Amazon’s new series Undone is a brilliantly acted and animated show that follows the life of a young woman named Alma (lit. soul) after she experiences a nearly fatal car crash, and then begins to see and speak with her long dead father. The show raises questions about the relationship between pagan spiritual experiences, schizophrenia, time travel, multiverse theory, and self-identity. Undone raises more questions than it answers, but there is one answer that it gives to the problem of evil that struck me for some reason.
[Caveat: Some Spoilers]
As Alma spends more time with her father, who is teaching her how to travel into the past to possibly change it, she acquires the ability to go back in time and change things that have gone terribly wrong. Past experiences of evil are not immutable; rather, they are mutable. But not only this, because Alma can experience evil and consciously keep it from ever occurring, she learns from the evil she experiences. From the car crash (natural evil) to her father’s lying (moral evil), Alma learns about herself, her family, and why some courses of action should or should not be taken in her life.
And this is what stuck with me – Alma’s education via the experience of moral and natural evil is universally relatable. The evil Alma experiences is not purposeless, it has a very specific function in her life. For Alma, and for all of us, evil teaches profound lessons. Our experience of evil reveals things to us about ourselves, about the world we live in, about others, and about our moral duties and our failure to perform them.
Evil is not gratuitous, but purposefully instructive.
Evil is Not a Problem
In Undone, and really in all sophisticated narratives, the viewer/reader is shown that evil, as an integral part of the story, is not purposeless.Human authors create characters who use evil for evil ends, but whose evil is overcome by the good it produces for the protagonist, as well as in the mind and emotions of the reader. And this is, again, a universal reality. The hero must undergo adversity in order to become “a better person” (e.g. a more attentive father, a more nurturing mother, a less self-absorbed husband, etc).
As our immediate grasp of evil’s function in narratives demonstrates quite clearly, we universally and intuitively understand that evil forces us to face aspects of reality we had previously not even given consideration to, and promises great rewards to those who survive its attacks on them. We universally and intuitively understand that evil can, and does, have two entirely different end results depending on whose perspective evil is being analyzed from (e.g. whether from the perspective of the one experiencing evil or from the perspective of the author whose intention is to bring about good by that very evil).
We do not question the existence of an author when we see his noble characters experiencing evil while the villain or villains escape detection or judgment. Why, then, has the presence of evil in the real world ever been considered a problem so monumental that it would cause a person to deny the existence of the author of all things, viz. God the Trinity? Is it because evil in real life does not teach us lessons?
Fallen Man's Real Problem with Evil
The problem with evil is not that it is gratuitous, but that it teaches us truths that fallen man does not want to accept. Regarding the non-Christian, Scripture teaches that evil/suffering/death teach man that God is angry with the wicked every day (cf. Ps 7:11 & Romans 1:18-32). The even greater picture being shown to the Christian is this –
Moral evil that brings about God’s wrath via natural evil reveals that God is just, will not be mocked, and must of a necessity punish the wicked. Rather than present moral and natural evils as things that first and foremost reveal our weakness and flaws so that we might “better ourselves,” the Word of God presents evil as the revealer of God’s attributes and actions to all men. Through moral and natural evil God reveals that we are the problem, our actions against a holy God are evil and, therefore, reproduce effects after their own kind.
And in eternity, the truths about moral and natural evil that fallen men may refuse to acknowledge now will be eternally cemented. The apostle Paul makes this clear with a rhetorical question in Romans 9:22-24 when he says –
What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?
The moral and natural evil that surrounds us is not a blank canvas onto which we can paint as the telos of evil those moral lessons we find palatable. Not at all. Rather, the moral and natural evil that surrounds us reveals that men are under the wrath of God, are enemies of God, and have no hope for salvation in the modification of their behavior. It isn’t God’s existence that is being problematized by the reality of moral and natural evil, it’s man’s falsely assumed righteousness, deity, and control that are being directly assaulted by God through moral and natural evil.
Had fallen man even the slightest amount of respect for the Author of Life, comparable to that which he shows to human authors of fictional narratives, he would be identifying evil for what it is: A teaching tool that is intuitively and universally understood to be such. The unbeliever’s problem is not that evil is, but why evil is, for it reminds him that he cannot escape from the omniscient scrutiny of his Creator.
The good news, however, is that just as evil teaches us the immutable truth about fallen man’s condition before a just and holy God, in the moral and natural evil Christ Jesus undergoes for the sake of his elect, the mercy and grace and justice and holiness of God are revealed to us in no uncertain terms. There we see the perfectly good God experience evil that his elect would learn that God is Father and King and Friend, and a perfectly just Ruler who perfectly punishes evil.
The evil we see in the world will teach all men the truth righteousness, truth, suppression of the truth, sin, and the judgment. The question is only this:
Will it teach you these things now, when there is time to repent and believe the Gospel?
Or will you be an eternal parable constantly displaying in your torments the truth that God is perfectly just and will not be mocked?
If you hear his voice today, do not hesitate. Repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
Soli. Deo. Gloria.
-h.
