I had an atheist argue to me recently that God, by virtue of simply enabling evil, is responsible for it. Why? God could have designed the laws of nature such that all the inertia in a knife when plunged into someone would leave the moment it touched skin. He could stop sustaining the causal effects of a bullet when it is fired. Given that He sustains the world, God is effectively causing evil and thus is culpable. Is this a good argument given the reality of evil? I argue no.
Standard of Culpability
First of all, it's important to note that the objection presupposes a standard of culpability. That is to say that the objection-er is judging God by a standard of right and wrong he has set up in his mind. However, where does he get this standard? If it is from his own moral judgments and not an objective standard, then he lapses into moral relativism. Why? If you were to judge my preferences of ice cream simply as "wrong", you'd be a punk butt. And if you weren't joking, I would look at you and say "BYE FELICIA!" You can't dismiss my preference of ice cream as inferior or "wrong" to yours because there is no objective standard of "right" when it comes to ice cream preference. In the absence of an objective standard for ice cream, value judgments for ice cream are no more than preferences. Similarly, in the absence of an objective standard for morality, such judgments are simply preferences; they bear no more weight than your or my preference of ice cream. Note: I'm not saying "atheists cannot know right and wrong without believing in God!" The argument often gets misrepresented like that; that's not what us Christians are saying. We are saying in the absence of God (so if God doesn't exist), moral judgments, such as culpability judgments, are impossible.
Now if this dude is getting his standard from an objective source, we have to ask if such a source could exist on atheism. I argue: no. On atheism, if you take a God's-eye view of the world, you see a bunch of little people with their own ideas of right and wrong, many of which cohere, but many of which directly contradict each other. Does anyone have an "inferior" moral sense? Well, without an objective standard, no--moral senses are just like ice cream preferences.
See, on the Christian view, God is Himself the source and origin of all good. His character is the moral bar; that which conforms to His character is good, and that which doesn't is not. Goodness is simply "God-ness" if that makes sense. So to frame the discussion, we have to remember that God's character, and His will which is an overflow of that character, defines right.
Answering the Objection
So is God creating the possibility of evil akin to a man who leaves a loaded gun in a room, in spite of knowing how it will be used? I don't think so. The loaded gun occurs within an existing framework of physical laws; and suppose these laws themselves serve a moral purpose. That is, suppose God set up the world so as to render the effects of our actions efficacious. Well why would He do a thing like that? Simply put: we're not God's pets. God's design is for us to be responsible moral agents, who make efficacious choices (like Himself) and must live with the consequences. The consequences of evil actions serve to reflect and communicate the evil of the action; they are parables. God does no wrong to create such a world for two reasons:
1.) A standard of culpability doesn't exist outside of God's being. And if exposing evil in all its ugliness is what God does, and the consequences of moral evils do that, then He does no wrong in setting up the world as He has. The loaded gun exists within that moral framework of the created order, so any creature/Creator comparison doesn't work. Since the obligation "don't allow the possibility of evil!" applies in a created order to created things, one cannot take this obligation and apply it to the Creator. It's an obligation that created things have to each other. Moreover, we know that allowing the consequences of moral evils isn't always wrong. Suppose a kid in a math class sees Little Timmy (that obnoxious punk that keeps coming up on this blog...) cheating on a test, but repeatedly doing so. He has confronted him before, but Lil Timmy is as stubborn as Donald Trump's presidential run. So on a certain test day, when he knows the teacher will be especially watchful, he doesn't let Timmy know about the teacher's watchfulness and in fact allows him to be caught. Then, and only then, does Timmy get the gravity of his actions. Has Timmy's friend done anything morally impermissible? I'd say no; the fault is on Timmy, and if Timmy's friend had told Timmy it would have been mercy...or perhaps even immoral, as Timmy would simply go on cheating. It strikes me that it's possible that allowing the consequences of moral evils actually aren't always wrong; and given that God Himself is the standard of right and wrong, who is to say that His desire for us to be responsible moral agents who live with the consequences of our actions is itself evil?
2.) Yet, there's a second reason. The analogy is a false one. God allowing for the possibility of evil, knowing and ordaining it's existence, is much more akin to this: suppose a man sees a starving person on the street, and decides to give him a bowl of soup. He gives him this bowl somehow with the foreknowledge that the starving man will spit in it and chuck it back in his face. He knows that as a result, a string of incomparable goods will be triggered through time. Has he done any wrong? I'd argue no. Why is this more analogous?
First of all, if we think of why any moral action is wrong, I'd say because it fails to respect dignity or value. Spitting on a person devalues that person; it says to that person, "you are worth being spat on and receiving an expression of disdain" whereas they're value as persons demands that they be respected. Sin against the Creator is the same sort of thing. All sin is ultimately a devaluing of His worth. For if we are images of God, and thus we have the responsibility to reflect God into the world, when we sin we are saying "God looks sort of like this ugly thing". We misrepresent Him in our actions, and do not ascribe Him the honor due to Him. In the end, all sin is ultimately and only a devaluing of God's worth. Why?
God gives us free will as a gift, and ordains moral consequences so that we use it responsibly. As mentioned above, I don't think these consequences are wrong, as they are parables. Moreover, we take the gift that God has given us, and we chuck it back in his face. In the analogy, other people are at stake with a loaded gun in the room; multiple people could be hurt. Yet according to the Christian narrative, creation is a communication of the deity. All creation are "beams of the Luminary"; everything exists to make Him known and tell us of Him. Humans, therefore, are designed to communicate God's worth. Humans are (supposed to be) mini communications of God; mini parables of His character. Wrongness then is a matter of distorting to the Creator to one another, and dishonoring the Creator by not ascribing the honor due those that image Him, and the creation that reflects Him. In fact, this is exactly what the Bible teaches. In Psalm 51, after King David murders a man and sleeps with and marries his wife, he repents and claims "against God only have I sinned" in verse 4. But wait! Didn't he sin against Uriah? Didn't he sin against Bathsheba? Well, yes. But this is ultimately only sin against God, for both Uriah and Bathsheba are image bearers. They are communications; so the crime is in devaluing God by distorting what He is like in the action of murder, and trashing Uriah and Bathsheba's rights as those appointed to reflect God. David did sin against Bathsheba and Uriah; yet they do not have some sort of independent value from God. Sin against them is sin against the One who's image they bear. It is sin because to dishonor humans is to dishonor the God in whose image humans are made.
Thus, in the end, if all crime is crime against God only, who are we to say that God has no right to allow His own worth to be disrespected? Isn't that His prerogative? And rather than rail at Him for even allowing us to do evil (when we are the ones who took the "bowl of soup" and chucked it at his face!), ought we take the gift He has given us and point others to the only One who can satisfy their souls?
In Christ,
Sean Luke
