A while back, I read a Los Angeles Times article that wrestled with the nature of evil. One observation seemed to me to have particular significance in the wake of last September's terrorist attacks in the United States: "To scholars who engage in theodicy—defending the justice of God in the light of evil—the theological problem of massive moral evils has become the most challenging. Why does God permit humans to perpetuate so many wrongs on others? And once that is answered, can it still be said that God is truly omnipotent and entirely loving?" Los Angeles Times, October 19, 1982, p. 14 .
What points us toward an answer?
In one sense, evil will always be a puzzle to the human mind. Why? Because the human mind sees reality very differently from the way God, the divine Mind that knows all, sees reality. Evil is very much a part of the human mind's sense of truth, just as the events in a nightmare may be very much a dreamer's sense of truth. But that doesn't make the "events" in a dream objectively true. It's difficult for the person having a bad dream to fully accept the truth that is so apparent to those who are wide awake.
