Why evil?

After almost four months of widespread drought, at the beginning of September, as often happens in recent years of disturbing climatic evolution, in some very limited areas of Turkey, very violent storms were recorded, with frequent anomalous floods. In a city like Istanbul, which extends over two continents for a diameter of more than 70 km, the climate can characterize different areas of the same megalopolis in opposite ways. While in the historic center, where we live, the rain continued to postpone its appointment, in the districts of Arnavutköy (on the banks of the Bosphorus), Başakşehir or Çatalca, the water caused extensive structural damage. The tolls were also heavy on people: the Istanbul Governorate Office reported the death of two people in the districts of Başakşehir and Küçükçekmece and 12 injured, although in non-serious conditions.

In the province of Aksaray, in central Anatolia, the tragic death of a three-month-old baby girl, who escaped from the hands of her parents, trapped in a car dragged by a river of water and mud. The little girl's body was found by rescuers after five days of searching. At this point, the words of Mehmet Ali Kumbuzoğlu, governor of the province of Aksaray, caused a sensation who, alongside more political statements commenting on the crisis situation, ventured into reckless theological considerations. Among other things, he said: «We would have liked to be able to deliver our little girl Asel alive to her family. But, apparently, God loved our little girl so much and he wanted to take her with him. She is now in heaven."

Concluding with: «May God give patience to his entire family». Despite the incomprehensibility, for our Western mentality, of this "invasion of the field" of a character with an institutional role, in a formally secular society, there are also perplexities regarding this interpretation, evidently of Islamic inspiration, of a tragic news story. The echo returns of the crucial trial of God staged by Fyodor Dostoevsky in his masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov: «... if everyone must suffer in order to acquire eternal harmony through suffering, what have children got to do with it? ? Please tell me! It is absolutely unclear for what purpose they must suffer and why they must acquire that harmony through suffering. Why did they also serve as material and fertilizer to prepare future harmony for the benefit of others?

Christians know that before asking God for his alleged "responsibilities" regarding evil in the world, they are invited in chapters 2-3 of Genesis to question their freedom and conscience because a large portion of the evil spread throughout history has a precise human source. Here, however, the existence of an evil that "exceeds" pure and simple individual and social human responsibility comes into play, an evil that cannot easily be "rationalized". From an Islamic perspective, it is essential to defend God's unconditional authority over his creation and, therefore, also the fact that nothing that passes through humanity escapes God, otherwise his omnipotence will be weakened; furthermore, God must not give answers to men's questions, He cannot be put on trial. Now, the fact that a newborn child is torn away from his parents cannot be considered a good thing. So, it is perhaps only faith in an incarnate God who offers his life for humanity, which can allow us to maintain, in the presence of suffering and bereavement, that the only way out is to allow ourselves to be challenged by the precariousness of existence and read human history with the eyes of God, who, always and only wanting the good of his children, through an inscrutable plan of his love, sometimes allows them to be tried by pain (without thereby making himself an accomplice to the pain) to lead them to a greater good.


Claudio Monge
NP October 2023