The Problem of Evil and the Goodness of God

The "Shifting Culture" podcast is one that I follow and tune into every few weeks or so. I really appreciated this one in which he interviews Ingrid Faro, author of a book called Demystifying Evil: A Biblical and Personal Exploration. I haven't read the book but this podcast episode makes me want to.

One thing I enjoyed about Faro is that she can bring the biblical and the personal to the table in equal balance, as the subtitle to her book suggests. I listened to the podcast episode a number of weeks ago so the details are fuzzy to me, but part of the episode is spent her discussing the personal suffering she has faced in her life. If I remember correctly she was the victim of serious domestic abuse, along with the understandable trauma and depression that followed from that abuse. So everything she says about suffering isn't trite or naive: she knows pain and difficulty and has emotionally grappled with it.

Combined with the personal is her biblical thinking about suffering. She is clearly intelligent and engages with the biblical and theological content in an informed way. She is not simply offering up warm fuzzies or Instagramable bible verses, but digs into the nuances of evil vs suffering vs pain, moral evil vs natural evil, spiritual warfare, and so on.

Overall what I found most inspiring and comforting is that she has engaged with suffering at both a personal and intellectual level and made it through with her faith not only intact but strong. She is a concrete example of someone who has faced significant difficulty and found a way to still genuinely trust in God, affirm Christian doctrines, and believe in the goodness of God.

I encourage you to check out the episode here: https://plinkhq.com/i/1566243892/e/1000642629561