Natural Evil

The best theodicy that explains natural evil in my opinion is: “natural evil is a tool used by God to let people appreciate life and test them in their lives.”

Suppose I had an employee that was very loyal to me, and I was very generous with him by giving him bonuses. One day to test this employee, I stopped giving him these bonuses to see if he will remain loyal to me. This idea is analogous but in a more complex manner to the way God is testing us with evil; knowing that there is a difference between the two situations but this difference supports the theodicy. The two elements of the theodicy that are not the same are: God and humans (creator/ creature relation), on the other hand we have same elements in the example. One can response by saying God is not withholding things from us: rather, he is inflicting something bad on us. If God is the creator of the earth and all it is components, it’s obvious that he is the owner of every component. By an earthquake God is destroying buildings that he “own”, injuring individuals that he created.

This next example will explain the difference: We have a rich man X who helped a poor man Y, by giving him a house and very good position in one of his companies. The Y man became successful in a way, so one day the X man decided to fire him. He is free to fire him since he was the person who gave him all that he own, in addition he gave him the house and all the money that he made. Now the question is whether the person Y will still appreciate what the rich man did for him. In other words God is testing people’s loyalty toward him by taking things from us to test our reactions, since he is the creator and he is the one who gave us all our abilities. On the other hand if only good existed in the world, how will individuals be tested and under which norms each person is judged.

One may ask how God remain good after being crucial by giving persons something they need, and then take it away from them as a test. For God good or evil is not the main issue in the life of humans since it is a test, the real evil for God will be found in hell and real good in heaven. For example, a person that was paralyzed in his life doesn’t imply that he will be paralyzed in heaven. In the Qur’an God said (paraphrasing): Never hate or detest a thing in life for it might be of some good to you, and never like a thing for it might be bad to you, only God knows.

A common response of this theodicy is that God is omnipotent, he already knows what we will do in advance so why testing us with evil stuff. Why a little child should die if the results are known in advance. By definition God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. If we emphasis on the last statement “all-good”, we can derive from it justice. It is obvious that a good person will not allow himself to be injustice toward anybody. God knows the decision that will be made by every person but how can he judge us upon