That's a completely fair question to ask when faced with the horrible evil we witnessed in Virginia this week. People ask it everyday when struggling with evil events in their own lives. There's a "pastoral" response that is vital: comfort, love, help, prayer. It's a personal response.
There's also a theological truth we should all face. Evil acts don't exist in a vacuum. People commit them because man's heart is wicked. Human beings are evil. We are evil.
Cho's acts Monday were manifestly more evil than what most of us do, but our sin is still evil. We suffer and wonder about the evil we witness in others, but rarely do we confront the evil in ourselves. One reason is because our own evil is less overt than Cho's. But another reason is because we don't want to face our wicked hearts. When we ask why God doesn't do something about evil, are any of us honest enough to ask God to do something about the evil in us? We're a lot more like Cho than we are like Jesus.
Greg has asked the question, if God answered our challenge and took care of all evil at midnight, where would you be at 12:01? Do we really want God's final answer when we ask Him why He doesn't do something about evil? Justice will hit much closer to home than most of us who rail at God consider the answer will be.
Why doesn't God do something about evil? He has and He will. He has offered us grace rather than justice in Jesus. He has offered us forgiveness, unconditionally. If we really considered the desperate wickedness of our own hearts, the immenseness of this answer might begin to dawn on us and drive us to our knees in shame and thanksgiving.
God has answered evil and He will. And when He completely deals with evil, it will be complete. And we'll have to answer to Him for our own evil if we don't stand with Christ.
There's another question that is rarely asked when skeptics challenge rather than ask why God doesn't do something about evil. Why is there good? If God doesn't exist because of evil, then there is no good either. Morality requires a grounding, an explanation. And if God is rejected because of evil, then so much good be abandoned. Yet we have an intuition of good, and very few are willing to abandon it.
The problem of evil is answered in the Bible, in the Christian world view. Sadly, what Cho did is what can be expected when we understand the nature of evil in us. Cho obviously had mental and emotional problems, and I think it's obvious that evil was done to him in neglecting the help he needed and the alienation he experienced as a child from classmates. I do feel some sympathy for him, but all of that doesn't mitigate the evil that came out of his heart Monday.
The problem of good is not answerable if we abandon God.
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