More from Keller dealing with God and the problem of pain

I'm continuing to summarize key portions of Tim Keller's book Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering. I just heard of a friend and his wife who are now going through crushing loss of a son. So, this book is not just for those who wish to discuss pain and suffering from an ivory-tower perspective. the pain is real, and we better get ready for it in our lives. So, here's more from Keller.

Most attempts to explain why God permits evil seem tepid, shallow, and ultimately frivolous, according to Alvin Plantinga. As a result, most Christian thinkers and philosophers have increasingly recommended the believers try not to formulate reasons but simply mount a defense. This simply seeks to prove that the argument against God from evil fails. The burden now is on the skeptic. It is up to the skeptic to make a compelling case that there can't be a God and evil in the world at the same time. Here's what the skeptic's argument has to look like: "A truly good and all-powerful God would not want evil to exist. Evil exists. Therefore, God who is both good and powerful cannot exist." 

But the believer in God can point out that the argument has a hidden premise, namely that God does not have any good reasons to allow evil to exist. If he has good reasons, then there is no contradiction between his existence and that of evil. The skeptic must reply that God cannot possibly have any such reasons. That is very hard to prove. We know that we often allow suffering in people's lives to bring about some greater good (doctors, parents,…). There's another assumption inside the first hidden premise – "If I can't see any reasons God might have for permitting that evil, then probably he doesn't have any." But this is obviously false. Our comeback is this: "If God is infinitely knowledgeable – why couldn't he have morally sufficient reasons for allowing evil that you can't think of?" We can't know as much as God. If you have a God infinite and powerful enough for you to be angry at for allowing evil, then you must at the same time have a God infinite enough to have sufficient reasons for allowing that evil.

Most people who see evil object to God's existence not for philosophical reasons but for visceral ones. But not everyone who experiences radical evil automatically loses faith in God. The assumption for skeptics is that God, if he exists, has failed to do the right thing. But this creates a problem for the person who disbelieves in God. We humans have moral feelings. Now if there is no God, where do such strong moral feelings and instincts come from? Is it from evolution? But that can't account for moral obligation. Where do you get a standard by which our moral feelings and senses are judged as true and others as false? This happened to C. S. Lewis. He rejected the existence of God because he hated the evil in the world. But eventually he came to realize that evil and suffering were a bigger problem for him as an atheist than as a believer in God. He concluded that the awareness of moral evil in the world was actually an argument for the existence of God, not against it. His objection to the existence of God was that he could perceive no moral standard behind the world – the world was just randomly evil and cruel. But then if there was no God, any definition of evil was just based on a private feeling of the individual. If morals are totally subjective, then you can't say Hitler was wrong.

In summary, the problem of senseless suffering does not go away if you abandon belief in God. If there is no God, why have a sense of outrage and horror when unjust suffering occurs? Violence, suffering, and death are completely natural phenomena. More from his book to follow in the next blog.