Why won't God stop evil and suffering?

Sex, Lies and Paratroop Deployment

For a season of my life I traveled with an international human rights agency that worked cases of forced child prostitution and child slave labor around the world. 1 million new girls each year are forced into child prostitution. I was part of a sting to raid brothels that abducted and forced 10-15 year old girls to provide sex to “customers” 4-5 times a day, six days a week. I posed as a customer in these brothels to identify those that were using the youngest girls. I also posed as an investor at child slave labor camps where little boys are burned or whipped with electrical cords if they did not meet their quota of rolled cigarettes. Currently there are 8.4 million children in slave labor camps.

I sat in brothel lounges, looking into the eyes of young girls on a catwalk, forced to offer themselves to the highest bidder. I saw the scars and burns left on the bodies of young boys in slave labor camps. Each day there were long lines of little girls, standing on the street in the scorching heat outside health clinics, waiting to receive their daily STD meds. I visited NGOs where rescued children received mental health counseling and support as a result of their physical, sexual and psychological trauma.

I can never unsee the horrors I witnessed in my human rights work around the world. I still flash back to their faces in my mind. Sometimes in crowds I think I’ll see one of those little girls or boys… and then they disappear in thin air. I’ll carry these faces inside me to my last breath. I promised myself to never forget them. And this is why in part I write this article today.

God and Suffering

In my first published book, Divine Nobodies, I devoted a chapter to my human rights work in India and Southeast Asia. The chapter is titled, “Sex, Lies and Paratroop Deployment.” These experiences were instrumental in my religious deconstruction process, and forced me to face the matter of God, evil and human suffering.

One of the most difficult questions related to the topic of God is: Why does God allow evil and human suffering? We know that any answer offered doesn’t really work.

Though I am not going to discuss this in today’s article, there is some merit in exploring and deconstructing the terms “evil” and “suffering”. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who I wrote about in last week’s article, wrote a compelling book on the subject, Beyond Good and Evil. Additionally, if you want to investigate a Buddhist view of suffering (much different from Western religious views), Sheng-yen’s book There Is No Suffering: A Commentary on the Heart Sutra might be useful.

For the purpose of this article, I am using terms like “evil” and “suffering” to identify morally reprehensible deeds in the world that inflict great harm and agony upon others. A quick review of news headlines reveal that the world is filled with incidents of cruelty, injustice, brutality, violence, and killing. The matter at hand is how one squares this reality with the existence of God, who is typically characterized as all-good, all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful.

Let me clarify the problem.

Traditional Christian theology teaches that God is both all-powerful and all-loving. Right? God can do anything and God is love. Let’s test this idea against one of those victimized 12-year-old girls I described above in my human rights work. I’ll frame the question this way: '

If God is all-powerful and all-loving, which means God has the power to stop this 12-year-old girl from being victimized and doing so would obviously be the loving thing to do, AND if God doesn’t stop it, could it actually be that God is truly all-powerful and all-loving?

Let’s not overthink this. I believe it’s self-evident that the answer to the above question must be “No.” I don’t know about you, but if I was all-loving and all-powerful, I’d certainly prevent innocent children from being brutally assaulted.

Let’s investigate a few common explanations to this dilemma of an all-powerful and all-loving God and the existence of evil and suffering:

1. God is all-loving but not all-powerful. That would make sense, although it would be a denial of the traditional Christian view of God. Of course God would not want a 12-year-old girl to be repeatedly assaulted, but this explanation asserts that God can’t prevent or stop it.

2. God is all-powerful but not all-loving. Again, this refutes what most people want to believe about God as loving, but it is a legitimate solution to our dilemma. God could stop evil and suffering but doesn’t because he is indifferent toward it.

3. Perhaps a more sophisticated explanation is that human suffering is part of God’s “passive” or “permissive” will, which means God doesn’t directly cause the 12-year-old girl from being repeatedly traumatized, but allows it. To this one could ask: Would you stand by and allow your 12-year-old daughter to be raped? And if you did, could you still be called “good” or “loving”?

4. Another way to resolve an all-loving and all-powerful God with evil and suffering is to say that “God works in mysterious ways” or “God’s ways are higher than our ways.” If I stood by and allowed my 12-year-old daughter to be sexually assaulted, would you call this act “mysterious” or “higher”?

