You can believe in God despite the evil in the world
The problem with the problem is that, for those who believe in and trust the Triune God of Scripture, it’s difficult for us to reconcile the sheer amount of evil in the world with the infinite goodness of the God who made everything. How could things go so wrong when God made them so good?
We will not be able to provide a comprehensive answer to this question. God keeps some things to himself (Deut. 29:29; Rom. 11:33-34).
We do, however, know this much: the problem of evil has its genesis in us. It’s because man sinned that the world began its ruinous revolt against God. The problem of evil is so insidious, extensive, and prevalent because it’s a violation of the One who himself is infinite in his holiness. In other words, the magnitude of sin and evil in the world show forth the magnitude of God’s character, and what a violation of that character by us entails.
The wonder of it all is that the Triune God planned, from eternity past, to solve the problem that we committed by committing the Son of God to the suffering that we ourselves brought on God’s creation, and that we alone deserve (Eph. 1:3-14). One of the most glorious and mysterious passages in Scripture is this: “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer…” (Is. 53:10). This passage speaks of that “Suffering Servant,” the Lord Jesus Christ.
The most mysterious aspect to the problem of evil is not why the Triune God included it in his sovereign plan. It is, rather, why he determined himself to suffer so that our problem would be his, and so that those who trust him would not have to suffer the penalty they deserve.
