Last night on the ABC’s panel show QandA, Professor of Theology & Culture from Regent College in Canada, John Stackhouse answered a really tough question about evil, brilliantly. The question was put to him by Peter Grice, President of Think Christianity.

Read below to find out his response.

Thanks to Nathan Campbell who originally drew our attention to this.

PETER GRICE: Professor Stackhouse, as you know, there is a lot of strife in the world at the moment in various places, including what one commentator called “Evil, the likes of which we’ve not seen in generations.” Such evil is even being visited on innocent children and many Australians are beginning to feel a sense of despair. It’s tempting to ask why God hasn’t shown up on the scene to fix a very broken situation. But supposing he did, what is your sense of a just punishment for those who bomb, torture, rape and slay innocent human beings and, by the same token, what remains of a positive vision for peace?

TONY JONES: John Stackhouse?

JOHN STACKHOUSE: Well, I would like to answer one of the other questions. They actually seem much easier now, compared to that global one.

TONY JONES: You can weave that in but try the one about what God would do?

JOHN STACKHOUSE: Well, I think it’s an excellent question because I think we do have to presume, if we’re Christians and people of similar outlooks, that God is mourning over the world, that God is not happy about these things and that God is, in fact, as the ancient scriptures say, you know, keeping a log of these things. That nobody does anything in a secret place. God has maximum surveillance, in fact. He does know what everybody is doing all the time.

TONY JONES: He knows your metadata?

JOHN STACKHOUSE: He knows the metadata and the data. He has got it all.

TONY JONES: He does do much with it though?

JOHN STACKHOUSE: Well, that’s, I think, the crucial question is that if God wants me to continue to trust him as an all-good and all-powerful God when he manifestly seems not to be one or the other or both, then he’d better give me a jolly good reason to trust him anyway and God hasn’t given me any account, any daily briefing about why he is allowing the atrocities here and why he is allowing them there and they go back since the dawn of time.

TONY JONES: Well, is that where faith comes in? Because, as we know, plenty of Holocaust survivors actually lost their faith once they saw the real dark side of human nature and realised that God was never going to intervene?

JOHN STACKHOUSE: Well, indeed, I think that post-Holocaust theology among my Jewish friends is a very daunting and very dark place because, for them, there is no ground on which to continue to believe in God that is strong enough to outweigh the grounds to not believe in God and that, to me, is the real question. It’s not necessarily whether God explains to me what he is going to do. I’m not sure I have the mental or the moral capacity to be able to judge whether God is doing a good job in the world. I think he is not doing a very good job often, but I’m not sure I’m capable to judge that. But if he wants my allegiance, he jolly well better give me a very good reason to trust him anyway and for the Christian, that answer is Jesus. That answer is looking at this figure, whom Christians believe is the very face of God. So if God is like that, then I can trust this hidden god who is seems to be making a mess of the world. And if he not like that, then I am really in a much difficult situation. So, Tony, for me, as a Christian who looks at the world like anybody else does, if I don’t have Jesus, I frankly am going to be an atheist because, like my Jewish friends post-Holocaust, God actually doesn’t seem to be doing a very good job running things.

Read our interview with John Stackhouse here.

Details on John Stackhouse’s speaking engagements while in Australia:

Is Dawkins Right, Are Christians Dumb, Delusional and Dangerous?’
7pm Tuesday 12 August Verbruggen Hall, Conservatorium of Music, Sydney

‘You’re Not Going to Heaven, and that’s a good thing, too’
7pm Thursday 14 August The Scots College, Bellevue Hill

Faith, Intellect, Vocation Conference
9am-4pm Wednesday 13 and Thursday 14 August
St Andrew’s College within The University of Sydney

Registration and information at www.scotslectures.org