100 Sermon Illustrations on Theodicy

Sermon in Job series. Failure of Job's Three Friends Job 4-11

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WHEN FRIENDS FAIL

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I. Wrong words at the wrong time.

II. Job's three friends.

A. Eliphaz, the Behaviorist. Job 4-5

B. Bildad, the Traditionalist. Job 8

C. Zophar, the Religionist. Job 11

III. What Job's friends did, and you shouldn't.

A. Make false assumptions about how our hurting friend feels.

B. Make false assumptions about God's plan behind the trouble.

C. Have a patronizing attitude.

D. Be blunt, uncaring, and unsympathetic.

IV. What to do.

A. "Be quick to listen, slow to speak." James 1:19

B. Listening requires an understanding spirit.

C. Show compassion.

V. The ultimate solution. 1 Timothy 2:5

A. Three things that won't work.

B. What we need is an arbitrator, a mediator. 9:33

#60

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“I’m sure you must be wondering why God let this happen to YOU.” Friends who visited me in the hospital after I had been seriously injured in an automobile accident said that, or some variant of it, to me many times. “No,” I would respond, “I don’t ask that question. I think it is an exercise in futility.”

“But it is natural to ask that!” some objected, implying that if I were not asking why God let it happen, I ought to be.

My friends were being kind, of course. They were saying, subliminally, “We think you are a good person and God shouldn’t let bad things happen to good people who are trying to serve him – unless, of course, he is bringing about some specially fine result.” They shared the common belief that God only lets GOOD things happen to good (Christian) people, and so eventually we will see that these apparently bad things really turn out to be good.

That is a comforting thought we would all like to embrace. But a realistic reading of the Bible indicates something is lacking in that view of God, the world we live in, and our place as human beings in it.

God has placed us in a world in which moral evil, suffering, and death are universal. All of us will die — Christians and non-Christians — regardless of our devotion to God. All of us have bones that can be broken when they conflict with the laws of gravity, or are damaged by disease. Christians and non-Christians seem equally subject to most of the lethal diseases of this world: cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure. Most of us have wept with Christian parents who have lost a child because of leukemia or an auto accident. Bombs dropped in war on “enemy” cities kill men, women, and children — Christians and non-Christians alike — regardless of whether the bombs are dropped by Christians or non-Christians. Christians share fully the pain and sorrow of this world.

God apparently does not make us more immune than our non-Christian friends. Pain, sorrow, and death are a part of this world of sin. We hurt, we mourn, we struggle with long-term problems that seem to have no answers and no relief.

Yet we intuitively cling to the idea that God is providing us with some special protection from the terrible things that would otherwise happen. Many times I have breathed a fervent “Thank you, Lord,” when we narrowly missed a calamity of some kind. Most of us, if we missed a plane on which we were scheduled and that plane later crashed, would feel that God had miraculously preserved us. But on that fatal flight also may have been a Christian pilot, Christian flight attendants, and many Christian passengers whom God did not choose to deliver. Who of us can ever explain the terrible 1981 private plane wreck in Alaska that took to death the head and founder of a mission board plus three devoted missionaries and a consultant?

“GOOD” IS SOMETIMES STRANGE

Our determination to find “good” reasons for the tragedies of life sometimes leads to strange conclusions. A young man once told me he believed God had let his father die so that he, the son, would be eligible for the social security benefits that permitted him to attend college. I wondered what great benefit God had in mind for his mother and three younger brothers and sisters!

Romans 8:28 teaches, I believe, that God does bring blessings even out of bad situations. But that is quite different from saying that God CAUSES, plans, or even permits tragic happenings BECAUSE of the good that can come out of them. We know that God is sovereign, but we also know that, in his sovereignty, God has placed us in a world of sin and suffering from which we have no immunity.

Jesus was not immune to pain and suffering, nor were his disciples. In the biblical account of the death of John the Baptist, there is no clue as to why God permitted John to be beheaded in a silly display of power by Herod. So far as we know, Jesus did not tell his disciples either that great good would result from it, or that they should “praise the Lord” for the tragedy. He just went away alone to mourn John’s death.

God’s love and concern for John the Baptist, or for us, does not place us in a protected position. After all, God loves my non-Christian neighbor just as much as he loves me. He is just as concerned about the well-being of the pagan as he is about that of the Christian. “The rain falls on the just and on the unjust,” and so do the sunshine, the floods, the good crop years, and the bad crop years. We have no special claim on God’s love or care because we are Christians.

But God does have a special claim on our love because we belong to him through the redemption of Christ. When we commit ourselves to Christ, our attitude toward God changes — not his attitude toward us. His attitude toward us — before we became Christians as well as since — has always been one of loving concern.

SPROUTING WINGS

Lying in my hospital bed after many visits – from people who posed the question, “Why did God let this happen to you?” I tried to imagine a world in which God always delivers “good” people from “bad” things. I thought of my own accident, in which our car was struck by one that went through a red light. In my protected imaginary world, I suppose God would have made the other driver’s car suddenly sprout wings so that it would fly over our car without impacting. Or perhaps God should make it impossible for any driver to go through a red light and hit another car. Maybe God should make cars stop automatically at red lights regardless of the attention of drivers.

In such a God-protected world, brakes would never fail on a car or truck. Airplanes would automatically be free of all defects — mechanical or those of the pilot or weather — especially if there were Christians on board. Christians would suddenly become very popular people if God gave special protection to them. You would want to be sure there was one in every plane, in every car, and, to protect from fire, in every hotel.

When we put it that way, it seems ludicrous, of course. Yet our underlying assumption is that God is supposed to give us some special protection from the unusual dangers and tragedies of life-unless he has some very special blessing in wait that will far outweigh the suffering and pain involved.

After all, does not the Bible say, “A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand; but it will not come near you ... he will give his angels charge of you to guard you in all your ways” (Psalm 91:7,11)?

Yes, but in our troubles his angels still have charge, to keep us in all our ways. To keep us from what? From illness, accidents, disappointments, poverty, sorrow, death? Sometimes God does deliver us from these things; sometimes not. But God and his angels always keep us from separation from him. That is the most crucial way we need to be kept.

SHORTCHANGING SIN

To assume that God lets bad things happen so that we can experience greater good is to deny the basic reality of sin and its evil nature. Christ gave his life to deliver us from the ultimate penalty of sin and moral evil. When we say that good will always be the ultimate outcome of any “bad” happening, we are saying that moral evil does not really exist — it only seems that way to our mortal minds.

When an innocent child is murdered (or John the Baptist), that is EVIL. Yes, God can, and often does, bring good results (conversions, family reconciliations, and so on) from such horrible events. But no parent would choose to let his child be cruelly murdered SO THAT these “good things” would result. Friends who have faced tragic losses are not usually comforted by well-meaning friends who tell them that “someday you will understand God’s reasons.”

“VICTORY” AS A HANDICAP

When we face tragedy of any type, we can, and often do, grow through the experience — often after weeks or months of painful mourning and “working through.” Those Christians who feel they must be “victorious” in the face of tragedy usually later go through a normal, painful (sometimes secretive) mourning time. Their desire to be a “testimony” often only delays the mourning and the slow, genuine healing that God can and does bring.

The false belief that God is supposed to protect us from the tragedies and pain common to humanity, or that he “sends” us such tragedies only to “teach something” we need to know or to “bring some great blessing,” may impair our ability to open ourselves to God’s healing.

That false belief was, in part, the problem of Job’s comforters. They said in essence, “God doesn’t let bad things happen to good people. Therefore, Job, you obviously are not really good; there must be some hidden sin in your life, and you must admit it. Otherwise you are impugning Cod.”

Some very profound statements appear in the advice of Job’s friends. The difficulty was that what they said did not apply to Job. Actually, Job had much the same concept of God as his friends had: God was not supposed to let such tragedies as his happen to people who had tried hard to serve and to please him. Job, in his anger and frustration, complained bitterly to God about God’s treatment of him.

In Job 38, God finally intervenes with the words, “who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (38:2), and in chapter 40, “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?” (40:2). Job’s answer was, “Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer thee?” His final response to God was “I have heard thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes,” (42:5-6).

According to the biblical account, Job never did learn why God permitted him to suffer so deeply and so long. (The reader knows that the suffering was due to Satan, to the presence of evil.) No particular “good” came out of it except Job’s deep encounter with God, and the marvelous account of it that is part of our Old Testament. At the end of the story, God gives Job double what he had before; but that was simply the grace of God and not directly related to his previous losses or his long suffering. I am sure Job never stopped mourning for his first seven sons and three daughters who died in the violent storm that struck their home.

Perhaps the real point of the Book of Job is not to answer the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” but rather to answer, “How does a person of faith respond to the tragedies and joys that come in life?” (Job had already been tested by the joys of success.) Does our trust and confidence in God grow, or is it destroyed? Do we reach more deeply into fellowship with God? Do we gain more appreciation for those who help us or those whom we can help? Do we use the changed circumstances or changed relationships to serve God and to grow?

