[Ruth] There's a question here, which I'm sure is echoed by many
people. This came through on the Unbelievable YouTube, and
the question is, "Why did God send COVID? Does he enjoy
watching people suffer? [Craig] Well I don't think that God enjoys
people suffering; I can't think of any reason in the Bible to
say that. But neither should we think that COVID was
necessarily sent by God. I mean it could have been, who
knows. But it could be just the result of evildoing. Justin
and I talked about this last time, about the carelessness
that may have taken place in that Chinese lab that released
this virus into the world, and so this could again be the
kind of intertwining of natural evil and moral evil that so
often seems to occur. And so we shouldn't necessarily think
that this is something sent by God, but certainly we should
say that it's something he permitted to happen, because
he could have stopped it if he wanted to, but he permitted it to
occur. And I think that whenever God permits suffering and evil
in the world, he does so with a view toward a grander purpose
that justifies that permission of suffering or evil. If you
ask me what that purpose is, I would say that in the broadest
terms, God's purpose is to bring as many people freely to
salvation as he can, and that it may well be the case that
only in the world suffused with natural and moral evil that the optimal
number of persons would freely come to find God's love and
forgiveness. I find that not at all implausible. When you
look at the places in the world today where Christianity is
growing at its most rapid rates, it will be in countries
that have experienced terrible natural and moral evil, such
as Ethiopia, China, Indonesia, El Salvador, and other places,
whereas in the indulgent nations of Western Europe and
North America, the growth rates are pretty much flat. So
someone has actually asked me why is it that God has not
blessed the nations of Europe and North America with more
suffering in order to bring them to salvation? It may be
they that are disadvantaged, and not the nations of Africa and Asia and
South America. [Justin] As C.S. Lewis has famously said, "Pain is often
God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world," and I've always found
that illustration you use, Bill, very helpful. [Craig] I
think that that is just sociological demonstrable, as I say, when you
look at those countries in the world where the most people
are becoming Christians and the church is growing most rapidly,
I think it just gives empirical evidence to Lewis's suggestion.
[Justin] My feeling has always been that the problem of evil
is a problem if you've got a particular definition of God,
that is, if God is essentially a divine babysitter who should
never allow us to experience any kind of difficulty or pain,
then obviously that's a problem. But if God's job is, as you say
Bill, to bring people to a knowledge of him, then there may
very well be ways in which a certain amount of suffering
does actually enable us to meet God in ways that we wouldn't
otherwise have been able to see or hear. [Craig] And I would want to add
one other point that the philosopher Daniel Howard
Snyder makes effectively, and that is that the problem
of evil is only a problem for someone who doesn't have
any good arguments for the existence of God, but Howard
Snyder points out, if you've got good reasons to believe that
God exists, then the problem of evil is not a problem.