How can a God of love allow injustice in the world?

It was an atheist philosopher called John Stuart Mill who led the attack on Christianity with a simple argument. His argument boils down to this:

"I cannot believe in God, because a God of love who was all powerful would not permit suffering in the world, so either God must not be loving, or he must not be powerful. If he is not all powerful, then he is not God, and I should not have to worship him. If he is not all loving, then I do not wish to worship him."

Is there an answer to this?

On the surface, John Stuart Mill's argument looks pretty powerful.

But, once you start to look at it, you come up with some serious problems.

First, it begins with the assumption that love is the same as preventing suffering. But is this what we usually use the word love for? Not really. In fact, not at all. A parent with a passionate desire for their child to grow up and be the best that they can be does not follow the child around, smoothing over every difficulty, laying down mats to prevent knees being grazed, and standing over other children while they play to make sure that no other child is spiteful or nasty. When two people are passionately in love, they will put up with all kind of difficulties — and expect the other to put up with all kinds of difficulties — in order to be together.

It's definitely true that if you love someone you won't put them through needless suffering, but that begs the question: what is needless?

The second problem is that the argument assumes that if God is all-powerful, he will use his power all the time to prevent anything he doesn't like from happening. But, in that case, the argument is talking about a universe where only one person makes decisions — God. Would this be more 'loving'? Actually, no. We wouldn't say that a parent who put up CCTV cameras in every room of the house and came running whenever their child was in danger of doing something that would hurt them was 'loving'. Actually, we would say that they were smothering the child. Not very many of us would like to be in a 'loving' relationship that meant that we were always being followed around, prevented from doing what our husband, wife, boyfriend or girlfriend didn't agree with.

Actually, what this argument is describing is not a God who is all-powerful, but a God who imposes complete control over the actions, words and even thoughts of all human beings.

Could a control-freak God be a loving God? Not in any way that we usually use the word 'love'. Does this have any impact on the God of the Bible? No, because right from the very beginning the God of the Bible does give people the power to make their own decisions — and to live with the consequences of their decisions.

So, no, the argument doesn't hold water. Actually, it refers a confusion in the minds of atheists, not a problem in the nature of God.

But what about the question behind the question?

So much for the classic atheist argument. But isn't there a more serious question behind the question? Isn't the real question about why God allows so much injustice in the world? Wouldn't it be possible for an all powerful God to limit the injustice to some extent, without being a total control freak and making all the decisions for us?

Actually, according to the Bible, this is exactly what God has done, and does do, at tremendous cost to himself.

It's fairly clear that we are all contributors to the amount of injustice and evil in the world. Although we may think we're pretty good people, we can all think of times when we've lied, been mean, covered up our mistakes and let someone else take the blame, and generally let others suffer to give us an easier life.

The bad news is that the very same God who gave us the ability to make our own choices has also set a day of reckoning. Actually, the only way in which justice can work is for there to be a day of reckoning— otherwise, everyone gets away with everything. The day of reckoning is going to be a bad place to be. If you want to figure out how bad, then count up all the times you've said, thought, or done something unkind, unjust or unhelpful in the past day. If the figure was just three times (which would make you more or less a saint), that would be more than 1000 a year. Multiply that up by your age. We have a problem.

More than a problem, in fact. The Bible says that the Day of Reckoning will be absolutely terrible. A Perfect God demands a perfect score. No human being comes close.

The heart of the Christian gospel is that God sent Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for our injustice in our place. We can be forgiven — but at the cost of the death of Jesus.

What does a loving God do in response to a world full of injustice? He creates a way for the unjust to be saved from their own injustice. This is the point that John Stuart Mill missed. Far from being a question that blows Christianity apart, the question takes us right to the heart of why mankind needs God.

Stechford Baptist Church • Victoria Road • Stechford • Birmingham B33 8AH. Map. Stechford is in the Stechford and Yardley North Ward, and is close to Hodge Hill.