Can the Christians here give their take on the Problem of Evil? I'm writing a story involving the Abrahamic God, and for once I want to give a fair representation instead of just putting in a random Pagan God and then saying that it's Yahweh. How do you explain the existence of an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient entity in a world where evil exist? I want to write him in a way that is believable for me, so I need some help here.
Additionally, some advice on how God would act would be helpful. I find it unlikely that God would act exactly like he did in the Bible in the modern day and age, what with changes in societal values. Do you think that God changes his methods of dealing with humans as we mature as a species, too?
I believe that we're sent here to learn and grow and so we don't get a perfect world. We get a world where we have challenges and overcoming them teaches us. If this life was all there was, it would be cruel, but because it's not then there is value in learning from a difficult world.
I think that God still acts fairly similarly to the way he did in the Bible. I believe that he still calls spokesmen/prophets just as he did in the Old Testament (and in the later New Testament) - I'm LDS and believe that the head of my church is a prophet. In addition, things like the Ten Commandments and related commandments in the New Testament are still in effect. However, they are updated to account for changes in society. For example, in my church illegal drugs are specifically prohibited, but they aren't even mentioned in the Bible (or even more recent scripture that my church also uses) because most illegal drugs didn't exist 2000 or even 200 years ago.
Hopefully that helps a bit. How are you planning on writing about God? What kind of role will he have - as a character or as the god of a religion that some characters are part of?
To put this in the stupidest way possible: The premise of the story is set in an alternate timeline to Earth, where Satan challenged God to a fair game of chance and won, with the wager between Satan giving up on tempting anyone and sending all the demons and the damned over to God to be redeemed, or for God to leave his Creation until the Judgement Day. God's departure coincides with the Civil War in the United States, where Satan set to work arranging for him to be summoned by both sides, and then proceeded to flatten both sides as her his contract. He then proceeded to rule the world Aku-style from Hell.
The protagonist has a pair of sacred revolvers and have been talked to by God, who has discovered a loophole in the agreement between Him and Satan, and the protagonist must travel through the demon-ruled US in her quest to find God, who is enigmatic and does not actually reveal what His plan is.
The reason I'm asking is because God would show up in person towards the end, and I want him to have a very good reason why this all happened in the first place. Something something free will and theodicy?
Just because God
can do something doesn't make that a good thing to do. I'm also LDS, and a cornerstone of our theology is that God is our Heavenly Father who set up this earth for us to learn and grow in. Just because He could arrange everything so that we never get tempted, or have a bad idea, or have anything bad happen, doesn't mean that doing that is the right thing to do. Like every parent, He needs to take a step back and let us have the opportunity to shoot ourselves in the foot, learn how to deal with seemingly random calamities, etc.
Satan's overriding evil, in our theology, is that he tried to usurp God's authority and misuse it to remove people's ability to choose. And some of our spirit siblings followed him and lost the privilege of being born into this world. Basically, he took his teen rebellion so far it became actual rebellion and God said no, sorry, you and your followers are no longer going to be part of gaining eternal glory. Now Satan and his followers are sad, jealous losers who get their jollies tricking people into making the same mistakes they made.
Evil is a side effect of being able to choose, because not everyone is going to choose to avoid evil. Sometimes, our spiritual brothers and sisters are downright vile and we suffer for it.
God promises us that we can and will be healed and live gloriously, that the evil we suffer from will be a temporary thing, if we let Him into our lives and trust His guidance. It's not a culture-specific thing either; we believe that all genuine religions (i.e. not joke churches or actual devil worship) have some truth and good principles. Most people will wind up with more glory than they can imagine, because most people are trying to be good people. The highest degrees of glory require more serious commitments, but those commitments are also possible to fulfill after this life, so no one is barred from anything they want and work towards.
And yeah, societal changes and different needs of different populations is why LDS put such an emphasis on living prophets and every person having their own connection to God. The scriptures are great and hold true principles and we study them all the time, but the world changes! A good parent and leader doesn't leave people without current feedback and guidance on how to apply eternal principles in their current life.
About your plot - God is not going to play games of chance with Satan. God doesn't need or want to. He's got a million things to do trying to get his crazy, stupid kids to learn not to be assholes. He's got a plan, Satan's accounted for in that plan, there's no need to humor the delusions of one of His kids who got on a high horse and is spiritually attacking people.
But what God
will do is respect our wishes. Including dumb, destructive wishes. So maybe something like society en masse is starting to follow Satan's principles more than God's principles. Slavery, the various religious wars, corruption, etc are all evidence of this. God tries to talk to people, no one is really listening, and He says 'Well, OK, this is going to be terrible y'all' and tries to warn anyone still listening to Him so they can prepare for what their fellow humans are about to bring down on them. That avoids making this God look like a callous gambler but doesn't really disrupt your plot.
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