Dealing With the Problem of Evil — Mark Spence

All right, you ever get that feeling that everybody's looking at you? Let's pray. Father, once again, I feel so inadequate to be able to open up your Word, and I'm so blessed that you had me on your mind when you sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross 2 ,000 years ago.

I'm seeing nothing inside of me, not because of your great foreknowledge, knowing that I was going to pick you, but for whatever reason, you invaded my life. You didn't ask my permission, and yet you did it anyways.

I just want to say thank you, and we say thank you, God, that you're God, we're not. You've given us our marching orders to go, and I pray that you'd help us to go, that you'd help us to be ready to give an answer to everyone for that hope that lies within us, that we can point people to Christ, that we can say, behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.

We want to be a conduit where you can flow through us, and you can reach out to a lost and a dying world of people that just hate you, that despise you. And I know, and I've come to be convinced that if you were to open up hell for five minutes and allow people to come out and repent, they would come right up to you and curse you to your face.

We need your intervention, God. We need you to open up the eyes of the lost, and unless you show up here, we're here in vain, and we simply, we wish to see Jesus Christ. Thank you for being our all in all.

Thank you for entrusting me with the pulpit, not because you see something good in me, but I believe you have a word to share, and I pray that in simplicity, you would accomplish that. So we sanctify this place, this room, our ears, our hearts, in the name of Jesus Christ for a holy work, and that you would do whatever it takes, whatever it takes, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how much we kick and scream, that you, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, would be glorified here today, and that you would light a fire inside of us, that we would go into the highways and the byways and the gutterways, and we would compel people to come, that we would point people to you, and we would say, come and see what good thing came out of Nazareth, what good, beautiful, and wholesome individual you are.

We love you because you first loved us. We submit this to you now, in Jesus' name, amen. Revelation chapter 21. I recently read my email that was sent back to me in May. I get quite a few emails, just because of the job that I do, and I saw that today was going to be on preaching and tomorrow is on teaching, well, we're going to do a lot of teaching in both.

Let me give a little commercial plug. I want to say thank you to Dr. James White for being patient with me. We had the opportunity to fly him out and to help us out with the filming of the third season of our TV show, and I went out with him on about a half a dozen meals, and I had an argument concerning the doctrines of grace, and my argument was this.

You mean to tell me that I have more love for my unsaved parents, for my brothers, than God does. I care more where they're going to spend eternity than God does, and he was so amazingly patient with me as he was slow to speak, and he said, Mark, your argument is philosophical, and I could never win an argument against your philosophy.

This is how cults are formed. Are you willing to bow your knee to whatever scripture says? Really, are you willing to bow your knee to whatever scripture says? If scripture says it, are you willing to say that's it?

That settles it, and I paused, and I think I was quick to respond, but it seemed like an eternity, and I said, you know, I came out of a denomination that encouraged me greatly to study the word of God, and when I would study the word, when I would want to study commentaries, they would tell me the commentaries to read.

They'd go, you want to study Calvinism, you want to study eschatology, well then read our guys. Read Bryson. Read other people, so a bunch of us, a bunch of my friends and I, we would gather around the table, and we would begin to study, and we said, wait, is it real study when you tell me what to study?

If you're going to tell me what to study, can't I read both sides? Don't tell me that I can only read your guys, your people, and shortly thereafter, I left that denomination. I got kind of forced to move on, and I attend a beautiful church in Anaheim Hills in California.

The pastor is Philip DeCourcy, he was discipled by John MacArthur, and I feel like I'm just freshly born again. I feel like, honestly, that I shouldn't be up here, that my eyes have been opened up to the reality that it's not about me.

It's not about me. It's about God. It's about Him. There's nothing I can do to gain the approval of God. If there's anything I could do, I would be patting myself on the back. If there's anything you can do, God would say, get on you, but He doesn't.

It's not about you. It's about Him, and what I want to do, I know I'm off subject, but what I want to do is I want to be very practical, and I want to give you some very good tools on how to approach a subject called the problem of evil.

Defining the Problem of Evil

I thank Greg Bonson, and Augustine, and Greg Cockel for helping me out in large with this, and you might recognize a little bit of their work inside here with, obviously, my own put inside there, but I want to be very practical with you today.

