Avoiding theodicy with the moral law
May 10th, 2010 | 10 Comments
It seems every time I hear Ravi Zacharias he’s either (or both) quoting Malcom Muggeridge or telling the story of going to a college campus and stumping a questioner by giving the following exchange (approximately):
Atheist: “If the Christian God exists, why is there evil in the universe?”
Christian: “The very fact that you believe there is evil shows that you are acknowledging a moral law, which itself requires a Lawgiver. So what’s your question again?”
Atheist: “. . .”
Every time he tells this story, which probably is just recounting the same incident that gave the best result, the questioner is said to be dumbfounded, essentially conceding the point, while Ravi’s current audience laughs and applauds as though it’s the first time they’ve seen the woman apparently sawed in half emerge from the box in one piece.
This silly gotcha game bothers me every time I hear it. It’s clear what the questioner is asking: “If, as Christians claim, evil is defined and despised by the Christian God who made the universe, then why would that Christian God allow evil as Christians define it?” What is being pointed out is a perceived lack of consistency in the Christian conception of good/evil and God’s nature. The questioner can be thought of as saying something like, “The idea of God offends my moral sense, which is evolutionary and emergent rather than absolute so long as He does not exist but is hopelessly self-contradictory if He does.”
It is a legitimate but entirely separate issue to ask someone who intuits and whose beliefs and attitudes presuppose an absolute moral law if they will acknowledge that there is no absolute basis for any of his/her ethical/moral preferences. There is some potential value in making them lie in the bed they make. But this is not what is being done in the shell game above. Instead, they’re asking Christians to lie in a bed we’ve made. What’s good for the goose, etc.
The tack above that Ravi and many other apologists have taken amounts to changing the subject and hoping they won’t notice. This does not mean that we as Christians are the only ones with hard questions to answer, but when answering this good question this way we should be aware that we are avoiding rather than doing theodicy. The problem of evil is the biggest hangup unbelievers and believers alike have; just try not to be so coy when you ignore it, please.
