Perceptions #200302

WHEN GOD DOESN'T MAKE SENSE

by Norman Bales

When we lost the crew of the Columbia last Saturday, we received another reminder of life's brevity, the importance of family and the uncertainty of life. We've had a number of those earth shaking events in recent years - the loss of the Challenger crew, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Littleton, Colorado shooting and of course the tragic events of September 11, 2001. At times like these people ask questions about God. They want to know why he doesn't prevent such tragedies. I don't have all the answers, but I do believe I have a responsibility to the person who asks, "Does God make any sense at a time like this?

The news media attempts to sort out what happened, how it happened and perhaps even attach blame to negligent persons The media does not attempt to sort out questions about God's response or lack thereof It is not equipped to answer one of the most troubling questions that events like this bring to our minds. Where was God? Can you still believe when things don't seem to make sense?

I think those questions are probably on the mind many folks these days. If we're not going to address that question, who is? If I had lost a family member on the Columbia, I would want some answers and I wouldn't accept half-baked, superficial clichés in response to my inquiries. Too often when someone is victimized by a senseless, seemingly meaningless tragedy, we lovingly put our arms around the grieving survivors and say, "Honey, you're just going to have to accept this as God's will." Do you have any idea what you do to people when you tell them that? Do you realize that you are actually saying, "You have just experienced the most cruel thing that could possibly happen in your whole life and God, who is supposed to be loving and caring has just kicked you in the gut." I will tell you that people who hear that kind of explanation are likely to think that God doesn't make sense.

I can't give you an answer to that kind of question in a neat, simple little package. What we know of God, we know only in part. God says to us in Isaiah 55:8-9 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." It would be most presumptuous of me to presume that I can plumb the depths of that kind of knowledge.

SOME BASIC PRINCIPLES

Before I try to deal with the question, "Why does God allow evil in the world?" I want to establish certain principles that reasonable people must observe in trying to answer a question of such importance.

1. Our answer must be consistent with God's nature. The only place that we can go to learn anything about God's nature is the Bible. Paul said in 2 Timothy 3:16?17 "All Scripture is God?breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." If the scriptures do that, they necessarily tell us everything about God's nature that we need to know. They may not tell us everything we want to know, but they will tell us what we need to know.

2. Our answer must be consistent with the premise that God is all powerful because that's what the scriptures say about God's nature. According to Luke 1:37, "nothing is impossible with God."

3. Our answer must be consistent with the premise that God is good. The prophet Nahum said, in Nahum 1:7 "The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him."

4. Our answer must be intellectually honest and defensible. It won't do to say, "I believe because I believe." When you simply say, "God is in his heaven and every thing is all right with the world", you're not offering a credible answer. The events that take place all around us provide convincing proof that all is not well with the world. As a matter of fact the scriptures recognize that truth. John writes in 1 John 5:19 "We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one." If we are going to deal with the question of God's allowing evil to continue in the world, we have to give an answer that will earn the respect of a sincere seeker of truth, because the truth seeker wants to know if God can be trusted.

SOME POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

So how do we answer the question, "Why does God allow evil in the world?" Let me suggest some premises that have been proposed.

1. God has chosen to limit his involvement with the world. About fifteen years ago, a Jewish Rabbi, named Kushner wrote a best selling book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Kushner's basic explanation is that God would like to do something about evil, but he can't. That explanation is explained in part by the fact that Kushner is Jewish. Every Jew alive in the world today feels the pain and reels from the impact of Hitler's "Final Solution," which resulted in the death of 6 million Jews in the death camps of the Holocaust. The only way many people of Hebrew origin can handle that mind numbing fact is either to assume that there is no God or that God was incapable of acting.

   For the Biblical believer, Kushner's solution is totally unacceptable, because as we have already seen that God is both good and all-powerful. God is portrayed to us in the Bible as an all powerful, all knowing, everywhere present being. We need to be wary of solutions that compromise those attributes of God. A four-year-old boy from Florida visited his grandparents in Lousiana during the midst of a summer drought. After church services one Sunday he told his grandparents that he needed to go in the garden and pray. They don't have a garden, but to him the back yard was the garden. His grandfather tried to convince him that God could hear him just as well in the house, but he insisted that he would be closer to God in the garden, so he went outside to pray. As he went, his grandfather said, "While you're out there, be sure to ask God for rain." He went out, lifted his arms up and shouted his prayer to God. They heard his closing remarks. "By the way, Paw-Paw says we need some rain." He came in the house and he was very confused. He said, "Paw-Paw, it's not raining." His grandfather said, "Well God doesn't always answer prayer right when you ask." Then he said, "Let's turn on the weather channel." They turned on the weather channel and the meteorologist reported that it was raining in Miami." The grandfather said, "God answered your prayer, but he thinks you're still in Miami."

   It's a cute story, but I have a mixed response to it. I think the grandfather was exactly right when he said, "God can hear your prayer in the house just as well as he can hear it in the garden." He was also right in suggesting that God does not always answer prayer at the time we ask, but his statement that God thinks the boy is in Miami compromises the basic nature of God, so we have to be very careful about giving glib explanations.

   It is consistent with the nature of God, however, to say that God has made the decision to limit himself. While God is all-powerful, his character will not allow Him to do anything that violates his essential integrity. Hebrews 6:18 says that "it is impossible for God to lie." Further more we can logically conclude that God does not do anything that is absurd or contradictory. He doesn't make a rock so big that he can't pick it up. He doesn't make a car that has bigger dimensions on the inside than it does on the outside. Even Japanese engineering can't pull that one off.

