I had thought about how many try to answer the question of evil, but never come up with a satisfactory answer to the problem. The simplest answer I came up to with that it is not possible to justify what is unjust. I remember from the show “8 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter”, there was a scene in the episode “Goodbye” when John Ritters character Paul died, due to the actors death in real life. I remember a scene where Kate’s mother who became all religious started giving all these explanations, suhc as “No one ever said life was fair” and “It was all in Gods plan”. Kate only got irritated with her mother’s solutions to this tragedy.
I also remember a clip on Spiritual warfare by pastor Gregory Boyd on the matter of evil, and he used a war analogy of not asking questions, and fighting against evil. This reminded me of the Buddha’s arrow sermon, where such questions are irrelevant for the sake of removing the arrow. The more I was thinking, Jesus third way of non-violent activism is the best solution of the problem of evil, not through a philosophical answer, but through action. I find that the problem of evil is only pondered when one finds themselves helpless in a situation. For example, I find that most people if they were to get a cut are going to clean the wound and get themselves bandaged up before asking why this happened. Yet I find more often, a more severe injury like a broken bone can get one wondering why this happened.
Yet the sense of helplessness I find comes from the matter that neither passive acceptance nor aggressive forms of activism solve anything, and often makes things worse. I find that often times the passivist way leads to indifference where the way of aggression can use the same methods they originally hated, or in states of powerlessness can fall into resentful brooding. The most common I have seen is a mixture of the two, such as the quiet guy who flips when things go too far, or the people who is a complete doormat to those in power, but can be quite tyrannical to those less powerful than them, or disloyal to those of equal power. The third way reminds me of Frodo’s fiat in the Lord of the Rings, where he vowed to take the rings, despite not knowing the way. I find that the most Christlike forms of activism are not about knowing the way, or having absolute power.