5. There is also a rationale that admits it’s tragic for a little girl to be victimized but she has a heavenly reward that will far outweigh her earthly afflictions. In other words, God’s justice will ultimately prevail. Well, hold on. This would only apply if she happens to have the correct theology by being born into a Christian culture, otherwise her fate is eternal conscious torment. Furthermore, you be the one to tell the little girl that “God’s justice” in the afterlife is a reasonable response to her daily brutality and torment.

6. Another explanation meant to mitigate the dilemma is saying that this victimized little girl will get through it with God’s help and be stronger, and will be in a unique position to especially help others who suffer horrific life circumstances. All this may be true but is this a sufficient reason or rationale for permitting such a horrific thing to happen? I’m all for “looking on the bright side” when applicable, but it doesn’t seem to justify an all-powerful and all-loving God allowing such gruesome deeds if said God is all-powerful and all-loving.

7. Others argue that God was present with the little girl the entire time as she was victimized, grievously sharing in the girl’s pain and suffering. Like the “Footprints in the Sand” poem, the idea is that God was not absent during the girl’s ordeal but present, perhaps in tears, “carrying her” through it. To this I reply: Why would an all-good, all-loving and all-powerful God be present during such a horrific circumstance and not intervene? Would you feel you were being a loving parent by comforting your 12-year-old daughter through a sexual assault as opposed to stopping it?

8. A common theological argument asserts that God must allow for human free-will, which means that God has no choice other than to accept the reality of a 12-year-old girl being sexually traumatized. This explanation is that God would prefer the 12-year-old girl not to be sexually assaulted and offers himself to the perpetrator to prevent it, but the outcome is out of God’s hands. To this one might say, what is the point of an all-loving and all-powerful God if the best he can do is offer help to someone who refuses it? If someone was intending to burglarize your home and the best a police officer could do is stand at your front door and request that the burglar not do it but it’s their choice, you’d be wondering why we have police officers. Right?

   Let’s say the little girl is ultimately killed by her perpetrator, which often happens, and when she get’s to Heaven (assuming she was properly “saved”) the girl asks God, “God, why did this happen?” And God says, “Well, in order for people to love me it was necessary that they be able to sexually assault you, but I was willing to help your abuser but he wasn’t interested and so what happened, happened.” That just doesn’t fly as an explanation.

In my view, none of the above eight explanations work in trying to square an all-loving and all-powerful God with the reality of human evil and suffering such as the exploitation, abuse, assault and traumatization of innocent children. God could possibly be all-loving OR all-powerful but cannot be both. No clever theological explanation can resolve this.

So what’s the answer?

Consider the possibility that the answer is that the all-loving and all-powerful “God” of classic Christian theism doesn’t exist. The entire question revolves around a false premise.

When your child discovers a new bike under the tree on Christmas morning it’s not because Santa Clause delivered it down the chimney. Right? You purchased the bike as a Christmas gift. There is no Santa Clause. Likewise, human suffering is neither caused or allowed by God because God doesn’t exist. At least not that “God” imagined in the above eight explanations. The reason why the existence of God and the existence of suffering cannot be resolved is because half of the equation is false. There is no all-loving and all-powerful “God” as conceived by traditional Christianity.

I’m not saying there is no room for any conception of God, even one that includes ideas of love and causal power, but I’m asserting the traditional Christian theistic notion of God is deeply flawed and untenable. And this is coming from someone who previously held such a view as a result of my academic theological pedigree.

Christian theism posits the idea of “God” as a separate and supreme being who created the universe and humankind, manages the world’s affairs, engages in personal relationship with true believers, and is marshalling a divine plan through human history, which will culminate in God’s ultimate glory. I have described and debunked Christian theism many times in articles such as this. Thankfully, Christian theism isn’t the only way of conceiving God, which I have previously discussed in articles such as The Either/Or Problem with God, and my piece on Baruch Spinoza.

The Bad News

The bad news is that God is not to blame for the evil and suffering in the world.

We are.

There is only one cause of suffering in this world – what we do and what we allow. There is not a sky-God above whose job is to prevent evil and suffering. If this were true I think we could all agree that God has done a horrible job and should be fired.

The end of suffering is not something God does now or later. This idea is appealing because it lets us off the hook from taking responsibility for our lives and the condition of our world. People sometimes wonder why God would allow so much suffering. Maybe instead we should be wondering why we do. The God of religion does not exist and will not save the world. If the world is saved it will be because we save it ourselves.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this view is that this is exactly what Jesus taught. I discuss this in my article Seeing is Believing, and in greater detail in my book, Inner Anarchy.

