Ode to the Problem of Evil

Lyrics

Is he willing, but not able?
Then he's weak.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he's cruel.
Is he both?
Is he both able and willing?
Then from where...
From where does this come from?

Epicurus in his garden, gone two thousand years.
The question hangs in the air after him.
Lactantius wrote it down just to tear it down,
but the ink bled through the page.
A ghost in the machine of faith.
A crack in the foundation stone.
They say you are good.
They say you know all things.
They say your power has no limit.
And I have a question.

All-good.
All-knowing.
All-powerful.
And the child in the cellar.
And the bone broken on the wheel.
And the quiet little cancer.
You see it. You can stop it. You want to stop it.
That’s what they say.
So which one is the lie?

Leibniz in Hanover, the year is 1710.
He writes his Theodicy, his grand defense.
Says this is the best of all possible worlds.
Calculus and optimism.
In the margins of his own book,
he converts the page numbers into binary code.
Ones and zeroes.
Good and evil.
As if it were a simple equation to be solved.
As if we just weren't clever enough to see the proof.

All-good.
All-knowing.
All-powerful.
And the child in the cellar.
And the bone broken on the wheel.
And the quiet little cancer.
You see it. You can stop it. You want to stop it.
That’s what they say.
So which one is the lie?

St. Petersburg, 1880.
A room smells of black tea and cheap tobacco.
By an oil lamp, Ivan Karamazov
lays his ticket to heaven on the table.
"I respectfully return it," he says.
The unexpiated tears of one tortured child
are too high a price for harmony.
Too high a price for the whole universe.
He's not denying you exist.
He's just asking for an explanation that makes sense.

Three thousand years.
And the line is still open.
And no one is picking up the phone.
From where does this come?
Whence then is evil?
Just tell me.
Which one is the lie?