Revelation chapter 21, starting in verse 1, I want to start off with scripture simply because it's safe, but also I was given a very sour and bitter letter about a month ago, and it's very shocking, but we'll start off with scripture before so, and it says this, now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and also there was no more sea.

Then I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, and I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people.

God Himself will be with them and be their God, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain for the former things that passed away.

Then He who sat on the throne said, behold, I make all things new, and He said to me, write, for these words are true and faithful, and He said to me, it is done. I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.

I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

I want you to consider for a moment this powerful letter that crossed my desk, and it starts off saying these words. I've been taught since I was a little girl that God is love and a benevolent father.

I've been trying to understand this in light of the blatant ambiguities and explicit contradictions in these concepts. You see, man has been suffering ever since his inaugural visit to this earth. As soon as he arrived, he was haunted by wild animals and suffered starvation and dehydration.

Almost two-thirds of all children ever born have died before reaching the age of ten. Almost one-third of all ladies have died in childbirth. Of all the people who came upon this earth, very few have lived past youth and still less to ripe old age.

Floods, pestilence, and epidemics have obliterated human societies. Plagues have killed millions in times past, while recently a tsunami wiped out more than 25 ,000 people in a matter of seconds. And most of those who died are the poorest, living near oceans in ramshackle huts.

God just creates these millions of innocent people and puts them through all sorts of hardships and sufferings. People offer their prayers to you, God, and you respond by sending down thunder and lightning, famine and floods, horrendous plagues and contagious diseases, earthquakes, tsunamis, and tempests, and in the end, death.

Nice payoff. Nice answer to prayer, God. You seem to follow no norm and no human rights. It's not safe to walk down the street at night. We must keep every door locked and every window shut. Evil runs rampant in the streets and there is no justice.

From crooked cops to paid-off judges, no one is to be trusted. Not even you. Where are you when nearly 600 women are raped each day? About the 200 ,000 children that are abducted each year. Where are you?

Seriously, are you asleep? Don't you care? Can you hear them cry at night? It's obvious you're too preoccupied to interject in the life of just one of the 2 ,000 people that will take their own life today.

Let's see if you're too busy to intercept me from taking mine. You are a monster, a hundred times over, signed, A Conscientious Observer. I think this dramatic and moving account echoes some of our deepest apprehensions about God.

It is a gross charge against Christianity. It's the one that I run into most often. It's the one I run into on the streets. I get a lot of phone calls and emails at the ministry. If you call the ministry and you want to talk to Ray, you first get me before I pass you on to Ray to see if it's something that I might be able to answer.

This accusation, this charge against Christianity, where is God? I believe that, in one sense, it's the hardest to answer. I don't mean it's difficult in its substance. I think for those of you that know how to answer the question, that it's quite complex, but it is rather easy to answer this question, this charge against Christianity.

What I want to do is I want to give you some strategies that I've learned on how to answer this question. If time permits, at the end, be able to show you how to answer this question in the open air and even on a one-on-one encounter when you hit the streets.

But sometimes it strikes us mute, especially if the problem is not merely intellectual, but it's personal. Aren't those the two ways that we answer this question? It's philosophical and it's personal.

What exactly is the problem? Well, here's the problem if you didn't catch it already. You Christians say that God is good. You say that he's powerful. But if he was good, he would want to deal with the problem of evil.

And if he was powerful, he would be able to deal with the problem of evil. But evil still exists. So either your God is too frail to oppose evil, or he's too sinister to care, or more possible, your God simply does not exist.

Let me break it down even more, another step for those that didn't catch it. You Christians think you're bad. You say your hearts are deceitfully and desperately wicked, right? You bet. You bet. Absolutely.

Curious. If you were to see a six-year-old girl being molested, raped, and ultimately knowing that she was going to die by a 14-year-old boy, would you step in and stop that atrocious act from happening if it was within your power to do so?

You'd say, yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, here's the disconnect. Because if you Christians say that you're bad, yet you would intervene, where does that place God, whom you alone say is good, when he doesn't intervene and prevent that molestation, when he allows that tsunami, when he allows 9 -11 to occur, where is he?

You know what? I think I'm left with the conclusion that your God is not good. Or maybe he is good, he just doesn't know what's going on. He's not omniscient. Or maybe he is omniscient, but he's stuck in the planet of Pluto and he's not omnipresent and he can't intervene.

