SOVEREIGN YET SILENT
Why a "Good" God Allows Evil to Run Its Course
When Paul visited Athens, he found a city steeped in idolatry and adorned with countless shrines to false gods. Yet he noticed something remarkable: amid the misguided worship was a humility, a yearning for truth, exemplified by the altar they had dedicated “to an unknown God.”
The Greeks were honest enough to admit that they might not have the full picture. That altar was a hedge, a theological insurance policy, just in case a greater deity existed, they hoped their acknowledgment and attempts at worship might be recognized.
Paul, never one to shy away from a challenge, was invited to speak at the Areopagus, the intellectual and judicial heart of Greek society. This was no trivial detail; not everyone earned the right to speak there. His presence signaled both his rhetorical power and the seriousness of his message.
In his address, Paul dismantled Greek elitism. He declared that all people, regardless of ethnicity or nation, are equal before God. Then, with striking audacity, he claimed that history itself, the rise and fall of empires, the drawing of national boundaries, was not random but sovereignly orchestrated by God:
“From one man He made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us.” — Acts 17:26–27
This is breathtaking. It reassures us that nothing is accidental. But it also opens a profound and uncomfortable question:
If God determines the course of history, does that mean He also governs the suffering within it?
This tension haunts skeptics and believers alike:
Why are we born into suffering?
Why do war, abuse, and injustice persist?
If God can stop evil, why doesn’t He?
To affirm that “God is in control” is both a comfort and a confrontation. It reassures us that history has meaning, but it also compels us to grapple with the mystery of divine sovereignty and human suffering.
In the following sections, we will face this tension head-on, engaging the difficult questions honestly and exploring how Scripture illuminates them.
If God Allows Evil, Is He Responsible For It?
The logic seems inescapable:
If God is all-powerful, He could stop evil.
If He is all-good, He would stop evil.
Evil exists.
Therefore, God must be either powerless, indifferent, or nonexistent.
That syllogism has haunted philosophy from Epicurus to Dawkins. But it rests on a hidden assumption, that power and goodness can only coexist if evil is immediately eradicated. The biblical claim introduces a third variable that changes the entire equation: God is also all-wise.
God’s wisdom reframes suffering. It means He can allow what He hates to accomplish what He loves. It means that there is a moral order deeper than our immediate sense of fairness, one that transcends our limited view of cause and consequence.
We humans live by this logic every day:
A patient consents to the pain of surgery, trusting the surgeon will heal them.
A parent disciplines a child, enduring tears and resistance to build character and strength.
An athlete pushes through exhaustion and agony, aiming for victory and mastery.
We accept short-term suffering for long-term good, but only because we can judge, however imperfectly, what that “good” is. With God, the principle is the same, but the scale is infinite. His wisdom spans all time and outcomes, while ours falters at the sight of a single wound. What looks unbearable to us may, in His perfect plan, serve a purpose far beyond our comprehension.
That’s where divine “utilitarianism,” if we can borrow that term, differs from ours. Ours is partial, fragile, and morally compromised. His calculus is not numerical but moral; the reconciliation of justice, love, and time in perfect proportion
The cross is the definitive proof.
“This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put Him to death.” — Acts 2:23
At Calvary, God ordained the most evil act in history, the murder of His Son, and yet those who committed it were fully responsible. Evil was not erased; it was weaponized. The greatest injustice became the foundation of redemption.
That is how divine sovereignty interacts with evil, not by negating it, but by subverting it. God does not merely permit evil; He uses it. And in doing so, He proves that His goodness and power do not compete; they converge in wisdom.
The God Who Suffers
If God’s wisdom explains why evil can exist, the cross explains how He responds to it. God is not a distant analyst of pain. He is its participant.
He entered the system. He designed and subjected Himself to its violence. He endured betrayal, hunger, injustice, and crucifixion. He absorbed every consequence of the human rebellion.
The cross exposes two truths simultaneously:
God takes evil seriously enough to judge it.
God takes humanity seriously enough to die for it.
Every other system of thought collapses under this tension. A God who destroys all evil instantly destroys every evildoer, us included. But a God who refuses to judge evil is morally bankrupt. The cross is the only intersection where perfect justice and perfect mercy coexist.
To erase evil instantly would be to erase freedom, and to erase freedom would be to erase love. Freedom makes evil possible, but it also makes love meaningful.