RESTING IN THE ARMS OF JESUS

In the worst days following my accident, I had no energy to ponder deep questions or to think about the “good” that could come out of it. I had hardly strength to smile and converse a little with family members who came in for short visits. But I found it required no energy at all simply to rest in the arms of Jesus and experience his healing presence. Moving in and out of half-consciousness, I knew I was not alone. Cards with the simple message “we are praying for you” took on great significance, for I had no energy to pray more than, “Let your healing power flow through these broken bones.” Supported by the prayers of friends, I felt no need to do more.

Our periods of helplessness may make us more sensitive to the needs of others, or they may make us bitter or depressed. We may become more conscious of our need of God and more conscious of his presence, or we may become angry with God.

DONE IN BY SUCCESS

Our response to the good and bad happenings of our lives will largely determine whether we grow or deteriorate in them. Actually, people are as apt to be destroyed or damaged by good happenings as by bad — by fame, success, beauty, outstanding talents. These have sometimes led to inner poverty, insufferable ego, misery for family and friends, even suicide. Yet we rarely ask, “Why did God let those ‘good’ things or these ‘blessings’ come to this person?”

God gives us the capacity to respond to the ills and joys of life in ways that are constructive or destructive. Whether we respond negatively or positively, God’s love remains constant. He does not withdraw it because we respond badly. His presence is always there, whether or not we recognize it.

Why did God let that accident happen to me? I do not know, nor do I feel a need to ask. What I did need, and still need, God gave me: a deep and abiding sense of his presence. And I am content with the words of Deuteronomy 29:29: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

God has revealed in his Word a great deal about what I should do — far more than enough to consume my energy and mental capacity. The secret things I will leave to him.

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Alvera Mickelson is Assistant Professor of Journalism at Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota. She and her husband, Berkeley, co-authored the two-volume, “Family Bible Encyclopedia” (Cook, 1978).

Three forms of suffering:

1. Misfortunes and trials.

2. Sanctification. (struggle with sin, persecution)

3. Vicarious. (suffering for others)

Suffering produces muscles. Stoics saw life as a concentration camp, but Christians do not. Christians know that pain can drive us to the Source of love.

Job’s problem is not that of pain, nor even suffering in a wider sense, but the theological one, why God had not acted as all theory and his earlier experiences demanded he should. Being a child of his age, he had naturally built up his life on the theory that God’s justice implied the equation of goodness and prosperity.

Taken out of their context, the words of his friends and Elihu are more acceptable than many of the rasher utterances of Job. They are rejected by God, not because they are untrue, but because they are too narrow. The friends create their picture of God only by a careful selection of evidence. Job’s agony is caused by the breakdown of his theological world-picture.

This explains the apparently unsatisfactory climax in which God does not answer Job’s questions or charges, but though he proclaims the greatness of his all-might, not of his ethical rule, Job is satisfied. He realizes that his concept of God collapsed because it was too small; his problems evaporate when he realizes the greatness of God.

The book does not set out to answer the problem of suffering but to proclaim a God so great that no answer is needed, for it would transcend the finite mind if given; the same applies to the problems incidentally raised.

Evening message derives from Rabbi Kushner's book.

WHY DOES GOD LET GOOD PEOPLE SUFFER?

I. People deserve what they get. Isaiah 3:10-11, Genesis 38:7,

Proverbs 12:21, Job 14:7

A. Positive points.

1) No one is perfect. Mark 10:18, Romans 3:10-18,23

2) Therefore no one is totally innocent.

B. Negative points.

1) Teaches people to blame themselves.

a) [Boy needs glasses after reading Playboy.]

2) Doesn't fit the facts.

a) Much evil happens to innocent people.

b) Evil people often get off scotch-free.

C. Balance.

1) Sometimes we get exactly what we deserve.

2) Other times we suffer as part of a fallen world system.

II. People get what they deserve, over time. Psalm 92, 1 Timothy 5:24

A. Kushner: Wishful thinking.

Even over time it doesn't always work out.

B. Holwick: However, in eternity it will.

III. God has his own reasons that we are not in position to judge. Job 42

A. Novel "the Bridge of San Luis Rey" (1924) by Thornton Wilder.

(Five who die in bridge collapse had recently resolved

a problematic situation in their lives and were now

about to enter a new phase. Perhaps it "was" an

appropriate time for each of them to die, thinks the

narrator-priest.)

1) Principle doesn't work on larger-scale disasters.

B. Life as a tapestry.

1) We see chaos, loose ends; God sees beautiful rug.

a) Medieval sage: "Tell me not why I must suffer.

Assure me only that I suffer for Thy sake."

IV. Suffering is educational.

A. It cures us of our faults and makes us better people.

1) God punishes us as a father punishes a child.

1 Cor 11:32, Heb 12:5-11

B. But no clear connection between fault and punishment.

1) Kushner offended by suggestion retarded children are

created so we will learn compassion and gratitude.

2) Why should God distort someone else's life to enhance

our spiritual sensitivity?

C. Concept of testing. Gen 22, Abraham & Isaac

1) God only tests those who can take it. 1 Cor 10:13

a) He knows who is weak.

2) But many good people apparently fail their "test".

V. Suffering liberates us from world of pain, leads to better place.

A. Tragedy should bring rejoicing.

B. But such rejoicing is a rejection of hard reality.

1) We are persuading ourselves evil is good. Isa 5:20

2) Wishful thinking can blind us to sense of injustice.

Sermon on meaning of tragedies, like Hurricane Andrew.

WHY FLORIDA? Luke 13:1-5

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I. The tragedy of Hurricane Andrew.

A. Southern Florida is devastated.

B. Why this area, and not New Jersey?

C. If God is good and all-powerful, why would he let it happen?

II. God and disasters.

A. God is the ruler of creation. Job 38:24-25

B. God can use disasters to punish for sin. Deut 28:58-61

C. Not all disasters are due to sin. Luke 13:1-5

D. More often, they are a side effect of living in a fallen world.

III. God and evil.

A. Our finite minds cannot fathom God's ultimate purposes.

B. NT teaches that God himself has suffered from evil, in Jesus.

IV. A greater calamity is coming.

A. Huge storms will precede Second Coming of Jesus.

B. Greatest tragedy is not being ready for Jesus.

Poem "God is Cold" by agnostic Stephen Crane, famous as the author of "The Red Badge of Courage."

A man adrift on a slim spar

A horizon smaller than the rim of a bottle

Tented waves rearing lashy dark points

The near whine of froth in circles.

God is cold.

The incessant raise and swing of the sea

And growl after growl of crest

The sinkings, green, seething, endless

The upheaval half-completed.

God is cold.

A horizon smaller than a doomed assassin's cap,

Inky, surging tumults

A reeling, drunken sky and no sky

A pale hand sliding from a polished spar.

God is cold.

The puff of a coat imprisoning air;

A face kissing the water-death

A weary slow sway of a lost hand

And the sea, the moving sea, the sea.

God is cold.

Crane's angry lyrics reflect the despairing heart-song of today's secular consensus: if God is there, he cares little about humankind's needs - God has an arctic heart. If the truth be known, most Christians have had similar thoughts of God. The predictable atheism of our sinful natures naturally quarrels with God when we go through hard times.

Where is God when evil seems to win?

On March 26, 1976, Vicky Olivas went for a job interview in a Los Angeles warehouse and was viciously attacked. She ended up shot in the neck, was paralyzed and will be in a wheelchair forever. The criminal, who had three prior convictions for attempted rape, was jailed only three years.

1. Injustice by design.

a. Life isn't fair.

2. God's perspective on it all.

a. God can use tragedy for his glory.

b. Pain forces us to focus on the now.

c. Justice is meant to be unbalanced on earth.

3. Looking at life from the end.

4. All is just in the end.

The year was 1957, the month October, I was 21 years old in my second year

at the Northwest Baptist Theological College. I bought a book and while

thumbing through it, my eyes fell on a picture that robbed me of my childhood

faith. It was a picture by Dore' titled, "The End of All Flesh."

As I stared at the picture, I realized that I had been viewing the flood

through the eyes of a child. My Sunday school papers showed pictures of Noah

building the ark and the animals entering it two by two. I could recall

pictures of the ark floating on the vast lonely ocean, but the painting by

Dore' revealed a cataclysmic tragedy.

As I looked at the picture I asked, "God, how could you do it?"

Dore's painting depicted the last pinnacle of land being flooded. It was a

rock on which parents had hoisted three or four children. The children shared

the rock with a mother tiger who was trying to save her cubs.

"God, how could you do it, those children weren't wicked murderers!"

[Judgment is never pretty, but in accordance with God's character it is

necessary.]

#4392

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A passenger jet was suffering through a severe thunderstorm. As the passengers were being bounced around by the turbulence a young woman turned to a minister sitting next to her and with a nervous laugh asks, "Reverend, you're a man of God, can't you do something about this storm?"

To which he replies, "Lady, I'm in sales, not management."

