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JINSIDER - Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on G-d & Evil

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Author: JINSIDER
Categories: Religion Science
Tags: religion, science
Views: 2 · Last viewed: 2026-10-15 19:00 UTC

Short Summary

Main recommendation: Treat faith as protest rather than passive acceptance, meeting the existence of evil by taking responsibility to act against it. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argues that in Judaism the problem of evil sits at the heart of faith, and that protesting injustice is how faith operates.

Key Points

  • In most religions the existence of evil is seen as a threat to faith, but in Judaism the people with the greatest faith ask the hardest questions about evil, citing Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, and the Book of Job.
  • Sacks defines faith as protest, based on the gap between "the world that is" and "the world that ought to be."
  • A physical world governed by physical laws necessarily produces earthquakes, tsunamis, and natural catastrophes; without such disasters there could be no physical universe, since stardust from exploding stars allowed planets and life to form.
  • Freedom requires space for human beings to commit evil; without that space, people could not choose to do good either.
  • God gave humans freedom and responsibility, so evil must be confronted together rather than solved by God alone.

Details Worth Noting

  • Concrete instructions: The video gives no step-by-step method, but its actionable guidance is to counter evil through concrete deeds such as feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and writing against injustice anywhere in the world, and to build just societies, compassionate communities, and loving human relationships.
  • Sacks frames the answer to evil as an action rather than a philosophical argument, with each good deed moving the world closer to how it ought to be.
  • The biblical examples cited are Abraham ("Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?"), Moses ("Why have You done evil to this people?"), and Jeremiah questioning why the wicked prosper.
  • The video presents the natural-disaster and free-will points as theological reasoning, not as a scientific or empirical proof.

Bottom Line

Sacks reframes the problem of evil as the engine of faith in Judaism: believers are called to protest and act against injustice, not to accept it.