We ask “Why?” people in the Bible ask “How Long?”

Books about the problem of evil can be extremely frustrating because you know at the outset that, from a Christian point of view, the answer (if we can call it that) will involve the word “mystery.” N. T. Wright in Evil and the Justice of God says that his intention in that book is

“not so much to give answers to impossible philosophical questions as to bring signs of God’s new world to birth, on the basis of Jesus’ death and in the power of his Spirit, even in the midst of ‘the present evil age’” (p. 11).

So when I read books on this subject like N. T. Wright’s, I am not really looking for answers, but I hope that the author will help me think about the issues in a way that will help me conform my thinking to the to way the Bible thinks about them. When I read a book about the problem of evil, I hope to gain wisdom more than understanding, hope more than assurance that things will work out in this life. For I know that, sooner or later, my reflections will be tested by the hard reality of suffering or the sheer evilness of evil at a personal level. You cannot go for very long just thinking about evil and suffering without experiencing them.

I think this part of Chris Wright’s book The God I don’t Understand serves as a guide to thinking biblically about these things. That does not mean sweeping the nasty stuff under the rug; it means coping with the hard questions with the conviction that a Christian worldview is the best way for us to traverse through them.

If I were to summarize this part of the book, I would say that Wrights wants us to understand that God in His wisdom did not think it was necessary to reveal to us where evil (he makes a distinction between moral and natural) came from. This does not mean that the Bible has nothing to say about when evil first came into the world, but its origin is something it does not bother to explain. Since this raises the question about what the Bible DOES say about evil, Wright spends some time talking about the Bible’s diagnosis for moral evil which basically says that sin effected both humanity and creation and “puts the blame of suffering and evil where most of it primarily belongs, namely, on ourselves, the human race” (35). It then makes sense to talk about the devil or Satan and the fall of the angels. Although Wright spends a few pages on this aspect of evil, the conclusion is that the Bible tells us very little, so at the end our most common questions about the fall of the angels and preexisting evil go unanswered. It is simply not for us to know.
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