Does God permit evil? Some food for thought

A slow day at work has given me opportunity to engage in an interesting discussion about the problem of evil. For this Fatima blog, it's a relevant question in light of the history of communism in the last century and today's upheavals in the Muslim Middle East.

As a start, the testimony of Scripture - from Joseph's ordeal to Israel's Babylonian exile to none other than the Cross of Calvary itself - is very clear-cut: Yes, evil is deliberately permitted by God to carry out his own purposes.

Next, while God wishes the good to resist evil, he often uses evil to purify the good even further - often showing them in the process that they're not really that 'good' anyway, because in the end only he himself is good.

Consider the Bible's principal example of Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers in the Genesis account. As Joseph himself later admitted to his brothers: "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." In other words, the great Israelite patriarch goes even further than to say that good eventually came out of evil - he actually relabels the evil that befell him as a good (!?).

We can surmise from the basic facts of his story as to why this was so. Joseph was, after all, an incredibly arrogant kid before his brothers turned violently on him - despite the fact that he was objectively the most deserving of Jacob's sons, or more accurately because of that very fact. Most likely, in the early weeks and months of his captivity (which were undoubtedly the hardest), he had plenty of time to contemplate the depths of his sin of pride against his brethren in tactlessly sharing with them his dreams of future dominion over them. "I just had it coming to me," he would have realized.

Thus, years later, without a shred of doubt that it was the terrible ordeal of exile and enslavement that gave him the supreme virtue of humility - and that all his gifts and blessings since then were merely fruits of that same humility - Joseph could say quite plainly, whether to himself or to anyone, "The evil which was done to me was actually the best thing that could ever have happened to me."

History itself bears witness through countless similar examples of how so much greater good comes out of evil that, in the end, one might wonder if all of it is actually a mirror of Joseph's experience of purification through humiliation - ultimately, of the Messiah's own glorification through the supreme subjugation of the Cross.

Now, does this mean we're to just raise up our hands and surrender to evil, thereby enabling it under the assumption that it's actually a good thing eventually? I hope not! But when we're backed into a corner by other free human beings who in the exercise of their freewill - which often expresses itself through apathy as opposed to action - turn the world into an inhospitable place for our values and beliefs, perhaps it won't hurt to ask ourselves, "If we don't win, might it just be possible that defeat is necessary for greater victory down the road?"

Now if this doesn't scandalize you, I suggest you see a psychiatrist. If you think I'm certifiably crazy, that's a good and normal thing.