“God allows evil only so as to make something better result from it” (St Thomas Aquinas). [309-314, 324]
Evil in the world is an obscure and painful mystery. Even the Crucified asked his Father, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46). Much about it is incomprehensible. One thing, though, we know for sure: God is 100 percent good. He can never be the originator of something evil. God created the world to be good, but is it not yet complete. In violent upheavels and painful processes it is being shaped and moved toward its final perfection. That may be a better way to classify what the Church calls physical evil, for example, a birth defect, or a natural catastrophe. Moral evils, in contrast, come about through the misuse of freedom in the world. “Hell on ear” — child soldiers, suicide bombings, concentration camps — is usually man-made. The decisive question is therefore not, “How can anyone believe in a good God when there is so much evil?” but rather, “How could a person with a heart and understanding endure life in this world if God did not exist?” Christ’s death and Resurrection show us that evil did not have the first word, nor does it have the last. God made absolute good result from the worst evil. We believe that in the Last Judgement God will put an end to all injustices. In the life of the world to come, evil no longer has any place and suffering ends.
