This question — if God is good then why does evil exist? — has plagued philosophers for centuries. Stephen Fry, famous actor, comedian and atheist, frames the question this way: if God is so good, then explain bone cancer in children.

On the surface, it seems like a legitimate question. And for those who like to disprove God, it’s a favorite line of attack. However, give the subject a bit of dedicated thinking time and you’ll find the answer is quite simple. Like most simple things though, the answer is easy to articulate but not to understand.

The reason why there is evil in the world is because of free will.

Let’s unpack that.

Explaining it to a six year old

If you were to explain that reasoning to a young child, the conversation might go something like this:

“Well honey that’s a really good question. God IS good and wants good things for you.

He gave you your life, a nice place to live, and a teddy bear to keep you safe.

He’s like Dad. Is Dad good to you? Does he want good things for you? Of course, he does. But does Dad make choices for you? No, he lets you choose on your own.

Remember when we made hot chocolate and we told you not to eat the dry cocoa but you ate it anyway? Yeah, it was terrible and yucky.

Who decided to eat the pure cocoa, you or dad? You did, of course. What did you learn? Without sugar and milk, cocoa is yucky.

Dad could have stopped you from eating cocoa but would you have learned anything?

No, you wouldn’t. Only tasting it told you it was bitter and gross.

God is like Dad in this way. He lets you make your own choices so you can learn and grow. And you want to grow up to be big and strong, right? You can do that by learning to make better and better choices.”

To begin, free will exists

The argumentative defense of any proposition is inversely proportional to the truth contained.— The Urantia Book, 48:7.30 (557.14) 28.

Many have argued that free will doesn’t exist, but so far no one has conclusively demonstrated its absence. The most recent effort is a valiant attempt by Sam Harris in his book, Free Will.

It appears that we have free will. We certainly act as if we do. We hold ourselves and each other accountable because at any moment we can freely choose from a huge range of options. Our entire system of morality and justice is founded on the reality of people as free will actors.

For all intents and purposes, free will is real and works the way we think it does.

So, we have the unlimited power of choice. But, possessing this power and making consistent good use of it are two completely different things.

When imperfect beings receive the power of choice — and we are most certainly imperfect — it’s inevitable we’ll choose badly, even catastrophically. The daily news and history chronically attest to this.

Evil results come from us, not God

Sometimes we choose badly on purpose, knowing full well what we’re doing is wrong. Murder is a good example, another is theft.

In other cases though, we end up choosing badly due to ignorance or misunderstanding, not due to intent.

A good example here is a food allergy like gluten intolerance. You’re allergic to some food but you don’t know it, so you end up eating bad foods for a long time (or feeding your children bad food) and it erodes your health.

Unaddressed gluten intolerance can and does lead a host of diseases, including colon cancer. I know. It runs in my family.

God doesn’t interfere with free will

Well, why not? If we’re down here bumbling around, jacking things up through all manner of terrible things, why doesn’t God step in already? What good can come from us harming ourselves and each other?

The short answer is this: if God made our choices for us, we’d never learn.

The less-short answer is this: What a child thinks is right and good is entirely different from what their parents think.

When I was a boy I insisted on eating peanut butter and cheddar cheese together. I loved them both alone, they must be twice as good together!

My dad told me not to do it. “The old man’s a fool!” I thought, and kept insisting. Finally, he relented. If his wisdom couldn’t teach me, then experience was going to teach me. (P.S. Turns out, I was demented.)

Immediately after tasting the hideous flavor, I was secretly mad at him for foisting such an experience on me. He knew! He knew and let me do it anyway!

What’s evil to children most often is character building to their parents. The same child/parent relationship exists between God and us. He gives us free rein to choose, learn and choose again.

You cannot perceive spiritual truth until you feelingly experience it, and many truths are not really felt except in adversity.— The Urantia Book, 48:7.18 (557.2)

So, why do children get cancer?

Each child has their own unique story, but a major causative factor in the health (or illness) of children and adults is a dietary choice, pursued over many years.

My grandma is a great example. Born in 1927, she was the daughter of an alcoholic mother. Not only did her mother drink during the entire pregnancy, but she smoked too: unfiltered Camel cigarettes. Today both are verboten, but back then the effects of smoking and drinking weren’t well known, or even known at all.

My grandmother didn’t have fetal alcohol syndrome (that we know of), but she did suffer with breathing issues in childhood and throughout her life (a known result of smoking during pregnancy).

Even without any genetic predisposition to disease, her overall health would have been much better if her mother chose differently in those pregnancy months.

Terrible health choices like this can and do impact the health of babies, even before they’re born, and set the stage for a host of childhood diseases, including cancer.

We make these choices because we have the ability to do so, and for whatever reason, most often ignorance or misunderstanding, we choose poorly, a lot.

Children get cancer for the same fundamental reason that wars begin and stock markets crash and people you don’t like get elected President: free will actors make choices that have consequences.

God does not directly intervene one way or the other.

What it all means for you

You have the power of agency. While there may be practical limits on your ability to act in the world, in the sovereign realm of your mind no one can directly interfere with your power of choice.

This is the basis of life as you know it, and nobody not even the infinite creator, can remove or alter this power.

The philosophical “problem of evil” isn’t really the problem they think it is. Rather, it’s a challenge.

Choosing well is challenging, no question, and our misinformed, mistaken choices often lead us down the dark alleys of life.

But even if you find yourself walking through valley of the shadow of cancer, remember, you are always and forever free to choose again. And with faith, love and dedication, you and your loved ones may just walk in the sunshine once more.

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