Jesus never advocated the idea that there is a Santa Clause God in the sky, deciding who is naughty or nice, and pulling the strings of human affairs from above. In fact, Jesus once claimed that looking at him was looking at God, and then he went into the world and lived a life of courage, character and conviction. Religion worships Jesus for his so-called divinity, but it is his humanity we fall short of. It takes guts to be human the way Jesus was.

There are many aspects of traditional Christian theology that skirts human responsibility for the evil and suffering of the world. I’ll mention two.

First, traditional Christianity falsely teaches that human beings are born sinners and need to be saved to be good. This view abdicates personal responsibility. It implies that our misdeeds in the world are inevitable because they are a product of our flawed condition. Secondly, it puts the onus on an outside agent to fix it, namely “God”.

Secondly, the traditional Christian metanarrative posits that there is a cosmic divine plan unfolding and will ultimately come to a head in a cataclysmic showdown between good and evil when God's judgement will punish the wicked, reward the righteous and wipe the slate clean (insert flames, destruction, meltdown, horror, hideous beasts, lake of fire, etc.).

There are three problems I see with this narrative:

1. The illusion of inevitability leads to passivity.

The idea that the world’s apocalyptic ending is certain means that people falsely think that our destiny as humankind is out of our hands. In other words, if it’s all going up in flames anyway, why try? It would be futile to work toward building a world of peace, harmony and workability if we already know we are on a collision course with Armageddon.

2. The illusion of divine conflict and intervention leads to lack of ownership and responsibility.

Our world is messed up for only one reason and it has nothing to do with Satan and demons, spiritual warfare and diabolical forces from the netherworld. Our world is messed up because we have messed it up. The pain and suffering of our world we have afflicted upon ourselves. Likewise, the solution and remedy is not God swooping in to save the day. The solution and remedy is you and me... us. The salvation, healing, and transformation of our world is not going to fall down from the sky, but lifted up from our hearts.

3. The illusion of opposing sides is thwarting the only hope we have.

The apocalyptic Christian narrative is all about sides: God versus Satan; the righteous versus the wicked; the saved versus the damned; us versus them, etc... Religion keeps the game of separation, division and discord going, and this will be what kills us all if we don’t stop, and realize that we are one human family and either we figure this out together or we all sink on the Titanic. Martin Luther King, Jr. got it right, “We either learn to live together as brothers and sisters or perish as fools.” Religion has made us all fools.

The word “apocalypse” actually means to unveil what is hidden. The answer is not up in the sky and caught up in some grandiose fantastical drama. Everything we need to know to save ourselves is hidden inside our hearts. We don't need divine intervention, we need a human awakening.

The last few weeks I have been writing about “Christian Atheism” and “death of God theology”. One of the applications of these ideas to today’s subject goes as this:

The all-loving and all-power God that humankind understood as the big “Other” emptied himself from the universe into the person of Jesus (incarnation), and then this God-as-Other was put to death on the cross of Jesus (crucifixion), and then resurrected in spirit to the body of universal humanity. In other words, there is no all-loving and all-powerful God-as-Other in the sky. Rather, WE are the all-loving and all-powerful ultimate reality on earth. In the Book of Acts we get a good first look at it when the first little community of believers cultivate a one-anothering community:

• loving one another

• caring for one another

• serving one another

• sharing with one another

• devoted to one another

• building up one another

• living in harmony with one another

• forgiving one another

• looking out for one another

• supporting one another

• calling forth the best in one another

Traditional religion often goes as follows:

God is the Big Other in the sky (God-as-Other)

God has chosen us as his representatives (God’s authority instituted through religious hierarchy)

Listen to us (God becomes the institution of religion)

But according to the life and teachings of Jesus it goes like this:

There is no separation from God.

The kingdom of God is within you.

There is no God-as-Other, there is only God-as-Us

The Good News

Here’s the good news: WE are the all-loving and all powerful God. What do I mean by this? We collectively have the necessary traits, skills, tools, capacities, and essence to build a world that works for everyone. We can argue over how we attained these powers and what we call it (evolution, image of God, etc.) but why argue about this?

Maybe we should stop filling libraries with books with clever theological explanations about how an all-loving and all-powerful God makes sense in a world where little girls and boys are brutalized, and instead face the following truths:

• We are solely responsible for the evil and suffering in the world

• We are capable of overcoming evil and suffering in the world

Injustice such as forced child prostitution and child slave labor is an abuse of power. The oppressor uses a combination of coercion and deception to exploit and victimize others. Most injustice is driven not by the overwhelming power of the oppressor, but by the vulnerability and powerlessness of the victim.