Does that make sense? Are you guys tracking along with me? It's a gross charge against Christianity. It's enough to push you back upon your heels. How many people here would say that you are very confident on how you would answer that question?

I don't want you to have to come up to me later and say, all right, I was just raising my hand because everybody else was raising their hand. I want to know how many people here are actually confident when faced with this gross accusation, will know precisely where to go if you're given this question out on the streets.

Raise your hand nice and high. One third to one half. Don't you want to know? It's the most common question that I come across and you're going to see why that is so. There's more to it than just being philosophical.

It's personal and that's why this objection is so difficult. I think that's our problem. I think that's your problem as well. You see, the person you might not be wondering through the second law of thermodynamics or the laws of non-contradiction, you see, it's almost irrelevant to what someone might say.

They want to be told, why did this happen? Why did this force me into the shower fully clothed, sucking my thumb down inside of a fetal position? C .S. Lewis, the great apologist who I don't agree 100 with, said this in the 21st century when he faced his own personal tragedy.

It wasn't a crisis of logic, it was a crisis of loss. It was personal. He married a woman 20 years his younger, Joy Davidman. Shortly thereafter, within that 10 years, she had died. She had come down with cancer.

He married her out of convenience, yes, but he fell deeply in love with this woman. He was so heartbroken that he wrote a book. It's called A Grief Observed. It was a book, in essence, in which he preached to himself, why are you downcast on my soul?

Hope in God. When he wrote that book, he used a pseudonym, a name that he created. He didn't want his name on the book. He didn't want anybody to know that he was struggling with this problem of evil.

His colleagues came along and gave him the book and said, look, this is exactly what you're going through. This person is right on. You need to read it. He finally had to confess that he was the one that wrote the book.

You see, the point for Lewis wasn't that God didn't exist, he knew too much, but rather the argument was personal as he dealt with his own grief. He just questioned the goodness of God. Why did you allow that to happen to me?

Why do you allow that evil in the world? When's it going to stop? Seriously, do you hear my prayers? I feel like I'm going in circles. Bertrand Russell, the great 20th century philosopher, he said, how can you talk about God when you're kneeling at the bed of a dying child?

Don't talk about God when you're kneeling at the bed of a girl who didn't even get a chance to live her life. The French poet, Moteler, in the 19th century said, if there is a God, he's a devil playing a game with his creation.

Tom Waite, the English composer slash actor, said, don't you know there ain't no devil? There's just God when he's drunk. The dual sides of God playing a game with his creation. That's the challenge we face.

Answering the Personal Objection

What I want to do today is I want to tackle this head on. I'm not afraid to answer this question. You know what I am afraid of? I'm afraid to hand out a track. I'm afraid to open air preach, and I've done it hundreds of times.

My greatest fear in an open air preaching session is to come across no one. I would love to be like Jeff Rose, who can preach to people that are walking by, people who seem maybe not really listening.

But I want to have somebody that objects. I want to have somebody that says, who are you to say what I believe is wrong? I want to have these objections come the way. Not because I have all the answers, but I want to hear the objections.

I believe Christianity is intelligent, and I believe God is worthy to have me bring a defense on who he is and what he's up to. That's the challenge we face. I want to approach this not as a pastor, not as a great theologian.

We're going to get that really soon. I want to approach this subject, honestly, as I break it down, I want to approach this subject just as a man who puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like you, with my own fears.

As a man who has been driven into the shower fully clothed, sucking his thumb in a fetal position like I have. I didn't think I was going to make it here this weekend, facing such an amazing, one of the greatest trials I've ever experienced just two days ago, thinking I'm not going to be able to get on this plane.

But worthy is the lamb to receive the reward of the sufferings, to be able to talk about God in the midst of a group of people. It's hard to pass that up. I faced my own personal crisis, and I know that the skeptic has as well.

Basically the answer to evil is God, specifically Jesus Christ, on a cross at Calvary. Really that's the answer. You know, recently I spoke at a conference, and right before I spoke, the second person before I spoke was Ravi Zacharias, right after him was Greg Koukl, and then it was me.

