ABSTRACT
We can all imagine things as they ought to be: a perfectly loving family; an ideal world without crime, poverty, cruelty, or even disease; oneself always feeling good and doing the right thing. We know all too well such a picture is very far from reality. Insofar as any religion portrays a world governed by an all-powerful and beneficent God, or ruled by inexorable laws that always work for good, it has a problem. The tremendous gap between what ought to be and what is has to be explained, and moreover religion needs to show how the gap can be bridged, both by individuals and the world as a whole. Evil is the most basic issue confronted by religion, and likewise the most difficult. More than one otherwise elegant philosophy or theology has floundered on inability to deal convincingly with the terrible, yet every day, face of bad: the “problem of evil.”
