The Eras Tour’s insights about the Problem of Evil

It is March 2024, meaning The Eras Tour has officially gone on for a full calendar year. If Taylor Swift’s 2020 career renaissance did not already establish her as the most notable figure in pop culture right now, her worldwide, 20+ month-long tour left any other contender for that title in the dust. 

Upon this surge into global stardom, many critics emerged arguing that Taylor Swift is bad for society. While I acknowledge that Swift and her music have become a golden calf for 3rd-grade girls, dudes who swear “they aren’t like the other guys,” and your 30-year-old librarian who regularly attends singles mixers at a local Applebees, I do not think that people should measure the badness of a thing by how prone it is to be an idol.

If that were the case, then agriculture, fitness, and academics could all be susceptible to a similar argument. I argue the opposite. If there were to be any secular celebrity that had to be propped up as the defining figure of our culture, I would want it to be Taylor Swift. Her persona and message are simple but insightful, and no point in her career illustrates those insights better than the tour that made her this superstar. 

At some point, every person who grew up thinking the world was good had to ponder the question of how tragic, devastating events could occur in a world that is supposedly structured and loving. The question pertains to events as massive and world-altering as the Holocaust and events as personal as a child getting mistreated at school. For Taylor Swift, the primary causes of distress come both from her romantic woes and her struggles to navigate fame. 

Maybe it is because I first listened to Taylor Swift with the physical copy of her self-titled country album on the way to watch Tim Tebow and Percy Harvin play college football, but she has always seemed more personal and down-to-earth than the typical artist, and thus more vulnerable to being overwhelmed by the overbearing eyes of the public. 

Her music, being so detailed and intimate, naturally makes fans invested in her personal life. While Taylor’s talents were ready for the spotlight, her psyche was not. Superstar breakup after superstar breakup, plus being humiliated on stage by another one of the most prominent artists of the millennium, Kanye West, all devastated Swift. 

To cope, she turned to what was always reliable, her pen and her guitar. These songs, not just being public but also blockbuster hits, never made her problems go away. The brutally honest content made more people invested in her life and provided more opportunities for jokes at her expense. 

In her attempt to innocently subside her complicated feelings, she ended up losing friends and relationships and becoming a laughingstock for many pockets of music fans on the internet. 

In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul writes, “We know that all things work together for good,” but amidst heartbreak, betrayals, and scrutiny, where is the good to be found? Some might point to the money gained, but material wealth, while not inherently evil, is not the good to which Paul is referring. 

An answer many philosophy and theology students are familiar with is perfect will and permissive will, the idea that God perfectly wills the good and permits the bad to happen. To those unfamiliar, this answer can feel like a copout that praises God for the good and washes the hands of the all-knowing, all-powerful God who supposedly loves us clean of all wrong. However, divine revelation and Taylor Swift’s tour (some argue those two are interchangeable terms) illustrate the practicals of a seemingly unsatisfied answer. 

In Scripture, despite His trial, crucifixion, and death having a crucial role in the Salvation of humanity, Jesus never forced any of those three things to happen. He never provoked Pilate, He never chose His means of death, and He never intentionally sped up the process of His death. Most notably, His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane pleads for another way. Matthew writes, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, Your will be done.”

This prayer shows the reluctance to allow the evil act of death, yet acknowledges the

good that results from it. That is not to say that humanity’s gruesome rejection of God is a good thing because of its later consequences, but it does show that bad things happening are still redeemable despite the evil resulting from humanity’s brokenness. 

If God only willed good things, what could truly be good? If we have no decision to choose anything besides good, there is no possibly good action since there is no other option to compare it to. Free will and God’s permissive will allow for the opportunity for good to be fully acted upon, and God’s unwavering omnibenevolence lets fruit sprout regardless of our choice. 

Similarly, Taylor never sugarcoats the pain faced by rejection, solitude, and criticism. These actions are not suddenly good because of the results that occurred a decade later. As The Eras Tour emphasizes, these events shaped her into the woman she is because of how painful they were. 

Now, she can stand in front of millions and have the robust self-acceptance that she has accumulated through these experiences. Some might say that a concert celebrating yourself is a tad egotistical, but the tour stresses a quote she sang in “Invisible String”: “Hell was the journey, but it brought me, Heaven.” Without the humiliation at the Grammys, the messy love life, and the bizarre beef with Katy Perry, Taylor would have been someone who was never tested, never as self-reflective, never aware of that “Invisible String” which guided her to this point. The problem of evil is a dilemma that will be debated as long as humans have concupiscence, but through the witness of the world’s biggest superstar, we can find solace in the very well-documented personal transformation she undergoes amidst the adversity of her career. This, however, does NOT absolve Jake Gyllenhaal from flaking on Taylor’s 21st Birthday. How dare you, you absolute monster!