A liberal Baptist discusses some of the moral dilemmas of the Old Testament [Holwick]:

When I was an early adolescent, I decided to read the Bible straight through. I had been exposed to carefully curated snippets of Joshua, but the full genocidal thrust of the narrative was a revelation. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for those poor Canaanites, driven out of their native land so the children of Israel, after 40 years of wilderness wandering, could find a place to land. It seemed unfair.

And yet, there it was in black and white.

I concocted a zero-sum solution. There wasn’t room for everyone in the land of Canaan. So, if Israel found a home, somebody had to surrender their property.

My facile solution to the genocidal bits of the Bible held up pretty well until I realized universal compassion, love and forgiveness are central to the teaching of Jesus.

In the churches of my youth, the genocidal biblical texts received very little attention, and the radical ethics of Jesus fared little better. The moment we consider the implications of loving our enemies, we can’t help thinking, “But what about Joshua?” This works in reverse as well. At least it does for budding Christians, like me, who had decided to read the Bible straight through. I call it the Jesus-Joshua problem.

The traditional solution doesn’t work

In his book The God I Don’t Understand, Christopher J.H. Wright “solves” the Jesus-Joshua problem by defining God’s commands to Joshua as an expression of divine justice. The Canaanites, the Bible reports, were exceedingly bad people. Not only were they sexual deviants, they sacrificed their own children to cruel gods. Of course, as the book of Deuteronomy freely admits, the Israelites weren’t much better. And, as the story of the flood in Genesis suggests, God came perilously close to wiping out the entire race. So, if God limited the general slaughter to the Canaanites, we can interpret God’s constraint as a severe mercy.

But this doesn’t work. Even if every adult man and woman in Canaan richly deserved to be butchered like hogs, what of the children? What kind of a God would sanction, let alone mandate, the wholesale slaughter of helpless infants (to say nothing of their parents)?

In his Commentaries on the Book of Joshua, John Calvin admits that, all things being equal, it would seem “arrogant and barbarous” and “contrary to the feelings of humanity” for the Israelites to “trample on the necks of kings, and hang up their dead bodies on gibbets.” However, the sage of Geneva argues, since the cruel deed was carried out at the command of God Almighty, it must not be questioned.

Jesus appears to disagree with Calvin’s assessment:

Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for bread, would give a stone? Or if the child asked for a fish, would give a snake? If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9-11)

Jesus takes it as self-evident that God is infinitely more loving, more forgiving, and more compassionate than we are. This is why we can pray with confidence. At the very least, we can safely assume that God is as kind and loving as we are.

It isn’t enough to refrain from butchering our neighbors, Jesus says. We must love them. We must forgive them. We must pray for them. We must feed them when they are hungry, care for them when they are sick, visit them when they get locked up. No exceptions. (You can understand why the core teaching of Jesus is generally avoided in sermons and Sunday school lessons.)

We may fall short of this lofty standard, but God does not.

What if the violent conquest of Canaan never happened?

For the past century, Old Testament scholars have crafted an elegant solution to the ethical problems associated with the conquest of Canaan: It didn’t happen. No conquest, no genocide. No genocide, no Jesus-Joshua problem!

So, if Canaan wasn’t settled by bloody conquest, how did the people of Israel get there? Theories abound. Some posit a gradual migration of Semitic tribes. Others suggest the people who came to be known as “Israel” always had lived in the region.

Scholarly debate on the subject was revolutionized by the discovery of the “Amarna Letters“ in Egypt. Discovered in the late 19th century, these letters provide a window into the practical workings of the Egyptian Empire between 1360–1332 BCE.

The Amarna letters make clear that thousands of slaves were routinely shifted from Canaan to Egypt and back again as economic needs evolved. A number of dates have been surmised for the biblical Exodus from Egypt, but most scholars agree the biblical narrative cannot be taken literally. In an article in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Ronald Hendel argues that between 1479 and 1148 BCE, “the land of Canaan was a province of the Egyptian empire.”

To illustrate the harsh reality of the Egyptian imperial project, Hendel shares this boast from Ramesses III (1186-1154 BCE):

I have brought back in great numbers those that my sword has spared, with their hands tied behind their backs before my horses, and their wives and children in tens of thousands, and their livestock in hundreds of thousands. I have imprisoned their leaders in fortresses bearing my name, and I have added to them chief archers and tribal chiefs, branded and enslaved, tattooed with my name, and their wives and children have been treated in the same way.

When Egypt’s grip on the region eventually loosened, bands of Canaanite slaves almost certainly migrated back to their ancestral home and, Hendel surmises, elements of the Exodus account may be rooted in this process.

Narratives shaped by helpless suffering

So, if the accounts in Exodus, Deuteronomy and Joshua shouldn’t be taken as sober history, how did these stories emerge? They certainly weren’t invented out of whole cloth. More likely, the stories that now comprise the biblical book of Joshua originated as distinct units cherished by the various tribes of Israel. Only later, in a process covering several centuries, were these narratives woven into a single connected story.

Most Old Testament scholars believe the Deuteronomic History (Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) assumed its present form in the years just before, during and immediately following the Babylonian captivity in the sixth century BCE.

The people of Judah wrestled with a single perplexing question: If we are God’s chosen people, why have we been reduced to ruin? It all came down to idolatry. As the Deuteronomic history makes clear, the children of Israel committed to loving and obeying Yahweh alone. Instead, they were seduced into idolatrous alliances with the neighboring nations.

All of which explains God’s insistence that the nations of Canaan must be utterly obliterated. Had we obeyed this command, the argument went, we wouldn’t be in this pickle.

This outlook explains why Ezra was so insistent that the people returning from Babylonian captivity must divorce their foreign wives.

Not everyone agreed. When God chose to spare the people of Nineveh, the prophet Jonah was outraged. He had been hoping for the kind of massacre God visited upon the citizens of Jericho, but God let him down.

If the scholarly consensus is right, the genocidal ambitions attributed to Joshua reflect the agony of weakness, not the arrogance of power. The people of Israel had watched helplessly as their children and fragile grandparents died by starvation and the sword. They stood by helplessly as Solomon’s temple was ground to powder. The book of Lamentations captures the languishing spirit of the times powerfully.

So does the closing stanzas of Psalm 137:

O daughter Babylon, you devastator!

Happy shall they be who pay you back

what you have done to us!

Happy shall they be who take your little ones

and dash them against the rock!

Churches as safe places for hard questions

The suggestion that the text of Joshua doesn’t reflect actual history tends to produce two equal and opposite reactions. Skeptics take scholarly opinion as validation; conservative Christians recoil in horror. If we can’t trust Joshua, they cry, why should we trust anything we read in the Bible?

Few preachers, even in relatively progressive churches, would resolve the Jesus-Joshua problem by questioning the historicity of the sacred text. Similarly, few religious thought leaders are willing to address the radicality of Jesus. Whenever possible, we are encouraged to be kind and forgiving. But the radical implications of loving our enemies receive, at best, superficial treatment.

We conduct guided tours of the Bible that steer clear of the rough neighborhoods. Neither Jesus nor Joshua is taken seriously. But when faithful Christians resolve to read the Bible straight through, the Jesus-Joshua problem can’t be avoided. The God of Joshua and the God of Jesus simply cannot be reconciled, and yet both are clearly present in the text. Those who take the Bible most seriously are left to wrestle with the Jesus-Joshua problem on our own.

As a consequence, millions of American Christians wander in the wilderness between a cool skepticism and a fearful biblicism. Unable to harmonize the Jesus-God with the Joshua-God, we end up worshiping an insipid deity who asks little of us. My problem isn’t primarily with the skeptics and the biblicists; both reactions are perfectly understandable. But what of those of us who can’t find a home in either camp?

Here’s the thing: We can’t commit to the enemy-love of Jesus until we’ve come to terms with Joshua. Is there a place in the church for these hard conversations? I hope so. Because, if we can’t talk about this stuff, the Jesus-Joshua problem is bound to get worse.

________

Alan Bean is executive director of Friends of Justice, an alliance of community members that advocates for criminal justice reform. He lives in Arlington, Texas

There are certain questions I come to expect now. After almost 10 years in ministry, there is only slight variation on wording or turn of phrase. I don’t even have to guess what might be asked of me anymore, for I know the questions before they are even asked. Is there a God? Does God care about me? If so, why does God allow suffering?

For many, these questions are intellectual pursuits that need to be answered for constructing a sound apologetic. For others, however, the questions come from the deepest places of the heart. They come because of personal experience with suffering of one form or another. When the fervent prayers of righteous men and women do not prevent the cancer from spreading, or the child from dying, or the plane from crashing, or the marriage from failing, the questions come like water bursting through the dam. Is God really there? Does God even care? If God cares about me, then why doesn’t God do something about the pain?

Unfortunately, these questions are not unique to my ministry or my generation. They have been asked for millennia. The technical term for the problem of suffering is called theodicy. Theodicy is a word invented in the seventeenth century by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, one of the great intellectual thinkers of the Enlightenment period.(1) Theodicy attempts to explain how and why there can be suffering in the world if God is all-powerful and loving. In trying to solve this problem, some thinkers have denied the omnipotence of God; God is all-loving, but not able to do anything about suffering. Others dispense of the notion that God is all-loving, at least in any conventional understanding. But if God is not love, then God is not God.

