Tennessee represent this struggle. While many Christians thought this posed a great challenge to the Christian faith, it has been widely accepted now that science should not be seen as a challenge to faith or scripture.
But the theodicy question still remains. It has existed in different forms throughout Christian history, and many of the great theologians of Church History have attempted to explain the tension in that children’s prayer: if “God is great” and “God is good,” why does suffering and evil exist in our world?
This Sunday in worship we will hear a story from Luke’s gospel in which Jesus is asked about suffering, with the suggestion that those who suffer do so because they are sinful. “What about those who were killed while offering sacrifices in the Temple? They must have been sinful for such a tragic thing to happen.” “And what about those who died when that tower collapsed? They must have been sinful for that to happen to them, right?” And Jesus answers plainly: no.
We long for reasons as to why terrible things happen. Because we can’t bear to think we live in a random world. Why did the hurricane hit Haiti and thousands of people die? Why did COVID begin and spread across the globe? Why did she get cancer? If I can just find a reason, maybe I can keep it from happening to me. And yet random evil things do happen. Good people suffer and people we may not think are good suffer. And we can’t find a reason.
It bothered those who questioned Jesus, and it still troubles faithful people. Jesus doesn’t give all the information we would like, but he does answer the question.
Join us Sunday in worship and join the conversation with the confidence that God will speak to us as we listen for Him.