Article January 17, 1920 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from M. R.

[M. R. in Christian Work, New York, N. Y.]

As the world goes on, man struggles again and again with the question why there is evil in the world, why there is suffering, why things go wrong, but the explanation he will not have is that God is short of being almighty. Every time a new religion comes or goes, it seems to me that our belief in God, our idea of God, grows loftier and loftier. We cannot disbelieve that God is beauty, power, and love. However difficult it is sometimes to hold on to this, we cannot give up the belief. That with our stupid, little, limited brains we should have thought of something less than God—that is not possible. All the evidence of the world will not rid our hearts of the desire at least to believe it.

How, then, can we reconcile the witness of our heart with the things we see around us? Is the fault in ourselves? Is it we who have made the world go wrong? Yes, it is. But does that satisfy? He made us, and if God is perfect, how is it He made us imperfect? If we are imperfect, how is it we are imperfect? We were given free will, and we can use it to choose wrong. But if you were perfect, would it not be a moral impossibility to choose wrong? If God gave us free will and made us imperfect, He gave us the right to choose wrong. The last solution is that evil is all an illusion, that it only exists because we think it does. We believe that. If the evil in the world is simply an illusion, how did we fall into such a monstrous error? The power to discern truth is one of the greatest powers of perfection. So we go on from step to step, and every generation that truly seeks God pushes the matter farther and farther. But though we have grown a little wiser, though our idea of God is a little nobler, though we are a little nearer to the truth, still it is not the truth itself. Yet all that we have gained has been worth while. The conviction that God is love is worth while; that evil is an illusion is magnificently worth while; that if God is absolute He must be good; a growing sense in modern minds that evil is unreal, and of eternity in what is good—all this is gain.

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