Christ's cross vs. God's sovereignty in answering "the problem of evil"

From Dr. Aaron Calhoun, Assistant Professor of Pediatric Care at U of L, in Touchstone...

He opens with the premise for his observations:

In my initiation into the medical profession, I learned that, in past days, doctors and priests shared much, indeed, were often the same person, and how their fields diverged due to scientific and technological advances. Yet I cannot help but believe that the practice of medicine remains at its core a pastoral task.

Calhoun describes medicine as service and "ministry"-- at its roots-- against "the so-called natural evil that suffuses our world". From there, he takes it to theology and theodicy (why doesn't God intervene to deal with evil). He recognizes the legitimacy of questions about God that can emanate from "the problem of evil" (although it can also be a straw-man). And he notes the limited Christian response to the legitimate questions by (rightly) appealing to God's sovereignty. Instead, he advocates a Christological answer.

Christological answers deal with natural evil not with a defense of who God is, but with an exposition of what God did. They stress, not logic and argument, but a direct appeal to the power of Christ's death and resurrection over evil...

We forget that the ultimate response to evil is not a theory or a doctrine, but a person...

God is not in Heaven as we suffer, benignly looking down on our struggles, holding back his divine power for some inscrutable (although unquestionably good) purpose. No, he is here with us.

His hands, pierced with iron spikes have felt the weight of a dying universe. His heart, impaled by the point of a spear, was broken for both the suffering we experience and the suffering we cause. The black sea of hatred, brutality, and sin that had engulfed the world was taken into the heart of the Godhead himself, only to be lost in the greater ocean of his unfailing love.

For those who are interested, Dan Goldfinch has a nice, longer commentary on Calhoun's essay.