The Problem of Evil vs The Absence of Meaning

I’ve not read much of Nietzsche, but I acutely remember the feeling of “lostness” that got into me (“if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you”) when I saw that the eventual & unavoidable heat-death of the universe nullifies all our weak human efforts at finding meaning in life.

 

“You make your own meaning” just didn’t cut it for me. This abyss (“there is no ultimate meaning to life”) was real and it gazed into me and found me hollow.

 

But belief in a good, loving and powerful God brings up a difficult challenge as well — often referred to as “The Problem of Evil & Suffering”. I still have not found an entirely satisfying answer to this. Yes, I am aware of various explanations around “soul-making theodicies” and “free will” etc but the vast scope of suffering and evil in this world, if we are honest, does defy our weak attempts at finding meaning in it. Parts of the human experience seem senseless, arbitrary and cruel. This too, is a another kind of abyss.

 

In any case, I felt I had to make a choice: which of the two would I rather face and struggle with? The abyss of the absence of meaning or the abyss of inscrutable suffering & evil?

 

I choose the latter — I would rather believe life has meaning and struggle towards it. And my companion in this journey is Jesus — who fell into the second abyss by his suffering as he was crushed by the evil powers of this world — and offers hope beyond the first, through his (and our) resurrection & the remaking of the cosmos.