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“Is there such a thing as a necessary evil?”

I opened up this can of worms by referring to systematic theology as a necessary evil a while back, so obviously I think there is. From the perspective of humanity, “necessary evils” are undesirable choices that may confront us for no reason we can discern, but more often come about when we have already departed from the word of God in some way, and no longer have the same menu of options available to us as we would have had prior to sinning.

Such choices are “evils” not in the sense that choosing them is in itself always a wicked act, but in the biblical sense, where all possible outcomes of our choices are varying degrees of disagreeable to the person choosing. The Hebrew word for “evil” may refer to either sin or simply misfortune.

From Bad to Worse

The point may be clearer with an example. A man and his wife divorce. That’s the original departure from the word of God, and it creates a situation where further choices are now limited by the first one. Both parties remarry, and both discover to their displeasure that their new spouses come with all the same problems as plagued their first marriage, and a few new ones beside. If you ever sit down with someone who has married two or more times, they will often tell you this sort of thing in their more candid moments.

What are their choices now? Another divorce, or toughing it out in a situation worse than the one they previously walked away from. Neither outcome is particularly desirable. The second is better morally, of course, but the first may ultimately be less stressful. There is no way to know, which is why one bad decision that goes unrepented often leads to more bad decisions.

Three Kinds of Horrible

Another example. The vet tells you your much-loved family pet is terminally ill with no chance of recovery. You now get to choose from the following list of unlovely options: (1) disbelieve the vet, and pour a fortune you can ill afford into its care, which will almost surely be an exercise in futility that will prolong your animal’s suffering; (2) allow the poor beast to go the way of all flesh naturally at home, where your children will watch it die slowly and horribly; or (3) quietly have your little guy put down for the low, low price of $350, except that you have a moral objection to euthanasia and will have difficulty looking at yourself in the mirror tomorrow.

Do any of these options look anything but degrees of awful to most people? Any of the above choices might reasonably be characterized as a “necessary evil”. That’s not your fault. It’s simply the inevitable consequence of living in a fallen world. Sometimes things just don’t shake out the way we would prefer, even when we agonize in prayer over them.

Necessity from God’s Perspective

Both of these situations are necessary evils in relatively small matters from the human perspective. There are much greater necessary evils.

Peter plainly states that God does not wish any to perish. None. If it were possible, he wants all mankind to come to repentance. And yet many will perish. The teaching of scripture is unequivocal in that respect. If something God says he doesn’t want to happen happens, that’s clearly because sin and death are necessary evils. Something worse would occur if they did not exist. There are worse things than Adolf Hitler, like multiple Hitlers or worse, immortal Hitlers.

The Garden of Gethsemane proved the cross was a necessary evil. “You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” That’s evil all right, yet evidently necessary to the plans and purposes of God. The Lord Jesus himself asked if there was any way dealing with the sin question by this means might be avoided. The answer from heaven was no.

Some evils are simply not optional, even for God. There’s a great mystery in that, but it’s definitely the teaching of scripture.

Defining Evil Biblically

So then, as long as we define “evil” in a biblical sense, to include misfortune and unavoidable bad choices, the idea of a necessary evil is at very least conceivable in a fallen world. What would not be true is to say that the Lord ever makes it necessary for his children to commit inarguably evil acts to accomplish an outcome he desires, or, as it is often put, that the end justifies the means.

That sort of evil may be costly to avoid, but it is never truly necessary.