Evil, or just bad luck?
From Chastek:
Is the problem of evil is simply the problem of bad luck? Aren’t the evils we are wrestling with simply a matter of wrong place, wrong time, or of being dealt a bad hand?
I suppose this opens up the question of whether there is room, in Christian theology, for discussion of such things as luck, and whether luck even exists. Being at least somewhat Irish, I’m given to believe that it does, and that it does exert some force in the world (whether for good or for ill).
But I think Chastek gets at the heart of what is really the most serious flaw in objections to God’s benevolence/goodness which are based on the “problem of evil”: is the problem really that God is lacking in goodness or benevolence, or is it simply a case of various human/natural circumstances piling up in such a way as to bring us misfortune, through no fault of God’s? Indeed, is the suffering — the evil — we endure really a genuine problem in the first place, or do we simply label it as such out of our flawed human reasoning?
