Why Does God Allow Evil?
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- čas přidán 17. 08. 2020
- Sometimes we encounter such horrible evil that we can't comprehend how God can allow it, like parents who abuse their children. How could God possibly allow this? Tim Staples addresses this question of Catholic Answers Live.
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Tim Staples is Director of Apologetics and Evangelization here at Catholic Answers, but he was not always Catholic. Tim was raised a Southern Baptist. Although he fell away from the faith of his childhood, Tim came back to faith in Christ during his late teen years through the witness of Christian televangelists. Soon after, Tim joined the Marine Corps.
During his four-year tour, he became involved in ministry with various Assemblies of God communities. Immediately after his tour of duty, Tim enrolled in Jimmy Swaggart Bible College and became a youth minister in an Assembly of God community. During his final year in the Marines, however, Tim met a Marine who really knew his faith and challenged Tim to study Catholicism from Catholic and historical sources. That encounter sparked a two-year search for the truth. Tim was determined to prove Catholicism wrong, but he ended up studying his way to the last place he thought he would ever end up: the Catholic Church!
He converted to Catholicism in 1988 and spent the following six years in formation for the priesthood, earning a degree in philosophy from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, Pennsylvania. He then studied theology on a graduate level at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, for two years. Realizing that his calling was not to the priesthood, Tim left the seminary in 1994 and has been working in Catholic apologetics and evangelization ever since.
If you are interested in booking Tim Staples for an upcoming event, please contact Catholic Answers at (619) 387-7200 or seminars@catholic.com.
I'm not a religious person, but i like how caring and respectful these people are.
Dear Alex, your story has obviously touched me profoundly. My heart goes to you. If I could add my two pennies, I'd say that the most horrible sufferings are also the opportunity for the most magnificent demonstration of God's Glory.
Ovetcoming all your past suffering, forgiving your dad etc are certainly treasures added to God's glorious crown.
I would dare to say that you suffered not because God took you for nothing worth but quite the opposite: maybe because your endurance and capacity of forgiving could, or better, WILL BE his precious jewel. God bless you. Trust.
I pray for Alex and I pray that CA reached out to him after the phone as he is reaching for answer and help after a very abusive life.
I understand suffering, very well. I lived in despair. And when I talk about my life it sounds like I should be older. Lots of things have happened to me. I was declared barren by a doctor but years later I had a child after begging and begging God, 10 years later, I had a child, then 5 years later I had another, and then two more right after. But it didn’t take away my despair, and only added to it. My son, my first child, my love, my dream, is very sick. Not disease, no, not something that can be treated medically, not that at all. He may be a sociopath. He doesn’t feel remorse, he always feels like he has the worst life and is always treated unfairly. And even though I was divorced, the Catholic Church took me in. And my diocese is not a liberal new age one. They helped me get my first marriage annulled because the bishop actually talked to my ex and said, yeah, she should not have to be tethered to this man. He wasn’t good for me or the child we made. My current husband isn’t the best husband on the planet. But he’s catholic. Thank God. Because when I pray without ceasing, I see results that would be impossible without God. And the evidence for God is massive. But I would always say, “why suffering?” But I would always mean in my heart, “why my suffering?” One day I was beaten down by my job, which isn’t easy, the kids weren’t listening, fighting with my husband. He went to work angry. I wasn’t going to apologize cuz I was right, ya know? And I ask God “how do you do it? You have more children than this, mine hate me, but yours hate you even more sometimes. How do you do it?” Then all of the sudden I plopped down on to the couch and put my hand over my face, about to cry. All of my kids, even little Mr Trouble, and he rubbed my feet, one rubbed my belly, one stroked my hair, and one kissed my face over and over. My husband stopped by from work and dropped off a soda and some candy (because he knew I had a hard day). So when he got home the next morning I said, “I’m sorry.” And then I told him all of my troubles that I was holding in, and he held me, and helped me come up with solutions to my problems. God works in mysterious ways, but if we sit back and watch Him work, we can get through anything. Our Father will care for us. He loves us no matter what. We lay it on the table and ask for forgiveness for what we’ve done. Then we can see what He’s doing, and what the enemy is trying to do. And He holds me in my most shameful hour and keeps me from my sin. The priests at my church are not appreciated as much as they should be, so for Father’s Day I got them a card. And a little money. I didn’t have much. But I wanted them to be blessed through God, especially during this pandemic. The eldest priest hugged me and I said Thank God for you. We all face struggles. But we can lessen other people’s burdens. We just have to listen and act.
I got teary eyed reading your story as I was thinking about my burdens.
Prayers for you. Praise God that he gives you the graces to seek the answer in the catholic church, because it would be too easy to abandon religion altogether. Pray for your father.
God does not WILL evil.. That does not come from the Holy Spirit.
