“I think there’s probably two components to that question,” said Huff. “One is a very, you know, I think honest assessment of what’s typically called the problem of evil.”
“This world is beautiful, yet it’s profoundly broken,” he observed. “And that’s the testimony of Scripture, ultimately, is that God created the world to be good, but something took place. We know deep down that the world is not meant to be like this.” Huff listed examples of brokenness in the world, such as cancer, children being abused, and people dying young.
“I think the fact that we understand that evil is something speaks to the fact that there is an objective evil to be outbalanced by an objective good,” Huff said. If evil were subjective, we could not actually call an evil event truly evil. All we could say is we “don’t like” it.
“I talk to a lot of people who almost assume that taking God out of the picture solves the problem,” said Huff. “I think it actually makes it more complicated.” If there is no God, there is no objective moral standard.
Huff explained that Christianity stands out when it comes to the problem of evil. “I think one of the things that’s unique about the Christian worldview is that the God of the Bible actually steps off his throne in eternity and into humanity and experiences brokenness,” said Huff. “He experiences abandonment. He experiences pain and suffering. And, ultimately, he experiences being murdered.”
“And in that way,” Huff said, “the God of the Bible is not distanced or aloof to the pain and suffering that we actually experience because he can actually relate to it.”
God “understands what depravity actually is,” said the apologist. “Yes, God is transcendent. Yes, God is holy. Yes, God is above anything we could fully comprehend. But God actually experienced what we experience in that brokenness in the world, and that he conquered that.”
Ryan asked Huff how God could have conquered brokenness because “it’s still here.”
Calling that a “good point,” Huff said the answer lies in “what theologians sometimes refer to as a now-but-not-yet reality.” Although Jesus defeated death when he died on the cross, we still live in a broken world. But God has promised to make all things new.