All right? That doesn't bother me. What was weird and unusual about it was we all had the same exact topic, and we didn't know. We all were going to discuss the moral argument for the existence of God.

I didn't get the email. I didn't get the phone call. Kirk Cameron looks over at me, because we sword fight quite a bit concerning these subjects. He looks over at me, and he just starts laughing, and he says, what are you going to talk about?

And he goes, I got an idea. Make it practical. Not a lot of people are. Make it personal. Show these people how to hit the streets, how to apply the methodology in which you're teaching. I recently read a book on presuppositional apologetics, and the very last chapter, I'm sure half of you have read it, is entitled Taking It to the Streets.

I said, amen. That's what I'm about. I don't want to read in theory, necessarily, as much as I want to see practicum. Show me how to apply this, how to hit the streets. That's what I want to do. I want my life to count.

And the opening paragraph said, you know, it's not my natural ability to apply this methodology out on the street, but let me give you a fictitious conversation between a Christian and a non-Christian applying the presuppositional apologetical method.

I took the book. I didn't even read the conversation. I took it, and I threw it across the wall. Now presuppositional apologetics is sweeping through the way of the master. It is knocking people over, being slain in the spirit, let me say, in a very good way.

Trying to get a hold of every debate, every article, every book that we possibly can. Ray Comfort came up to me and he goes, Mark, show me presuppositional apologetics in the open air. Bring it down in a very simple fashion so that people can get it.

Kirk and I were going back and forth trying to just nail this down. I don't know a lot of people who can simplify it, and yet a lot of people that are in presuppositional apologetics says it is very simple.

I say it is simple for you, not for us. We have a sixth grade education. Make it simple for us. That's what we are trying to do, to simplify it down for the common person in the open air and on a one-on-one encounter.

You're going to recognize it a lot in our season four TV show, which will be out in about six months. I want to make two observations that are going to simplify this problem immensely. I want to share the biblical view that removes the apparent philosophical contradiction, and I want to show you how God solved the problem, which is the personal side.

In other words, when people say, where was God, you say he was right there in the thick of it. You ready? Point number one. If you're taking notes, evil is something. It's pretty profound, isn't it? Evil is something.

Evil as an Objective Moral Reality

It actually is when you consider it. What has to be the case in order for you to even raise the question? What has to be the case is that there has to be evil in the world. That's right. Things actually have to be bad.

Now, let me tell you why that's so important, because there's a very, very popular point of view today called relativism, which most of you are familiar with. Relativism, in a nutshell, is the philosophical position that all points of view are equally valid and that all truth is relative to the individual.

Now, catch this. This means that all moral positions, all philosophical ideas, all political ideologies are up to each individual to decide what is right and wrong. In other words, there is no right or wrong.

There is no good or bad. There is no sacred and secular. There is no evil. Self-refuting statements. You ready? This is what we catch out on the streets. I catch it every time I open air preach. I talked to this

I had a debate, a discussion in the open air last Friday in Santa Monica with this gentleman who had a PhD over at Cambridge, much smarter than me. I just happened to be right. I made all the difference in the world in our discussion.

He was spewing out these self-refuting statements. Let me see if you've recognized, if you've heard a couple of these yourself. You can't know anything for sure. To which I say, are you sure? Are you sure you can't know anything for sure?

You shouldn't judge. Is that your judgment? If you shouldn't judge, then why are you judging my judgment? You shouldn't judge. That's your world view. Your world view says you shouldn't judge, so listen, don't judge me.

That's not part of my world view. My world view says, hey, when judged, use righteous judgment. You can't know anything. Now, how do you know you can't know anything? Nobody's right. Nobody's right. Listen, nobody's right.

There's so many different world views out there, so many different religions. Nobody's right. Are you right that nobody's right? Because if you're right that nobody's right, well, then you're wrong about nobody being right.

So who's right? I say you're wrong. See how simple that is? It is extremely simple, and what is true for you is not what is true for me. What is true for you is not what is true for me, to which I say, that's true, and what's true for me is that you're wrong because you are wrong, and every other world view has to begin to borrow from my world view to make account for anything that would make sense inside this universe.

You see, there's only a real problem with evil if evil exists in an objective standard. In other words, why does God allow that evil out there? That was terrible. That's an evil thing, but you notice that such a statement requires an objective or an absolute standard by which you are comparing evil to.

