If God Is Good, Why Does Evil Exist?
Wrestling with God: The Questions That Won’t Go Away (Part I)
It was one in the morning when I heard the noise.
I was half-asleep, caught in that foggy space between dreams and wakefulness. The sound wasn’t one I recognized. I jolted upright in bed, fumbling for the light. The alarm was coming from the pastor-on-call phone. This was one of my first weeks being the POC, as we called it.
The message from the hospital was cryptic.
“Please get here immediately. We can’t say more.”
Here I was, 24 years old, a young pastor, getting a call from the hospital in the middle of the night. Nothing prepared me for what I walked into.
I stepped into a waiting room full of hopeless despair. A woman clung to me, hysterically sobbing, “I need to see my boy. I need to see my boy.”
It felt like I stood in that room for an eternity with every eye on me, though it was only a few minutes before the nurse arrived. “Pastor, come with me,” she said, already halfway down the hall. I had to catch up. She led me straight into the emergency wing.
I asked, “What’s going on? Why was I called?”
She hesitated. I could see she wanted the doctor to answer, but he was nowhere in sight. Again, I asked, “What’s going on?”
She looked down at her hands, her voice trembling. “A boy tried to take his life. He put a bullet through his head. The family wants you to go in and pray for him.”
Even working in a hospital, some things you never get used to.
We stopped in front of the door. She looked at me and asked, “Do you need a minute before you go in? Have you ever seen someone in this state before?”
I looked at her and said, “let’s go in.” I didn’t know what else to say.
We entered the room. Lying before me was the boy, no older than 17. To my right stood the social worker. To my left, the nurse.
It’s hard to explain, but when death is near, you can almost smell it. You can feel it. You can hear it, even though it’s silent.
I placed my hand on the boy’s frail arm and prayed.
I prayed with everything in me. “God, why? God, heal. He’s just a kid.”
When I finished the nurse turned to me. “Do you remember the way back?”
I left the room, quietly shutting the door behind me. I walked down the long, fluorescent-lit corridor. At the end, I paused. I knew once I stepped into the main hallway, I’d need to comfort the family, but I had no words. Nothing I could say or do would change what they were facing.
I walked into the waiting room. The only thing they wanted was for me to be walking back with their boy. But it was just me.
The room fell silent.
I offered what encouragement I had and left.
I couldn’t drive. I just sat in my beat-up 1995 Toyota Avalon in the hospital parking lot, part numb, part in shock. Watching the bugs buzz around the outside lights.
God, why.
Evil.
I’ve stood in too many hospital rooms.
Too many funerals of parents taken too soon.
Children, tragically gone.
Introduction: The Unavoidable Question
You have your own stories, you’ve asked it yourself, not as a skeptic, but as a believer clinging to what little faith you have left:
“If God is good… why?”
Why does evil exist?
Why do children die?
Why do the innocent suffer?
Why do genocides happen?
Why cancer, why war, why abuse? Why, why, why?
It's not academic. It’s personal.
More than a theological problem, it’s a wound.
And that wound becomes a question:
If God is all-powerful, and if God is good… then why is the world the way it is?
This is the oldest and most emotionally charged question in theology. And we’re going to face it head-on.
