Bishop Robert Barron

Bishop Robert Barron, a Catholic bishop and founder of Word on Fire Ministries, joined Theo Von for a conversation that ranged from the nature of God and evil to the structure of prayer, the crisis of modern addiction, and the spiritual dangers of technology. Barron, who became a bishop after receiving an unexpected phone call from the Vatican while watching golf in shorts and a t-shirt, spoke with unusual directness about what he sees as the core problem of contemporary life: a culture of self-invention that has left people disconnected from God, from each other, and from any sense of ultimate purpose.

God as the Ground of Being, Not a Thing in the World

Barron defined God in a way that sidesteps common misunderstandings. God is not a being among other beings—not "you and me and the planet Jupiter and God and the Empire State Building." Rather, God is the reason there is anything at all. "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Barron asked. "The answer to that question is God." This philosophical grounding leads to a crucial distinction about evil. Since God is the cause of all being, and evil is not a thing but a "lack of being"—like a cavity in a tooth—God cannot be the cause of evil. He permits it, Barron explained, to allow for some greater good, a mystery the Book of Job wrestles with. God’s answer to Job is not a tidy explanation but a reminder of scale: "Whe