If you're a relativist, you do not believe in evil. The word evil merely describes things you don't like. You have to be a quiet observer as you say, that's not my preference. Let me apply it out on the streets now.

You ready? I'm out on the streets. I approach an individual. I have my gospel track ready. I hand it over to him, and I say, hey, did you get one of these? He say, what is it? That's a gospel track. Hey, what do you think happens on the other side?

When we go from time on into eternity, what's going to happen? He goes, oh, well, I'm an atheist. I go, oh? Would you consider yourself to be a good person? He says, oh, yeah, absolutely. You see, the latest Barna poll shows that 53 of Americans believe that they are good people.

In fact, scripture says most men will each proclaim their own goodness. I say, define good for me, and he does so, and he says something along these lines. Well, I provide for my family. I don't cheat on my wife.

I don't cheat on my taxes. I donate money to different local charitable organizations. I think that makes me a pretty good guy. And right then, Henry the Humanist, who's also an atheist, comes walking along, and he says, hey, I'm sorry.

I don't mean to interrupt, but I've noticed that you're talking about good. I think I'm a pretty good guy, too. But funny enough, my definition is the exact opposite of Alan the Atheist. You see, I'm only good if I am cheating on my wife.

If I cheat on my taxes. I provide for my family from time to time, but really, it's not my main thrust. Why do I work? To get money? Sure. To feed my pleasures? To donate money to this local charitable organization called Al-Qaeda?

It's a neat little cell group down the road. And I look over at Alan, and I go, Alan, is he wrong in his worldview, his definition of good? He says, absolutely, he's wrong. And I say, how do you know?

Where did you get your definition from? And he can really only pull it from one of three places. He got it from himself, which is what he did. He got it from society, or he got it from legislature. Really, there's no other place to really get your definition unless we're going to hit another supernatural book.

Suppose it's supernatural. Alan, where did you get your definition from? I got it from myself. I don't need any authoritative figure telling me right and wrong, good and bad, sacred and secular. I go, oh, Henry, where did you get your definition from?

He says, the same place. I don't need anybody telling me what is good and bad, right and wrong. So Alan interrupts my conversation with Henry, and he says, listen, you can't harm anyone. You're hurting people.

To which Henry says, define harm. Your hairstyle is harming me. If it's up to each individual to decide what is good and bad, then you can't tell me that I'm not being harmed by your hairstyle. Because we know that harm isn't merely just physical harm.

It can also be an emotional state. We know that kids can be subjected to harm by listening to something that they shouldn't listen to or watching something on the telly that they shouldn't watch. They were never touched, but they were harmed.

How can you say he's not being harmed by your hairstyle? Well, harm, I would say it threatens civil order. Order? What is order? You see one man's messy desk is another man's filing cabinet. He goes, well, we have laws that are set up.

Laws? So does legislature, society get to determine what is good and bad, right and wrong? You know, not too long ago, right before our president took office, we had a lot of different propositions that poked up out in Southern California.

Marriage, Moral Law, and Social Relativism

I took a team out to Hollywood. I had a microphone, and I set up a microphone outside the crowd, and I held up a sign. And the sign said, yes on eight. And it was a proposition saying that marriage should be between simply a man and a woman.

If you wanted to vote no on eight, you were saying, no, marriage should be between two men or two women. So unashamedly, I held up the sign, and I had a microphone out, and I said, hey, liberal Hollywood, anybody want to have a nice civil conversation?

And someone took me up on the offer. He's an actor on Desperate Housewives. He graduated from USC. He stepped up to the microphone, and this is what he said. He said, who are you to say that two men who love each other cannot have the same enjoyable rights that you have with your wife?

Stop the hate. And this was the tagline. Stop the hate. Don't discriminate. No on eight. And he worked up the crowd. And they were in a frenzy. It was on Halloween night. People were in costumes and crazy, crazy stuff.

And he had the support of everybody there. Who are you? Really, who are you to say what we do is wrong? And he said, sir, if I use your logic, and I bring your logic to its logical conclusion, then consider this.

If it is up to society to determine what marriage should be, and in your eyes, it should be just two men, why are you stopping there? Why not three men? Why not four men? Why not a little boy marrying his mom?

