Evil

If a God of justice exists, then why do we read about so much evil?   

  

We can know why evil exists (the consequence of free will) and we can know how God wants us to respond to evil (carry the crosses He wants us to; drop the ones He doesn't), but we cannot completely know why certain people seem to experience evil more than others. To do that we'd have to be God -- the big lesson from Job.

Note that the person who asks this question may feel resentment toward God, and won't be just looking for intellectual closure.  C. S. Lewis recalls that as an atheist he "did not believe God existed. I was also very angry at him for not existing." Remember that conversations on this topic may be more like talking to a divorcee than a skeptical scientist.

Here's the irony: some try to use this question as an argument against God's existence, but in actuality, the mere asking of the question is itself evidence for God!

C. S. Lewis:  My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction to it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words—that the whole world was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

For a nice write-up on the question, please read Cliffe Knechtle's article:
Why Do the Innocent Suffer?

or Dr. Kreeft's terrific audio lecture:
Making Sense Out of Suffering