Yet beyond the intellectual wrangling over this problem, the experience of suffering in light of both the goodness and power of God has caused many to doubt God, and others to walk away from faith altogether. If God does not prevent suffering, and if God does not care about the sufferer, then God does not exist in any meaningful way.

The writers of Scripture wrestled with these questions too. Often, they provided different ways of answering these questions. Some believed that suffering resulted from sin. Others believed that God causes suffering as a form of punishment. Still others asserted that suffering brings redemption.(2)

In Mark’s gospel, a simple story about a boat caught in a terrible storm provides an altogether different answer framed around three questions. When evening had come, Jesus and his disciples got into a boat, most likely on the Sea of Galilee, in order to “go over to the other side” (Mark 4:35-41). In the course of their travel, a fierce storm arose suddenly and violently. It was so intense that the waves were not only breaking over the boat, but the boat was filling with water and on the verge of sinking. Jesus, asleep in the stern of the boat, Mark tells us, was resting soundly when the disciples roused him with their fearful, first question: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Jesus doesn’t answer their question, but instead answers the wind and the waves, “Peace, be still.” His exhortation to the natural elements of wind and water was nevertheless intended for the disciples as well, for he returns their question with a second question: “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” To which the disciples reply to one another with the ultimate question, “Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?”

For some reason, we think that because Jesus is in the boat with us, suffering will not come our way. But suffering does come, and the wind roars around us and the sky turns black, and the storm of all storms appears to envelop us in darkness and terror. Jesus, don’t you care that we are perishing becomes an incredulous statement because we think as Christians we are somehow immune from the troubles of life. But Jesus’s answer reminds us that faith does not insulate us from life’s storms. Indeed, as Craig Barnes has written “Faith...has little to do with our doctrines or even with our belief that Jesus could come up with a miracle if he would only pay attention. Faith has everything to do with seeing that we have the Savior on board”(3)

In the midst of our questions about suffering, there is Jesus in the storm of doubt, in the tempest of despair, in the gale of defeat, resting calmly in the assurance of God’s care in the storm. His presence with the disciples in the storm tells us more about who he is -- neither removed from suffering, nor always preventing suffering -- then why we suffer. After all, that’s the more important question to answer: “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

And like the disciples, we too can be filled with awe and wonder at the God “of all creation who does not explain everything and is mysterious -- too mysterious to fit our formulas for better living...and who brings mystery into our lives because we do not know how God will intervene.”(4) As you ask your questions, may you also hear his answer: “Peace, be still.”

________

1. Bart Ehrman, GOD’S PROBLEM (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 8.

2. See for examples Proverbs 3:33, “The Lord’s curse is on the house of the wicked, but he blesses the abode of the righteous”; Amos 4:1-3, “[Y]ou cows of Bashan who oppress the poor, who crush the needy...the Lord God has sworn in his holiness: the time is surely coming upon you, when they shall take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fishhooks”; and Isaiah 53, the suffering Servant.

3. M. Craig Barnes, WHEN GOD INTERRUPTS (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 138.

4. Ibid., 135, 139.

________

Copyright © 2008 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #4849]

“Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will give us later.” Romans 8:18 NLT

THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING

On my shelf is a little books that asks a big question. It is titled DOES GOD CARE WHEN WE SUFFER? and was written by Randy Becton. Randy is a good friend and a cancer survivor who has spent much of his life ministering to people with terminal illnesses. Randy writes:

Of the hard “why” questions, “why is there suffering?” may be the hardest. This is probably because it not attacks us personally, but also because whenever the question is raised, the question of God’s part in suffering follows close behind... We are desperate for the meaning behind all this. We seek some someone to blame or deliver us, and that always leads to our view of God.

DOESN’T GOD CARE WHEN WE SUFFER?

Of course he does.

THEN WHY DOESN’T HE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?

He did. Becton sums it up this way:

The answer is the cross of Jesus Christ.... From now on all human suffering must be understood in the light of his suffering; it is the source of meaning, hope, and new life for sufferers. When someone cries out, “He doesn’t care. He’s immune to pain,” they are brought to the foot of the cross to see for themselves.... The cross and resurrection hold the key to the mystery of suffering.

________

Adapted from Embracing Eternity by Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins and Frank M. Martin (Tyndale House Publishers, 2004), p. 3

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[Original illustration at this number was added to HolwickID #6935]

A Presbyterian pastor's answers to issues brought up by the September 11 terrorist attack.

1. HOW CAN YOU TRUST GOD AFTER THIS KIND OF AN EVENT?

The Christian answer to issues of suffering and tragedy always has to do with the Cross. Imagine you are an admirer and companion of Jesus Christ during his ministry. He is such a powerful worker of miracles that disease and hunger are almost banished from the countryside when he is present. He is such a powerful teacher and spiritual guide that thousands of people hear him gladly and get hope. Then suddenly this man who is the one to help the whole country is cruelly, unjustly cut off in the very midst of his life -- at only age 33.

What if you stood at the foot of the cross in front of this apparently senseless act of violence and tragic waste of life, and you said, "I can never, ever trust God again after an event like this!" And what if you went home and completely renounced all belief in God saying, "This proves that God is either a monster or indifferent or he doesn't exist"? If you did that, you would have been missing the greatest act of God's love and redemption in history. But of course no one at that time (and only a few for a good while afterwards) could fathom what had happened.

The Cross of Jesus Christ is the main reason I can trust God after this kind of event. First, the Cross is the best proof that God is not remote from us in our suffering. (See question #3 and #5 below.) Second, the Cross and its aftermath shows us how dangerous it is to judge God on surface appearances. His way is to work strength through weakness and bring resurrection and new power through death.

2. IS THIS A JUDGMENT FROM GOD ON OUR COUNTRY?

I don't think we can infer from prosperity that God is pleased with us, nor can we know from disaster that he is displeased with us. In Romans 1:18ff Paul hints that the worst punishment may be to get the happy life you want! That way you never wake up to your pride, self-righteousness or need for him. On the other hand, Luke 21:16-19 is a remarkable assertion that God's loving protection of his people does not mean exemption for suffering. Jesus says, "They will put some of you to death. All men will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will perish." This is startling to us. We would think that 'not a hair of your head will perish' must mean that we can't be attacked and killed, but that is not so. Jesus is saying that God exercises the most detailed and loving control of our lives ("not a hair"), and that in the broad scope of things every event works out for our good and his glory (Romans 8:28). But our life-plan may still include terrible tragedy, just as did Jesus' life plan. (Why should servants be above their master?) What do we learn from all this?

We learn that we cannot be sure that disasters imply divine judgment nor that prosperity implies divine approval. So how can we know whether God is displeased with America or not? The only way to know that for sure is to consult the Scriptures and its standards.

But this does not mean we cannot 'hear God's voice' in a time of tragedy. We can. Jesus was also asked whether certain corporate and personal tragedies were "judgments" of God. In Luke 13 he was asked if a massacre and (ironically) a falling tower were signs of God's judgment on those killed. His answer was an unequivocal "no", but he added cryptically "you yourselves should repent". That fits with C.S. Lewis' famous statement that "in prosperity God whispers to us, but in adversity he shouts at us." God speaks to us in all troubles. So what is God saying in times of tragedy and suffering? I think the message is different depending on how touched you are by the disaster.

If you have actually lost a loved one, I think you are being called to look to the only God (so to speak) of all the faiths of the world who literally lost a child. Jesus was himself the victim of a hostile, physical attack. I don't think you will really be able to handle the brutality of life either with a) a general God who has not suffered, or with b) a universe without any God in it at all. Both of those options bring no consolation. If there is no God, then even your outrage is trivialized. This is just the way life is. There is no justice. On the other hand, if there is a general God up in the sky, how do we know he cares? But the God and Father of Jesus Christ gives us a new resource that comforts deeply. He proved his commitment to ending our suffering by getting involved in it himself.

If you have not directly lost a loved one, but rather find yourself dazed, shaken, and fearful, God is saying to you: "Wake up to your need for me and wake up to what real security is. No military power or technology or human factor can make you safe. Only in the very center of my will is there any safety. You don't have the human ability to control things. You need me." C.S. Lewis pointed out that times of war or disaster don't really increase the amount of misery and death in the world, but they concentrate it and wake us from our illusion that life is manageable. "If we had foolish hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we thought we were building up a heaven on earth, if we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned, and not a moment too soon. In ordinary times only the wise realize it. Now (in war-time) the stupidest of us knows it." (C.S.Lewis, "Learning in War-Time")

3. HOW DOES VENGEANCE NOT MANIFEST ITSELF IN THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY?

In most people's minds there is a false "either-or" between vengeance and forgiveness. But that is a mistake. Forgiveness is not simply resignation or capitulation to evil.