A world without the possibility of rebellion is also a world without the possibility of relationship. That’s not creation; that’s programming. The image of God in man requires moral agency, the freedom to choose both obedience and defiance.
When Adam and Eve fell, God didn’t abandon the experiment. He enacted the plan that had been set “from the foundation of the world.”
“The Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world.” — Revelation 13:8
“He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but made manifest in these last times for your sake.” — 1 Peter 1:19–20
The cross was not Plan B; it was built into creation’s DNA. God made a world where love was possible, and therefore where betrayal was possible. But in the same breath, He made redemption inevitable.
This is why evil persists, not because God is indifferent, but because He is patient.
“The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise… but is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” — 2 Peter 3:9
Between the cross and the final judgment lies a providential span of grace and mercy. Evil is permitted to run its course, yet it remains fundamentally subverted, never unchallenged. This deferral of ultimate justice is not divine sluggishness; it is divine patience, ensuring the broadest possible opportunity for redemption to be received.
When God Orchestrates History
Divine sovereignty doesn’t end with individuals; it extends to empires. Paul’s words in Athens weren’t only about personal faith; they framed the sweep of civilization itself.
“He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.”
Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome; each empire rose and fell under the quiet choreography of God. History is not a random sequence of power and decay; it is a symphony, composed and conducted by a sovereign hand.
When God told Abraham that his descendants would suffer in Egypt for four hundred years, He added an enigmatic phrase:
“For the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” — Genesis 15:16
Four centuries of patience.
Four hundred years of divine restraint before judgment.
When God later commanded Israel to strike Amalek, it was not impulsive wrath. It was justice deferred for generations. The same God who used Israel to punish the wicked later punished Israel for its own wickedness. Sovereignty does not mean partiality. It means accountability for all.
This is the hard truth: God’s involvement in history is not always gentle, but it is always just.
The World That Groans for God
If God orchestrates the rise and fall of nations, why does He let evil linger?
Because He is not building utopia, He is awakening longing.
“…so that mankind would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us.” — Acts 17:27
God actively leverages the chaos of history to cultivate a hunger for what history can never deliver. The pervasive ache for justice, the insistent cry for peace, the relentless search for meaning; these are not flaws in the system, they are its defining features. They are, quite literally, the fingerprints of ‘Eden’ impressed upon the human soul.
That is why God does not constantly interrupt evil. A sanitized world would leave us complacent. A broken one leaves us searching.
Pain is not the absence of God; it is the echo of His distance, the reminder that something vital has been lost. The longing itself becomes the proof of transcendence.
In my Dust & Divinity article, I had already shared this quote from C.S. Lewis:
“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
It makes the point just as powerfully here, because the author of Ecclesiastes expressed the same truth centuries earlier:
“He has set eternity in the human heart.” — Ecclesiastes 3:11
Paul later echoed this reality in his teaching, showing that even in our ache and longing, we glimpse evidence of a reality beyond what we can see, a reality that points directly to God.
The Calculus of Eternity
Utilitarianism asks the brutal question: Is the outcome worth the cost?
If the cost of human freedom is centuries of bloodshed, suffering, and decay, is the good of finding God really worth it?
The Christian answer is scandalously direct: a resounding yes.
Because if God is who He says He is, the fountain of life, the architect of meaning, the conqueror of death, then to know Him is worth more than everything else combined.
That is not theoretical optimism. It’s the testimony of history’s martyrs; men and women who endured torture, exile, and execution not because they despised life, but because they had glimpsed something greater. They had tasted glory.
“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” — Romans 8:18
Paul’s words sound reckless unless you’ve seen what he saw. Once you have, the moral calculus changes forever. The finite cannot outweigh the infinite. Time cannot outweigh eternity.
The Final Equation
When the Kingdom comes, not as metaphor but as reality, every injustice will be reversed, every question answered, every scar transfigured. The moral geometry of history will finally make sense.
And in that moment, when the veil lifts and glory floods everything, there will be no debate left; only understanding.
All the “whys” will collapse into one “yes.” Yes, He was just. Yes, He was wise. Yes, He was worth it.
Because to lose everything and gain Him is no loss at all.
But to gain everything and miss Him is the greatest tragedy imaginable.
This is the paradox at the center of divine sovereignty and evil:
The God who permits it also redeems it.
The God who governs history also bleeds within it.
And the God who delays justice now will one day be justice; perfectly, finally, and forever.