The mystery of evil

A young child with leukemia... a mother struggling to make ends meet with no-one to help her... people caught in earthquakes, tornadoes... the innocent victims of injustice, at school, at home. These are just some examples which might suggest that God lets people suffer pointlessly. We could think of many more similar instances.

And it's a good point … surely a good and powerful God would not let all the bad things happen? If God is who he is supposed to be (all-powerful, all-loving), then why is it that life is so hard and even unjust at times? It makes no sense!          

The honest truth here is that 'the problem of evil', as it is called, remains a mystery.

That's not a cop-out though. A mystery is not something that is incomprehensible; rather, it is something that cannot be explained on purely rational grounds. "Life is a mystery", Madonna (as in the singer) once sung. She's right. But that doesn't mean that life is not worth trying to understand. Including the seemingly-irrational 'problem of evil'.