Why not a boy marrying his dog? How about the man that's up inside that tree up in Northern California for three years to marry that tree? He goes, well, that's absurd. Says who? Says who? Who says it's absurd?

Because you see, it is absurd to think that a man can marry a man not even 50 years ago. Absurd. And if you're going to redefine our terminology on what marriage is, where do you stop? I believe I'm the only one with a consistent worldview that can say where the origin of marriage has come from, and God alone has come up with the definition of marriage.

It's a man and a woman. You cannot do that. Sir, one final thought. What prevents a man from marrying himself, a man who's been diagnosed with dual personalities? Great tax breaks. Well, that's absurd.

So is your argument, sir. And I had a chance to talk about good and bad, right and wrong. Well, listen, if society gets to determine what is morally right and wrong, then people ought to do whatever their society tells them to do.

It also makes this view impossible to criticize another society's practices, no matter how bizarre or morally repugnant they may seem to us. We can't lift our nose up to point our finger down upon Adolf Hitler, who by and large used the argument at Nuremberg when he said society allowed, backed up my disposal of these six million blacks, Jews, Christians, and gypsies.

If you're going to say society gets to determine it, then where do you stop? You see, listen, some things are wrong regardless of what society dictates, and that includes plundering innocent Jews and pressing them into forced labor and exterminating them.

This last Friday when I was talking to this atheist, Sam, I said, how do you get a defined society? Because that was his argument. Society gets to determine what is good and bad. I go, is it two people?

Is it five people? Is it 100 people? Is it within a city? Is it within a country? He says, well, morals evolve, which got me excited when he said that. I said, so you're saying basically in times past or in times future, rape might have been or might be acceptable.

Under what cases will rape be acceptable? Sir, is pornography right or wrong? It's right. It's right. Is child pornography right or wrong? It's not my preference. Sir, at what age would you like your precious little daughter to get involved with that beautiful profession of pornography?

No answer. You see, they might try to hold on to their logic, which would become a true sociopath, but they would never hire somebody, an individual that would support their true worldview. You would never hire an individual who says, it's up to each individual to determine what is right and wrong.

I'm going to hire a bookkeeper with that worldview to take care of my finances. I'm going to hire a babysitter with the worldview that he can do whatever he wants to do. You see, this is the number one point of view of most Americans.

They might be Mormon, Anglican, Episcopalian, but they become a relativist. So C .S. Lewis said, a man cannot call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. We need a definition outside of ourselves, otherwise we would never agree.

Let me give you a pretty good definition. To be good means to be morally perfect in thought, word, and deed. How many of us qualify? You see, good is a reflection of God. God alone is good. The rich young ruler came to Jesus and he said, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

He said, why do you call me good? There's none good, but one, that is God. I think you get the idea of relativism, but I simply want to say that evil is something, but only, excuse me, evil is something, but only the Christian can attest to what evil is because we have something to compare it to.

No other worldview really can. First point, evil is something. Second point, because we have to move right along, that is evil is not something. First point, evil is something. Second point, evil is not something.

Evil as Privation and the Reality of Sin

It is not something. It is not something tangible. Sure, evil is real, the condition is real, but it's not some type of black diabolical stuff that floats around the universe that globs onto us and attaches to us and now we do evil things.

I recently went over to Krispy Kreme Donuts and I purchased a dozen donuts, brought them over into the ministry, put them in the break room for anybody that wanted one. I went back for thirds because I wanted one.

By the time I was going back for the 12th donut, I ate all 11 donuts. As I went back for the 12th, Ray Comfort looks over at me and he says, you glutton, what are you doing? I go, nobody wants them, I like them, they're good.

All right, speaking of donuts, how many people here have eaten a donut whole? Not the center of a donut, not that little glub blot of cholesterol filled goober that will make you die some day, clog up your arteries, but I'm saying a donut whole.

Not a whole donut, but the center of a donut, the whole of a donut, nobody, none of us have. None of us have eaten a donut whole, the whole of a donut, none of us have, why? Because a donut whole is where a donut ain't, right?

That's kind of like what evil is. Evil is the same thing. As Augustine said, it's a privation, it's a void. There's really no true definition of evil that we can come up with. We can define good and anything outside of good is evil.