The Problem of Evil
1. In his second letter to the Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul speaks
of the Anti-Christ, “the man of sin… the son of perdition, who opposes
and is exalted above all that is called God…” “Already,” he says, “the
mystery of iniquity is at work.” (Cf. 2 Thess. 2:3-7) From the beginning
of the Church’s history until the present time it has always been the
same.
There always have been
and always will be men who do evil not from human weakness, but from
motives of malice so diabolical as to present something of a mystery to
us. These can be called Anti-Christ because they seem to be incarnations
of the devil, the spirit of iniquity. They delight in spreading error,
in corrupting minds, and in persecuting the Church. They are steeped in
all kinds of baseness and nothing pleases them better than to succeed in
inducing the young and the innocent to follow them in their sinful
ways. For this purpose they employ all the advantages which modern
technical progress has to offer – the press, the cinema, the radio, and
television. In short, they use God’s gifts in their commercialisation of
sin in order to draw souls away from Him.
The realisation of
this terrifying fact provokes two questions. (1) How can such evil be
permitted by God, Who made man for Himself and redeemed him with the
Blood of His only-begotten Son? (2) What steps can we take to control
this alarming and universal deluge of evil?
2. St. Augustine
answers the first question by pointing out that the infinite and good
God created us without any assistance from ourselves, but does not will
to save us without our cooperation since He has endowed us with the gift
of liberty. Moreover, He prefers to draw good from evil rather than to
prevent the evil itself. We must answer the second question ourselves,
remembering that we have a serious obligation to combat evil in
ourselves and in our fellow-men. What have we done up to now and what do
we propose to do in the future?
3. According to St. Augustine,
great good can come from the evil which God permits. In the first
place, God displays His infinite goodness and mercy. Even though He
permits us to offend Him out of respect for our human liberty, He is
always ready to forgive us, even as He forgave the penitent thief. In
the second place, by permitting evil God gives the good an opportunity
of practicing virtue, especially the virtue of patience. If there were
no persecutors, there would be no martyrs and the Church would be
deprived of the glory which makes her most like her founder, Jesus
Christ. Finally, each of us has a particular duty to fulfil in resisting
the onslaught of evil. As followers and soldiers of Christ, we cannot
remain passive. The invasion by the forces of evil demands a
counter-attack by the forces of good in defense of the faith and of the
Church. As Christians, we are the sons of martyrs. We must not refuse,
therefore, to make our lives a continuous martyrdom for the triumph of
goodness in ourselves and in others. The faithful exercise of virtue and
of the apostolate is often a form of martyrdom.
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