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by thanhhaimai 455 days ago
> For one, that all bad things are actually good is not a tenet of Christianity and is not in the Bible

Just for my own learning, if it's not considered a tenet, why do I see this line of thought so often portrayed: "This <bad thing> is not bad. God made is so to test my faith."
2 comments
taylorlapeyre 455 days ago
This is one of three major answers to the problem of Theodicy (justifying God in the face of evil) in Christian theology. They are:

1. Pedagogical (the one you mentioned) - Evil exists so that we may grow and learn. All evil will be used to create even greater good. Quintessential example would be the story of Job in the Old Testament.

2. Eschatological — Evil is a by-product of having any creation in time whatsoever, and will be fully restored at the end of all things. Another way of thinking of this one is that evil is "non-being", the absence of the good. A lack, a privation. Espoused by Augustine (and before him, Neoplatonism in general), and Aquinas.

3. Freedom-oriented — Evil (even natural evil) is a broken state of affairs caused by the freedom of people, who use that freedom against God. God nonetheless allows this because he allows us the dignity to choose. The official teaching of the Catholic Church. The straightforward reading of Genesis 2.

None of these say that "This <bad thing> is not bad" - Christianity acknowledges the existence of evil "as evil". However, with God's grace, evil may be healed or made to serve higher purposes.

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Cantinflas 454 days ago
Imo 1) and 3) make little sense, e.g. no one learns anything from a toddler dying from cancer, and no "freedom" caused it. 2) looks more interesting, although I'm not sure I understand it
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taylorlapeyre 454 days ago
A toddler dying of cancer falls under the category of "natural evil" (as opposed to moral evil, in which an intention or will is involved). You're correct to say that natural evil can sometimes be difficult to explain in a pedagogical sense. A storm taking one's home can be a way to teach us our dependence on God alone, but a child being taken by cancer does seem meaningless to us at the best of times, and simply cruel at the worst.

But the story of Job (in which his family, including his children, are taken away through natural evil) shows us two ways of engaging with this kind of evil: 1) Seeing the resulting struggle with God as its own form of growth, and 2) the virtue of humility.

In my opinion, there is no "one answer" to Theodicy - it requires all three and a healthy dose of Job's eventual humility. The first has been true in my life multiple times. The second is often helpful when engaging with evil on a cosmological level. The third is helpful when wrestling with the problem of moral evil. Taken together, I think the picture is reassuring, and certainly better than the alternative (a meaningless universe of hopeless suffering).

I recommend David Bentley Hart's "The Doors of the Sea" as a good short work on this subject!

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heyjamesknight 454 days ago
A toddler dying from cancer is horrible. It's not evil.
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adamtaylor_13 455 days ago
Them be some deep theological waters you're wading into.

It's not a tenet, because it's not presented as a teaching that "bad things are good things".

However, we often label things as "good" and "bad," which are overly simplistic for many things in life. A child dying is unequivocally a bad thing. But if your faith deepens through the course of grieving, then a good thing happens from that bad thing. It doesn't nullify the bad thing. It doesn't magically transform it into a good thing. But your faith being made stronger is a good thing, while your child dying is a bad thing.

My understanding is this is the Biblical principle of redemption. Not to be confused with salvation. It's used to refer to God's ability to make good happen from a bad thing, or to "redeem" a bad thing. In this way, redemption can also refer to salvation because man is inherently bad, but through Jesus's death on the cross, man can be redeemed. Once again, bad things happen, but good things can come from them.

Again, it's important to note that the Bible does not teach BAD == GOOD. It teaches that bad things can be redeemed for good outcomes.

I am not a theologian, but that's my understanding of it.

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