2. In his dealing with us, God has chosen to let us live in the medium of matter. Matter, by its very nature is a limited medium. It's subject to certain physical laws, like the law of gravity. One of the areas of matter that we work with is electricity. Some people make their living working with electricity. They are able to take advantage of electricity for their benefit because they know how it functions and have been able to harness the power of electricity to produce services that benefit the human race.

   It would not be in the best interest of the human race for God to suspend the laws of electricity every time they present a threat to mankind. Electricity can only benefit us if it behaves in a stable manner. But electricity can hurt you. Hundreds of people die every year when they find themselves in conflict with the physical laws that govern electricity. Electricity is unforgiving. It knows nothing of grace and forgiveness. Matter operates in a predictable manner.

   Is that a bad thing? Of course not. In Genesis 8:22, God said, "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." We need both the cold of the winter and the heat of the summer, but there are times when people find themselves in conflict with the weather and thus people can freeze to death in the winter and die of heat stroke in the summer.

   Some times pain benefits us and sometimes it creates problems for us. Pain is our alarm system. If you accidentally touch a hot stove, pain will immediately tell you to move your hand before you fry the flesh. My wife, Ann, has no feeling on the soles of her feet. In fact, she is gradually losing feeling in her feet and legs. Some time ago she accidentally cut into the flesh while she was trimming her toenails. She didn't know what she had done until she saw blood on her feet. She would have been better off to feel pain. If God eliminated pain, he would then be obligated to redesign the central nervous system and while the central nervous system may cause us some problems, it provides us more good things than it does evil things.

3. God allows evil to exist because he has endowed every member of the human race with a free will. Had he so chosen, God could have installed a computer chip in your brain and programmed it in such a way that evil would never be a possibility that you would ever do anything wrong. He could have installed a keypad on your back and programmed your behavior every minute of the day. But he couldn't do that and give man a free will. From the very first day that Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden they had a will of their own. God made his commands clear. Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, except of the tree of the knowledge and evil. That was off limits.

   God wanted Adam and Eve to choose responsibly, but he gave them the capacity to choose irresponsibly. If he had not done that, they would not have had a choice. Much of the evil in the world can be explained by the fact that people make poor choices.

   But God is not to be held responsible for our poor choices. Human misuse of divinely given freedom is not an indictment against God. Apparently God didn't want robots, which would have no choice other than to serve him. He wanted people who have the capacity to do evil, but who choose to do good and serve him of their own free will.

4. God allows evil to exist because he is in the business of facilitating our spiritual growth. This may be a little harder to accept. Some people call this soul making. According to Genesis 1:26 we are created in the likeness of God. 2 Peter 1:4 says that we "participate in the divine nature." When you put that remarkable truth down alongside the fact that people have free wills, then it becomes apparent that God wants us to choose those actions in life that will glorify him and enable us to participate in His divine nature.

   How does the existence of evil help us to grow spiritually? Let's suppose that God had chosen to arrange things in the world in such a way that every time you get your billfold stolen, you receive a new supply of money. Suppose that every time a person is murdered, that person is resurrected within an hour. What kind of world would it be? Would it be a world where God is respected and honored? Or would it be a world in which people would take their blessings for granted and expect God to do even more for them.

   Lloyd John Ogilvie, chaplain of the United States Senate, tells the story of a man in his early forties who came to see him. Throughout all his forty years, an indulgent father had pampered, catered to and spoiled his son. He had never been allowed to fail and learn from his mistakes. Consequently, he had never been able to keep a steady job and he manipulated and used people. When he found out that he couldn't manipulate Ogilvie, he didn't want to see him again. And I ask what would become of us if God pampered and spoiled us? What kind of people would we be if we were never allowed to harden our spiritual muscles? It is not in the best interest of people who participate in the divine nature to live in an environment where nothing bad ever happens. The Hebrew writer said in Hebrews 12:10, "Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness."

5. God allows evil because he can actually turn man's treachery into a blessing. In Romans 8, Paul mentions a long list of evil things that Christians sometimes suffer. The list includes trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger and sword. But then he has the audacity to say in verse 38, " in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." If that seems like a stretch to you, then you might want to consider the example of Joseph. Joseph suffered greatly, first from the treachery of his own brothers, then from the treachery of an immoral woman. Eventually the wrongs were righted. When his brothers feared for their lives as the tables were turned and they were in effect placed at the mercy of the brother whom they threw in a pit and sold into slavery, he said, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." God was not responsible for the brother's treachery, although he allowed them to carry out their evil plan. It's hard to see good in some of the bad things that take place, but if we remain faithful, God can and will cause good things to happen.

   I don't believe God is responsible for war. I know there were times in the Old Testament when God commanded people to go to war, but modern wars are usually of our own making. World War II was a time of great suffering. Even now we are anticipating the possibility of a war in the Middle East that could cause great suffering. But good also comes out of war. Would anyone seriously argue that the world would be better today if the values of the Third Reich had been allowed to prevail?

CONCLUSION

God's ultimate response to the evil that's in the world was the sending of his son to take on our nature and experience our problems. In the act of sending his son, he was saying to us, "I know life is hard. I know how it hurts sometimes. I'm going to help you out. I'm going to send my son to suffer with you and for you. Then one day I'm going to take you home and in my home there is no suffering; there are no tears, there is no pain. And that is good news for us even though we live in a world controlled by the evil one. Sometimes it may seem like God doesn't make sense, but when we come into his presence and we hear him say "Well done," we have no regrets in having followed him and trusted him.

top of page    previous article    Perceptions Index