Gary Haugen graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and earned a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, cum laude. In the mid-1980s, Haugen served on the executive committee of the National Initiative for Reconciliation in South Africa. He directed an international team of lawyers in the gathering of evidence against the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide. He later became the founder of the International Justice Mission, an international human rights organization that does casework. He wrote two books about injustice and human rights worth reading: Good News About Injustice and The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence.

Thought I don’t necessarily embrace Haugen’s religious beliefs, I think we can all appreciate these words of his, “God’s people are his plan to respond to the needs of the oppressed in our world.” I might re-phrase it this way: “God is the people responding to the needs of the oppressed in our world.”

Some of the most spiritual, sacred and holy deeds in our world is the scrappy, courageous and assertive actions of confronting injustice. This sacred work sometimes involves a paratroop deployment operation and brothel raid in which the doors of a brothel are kicked down by force. The young girls are rescued out the back door and placed in aftercare NGO’s for recovery and healing. The brothel owners are arrested, prosecuted, held accountable, and began the process of rehabilitation toward wholeness. That’s not to say that human trafficking, forced child prostitution or child slave labor are easy to address. They aren’t. It’s complicated. In some situations around the world local law enforcement protects the brothels or slave camps in exchange for financial kickbacks.

Isaiah 1:17 says, “Learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow.” Edmund Burke wrote, “All that is required for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

Do you think Jesus would have walked past these brothels and slave camps and done nothing? Would he have gone to the top of a mountain and prayed for God to fix it? Do I even need to even answer these questions?

I have spoken to audiences all over the country about these issues. People often ask what they can do to get involved? Sex tourism fuels the problem of worldwide forced child prostitution. Western men with financial means who travel abroad are often the perpetrators. Little Johnny doesn’t say at 8 years old, “I hope I grow up to victimize young girls.” But it happens.

At the most fundamental level, something we can all do is not condone the objectification of women. Female sexual objectification by a male involves a woman being viewed primarily as an object of male sexual desire, rather than as a whole person. We need to teach little Johnny at a young age to view women differently. The “boys will be boys” mentality is not legitimate and could lead to little Johnny growing up and becoming a brothel customer on his travels abroad.

So what are these special powers we have as human beings that equip us to address evil and suffering in the world? A few would be:

• connected to the ground of all being that creates, sustains and nurtures life

• 14 billion years of cosmic evolution through which the universe has been self-organizing into a more ordered, complex and functional state

• 250,000 years of evolution as a species, which includes the acquisition of a mind and consciousness, and acceleration of knowledge for surviving and thriving

• Tools or capacity for reason, critical thinking, civilization-building, collaboration, adaptation, mutual-aid, empathy, existential health and conscience

The reality is that anything “God” was going to do, “God” did, which included bringing an end to “God-as-Other” in Jesus so we could get on with it. Here is the inconvenient truth we do not want to face. It’s not that we can’t resolve the evil and suffering of the world; it’s that we won’t.

Being Jesus in Nashville was my third book, which my Christian publisher leveled charges of heresy against me and promptly cancelled my book contract. The original publication, which is no longer available, is here. I re-published the book in 2023 with SacraSage Press, which is available here. The book tells the story of my discovering that the only real difference between myself and Jesus is that Jesus knew he was both divine and human, and I had failed to understand and accept this about myself.

Christianity is waiting for Jesus to return on a white horse to end all evil and suffering. But Jesus is not coming back in this way that the Christian religion has conceived. The truth is that Jesus never left. The same spirit that animated the life and claims of Jesus is alive in all of us. Jesus proclaimed another reality was possible. He chastised people for sitting around waiting for God to save the world, and challenged us to wake up and save it ourselves.

In Summary

• There are many theological theories for why God allows evil and suffering in the world, but none of them work.

• Millions of children around the world are victimized through forced child prostitution and child slave labor, but it’s action not prayer that fixes it.

• One of the best kept secrets about Jesus is how he didn’t advocate the “God” that the Christian religion constructed.

• We collectively as human beings have the tools and capacities to build a world that works for everyone and eliminates unnecessary human suffering.

• People sometimes wonder why God allows so much suffering in the world; maybe instead we should be wondering why we do.

“The strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much 'truth' he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil