Apologetics - Week 2 - I Can't Worship A God That Doesn't Stop Suffering and Evil

"Either God wants to abolish evil and cannot; or he can but does not want to; or he cannot and does not want to. If he wants to but cannot, he is impotent. If he can and doesn't want to, he is wicked. But if God can and wants to abolish evil, then how comes evil in the world?" Epicurus, philosopher

   Why is my pain unending
    and my wound grievous and incurable?
You are to me like a deceptive brook,
    like a spring that fails.  Jer. 15:18

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
⁹ “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.  Isa. 55:8,9

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. ² I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ⁴ ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
⁵ He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”  Rev. 21:1-5


      A recent gallup poll asked the question, "If you could ask God one question, what would it be?" The number 1 answer was "Why is there so much suffering and evil in the world?"

 Since this is such a common rejection of Christianity we as Christians need to be ready to give a rational answer. Also, maybe you as a Christian wrestle with this and it is weakening your faith. You may need this answered for yourself. Let's look at this from a few different angles.

  1. God gave mankind free will when He created us.
          Since people are challenging our God and our faith we can use the Bible in our defense. In the Bible we are told that God created a perfect environment when He created mankind. There was no sickness, pain, or death. However, God gave man a free will to choose. He did this because He wanted mankind to be able to choose to love Him not be forced to love Him. Love is impossible without freedom. Did you ever see the movie Stepford Wives? Or imagine having a cupid's arrow or love potion to make someone love you. Would that be love? No, because love demands a choice. Love is the greatest good for all creatures according to Jesus;
Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
Evil, therefore cannot be destroyed without destroying freedom. Therefore to destroy evil would actually be evil. When God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden, He was giving mankind a choice to love Him. When He gave Lucifer a free will, He gave the possibility of evil coming into this world. So when Adam and Eve chose to rebel against God, God gave them the results of their choice which was death, pain, suffering and living on a cursed planet. They wanted to know what it would be like to know evil and they found out. God was providing them with everything good and when they chose to turn away from Him, He showed them what the absence of Him is like. I think of evil like this;
 Being a baseball fan I would often go watch the Milwaukee Brewers play night games at County Stadium. Before the game started, the lights were on, people were grilling bratwurst, corn, burgers, etc. in the parking lot. The sweet savor filled the air. Footballs and Frisbees were being passed from car to car and camraderie and good will was spread from person to person along with excited anticipation of the game. 4 hours later the parking lot was empty and in darkness. Rats roamed the lot scrounging for food. Homeless people sifted through garbage cans while unsavory characters looked for stragglers to mug. The sweet smell was replaced by smoldering coals giving off smoke. What changed in those four hours? The light went out!
  Evil, pain, suffering is what happens when the "light goes out". When human beings told God to "shove off" He partially honored our request. Since that time mankind has been born into a world of suffering, disease, genetic breakdown, and a planet that is slowly coming apart." C.S. Lewis says, "Goodness is, so to speak, itself; badness is only spoiled goodness. There must be something good first before it can be spoiled." This leads to the second point.

2. The fact that there is evil in this world is proof there is a God. Adam Steiger handles this point well in the following video.

     Why does the presence of evil and suffering point to God?
  A. "If there isn't a God, why is there so much good in this world?" Augustine, theologian. In other words, if evolution is true and we are cosmic accidents in a world where the weak are prey and the strong survive, then we would expect tragedy as a norm and death and suffering as part of life. The human species advances on this. Yet we are surprised and shocked and indignant when the innocent suffer. The fact that we even have a word in our vocabulary as tragedy reveals that we expect good. Where does that good come from? The source of good - God. He gives common grace to the righteous and unrighteous in such amounts that we are taken aback when the norm is broken. We were just at the beach where builders build high rises just yards from the surf because we expect it to be held in place. Then we are indignant when a rogue wave leaves the border. We see it on the news in shock and horror. Why doesn't this happen daily? God's goodness. We take Him for granted.

B. You can't have it both ways
    "If you have a God great enough to be mad at because He hasn't stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have a God great enough to have good reasons that we finite, limited creatures might not understand for allowing it to continue. You can't have it both ways." Tim Keller.
Imagine a 3 year old being taken to the pediatrician for shots. Maybe you don't have to imagine. They don't understand why their parent tearfully holds them down and why the evil nurse is inflicting pain. Or imagine you are a 6 year old and you are moving to a different city because your parents got better jobs. You are being uprooted, taken from all your friends, out of your comfort zone and you are scared, angry, anxious, fearful, and mad at your parents for doing this to you. However, in both these illustrations, 20 years from then you understand and may be even doing it to your kids. Could it be that a God so big that He can make this whole world by speaking it into existence is big enough to have reasons we don't understand?
        Alvin Plantinga uses the "no-see-ums" illustration. He states, "If you look into your pup tent for a St. Bernard, and you don't see one, it is reasonable to assume that there is no St. Bernard in your tent. But if you look into your pup tent for no-see-ums and you don't see them, it is not reasonable to assume they aren't there because after all no one can see them. Many assume that if there were good reasons for evil and suffering they would be accessible to our minds, more like St. Bernards than no-see-ums, but why should that be the case?" (this illustration would not work for Johnny Bravo)

 How conceited of us to say we are smarter or know better than God. Isn't that sort of what God told Job?

Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

² “Who is this that obscures my plans
    with words without knowledge?

² Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?
    Let him who accuses God answer him!”

³ Then Job answered the Lord:

⁴ “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you?
    I put my hand over my mouth.
⁵ I spoke once, but I have no answer—
    twice, but I will say no more.”

⁶ Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm:

⁷ “Brace yourself like a man;
    I will question you,
    and you shall answer me" Job 38:1,2 40:2-7

C. The dilemma is really a quadrilemma
      What in the world does that mean? Ravi Zacharias recently co-wrote a book on suffering where he discusses this. Basically he is saying that the argument Epicurus came up with that I listed at the top of this blog was a dilemma. If God is 1. All-good He would defeat evil and 2. If God is all powerful He could defeat evil. Since evil is not defeated then that God can't exist because He hasn't done anything about the evil.
     First off, before we get to the quadrilemma, God has done something about evil.
      a. He gave us the law in Exodus 20 to reveal what is wrong and how to avoid many consequences of evil.
      b. He gave us a conscience to know what is wrong  Romans 2:12-15
      c. He gave us power to do what is right through the Holy Spirit Romans 8:12-15
      d. He sent His Son to defeat evil officially at the cross. Col. 2:14-16  Heb.2:14,15
      e. Eventually God will send His Son to defeat evil actually. Rev. 19-22
 
     This leads us back to the quadrilemma. Points one and two are that God is all good and God is all powerful. Ravi Zacharias adds two more points to the argument. We are forgetting that God is 3. All knowing and 4. Eternal. Therefore we must surmise that even though evil is not defeated God knows it will be and understands why it is here and has a purpose for it above our understanding, and He has all eternity to do it. Therefore the quadrilemma goes;
If God is
 1. All-good He would defeat evil 
 2. If God is all powerful He could defeat evil.

 3. If God is all knowing He could have a purpose for evil to temporarily exist

 4. If God is eternal there is no time frame on defeating evil

Since evil is not yet defeated then we can be assured it will be.

  Now this argument is totally changed by adding two more qualities of God to it. Mankind is like a reader of a novel who read half the book and is criticizing the novelist for all the problems of the characters.

D. If there is no God, you can't call anything good or evil?
   "If the universe is so bad, how on earth did humans ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good creator? The very presence of these ideas in our minds - evil, goodness of God, standard of goodness need to be accounted for. My argument, as an atheist, was that God was cruel and unjust. How did I get my ideas of 'cruel' and 'unjust'?" C.S.Lewis
      We talked about this in the 1st blog on apologetics, but if there is no God, no absolute authority, then to come up with words such as "good" and "evil" are meaningless - "good" according to what standard? "Evil" according to what standard? Even though people claim there are no absolutes, they don't and can't live that way. The famous atheist Bertrand Russell said early in his life, "There is no God, therefore there is no good or evil." Near his death he amended that and said, "To love is good and to hate is evil." If there is no God or absolute truth, then you can't make that statement. The very fact that we call something evil points to God.

E. Some suffering can be good
   Can you imagine a world without anything going wrong? It's difficult. Hollywood writers acknowledge that difficulty.

 I know it is a weak example but being a Brewer fan, the year they win the World Series will be much greater than when the Giants win every other year. The year the Badgers are national champions will be so much sweeter than the year Alabama wins it because it happens all the time.
    Think of your worst times of suffering in your life. Do you look back on them and see the growth that occurred during those times? Joseph said, "You meant it for evil but God meant it for good". Paul had a "thorn in the flesh" which caused him great suffering. He prayed repeatedly that God would take it away but it persisted. Paul realized that this "thorn" made him humble and made him rely on God's power not his own. Job is the famous sufferer of the Bible. He questioned God why and begged to be delivered. What happened? God showed up and that was enough. The writer of Hebrews says that Jesus prayed passionate prayers to God in the garden in the midst of His suffering. What happened? He was heard! Not delivered but God showed up. Suffering brings us close to God. Suffering also is a megaphone screaming out that this world is not our home. There is a Heaven coming where all that's wrong will be made right and it makes us long for the Kingdom of God even more. Suffering is going to make our future life and joy infinitely greater.
    On a practical sense, what appears to kill people with leprosy is that the nerve or pain fibers in the body are destroyed by the disease process. Thus people touch hot stoves and don't know it. They step on glass and are unaware it is embedded. They wear shoes that erode into the skin because they don't know the shoes are too tight. Eventually these injuries become infected leading to sepsis and so on.

 

F. Quit blaming God and do something about it

 

     "You give them something to eat" Matt.14:16

 

 

If a drunk driver kills someone, do you blame God? Do you blame Hitler or God for the murder of 7 million Jews? God gave me a mind to use. I can either use it to build a bomb or find a cure for cancer.
How can we blame God for starving babies in Etheopia when the best selling books in America are on dieting and how to take off extra fat. The Earth produces enough food to give every person on this planet 3000 calories a day. The problem is that some hoard and others go to bed starving." If Christians tithed, they would have another $143 billion available to empower the poor and spread the gospel. Studies by the United Nations suggest that an additional $70-$80 billion a year would be enough to provide access to essential services like basic health care and education for all the poor of the earth." Ronald Sider. Did you know that just $10 billion a year would bring clean water to the whole world. Lest we think that this is just a "God of the Christians" problem, during the month of Ramadan when Muslims fast during the day, their expenditure for food goes up 50% as they over consume in the evening. Hindus let people starve on the streets of India while food sources such as cows walk the streets in plain sight of the ones lower in the caste system due to bad Karma.

     The Christian gospel teaches us that evil and suffering are contrary to God's plan. They are the absence of God. We must and are commanded to put God into these areas through social justice. The Christian God does not tell us to stand by and be aloof to these problems but to reverse the curse. God does not stand aloof to the suffering in this world but entered it Himself and became a victim of evil. "When we look at the cross we still don't know why God allows evil and suffering to continue, but we do know that it can't be because He was indifferent or detached from our condition." Tim Keller

 

"For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is - limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death - He had the honesty and courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He was playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile." Dorothy Sayers