Your dad is only human and maybe through his own scares of his humanist (childhood) entered into corruption of his own faith.
But yes the Lord allow never allows anything bad to happen if he can not bring something good out of it. He promises your cross will be glorified like the cross of his son Jesus christ if he hold on to Him. Prayers prayers to you and your journey of a real conection and relationship with God our father.
You explain that so clearly to that gentleman that was tortured by his father. Makes me want to cry. That Jesus did feel his pain that he suffered and by hanging on the cross proves his love for us. I pray for him I pray that he heard you. And I will pray for him myself. I pray for anyone who is suffering stumbles upon this. It's so beautiful and comforting. Thank you God bless all of you
I’m sometimes curious of the evils that God actually prevents that we know nothing of. Evils that we mere mortals can’t even comprehend because God didn’t allow it.
I love you guys. This has helped me immensely
This is the question I always hear when asking people why they don't believe in God.
Catholics pray for him please.
I thought only catholics saints can pray for you?
@@rakashe1 You need to get more familiar with Catholicism then if you really believed that! :-) If you're not mocking...
@@faithwisdom788 i came from a catholic background, i had all those idols in the house, then i started reading the bible, i found out so much contradiction. Matt 6:6,made me get rid of the rosary.... I'm definitely not mocking.
Wait, so, you got rid of the rosary because the Bible says it’s best to pray in private (Matt 6:6)? You should know that many Catholics pray the rosary in secret too. Praying it in groups is also beneficial as a group meditation, but obviously if you are virtue signaling by publicly praying the rosary (or any prayer) then you’re doing it wrong, per Matt 6:6.
@@killianmiller6107 sorry, my bad, it's matt 6:7...now you tell me
Whoa! This is superb teaching. This, and Abp Fulton Sheen - learn so much. We seldom, actually never, hear such detailed explanations on typical Sunday homilies.
Hi alex I am from Philippines, am very far from you, yet i hear you. I can relate to you that even Our Lord Jesus suffers. Crucifixion and His death even start from His agony... God bless you brother! after His death is their realization, He is truly a good man and a Divine.
And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."…. Genesis 3:22
He allows it because he understands evil's value. When you truly understand the need for every ingredient in a pie, you don't call the crust evil. Life, and the entire universe, exist in the chaos of two opposing forces. Morality too, is found in the wake of good and evil... it can exist nowhere else.
Im constantly afraid of death. I worry that there's nothing after that. Its a cripplong affect on me each day. I wish I could see something that proves an existence after.
I suffered for that too. What helped me was reading the saint's lives bcs I love stories and saints seemed to have interesting lives. However, I discovered that saints, no matter the time, saw and felt the same about purgatory, even when they describe it differently. This is hard to understand or explain xd but try to read experience of saint's about purgatory and you will get a better idea of what I am saying 😊 the saint's lives are so great...for me that has been a conversion way, even when I am catholic. And my conclusion was this: if purgatory exists that means that is life after death so I want to go beyong that and go to heaven, the final part of the after life. And to be honest...If I had not read the sain'ts lives, I will not accept life after dead exists. God forgive me but that was my case. That is why I recommend to read them. We have a treasure there and a way to educate and understand many things.
I think it's worth saying that this man's father was anything but a Catholic. Now there are miracles. A person may change. However the level of evil this man had to endure. It's hard to fathom that his father has become a true Catholic. That's my two cents. I am sorry that you had to endure such horrid evil.
Thanks Alex. I need to know that too.
Good one ☝️
God doesn't allow evil we do.
Well, he does, by proxy of giving us free will. But he does that knowing that afterwards the fulfillment that comes after evil and suffering is more fulfilling than if you Hadn't passed through that suffering.
@@SirBelmerD yeh ok he does but he doesn't do evil, he will use your enemies to punish you or the people. However these punishments are righteous.
Sounds as though this father has a serious mental health issue. Religion was his obsession in which the issue was displayed.
God does not allow evil rather evil is the absence of God. St. Thomas Aquinas
Amen 🙏
Remove all evil
💯💯💯🙏
Does Fr James Martin get a mention. "Why does God allow evil" ?
That's one advantage that Hinduism has answers that Abrahamic religions cant seem to answer the problem of suffering in a Karma based system of reincarnation the soul reaps what it sows in the form of misery and blessing in 1 life or the afterlife based on your Karma your actions. Why some people are poor some people are disabled etc
@@TheAaronChand Christianity contradicts karma which involves re incarnation. Christianity teaches you only have one life and then it is eternal life and you get your reward or punishment there.
@@brendanquinn6894 yes there is no reincarnation. The body is temporary, the soul is unique and eternal. Karma as Buddhist want to refer is a washed version of what we believe to be guardian angels.
Sick man.😲
Matthew 13 24-30 is a good explanation on why God allows evil. We always forget we have an opponent to God. This Enemy rules this world, but God cannot eradicate that evil because it is part of the duality of human being nature and, as it was said, of his free will.
When the harvest time comes, then the evil will be destroyed
Since Our Father in Heaven gave us free agency to make choices for ourselves, some times the choices we make are not good choices cause it unfortunately hurts others or the innocent, but our Father in Heaven will not step in and take away our free agency no matter what.
I don’t know this guys whole life story, but I imagine God does know, and it is possible that he did answer in ways that weren’t clear. He could have comforted the child with moments of peace, or through people like his mother or his friends or everyone who’s praying for him now after seeing this video. Sometimes God answers in ways we don’t expect, so sometimes we don’t see it. I mean, placing expectations on God in the first place is the epitome of foolishness, for God is personal and free, not a strict input-output machine.
If the child expected that praying for comfort would lead to his dad all of a sudden being a lovey-dovey cuddle pillow, that very well may have been a breach on his free will, _unless_ the father somehow came to that behavior of his own volition (whether through certain influences or not). It is the father who chose to be a religious wack and drag his son into it in an abusive way, and ultimately it is the father who needed to choose to recant from that and reconcile with his son. God will not force him to do that.
How would comforting a child during all of that have infringed on his dad's free will? It depends if “comforting the child” entailed God interfering with the dad’s free will to turn him from an abusive religious wack to a lovey-dovey cuddle pillow. If it was the case that the child wanted God to comfort him by ultimately altering his dad’s personality as though the dad would not freely choose to do so, then in that case God would not have done it, because it was by the dad’s will that he abused his own son and it ought to be by the dad’s will to recant and reconcile with him, otherwise the dad has no right to be called righteous because God forced him to be righteous. If that was the expected solution, then yes, the comfort would be infringing on the dad’s will.
And it’s easy to see how we might interpret “comfort a child” this way: *the problem* is that a dad is not acting morally unto his son, so the *fundamental solution* to bringing comfort to the child seems to be to get the dad to _stop_ acting immorally unto his son. This appears to be the only real way to fundamentally address the aforementioned problem, as opposed to other interpretations of “comfort the child” such as deferring the abuse for some amount of time (after which it happens again) or introducing some person or institution to confide in who will shelter and comfort them from the abuse (until moments when they’re not around to shelter them). The thing is, the dad is using his free will to do these things, and to _stop_ him from doing these things seems to entail infringing on his free will, which God will not do. Am I making sense?
Apparently I’m not making sense. As you said, people only hear what they want to. And for you to accuse me of avoiding the question is seriously uncharitable. How does comforting the child infringe on his dad’s will? Answer: yes if and only if comforting the child from abuse entails tinkering with the dad’s will to solve the core of the problem. But obviously there are other ways to acquire comfort that don’t involve infringing on free will.
When people are able to endure suffering with joy, it is due to grace as a gift from God that one incorporates into their will. Usually when people are burnt alive, they scream in agony; but with grace, they can say thinks like “turn me over, I’m done on this side.” When one is given this gift, it does not involve altering someone’s will against their will, because one can still reject this gift. The child can pray that his abusive dad receives the grace to realize his wrongdoing (“pray for loving parents”), and God could give the dad that gift, but the dad can still reject it because he still has free will. The child can also pray that he receive the grace to endure the abuse, aka “comfort.” I don’t know enough about his life to determine whether his prayers were actually answered (I’m not omnipotent like God is), and I maintain that it is possible God did answer in ways he didn’t expect or pick up on. It kind of reminds me of Jesus and Peter walking on water for some reason: as soon as Peter doubted, he began to sink. In a similar way, when we begin to doubt that God did anything at all, it is easy to forget the things he did do for us.
So to answer your first question, obviously yes, God can and will offer graces to anyone who asks for endurance in suffering. He can not deny an opportunity to gift his grace. And yet, just because he gives it doesn’t mean we keep it.
I think it is hasty to assume God did nothing when 1) none of us can comprehend God’s mysterious ways, and 2) there is a very easy possibility he did do something that wasn’t explicitly made clear, or it was forgotten. If it is actually the case that God never responded back then, maybe he plans to answer all those prayers in the future (aka, “not yet”) in a way that goes way beyond what child version of the caller could have comprehended. For instance, if he holds fast in the faith, one day he will receive the ultimate comfort in heaven.
If God is capable of doing a good or eliminating an evil, but doesn’t, then it can only mean that his permissive will is working to bring about a greater good. He would know how letting an abuse continue will contribute to the child’s story of salvation. I wouldn’t know, because I’m not God. This leaving aside the possibility that God did answer in subtle ways. To the second gotcha question, I imagine God could be powerful enough to invade someone’s free will, but it is contradictory to his omnibenevolent nature to force someone to be a certain way, to place his will in place of theirs without consent. As a side note, Christians _are_ called to follow God’s will, but this is of their own volition to submit and make God’s will part of their own, not by any invasive infringement of the will.
