The Problem with Evil

Whatever answer we may wrestle with about why there is evil and suffering in the world, we can be sure of one thing: God took His own medicine. The Christian story is not one of a distant deity watching human pain from afar. No, it is the story of a God who entered into the very heart of human suffering. Like a composer who weaves dissonance into a symphony to highlight the beauty of resolution, God has mysteriously allowed the presence of evil to serve a greater redemptive purpose.

The Problem with Satan's Name

It’s often assumed that Satan has a proper name in the Bible—but this is a misunderstanding. The Hebrew term satan simply means “adversary” or “accuser,” and appears in the Old Testament most often with a definite article (ha-satan), meaning "the accuser." It’s not so much a name as a role—like “the prosecutor.” In Job’s courtroom scene, Satan appears more like a cosmic functionary than a named villain.

In the New Testament, the term loses its article and begins functioning like a proper name, yet it still remains a description more than an identity. The same goes for diabolos (devil), which means “slanderer,” and other terms like “the evil one,” “the tempter,” and “the prince of the power of the air.”

The name Lucifer, often misunderstood as Satan’s original name, comes from the Latin translation of Isaiah 14:12. But in its original Hebrew context, the passage refers to the king of Babylon. It was only later that Christian tradition read this text typologically as describing Satan's fall.

Theologically, this is significant. As Augustine and Aquinas teach, the devil, like all creatures, was made good. Evil does not create—it only corrupts. That’s why evil beings don’t even get real names. In Scripture, names reveal purpose and essence. To fall from grace is to fall from name. Evil is anonymous because it is parasitic, a twisting of what was originally good.

God’s Power and Human Freedom

Some skeptics pose the famous dilemma: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is impotent. Is He able but not willing? Then He is malevolent.” But this misses a crucial element: God values freedom.

If God’s aim is to bring about moral goodness, then humans must have the real freedom to choose it. Coerced love is not love. Forced obedience is not virtue. So God, though all-powerful, voluntarily limits how He exercises that power, creating a space where real freedom can flourish. Love, trust, and moral maturity only exist where there is real choice.

God’s power isn’t about control—it’s about redemption. The first Adam, through disobedience, opened the floodgates of suffering and death. But in the second Adam—Jesus Christ—God enters into that brokenness, suffers with us, and rises to restore what was lost. The gospel is God’s answer to evil: not in overpowering force, but in suffering love.

Justice and the End of the Story

Does God override our free will to solve the problem of evil? No. But He does guarantee that evil will not have the last word. He promises that justice will prevail—either in this life or the one to come. That is not a cop-out. It is the hope of every martyr, every abused child, every oppressed people. God sees. God remembers. And God will act.

The theological idea of the Suffering God is one of Christianity’s most radical and comforting truths—that God is not distant, immune, or indifferent to human suffering, but has entered into it fully. In Jesus Christ, God took on flesh, embracing vulnerability, rejection, pain, and even death. This is not just divine empathy; it is divine participation. At the cross, we see the ultimate expression of this mystery: the omnipotent Creator willingly suffers at the hands of His creation to redeem it. Unlike the gods of myth who remain above human agony, the God of the Bible stoops down, taking our sorrows upon Himself (Isaiah 53:4).

Theologians emphasized that on the cross, not only does the Son suffer, but so does the Father, grieving in divine solidarity. This changes everything. It means that no pain we endure is foreign to God. He suffers with us, redeems suffering from within, and promises that it will not have the final word. The Suffering God is not a weak God, but a God so strong in love that He chooses to be wounded to heal the world.

Peter Kreeft explains in his book The Three Philosophies of Life that the key to Job’s genuine faith lies in his relationship with God—even in the midst of pain and loss. While Job’s friends talk about God and try to explain Him with theological arguments, Job speaks directly to God. That, says Kreeft, is the crucial difference: “Job’s friends talk about God; Job talks to God. That is the essence of the difference. That is what makes Job a true religious man and them mere theologians” (2011, p. 64). Even when Job complains, questions, protests, and sometimes even accuses God, he remains in conversation with Him. He doesn’t turn away—he stays within the relationship, within the mystery. Kreeft puts it this way: “Job complains, questions, protests, and sometimes accuses God, but he never leaves the conversation. He never leaves God out of it. That makes all the difference” (2011, p. 65). This persistent dialogue, this refusal to exclude God, shows us what true faith really is—not the absence of questions, but the presence of a relationship in which we wrestle honestly with God.

Not a Dualistic Battle

We are not trapped in a cosmic tug-of-war between equal gods of good and evil. This is not Zoroastrianism or Mani’s dualism. Satan is not an anti-God. He is a finite, fallen creature. Evil is not a substance—it’s a shadow, an absence of good. As Peter Kreeft says, evil is like a hole in the fabric of being, a distortion of the good.

Kreeft, echoing Augustine and Aquinas, teaches that evil doesn’t stand on its own. It’s parasitic. Like darkness is the absence of light, and silence is the absence of sound, evil is the absence or corruption of something good. That’s why it can’t win. It’s not even a thing—it’s a lack.

So What Do We Do?

We walk in the light of Christ. We do not live as victims but as overcomers. We don’t always understand suffering, but we do know our Savior has suffered with us. The cross was not the end. It was the beginning of the end for evil—and the beginning of the new creation in us.

📖 Types of Evil in the Bible

1. Moral Evil (Sin)

• Actions committed by free beings against God’s will.
• Examples: Cain killing Abel (Gen 4), David’s sin (2 Sam 11).
• "For all have sinned" (Rom 3:23).

2. Natural Evil (Calamity, Disease, Death)

• Not directly caused by sin, but part of the fallen world.
• Examples: The flood (Gen 6–9), famine (Ruth 1).
• "Creation groans" (Rom 8:22).

3. Supernatural Evil (Demonic Influence)

• Evil from rebellious spiritual beings.
• Examples: Eve tempted (Gen 3), demon possession (Mark 5).
• "Your adversary the devil" (1 Pet 5:8).

4. Systemic Evil (Societal Injustice)

• Evil rooted in social or political structures.
• Examples: Egypt’s oppression (Ex 1), greedy temples (Matt 21).
• "Woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees" (Isa 10:1).

5. Eschatological Evil (End-time Rebellion)

• Final evil events before judgment.
• Examples: The Beast (Rev 13), Armageddon (Rev 16), Satan’s end (Rev 20).
• "The devil... cast into the lake of fire" (Rev 20:10).

Evil is real. But so is our Redeemer. Walk in His light. Evil is loud, but it doesn’t get the last word. Christ does.