In vengeance we simply pommel the enemy to hurt them worse than we were hurt. Our motivation is neither the common good nor the upholding of justice and truth per se. We simply want to assuage our own pain by seeing our enemy in worse pain than we were. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is not 'letting him off scot free'. Forgiveness is a means of giving up the hate and the desire for personal vengeance so that we can then pursue justice and maybe even reconciliation. I have personally found that I can't really confront a wrong-doer effectively about his or her sin until I've forgiven it. Then I am sometimes able to help the person see their wrong, or at least I am able to wisely pursue justice and restitution. But if I keep my heart full of hate, I never get anything done except fuel the cycle of retaliation. When I aim not to bring a person to see the truth, but rather only to hurt them, I never get anywhere. In other words, forgiveness does not 'let a person off' -- rather it frees my heart to pursue justice and/or reconciliation, depending on the reaction of the wrongdoer.

At the very least, forgiveness prevents me from becoming as evil as the other party. The basic plot-dynamic of The Lord of the Rings revolves around the conundrum of the Great Ring of the Dark Lord. The 'good' people have found his ring, but they can't use his own power against him without becoming just like the one who made it. They can, as it were, defeat the Dark Lord, but only by becoming an evil Dark Lord in his place. Unless we forgive our enemies, our anger could turn us as demonic as it has turned them.

Now that we know what forgiveness is, how can we do it? I don't know how to do that without embracing the message of the cross. The Cross means at least that a) God so hates evil and injustice that he is willing to come suffer himself in order to end it, but b) we are so tainted by evil as well that Jesus had to die so that we could be forgiven. Both of these truths are absolutely essential for forgiveness. Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf puts it perfectly:

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans and exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one can be in the presence of [the Cross] for long without overcoming this double exclusion....When one knows that the torturer will not eternally triumph over the victim, one is freed to rediscover the torturer's humanity and imitate God's love for that person. And when one knows that the love of God is greater than [my] sin, one is free to see oneself in the light of the justice of God and so rediscover one's own sinfulness. (Volf, The Spacious Heart, p.57)

4. HOW DO BOTH NATION AND INDIVIDUAL COPE WITH GRIEF?

It is interesting to see that the basic process of grief works itself out at both the individual and the corporate level. First comes numbness, shock, and an air of unreality. In the first stage it is necessary to simply express emotions together. We hold hands, cry together, and embrace. It is not a time for moralizing and instructing and looking for lessons. It is a time to "weep with those who weep" (Rom.12:15).

But second comes a stage of anger and/or creeping despair. In this stage there is a persistent need to 'make sense out of all this'. People have to find a way to think about the tragedy so that it does not make the rest of their lives meaningless. Ironically, there seems to be no way for people to deal with grief at this level without having recourse to the basic gospel dynamic of death-leading-to-resurrection. This is the basic approach that the mayor and governor have invoked and used. They say: "Out of the loss of good things will come even greater good things. We will come together as a community as never before. We will be brave as we have not been before. We will find victory through this defeat and strength through our weakness. This 'death' will lead to a resurrected city better than the one before."

I personally believe that this is the right way for NYC to deal with its grief. It must reflect the gospel dynamic of death-into-resurrection at a civic level. Through this New York could become less a place of individualistic achievement and more of a community. Through this Americans could become on the one hand humbler and more sensitive to the injustice and pain in the world and yet more committed to and (rightly) proud of our nation than ever before. In summary, we could become stronger through this weakness, not just in spite of it. That is the basic gospel dynamic.

However, the very deepest and best way to handle grief is to believe and use the gospel itself on the heart. Unlike any other religion, Christianity has at its very heart an act of tragic and unjust suffering and death. It has at its heart a man literally abandoned by God, crying out and unheard, yet this is the way God brings his salvation and hope into the world! How does this help us?

First, when we trust in his death on our behalf, it takes away fear for ourselves. We know that now even death can't harm us. "Death used to be an executioner, but the gospel has made him just a gardener." George Herbert) This frees us to love and sacrifice for others in such a way that makes the broken world more livable. We don't need to amass power and wealth in order to prove ourselves. Second, when we see how the very best man who ever lived had to suffer, it undermines our own self-pity or bitterness. If God could bring life and good out of the tragedy of the cross, then he can work through other suffering as well. Third, the cross gives us hope for the whole future. The Cross means that God is so committed to ending the suffering and brokenness of the world that he would himself become embroiled in it and pay the ultimate cost! And if we ask: "Why isn't the suffering over yet?" the answer is: "We don't know, but here's the proof that he's committed to it! The cross!" Only Christianity has a God who has suffered, proving his commitment to us in our brokenness. "To our wounds only thy wounds can speak, and no God has wounds but thou alone." (Edward Shillito)

If I have hope like that -- not just for a slightly stronger city, but for a literal new creation -- then I can face anything. In "The Lord of the Rings," one character is facing terrible evil, and suddenly he looks at a star in the sky. "Like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now for a moment his own fate ... ceased to trouble him ... putting away all fear..." Hope is not the same as defiance. Many people will turn to defiance to deal with their grief and pain rather than to hope. Hope comes from a certainty that there is a Judge and a Redeemer. The Cross proves that God is both.

5. SHOULD AMERICA RETALIATE?

Under question #4 we looked at the problem with simple cries for vengeance. But what should America do now? This question moves outside of my area of competence and wisdom. But here are a few observations that should be kept in mind as we move forward.

This is 'post-modern' war, and it is different than anything we have seen before. a) First, there are no rules. (We can kill civilians, children, whatever.) b) Second, it is not nation-on-nation. It is an international network of world terrorism attacking the multi-national corporations of world capitalism. c) Third, it is 'semiotic', aimed not at factories and air bases but at our icons and symbols in order psychologically debilitate and demoralize. d) Fourth, it is deliberately and bitterly ironic. It uses no bombs or guns, but our own technology against us. It is the very picture of Neitzschean ressentiment.

This is a new chapter in history. A knee-jerk 'warfare as usual' reaction will not likely be effective. Instead, I think that what is called for is a deeper change in the way America thinks about itself and the relationship to the rest of the world. When commentators say that the frivolous, me-centered decade of the 90's is officially over, that rings true to me. But I am not able to see what lies ahead. That's beyond my expertise.

6. WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE TO DO?

In The City of God St.Augustine contrasts the "City of Man" (which is the nexus of human systems based on power and pride) and the "City of God" (which is God's Spirit working through the message of the Cross to create new human communities based on love, service, and giving.) Augustine tells Christians to love the human city in which they live but to remember how it is distinct from the coming City. The City of God does not respond to an 'attack' with the firepower of guns but with greater and more sacrificial service in word and deed. And this is the way it 'wins' over the world. The hymn goes: For not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums, but deeds of love and mercy the heav'nly kingdom comes. Christianity is unique because its central reality is that real influence comes not to those who take but those who give, not to those who rule but those who serve, not to those who accrue power but to those who sacrifice.

This is a tremendous moment for the "City of God" to show Jesus' love in more powerful ways. We should be available to our neighbors and friends spiritually to listen and pray with and for them, not to preach at them. We should also be available to our whole city to meet material needs. Christians should not sit back and wait for the phone to ring -- we should pro-actively fan out through the city and look for ways to help. After all, nobody asked Jesus to give himself for us. He came to us and gave us what we needed.

7. DOESN'T THIS JUST SHOW HOW DANGEROUS IT IS TO BELIEVE TOO STRONGLY THAT YOUR RELIGION IS 'RIGHT'?

It has been widely stated that the terrorist attacks show us that religion is only good for us in moderate amounts. The argument goes something like this: 'This proves that religious fundamentalists of all sorts are a great danger. They believe that God is on their side, and that they therefore have the right to conquer or kill others who don't believe." One writer even said, "It seems almost as if there is something inherent in religious monotheism that lends itself to this kind of terrorist temptation" because "in a world of absolute truth, in matters graver than life and death, there is no room for dissent and no room for theological doubt." (Andrew Sullivan, "This is a Religious War", New York Time Magazine, October 7, 2001) So the question is -- does 'religious fundamentalism' inevitably lead to oppression and even violence?

The right answer is -- it all depends on what your 'Fundamental' is. Let me give you two examples. First there is the Khymer Rouge, a Marxist movement that did not believe in God or any transcendent moral absolutes of any sort. Yet it was one of the most genocidal regimes in history. The second example is the Amish, who are an extremely conservative religious sect. They even refuse to wear modern western dress. They are by modern standards very patriarchal. They believe the Bible very literally and believe it is the absolute truth. If the Amish are such absolutists in their beliefs, why aren't we afraid of Amish terrorists?

The answer has to do with what the Amish "Fundamental" is. It is the same fundamental that all Christians share. Only Christianity (of the major religions) tells us that God came to earth and that when he did, he came not with a sword in his hand but with nails in his hands. He came not to accrue power, not to be served, but to serve and give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). And not only that, Jesus Christ did not pay the price of sin and die just for "good" people who were wisely following him, but also for people who were rejecting him and abandoning him. If that is the fundamental at the heart of your faith, at the heart of your self-identity, and at the heart of your relationship with God -- then it will make you (like Jesus) want to 'win' people to God by serving them, not conquering them. "For not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums, but deeds of love and mercy the heavn'ly kingdom comes." (Ernest W. Shurtleff, "Lead On O King Eternal", 1888).If you believe very strongly in the absolute truth of the gospel of the cross and grace of God, it will only serve to drain you of superiority and self-righteousness.

8. DOESN'T THIS SHOW HOW DANGEROUS IT IS TO THINK YOU HAVE 'THE TRUTH'? WE CAN'T HAVE A FREE SOCIETY UNLESS WE ALL AGREE THAT NO ONE KNOWS THE TRUTH.

In the aftermath of September 11 many have written along the following lines: "The whole problem comes from the violence that accompanies a belief that you have the truth. The best way to have a free society is to insist that there is no (or that no one knows) 'absolute truth'."

This position is very shortsighted. First, it is intellectually contradictory. "There is an appearance of humility in the protestation that the truth is much greater than any one of us can grasp, but ... it is in fact an arrogant claim to a kind of knowledge which is superior to [all others]... We have to ask: 'What is the vantage ground from which you claim to be able to relativize all the absolute claims which these different scriptures and religions make?'" (Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society) To say "I don't know which religion is true" is a statement of humility. But if you say, "No one can know which religion has the truth" you are making a very dogmatic assertion which assumes the very superior 'religious knowledge' and certainty you just insisted that no one else had. For example, if you say to religious persons, "you must not insist that others modify their beliefs to bring them more into line with yours", you are asking them to modify their beliefs to bring them more into line with yours. You are doing the very thing you are forbidding. The contradiction is blatant.

Secondly, this approach does not really lead to as much tolerance within society as it often claims. "Efforts to craft a public square from which religious conversation is absent, no matter how thoughtfully worked out, will always in the end say to the religious that they alone, unlike everybody else, must enter public dialogue only after leaving behind that part of themselves that they may consider most vital." (Stephen L. Carter, The Dissent of the Governed)

Our core 'identities' are always moral and quasi-religious. Consider people with a passion for the poor arising out of Marxist convictions. They are basing their lives not on the findings of empirical science, but on a view of human nature and history that they accept through faith. Why then should people with formally religious commitments (like Christianity or Islam) not be allowed to bring their beliefs to bear on public issues?

But thirdly, this approach reduces every conflict to a simple naked struggle for power. Stanley Fish wrote: "There can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations is the true one" and so we should not justify our response to the attacks "invoking the abstract notions of truth and justice" but "instead we can and should invoke the particular lived values that unite us and inform the institutions we cherish and wish to defend." ("Condemnation without Absolutes", New York Times, October 15, 2001) What is he saying? He is saying that we should fight not because we are right but because it is advantageous to us to win. Ironically, he is adopting the offensive old Vietnam War slogan "My country -- right or wrong!" That slogan was repugnant because it meant, "I will defend America whether it is crushing and oppressing the poor or not. It doesn't matter whether we are right or wrong. We fight simply to keep power and defend our interests." That is exactly what this erudite and intelligent man is saying.

If there is no way to know the truth or who is right, then there is never such a thing as an unjust or wrong military action. But we all know in our hearts that napalming babies (in Vietnam) is wrong, and that crushing thousands of unarmed unwitting people (in the World Trade Center) is wrong. It is not impractical or uncongenial to our economic and political interests. It is wrong. So if you have a premise ("no one knows the truth") that leads you to a premise which you know isn't true, ("there is no way to tell that the WTC attack was wrong") then why not change the premise?

9. ALL THIS DOES NOT MAKE ME BELIEVE MORE IN GOD, BUT LESS. ISN'T ALL THIS UNJUST SUFFERING EVIDENCE AGAINST THE EXISTENCE OF GOD?

The president of American Atheist, the country's oldest organization for nonbelievers in God, said to reporters, "If that [September 11] wasn't a wake up call to a religious nation, I don't know what is. That said to me, 'There is no God.' Where was he, on a coffee break?" ("Atheists Decry Post-Attack Focus on God", Los Angeles Times, October 12, 2001) There are two ways to answer this.

The skeptic says: "If there is a God, he would have stopped such an evil thing from happening." But how does the skeptic know that this event was evil? All of evolution is based on the survival of the fittest. Violence of the stronger and more adaptive organisms over the weaker and less adaptive is utterly natural in this world. Why is it wrong, then, when humans do what the rest of nature is doing? How could you know if our part of the natural world was unnatural or bad? "If God does not exist...there is no longer any possibility of an a priori good existing. It is nowhere written that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now on the plane where there are only human beings. Doestoevksy once wrote: 'If God did not exist, everything would be permitted' ... If God does not exist, we have neither behind us nor before us a luminous realm of values, nor any means of justification of any behavior whatever. (Jean-Paul Sartre, "Existentialism and Humanism") So evil and suffering are major problems for people who believe in God, but they are actually even bigger problems for people who don't believe in God. If there is no God, what is your basis for being outraged at violence and oppression? How can you insist that something utterly natural to this world is somehow unnatural? And if you are sure that the World Trade Center is an evil, doesn't that comprise some evidence for the existence of God?

But there is a second way to respond to the question: "why would a good and powerful God allow evil and suffering?" There is a hidden train of logic deep in this protest. I think it goes like this:

"1. God would have to have a good reason for allowing evil and suffering to keep going on.

2. I can't think or perceive of any good reason.

3. Therefore, there cannot be any."

Of course, when you lay it out like that you can see how fallacious this reasoning is. If you have a God infinite and great enough to be mad at for not preventing evil and suffering, you have to (at the same time) have a God infinite and great enough to have reasons for allowing evil and suffering that we can't discern. (You can't have it both ways).

But how can we know if he has a good reason? [Christ] the god-man suffers too, with patience. Evil and death can no longer be entirely imputed to him since he suffers and dies. The night on Golgotha is so important in the history of man only because, in its shadows, the divinity ostensibly abandoned its traditional privilege, lived through to the end, despair included, the agony of death. Thus is explained the 'Lama sabachthani' and the frightful doubt of Christ in agony -- (Albert Camus, Essais)

Camus is saying that though we cannot discern the reasons that God might have for allowing evil, we have a remarkable assurance that he does have them. He himself has suffered infinitely with us, for us, on the cross. Surely this proves he is not indifferent to our suffering.

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The book, "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" (Schocken, 1981), shocked everyone in the industry. When was the last time a book on a profound human question, much less a book about God, had ranked up there with the guidebooks on thinning thighs and mastering Pac-Man? Now, two years later, half a million hardback copes have been sold and the paperback sales are expected to total in the millions.

The book, with its splendid title and articulate rabbi author (Harold Kushner), has confused many Christians. The largest Christian book distributor sent out a warning notice to its bookstore clients, admitting that demand from readers virtually forced them to carry the book but acknowledging that Kushner's answers "do not present an orthodox Christian theology of suffering." Some Reformed denominations published cautiously negative reviews, and at least one evangelical leader, Charles Colson, went public with a blast against the book. Yet, throngs of average Christian consumers have found the rabbi's book comforting; his answers to the problem of pain sound good and feel good. Because I have written a book on the problem of pain (Where Is God When It Hurts?) and sometimes speak on the topic, I often get questions about Rabbi Kushner's approach. What do I think? Is he a heretic or a prophet?

COMPASSION AND PERCEPTION

First, I must congratulate Kushner on a wonderful writing job. Whatever else he is doing, he should stop it and get back to the typewriter. He tackles complex issues with a gracious style that makes them accessible to large numbers of readers. This book especially, coming out of his own family's experience with a horrible illness, shows human warmth and compassion. It deserves best-seller status. But a book that exists mainly to answer a theological question cannot be judged on its clever title, empathetic tone, or literary style. The central question is, are his conclusions biblical and true?

Frankly, I cannot join with those who categorically condemn the content. Kushner has presented some true and needed correctives for people who stuffer or who stand with others who suffer. Let's face it, too often evangelicals have offered guilt ("You must have done something to deserve this") and frustration ("You must not be praying hard enough") to sufferers. Thousands of years later, we keep falling back on the same rationalistic explanations for suffering that were voiced eloquently by Job's three friends - and repudiated in a withering attack by God.

Rabbi Kushner offers a superb analysis of the false guilt we can bog down in. His rejection of the idea that suffering is a common, specific punishment by God squares with Jesus' comments in John 9 and Luke 13 and with the underlying message of the entire Book of Job. A person in pain need not compound his or her suffering by such torturous questions as "What have I done wrong?"

In addition, Kushner offers stimulating insights on the role of natural law in this universe, the meaning of the fall of humanity, and the nature of free will. I wish all theology books were written with such clarity and brightness. Indeed, the book stands as a good model for Christian writers, who seldom have been able to present theological concerns to such a broad audience.

SOME RESERVATIONS

Despite my deep admiration for what Kushner has accomplished, however, I cannot endorse his ultimate conclusions. Essentially, he concludes that suffering exists on this planet because "even God has a hard time keeping chaos in check," and God is "a God of justice and not of power." In other words, God is as frustrated, even outraged, by the pain on this planet as anyone, but he lacks the power to do anything about it. After perceptively uncovering the flaws in other explanations of pain and evil, Kushner stumbles when he must provide his own solution to the age-old riddle.

