In this post, we conclude our response to Chapter 5 of Mark Clark’s The Problem of God, titled “The End.” Here Clark brings his discussion of evil and suffering to a sentimental close, appealing to Romans 8:28 (“all things work together for good”) and Romans 8:18 (“the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed”). It’s an emotional ending—but emotion isn’t evidence. Let’s take a closer look.
1. The Emotional Bypass
Clark’s final appeal isn’t an argument—it’s a coping mechanism. By quoting Paul, he shifts from evidence to reassurance: suffering feels meaningful because one day, somehow, it will be. But this is not a logical resolution of the problem of evil; it’s a postponement. The question “Why does a loving, all-powerful God allow needless suffering now?” is replaced with “Maybe someday we’ll understand.”
That’s not philosophy—it’s deferral. And deferral, however comforting, doesn’t erase the observable fact that billions of sentient beings suffer without purpose, redemption, or relief.
2. The All-Things Fallacy
Romans 8:28 is often quoted as a promise that every tragedy hides divine intention: “All things work together for good.” Clark follows that script. Yet the claim collapses under minimal scrutiny. All things? Childhood cancer? Genocide? Animal suffering across millions of years before humans existed?
If “good” can encompass these horrors, then “good” has lost meaning. The verse survives only by stretching “good” so far that it becomes an empty synonym for whatever happens. That isn’t moral depth—it’s moral surrender.
3. Suffering as Evidence Against, Not For, God
Clark treats suffering as evidence of God’s empathy (“a God who suffers with us”). But an empathetic bystander who can prevent agony and doesn’t is not compassionate—he’s complicit. The Christian claim that God both feels our pain and allows it for a mysterious greater good makes moral sense only if we downgrade compassion to something sentimental and inert.
If we judge by human ethical standards—the same standards we are told God implanted in us—then omnipotent empathy that permits torture is incoherent. Either God cannot stop suffering (and is not omnipotent) or will not (and is not good). Clark resolves neither horn of that dilemma; he merely quotes scripture to declare victory.
4. The Tolkien Illustration and the Narrative Trap
Clark ends with Samwise Gamgee’s reflection from The Two Towers: even darkness is “a passing thing.” It’s a lovely literary moment—but Tolkien wrote fiction, not metaphysics. To borrow that line as theological evidence is to mistake emotional catharsis for truth. Stories comfort us precisely because they end—because meaning is imposed by an author. The real world, indifferent and ongoing, offers no such narrative guarantee.
5. The Psychology of Closure
The closing tone of “The End” mirrors a human impulse, not divine revelation: our need for closure. We dislike unresolved pain, so we craft cosmic closure where none is evident. In that sense, Clark’s theology is anthropological data—it tells us how the human mind copes, not how the universe works. Hope is valuable as hope, but to mistake it for knowledge is to blur the line between comfort and truth.
6. The God Question Reframed
If suffering can exist without purpose, then meaning is ours to make—not handed down. The more honest response to evil is not “It all works for good,” but “We must decide what good means and act accordingly.”
Presence, empathy, and alleviation—these are human responsibilities, not divine mysteries.
That, perhaps, is the real end: not a verse about glory later, but a choice about compassion now.
📜 Closing Thought:
Christianity’s hope rests on postponed justification. The God Question’s hope rests on clear sight: that pain needs no permission to matter, and kindness needs no eternity to be sacred.
God or Delusion? 