A great deal of intellectual effort is spent on the theological project we call "theodicy," attempts to explain why a good and all-powerful God allows evil, pain, and suffering in the world. And I think it's safe to say that, in the end, all these efforts fail in some way. None of these answers are wholly satisfactory. And I think one of the reasons for this is that theodicy attempts to address the problem of evil by creating a hard magical world.
By this I mean that theodicy attempts to "explain" the source of evil, to lay the "mechanism" bare. Maybe it's the devil. Maybe free will. Maybe God can't do anything to stop evil. Maybe God is punishing us. In each case, the ways of God are analyzed and explained. The enchantment becomes plain and accessible. A hard magical world.
The alternative move here is to say that theodicy is illicit. And not simply to say that theodicy is impossible, but that theodicy itself is problematic, even hurtful. To "explain" evil is to minimize its dark assault upon the world. To explain to a person "why" she is suffering is pastoral malpractice. Evil, to be evil, has to befuddle our minds. We don't have any answers. In short, evil, to be evil, needs mystery. To approach evil as a theological algebra problem, to situate it in a hard magical world, is to miss the key element about what makes evil so evil.
In short, like prayer and providence, evil exists in a soft magical world. We know evil exists, that the world is haunted by a dark enchantment. But the origins of evil are unclear to us. We don't know why it exists or how it works. We might try to penetrate evil's mysteries, but all these efforts ultimately fail and prove unsatisfactory.
All we know, in the end, in our soft magical world, is that something prowls in the darkness, calling us to vigilance, righteous action, and, ultimately, trust in God.