Kushner wisely devotes an entire chapter to Job, a book of the Bible that could conveniently be subtitled "When the Worst Things Happen to One of the Best People." The Bible's fullest treatment of the problem of pain confronts the issues of undeserved suffering in their most absolute terms, even at the risk of approaching caricature. No one deserved suffering less than Job; no one suffered more. Somehow, though, Kushner and I come up with opposite conclusions looking at the same evidence. To me, Job's predicament gives God the perfect platform from which to launch an explanation of his less-than-omnipotence. Surely Job would have welcomed a speech that implies like Kushner: "Job, I'm truly sorry about what's happening. You know, of course, I had nothing to do with the way things have turned out. I wish I could help, Job, but I really can't." Such a speech, though hardly relieving Job's physical ailments, would have restored his faith in a loving, faithful God.

GOD'S ANSWER TO JOB

The speech Job got instead is one of the most extraordinary passages in the Bible, the longest single speech of God recorded. It has dazzling poetry, a wild celebration of nature, and a combination of exuberance and explosive force. The speech is so eloquent, we can easily miss its central message. Nowhere in the Bible is God's power described more impressively. God never once apologizes to Job for his lack of power; rather he composes verbal fugues about ostriches, wild oxen, snowstorms, and constellations to illustrate it. Frederick Buechner summarizes the argument this way, "God doesn't explain. He explodes. He asks Job who he thinks he is anyway. He says that to try to explain the kind of things Job wants explained would be like trying to explain Einstein to a little-neck clam.... God doesn't reveal his grand design. He reveals himself."

Job's response is as amazing as God's speech. In spite of the fact that God never answers question one about Job's own predicament, just hearing that blast flattens him. Perhaps Job, like Buechner's little-neck clam, doesn't understand any more about the theory of relativity, but he has seen enough to convince himself there really is an Einstein out there, one worthy of worship.

A response such as this causes me to question Kushner's final conclusion. If God is less-than-powerful, why does he choose the worst possible situation, when his power is most called into question, to claim omnicompetence?

To me, the puzzling question of God's involvement in the world is seen much better in terms of God's self-imposed limitations. He acts, and does not act, not because of weakness but because of self-restraint designed to promote certain other possibilities, such as freely given human love. And I know of no better example of God's self-imposed limitation than the Incarnation, an event that Kushner, a rabbi, understandably does not discuss.

The Book of Job reveals the more abstract, theoretical side of God and pain. (Looking back, we may have trouble understanding why Job felt so satisfied with a seemingly evasive answer; but, then, we didn't hear God speak out of a whirlwind, either.) Thankfully, the Bible also reveals God's close and personal response to human suffering. God himself, the God who boasted Of his power in creating the wild things, of earth, subjected himself to natural laws, including pain, when he visited our planet.

CHRIST ON PAIN

How did God-on-earth respond to pain? Surprisingly, Christ reacted much as we react. When he met a person in pain, he was deeply moved with compassion (from the Latin words "cum" and "pati", "to suffer with"). When his friend died, he wept. Very often (and every time he was directly asked) he healed the pain. Obviously, God is not a God who enjoys seeing us suffer.

When he faced pain personally, Christ also responded like most o f us. He recoiled from it, asking three times if there was any other way. When there was no other way, he experienced the sense of alienation that all of us feel to some degree at such moments. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" he cried out. It was the only prayer Jesus uttered that did not begin with the familiar term "Abba," or "Father."

No other religion - not Judaism, not Hinduism, not Buddhism or Islam - offers this unique contribution of an all-powerful God who willingly takes on the pain of his creation.

I am glad the Bible describes both sides of God' response - the perspective from heaven, in Job's case, and the perspective from the cross - for those of us who try to figure out why God permits suffering. We need both dimensions. The gospel writers stress that Jesus' suffering was not a question of impotence; he could have called on a legion of angels. Somehow he had to go through it for fallen creation to be redeemed. Suffering was the cost to God of forgiveness.

Often, when I contemplate the paradoxes inherent in the problem of pain and God's involvement in our world, I find myself going back to one passage of the Bible that falls halfway between the Book of Job and the first account of Jesus' life on earth. In a remarkable blend of prophecy and poetry, Isaiah 53 summons up an image of a suffering servant who bears our diseases, carries our pains, and is wounded for our rebellions. Jewish interpreters often apply the suffering servant to themselves as a race. Christians, following the New Testament, apply it to Christ. Could this be the reason, asks Japanese theologian Kazoh Kitamori, that Judaism has attracted so few converts? No race has suffered more than the Jews. But human pain, no matter how great, remains meaningless and barren unless it can become a symbol of God's empathy.

NOT CAUSATION, BUT REDEMPTION

After spending several years reading about and thinking about this messy problem of pain, I have concluded that the key word is not causation - the first question that occurs to one who suffers - but rather redemption. Senseless pain offers us little. But redemptive suffering, whether that absorbed by Christ in the reconciliation of he world or that ultimately accepted by such persons as Job and Jeremiah and Paul, can ignite the world. God took the Great Pain of his own Son's death and used it to blot up into himself all the minor pains of our confinement on earth. It doesn't seem like impotence to me.

________

Philip Yancey is a CHRISTIANITY TODAY editor at large.

"Questions People Ask" sermon series. Habakkuk 1:2-4; 3:17-19

WHERE WAS GOD?

==============

I. We live in a world of senseless atrocities.

A. Wedgwood Baptist Church massacre.

B. Destruction of World Trade towers and Pentagon one year ago.

II. "Where was God?"

A. Hard question, but common and even ancient one.

B. The co-existence of God and tragedy has perplexed many.

C. Four possible worlds.

1) No creation at all.

2) World where only good is permitted.

3) An amoral world, with no good or evil.

4) The world that we live in, with good and evil and choices.

D. We can't let God off the hook.

III. Did God do all he could do?

A. Wedgwood's silver lining.

B. September 11 email on positive aspects of attack.

C. It can always be worse.

IV. Trying to make sense out of disaster.

A. We want to think every event has a reason we can figure out.

B. A prophet's quiet trust in God.

C. Where God was on September 11, and September 15.

V. God is still in charge.

A. There are often signs of grace in the midst of tragedy.

B. God's location, and ours.

*

Sermon on topic of theodicy. Luke 13:1-5

THERE'S GOT TO BE A REASON

==========================

I. The recent tragic accident and last week's sermon on Psalm 91.

II. Two headlines by Jesus.

A. Pilate's atrocity.

B. Building failure.

C. Whose fault is it?

III. There is much danger in this world.

A. We have a level of control.

B. Some danger unplanned and random; we call it "an act of God."

C. We cannot say with certainty why horrible things happen.

IV. Fatalism vs. Faith.

A. Was their "time up"?

B. God's will has an element of flexibility. Isaiah 38:1,5

V. We must be ready to face God.

A. We may not be more wicked than others, but all are in danger.

B. God's rescue plan through Jesus.

C. Implied theme of funerals - everyone goes to heaven. Not true.

Be it the chaplain in Manhattan, the pastor in Pittsburgh or the farmer in Kentucky, Christians across the country searched for answers to explain what happened Sept. 11 and offer a God-centered approach to personal healing and the country's response.

From the Oval Office to the pulpit, one word came up consistently to describe the terrorist hijackings and crashes of four commercial airliners: evil.

But charting a Christian response to such evil requires prayer, pause and purpose, according to theologians, ethicists and others who wrestle with such issues.

"You have what Paul called the 'mystery of iniquity,' and evil is there," said Henlee Barnette, professor emeritus of Christian ethics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. "It's everywhere, and the challenge to the Christian is to respond in an intelligent, reasonable way to evil in his or her own life, in the lives of others and in the life of our nation."

All crises bring out basic questions of meaning and purpose, but a number of Christian observers outlined three major questions that Christians must answer in the wake of recent events:

-- HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?

"I have been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering," evangelist Billy Graham said during a prayer service at the National Cathedral. "I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction."

Understanding the human potential to cause such destruction leads Christians back to the basic doctrines of their faith, including sin and the freedom to choose right from wrong, said ethicist David Gushee.

"Why this happened is really in a sense the same answer to 'Why did Adam and Eve sin?'" said Gushee, professor of moral philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn. "It happened because we have the freedom to make bad choices."

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, agreed. "We need to be very clear that the problem behind all of this does not come down to a lack of security in an airport," he said. "Ultimately, we still have to deal with the reality that God has allowed a sinful world to exist and for some time he is allowing sin to take its toll."

Mohler and Gushee said Christians should avoid answers about the existence of evil that either are simplistic -- such as "God will always protect me" -- or outright heresy, such as "God must have caused this to happen."

Romans 8:28 often is cited in times of suffering, proclaiming "that in all things God works for the good of those who love him." But Mohler said that doesn't imply that God causes tragedies. The Bible consistently insists God does not cause suffering, Mohler added.

