The New Gospel

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?&nbsp; Then he is not omnipotent.&nbsp; Is he able, but not willing?&nbsp; Then he is malevolent.&nbsp; Is he both able and willing?&nbsp; Then whence cometh evil?&nbsp; Is he neither able nor willing?&nbsp; Then why call him God?&nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">So I was seeking the origin of evil … “Look, this is God, and these are the things God has created. God is good … Where then is evil; where does it come from and how did it creep in?&nbsp; What is its root, its seed?”&nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">My primary intellectual obstacle to belief sprang from my own rendering of the problem of evil.&nbsp; Many people I have spoken with who reject theism do so in virtue of the fact that they, in the company of numerotemporary intellectuals, are simply unable to reconcile the existence of evil with the existence of the God of Christian theism. … years later, as I was confronted with the Christian gospel, thoughts of these early years haunted me desperately.&nbsp; How could a God of this sort allow my mother and family to endure such horrors.&nbsp; These inner struggles exploded one day as I drove Preston [my friend who was trying to bring me to Christianity] to his job site. … I remember screaming at him that God would never allow the evils that I had experienced and that unless he had an answer to that, he would do well to keep his mouth shut.”&nbsp;</em></p>