Necromancer wrote: ↑Sun Jul 09, 2017 7:24 am
After having thought about the Problem of Evil for a longer time, I now come to think that the answer to the Problem of Evil is simply
Salvation...
The word "salvation" implies a couple of things.
Firstly, that the Problem of Evil cannot be solved by evil's victims or practitioners, through their continually exerting enough effort to be good. They stand in need of rescue. If they do not, then it is self-improvement, not salvation that they need.
Secondly, that someone unable to save himself/herself is being "saved" by Someone capable of such a rescue.
Thirdly, that whatever the injustices created by evil in the first place, the Agent of salvation must be capable of paying those costs so as to restore a right and just condition to the whole; for absent that, all we'd have is an unremedied state of injustice, followed by a subsequent more equitable state...but no redress for evil in its totality. Past victims would just be hard-luck stories, with no justice for them, and past perpetrators would just be bad people who "got away with it" and never paid the price for what they did, and never had to restore wholeness to their victims.
So "salvation" is a word we can only use of people who a) know they are guilty of evil, b) have abandoned self-improvement as the basis of escape from evil, and c) who have located an Agent capable of rescuing them from the situation in which they are found, and of restoring a just state, including making reparations for all the past damage created by evil.
And this is essentially the Christian message: God is not indifferent to the Problem of Evil. God has dealt with evil in providing Jesus Christ to pay the price you cannot pay. He saves. You will not save yourself. Forsake evil, and turn to God for mercy. Accept His forgiveness and offer of salvation. Turn to Him for healing. Be reconstituted as a child of God. There is no other way.
It's pretty straightforward, really.