Man may not fully understand the mystery of evil but can rejoice nonetheless in anticipation of its ultimate destruction through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, said the international director of Langham Partnership at the Christian Resources Exhibition on Wednesday.
In an address on the existence of suffering and evil in the world, Dr Chris Wright said that humans had to accept some of the responsibility where they were caused by man’s sin.
“A vast amount of the evil and suffering in the world actually is not in itself a mystery,” he said. “It can be explained in relation to our human sin, our folly, our stupidity, either directly or often indirectly, causing other people to suffer pain.”
He acknowledged, however, that Christians struggle to answer the question of where evil actually comes from.
“When you come to this point where you say ‘Where did evil come from?’ and you get silence, it seems to me that that’s a significant silence, that God has chosen not to answer that question in his wisdom and for his own reason,” he said.
Dr Wright contended that while it was instinctive to try to make sense of evil and suffering in the world, the Bible instead compelled humans to accept the “unanswerable nature” of evil.
“In other words we understand that we cannot understand. And I want to say I think that’s ok. And more than ok, I actually want to suggest to you that that’s a good thing,” he said.
“Evil is there to be resisted, not to be understood. God has withheld it from our understanding because it is not, like everything else we encounter, a part of his universe that has that sense of rational legitimacy and justification.
“And it is therefore an enemy to be destroyed, not simply a part of the universe to be understood and explained.”
Dr Wright went on to reject the idea, popular among some Christians, that natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 were God’s curse and judgement on man for sin.
