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Often, non-Christians will bring up evil as a way to argue against the existence of God. However, evil is actually a great evidence for the existence of God.

It's very common to hear someone say, "God can't exist." You might say, "Well, why not?" They might say something like, "Well, the God of the Bible is said to be all good and all powerful. Evil exists in this world, so God can't exist, because if God existed and he were all good and all powerful, he would want to eliminate all of the evil and he would be able to eliminate all of the evil. But that hasn't happened. There's still evil, so God does not exist." 

If you're not prepared to deal with this objection to Christianity, that might throw you back on your heels. This is not an unaddressed or unsolved problem. I've actually talked about this before. We're not going to focus too much on the problem of evil today. 

What we're going to talk about today is a way to pivot on their objection and actually make an argument for God. Now you would want to be able to deal with their objection, but it’s also good to know how to use that objection in a positive way to argue for God's existence. Here's how you do that.

The person complaining about evil in the world is saying they think evil actually exists. You might say, "Yeah, well everyone thinks there's evil. What does that have to do with anything?" Here's the thing. In order to say there is evil, there has to be some type of objective standard that's outside of a person as to what makes something evil and what makes it good. In order for there to be a moral law that someone breaks which would then make them be doing an evil thing, there must be a moral law-giver. Moral laws, like all laws, require law-givers. Where would a moral law come from if you're not a Christian, especially if you're not a theist, if you don't believe there is a God? From no where. There wouldn't be a moral law. 

The non-Christian, especially the atheist, who believes there's such a thing as actual right and wrong and disbelieves that God exists, is actually living inconsistently. They have two beliefs that don't fit together. They don't cohese well. On the one hand, they're saying there's no God - there's no transcendent creator. On the other, they're saying “I think things are actually right and wrong.” They have no reason to believe that. That doesn't mean that they don't believe it. It doesn't mean that they can't behave morally, but what it does mean is these things don't fit together. 

Here's how we could respond to someone who says, "There's so much evil in the world. How could God exist?" The first thing I'd want to say is, "So you actually think evil exists in the world? You actually think rape is wrong or discrimination is wrong, bigotry is wrong." If they say, “yes,” this is helpful. That's the first step. 

Next you could ask, “Would it be wrong if no one thought it was wrong?” The person will probably say yes. Now, not everyone will. That's important to understand. Most people are going to say yes: It would be wrong even if I didn't think about it. (It's like that question about if a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to hear it, did it actually fall. Yes, it fell!) In the same way, the murder that no one knows about or no one thinks is wrong is still wrong. 

You ask the question, “are there actually right and wrong things in the world.” They hopefully reply, “Yes.” “What makes them right or wrong?“ is the next question. If wrongness is breaking a moral law, where did the moral law come from? Now they're probably going to be stuck. What they might say is "Well, we as a society agreed." You can point this out: "Now back up, you said things were wrong or right regardless if anyone thought about them or not. Regardless of if soci…