I can only hope I’ve clarified my position. Talking about how God answers prayers is tough and confusing for a limited mind like mine who can barely scratch the surface of God’s mysterious ways.
Yea. When it comes to wondering why God doesn’t answer prayers, there are 3 ways to make sense of it.
First is that God simply said “No.” God can know if what you think is good for you is not actually good for you, and it goes against his nature to actively will anything bad. For instance, imagine praying to get a job you want, but it turns out you would eventually end up hating the job. Also God can know if your intentions are not in the right place. In the caller’s situation, this response is very unlikely because God is all about comforting the downtrodden.
The next answer is “not yet.” Sometimes what we pray for is good, but God wants us to wait for it to be answered. This could be because he wants us to be patient and to persevere in the faith before having a prayer answered. It is also because quality often requires time to come to fruition, and all good things are worth waiting for; a house constructed too hastily is bound to have poor foundations and many gaps. It can seem odd for God to make a kid under abuse wait for his prayers to be answered, but if this was his response then it it can only be because God plans to answer the prayer with far more glory than a brief moment in the present; sort of like “the darker the night, the brighter the light.”
The third way to understand an absence of an answer is that we simply weren’t listening when God did answer. Often we put expectations on God as if he’s a mathematical function: “pray this way and you get this result,” but God does not work that way (and it’s hubristic to have God meet _our_ expectations). If we go this route, it is too easy to miss when God answers in ways that may be better than expected. Again, I don’t know enough about the caller’s life to determine whether this is what happened, but it is a very easy possibility.
If God is all powerful (I am catholic) then could he not have created world where free will existed without evil without us being robots without forcing us to choose good without evil and suffering that also did allowed us to grow as people despite the lack of suffering?? I feel like an all powerful God could do all things right? To say that he could not or to say that we would be different in a lesser way feels like it does not do God justice be abuse he is after all...all powerful....and saying that God could not do something at all...
Mary had other children like James
God don't allow evil. He gives up those with Reprobate minds as he said in, Romans 8:18-32. All the explanations are there.
The Archivist. No he gives other chances but, most people refuses or don't like to read the Bible so they miss out on it. Matthew 28:19. Jesus said to his deciples baptize and received the holy spirit it teaches all things and to obey God command to live better lives. Romans 8:6 says, The mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and piece. There is a way out...! In fact, that will deal with the Reprobate minds. People brings judgement on themselves and blames God. Jesus the Nazarene died for our sins, we have to seek it out and take advantage of it.
Answers are only when YOU read the BIBLE, not in any other writings
The mere fact that several thousand interpretations expounded upon this idea that the Bible is all you need is proof that the Bible is not all you need.
It has been 2000 years of theological debates, all sorts of interpretations and heresies gained popularity among people, the Catholic Church only managed to keep the teachings consistent because they had "other writings" that invalidated bad interpretations. But on the other hand if you look at 500 years of protestantism, when a new misleading interpretation gains popularity they are not invalidated by their peers, they simply create their own "new church" with a different name.
Imagine if every generation had to engage into complex philosophical and theological debates about Abortion, use of violence in self-defense, marriage, etc... Just so they could come to their own conclusions, without any external help.
The only thing the Catholic Church is doing with their writings is to help us read the Bible in a more consistent way.
If you spend 50 years debating about Abortion, do you think it would be wrong for you to "write up" your conclusions as you get old so you can teach your granddaughter the appropriate christian view about the subject? Or would you rather leave your granddaughter to her own interpretations (that might be heavily influenced by anti-christian friends and media)?
...he doesn't...for painfully obvious reasons...
Mary also suffered with Jesus? As in she took the part of the weight of the sins of the world?? Confused.
I agree that God allows evil because he loves us.
He can use the pain that happen to him to help someone else that’s going through the same thing. Turn that suffering around for the better good for others.
But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
Isaiah 64:6 KJV
....... AND THAT INCLUDES MARY
no
What an eons-long load of hooey.
There was Evil when God Was alive.
Was?
Patricia Dyson God is still alive he’s been and will always be alive he has no beginning no end! If your question is when Jesus was alive he resurrected on the 3 day there for he is still alive!
"Blessed mother" never sinned? This is blasphemy against the holy spirit.
She was a sinner just like you and me.
If Mary was a sinner, that would make Jesus a sinner as well because he would be born from a sinner. which isn't true.
@@tominkurisunkal886 But by that logic Mary's parents couldn't be sinners either.
GrandEvoker that’s the whole point of the Immaculate conception. There’s a video about it on this channel you should check it out.
@@tominkurisunkal886 Mary was not sinless, but she was righteous, the sinless son of god came forth through this blessed vessel by the holy spirit
But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
Isaiah 64:6 KJV