"No way can we dignify these murderous acts by proclaiming in a glib way that some good is going to come of it," he said. "The biblical affirmation is that even in the face of such awful evil, God's grace will triumph."

But God's ability to redeem a tragedy doesn't eliminate the challenge for Christians to insist that God is loving and powerful even though he permits sin to cause terrible consequences.

Theodicy, the branch of theology that seeks to vindicate God's permission for evil to exist, is nothing new.

Evil is a major theme in both Psalms and Job, according to George Klein, an Old Testament professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

But while both books contain agonizing petitions to God in the face of evil, neither holds God's answer for why he allows suffering, Klein said.

Many psalms that lament evil have a common structure, Klein noted. Rather than staying focused on the evildoer or how God will judge him, the psalm reviews one of God's previous great acts, such as creation or protection during Israel's exodus from Egypt.

"They jump fast-forward to their conclusion, and their conclusion is that the Lord is righteous, the Lord is powerful and he should be revered even in the midst of uncertainty and trouble," he said.

"The Psalms do emphasize God's role as king and righteous holy creator. But the way they function is to help God's people lift up their eyes, to look on the Lord to realize that he is good. The fact that somebody appears to do well even though they are evil does not undercut God's righteousness. He will deal with them in his own way," Klein added. "It's not a nice bumper-sticker theology, but it really is a hope, a confidence."

Likewise, the book of Job never defends God for allowing the central character to suffer.

"It just doesn't. Instead it just quickly jumps and says that God is worthy of worship, ... God is good and in his way, in his time, what is mysterious, unknown, troubling to us will be seen in a different light. But for now, our responsibility is to accept the painful mysteries and uncertainties and to trust in God wholeheartedly and his righteousness and his power and his knowledge, his providence."

-- WHAT SHOULD AMERICA DO?

Christians dare not shrink from their responsibility to influence a government's response to evil, several theologians and ethicists said.

From "just war" theories of combat to an introspective view of American policies, Christians must lead the country to develop a moral response, they said.

"When the public discourse turns from grief to retaliation, the community of faith must offer a different language and articulate different solutions," said Robert Parham, founder and executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics.

Beginning with St. Augustine 1,600 years ago and modified since, a "just war" doctrine requires that government military action be measured and appropriate, said Chuck Colson, a Christian author and former adviser to President Richard Nixon.

"Augustine's formulation was that it has to be, obviously, a just cause," Colson said on his BreakPoint radio program. Military action also must be a last resort and intended to prevent more evil or damage than it will cause.

"There's got to be a good chance of success, and, most importantly, civilian casualties have got to be limited. You cannot target civilians," he said.

Mohler said Romans 13 outlines government's responsibility to maintain order and punish evildoers. Biblical admonitions to turn the other cheek do not apply to a proper response to last week's attack, Barnette added.

"As Christians we should respond with love, even to our enemies," he said. "Jesus taught us to love our enemies. But let me add, love without justice is pure sentimentality."

"Now personally, I'm a man of peace, but this is a defensive war against a destructive evil. As a Christian ethicist, I believe that the most loving thing to do is to seek out the evil perpetrators and their supporters and bring them to justice," Barnette added. "If someone comes up and strikes me on the right cheek, I turn the other one. But if someone comes to destroy my family, love becomes justice."

But Christians also must lead the country in controlling its emotions, Gushee added. "We may be setting ourselves up for a deep sense of national rage if we are not able to achieve the kind of perfect justice that we appear to be looking for."

Like the Jews around the world who lost a more massive 6 million lives in the Holocaust, Americans might have to come to terms with an inability to balance the scales of justice in this life, he said.

"The theme that there is an eternal Judge and that we don't have to hinge all of our future hopes on achieving some earthly justice is very important right now," he said.

"The most powerful nation in the world, unable, perhaps, to get the full and perfect justice that it's looking for, could be a pretty dangerous nation," Gushee said. "Let's hope we have more wisdom and sobriety and realism than that."

The Christian command to love one's enemies also dictates a willingness to understand the motivation of perceived injustice behind such hateful acts, he said.

"That doesn't make the decision any less evil," he quickly added. "But I think a distinctively Christian response says there is humanity in the image of God, even in the adversary. And you seek to recognize that even while you deal with appropriate responses to protect yourself from being harmed like this in the future."

-- AS A CHRISTIAN, WHAT SHOULD I DO?

A Christian personal response to evil begins with a willingness to base one's actions on something other than simple human nature, Barnette said. "We should respond and not merely react."

Part of that response begins with a simple decision to engage in the experiences and suffering of others, said Vicki Hollon, director of the Wayne Oates Institute, an agency in Louisville, Ky., dedicated to Christian-based ethics and pastoral care.

More than just showing compassion or being a good civic person, a Christian's involvement in assembling care packages, donating money, giving blood or praying for victims should be based on God's instructions and be intended to help others find God, she said.

"We have ... a framework out of which we do what we do very clearly, very intentionally with a purpose of serving as a light that points back to God," she said.

Prayer is a basic response to any tragedy, many noted. "I heard one person say all we can do is pray, but you know that's not a little thing," Mohler said. "Prayer is one of the most important ministries that a Christian can perform in order to reach out to those we cannot see, we do not even know."

Individual Christians also should recognize that evil is not entirely an outside force, Barnette noted. "I have to say this: The more optimistic theologians overlook the evil within," he said. "Wherever there is an overwhelming desire for power, for the accumulation of things for self or for a nation, you're going to have this kind of evil."

Christians leaders also must be prepared to interpret events through the lens of the Christian faith, Gushee added.

During his address at the National Cathedral, Billy Graham noted that victims entering the World Trade Center, the Pentagon or any of those four planes probably didn't think it would be their last day.

"That's why each of us needs to face our own spiritual need and commit ourselves to God and his will now," he said.

Likewise, all Christians have an opportunity to offer a distinctive moral vision and spiritual presence, Gushee said.

"I cringe when I think about the inevitable Sunday school classes that will mainly consist of 'We need to go nuke those guys' kind of response. We can do, and must do, so much better than that."

___________________

David Winfrey is news director of the (Ky.) Western Recorder.

This weekend I received a call from a Christian friend who was deeply troubled. The husband of a woman to whom she had been witnessing had been killed in the World Trade Center attack. The woman called my friend and demanded bitterly: "Where was your God that you've been telling me about this week?"

Everywhere, people are raising the same question: How could a good God have allowed such massive evil? No question poses a greater stumbling block to Christian faith; no question is more difficult for Christians to answer. Yet, the biblical worldview does give us a good answer.

The simple answer to why bad things happen to so-called good people is that God loved us so much that he made us free moral agents in his image. He designed creatures with the ability to make choices, to choose either good or evil. The original humans, Adam and Eve, exercised that choice -- and chose to disobey God. In doing so, they rejected God's good, thus creating sin and opening the door to death and evil.

What happened last week was raw, naked evil -- committed by men who made evil choices. But it was something else as well: It was merely a consequence of the fact that there is sin in the world. God could erase the consequences of sin immediately. But then we'd no longer be free moral agents; we would be robots. For without consequences, there is no real choice. God cannot simultaneously offer us free choice and then compel one choice over another -- which is what would happen if he stopped all evil.

Jesus himself was asked why bad things happen to good people. In Luke 13, we read that people asked him if the Galileans who were killed while worshipping at the altar were worse sinners than anyone else. "No," Jesus answered. And then he added, "Unless you repent you will all likewise perish." Jesus then reinforced his point. Recently, a tower in a nearby city had fallen; eighteen people had been crushed to death. Jesus said, "Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish."

This is one of the hard sayings of Jesus, but there's great truth in it. We are in no position to ask God why terrible things happen. We're only to seek forgiveness ourselves.

What happened last week was one of worst tragedies in American history. But God can bring good out of evil, and he often works through adversity. Since the terrorist attacks, we have seen the nation come together with greater unity than I've witnessed since Pearl Harbor. And this Sunday my church was filled to capacity at all services -- very unusual in Florida at this time of year. Churches all over the country were packed out, and were in England as well. People may be angry at God, but they're also asking questions about the meaning of life and God's role in it. You and I need to be prepared to answer the questions of people in pain.

Where was God last week? He was with us -- just as he always is. He gave us everything we need to cope with this or any other evils: He gave us himself at the cross at Calvary.

_________________________

Copyright (c) 2001 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Jane Clayson conducted an interview with Billy Graham's daughter Anne Graham Lotz on CBS's "The Early Show" on the Thursday morning after the terrorist attacks of 9-11.

According to the transcript of the broadcast, Clayson asked, "I've heard people say, those who are religious, those who are not, if God is good, how could God less this happen? To that, you say?"

Lotz replied, "I say God is also angry when he sees something like this. I would say also for several years now Americans in a sense have shaken their fist at God and said, God, we want you out of our schools, our government, our business, we want you out of our marketplace. And God, who is a gentleman, has just quietly backed out of our national and political life, our public life. Removing his hand of blessing and protection. We need to turn to God first of all and say, God, we're sorry we have treated you this way and we invite you now to come into our national life. We put our trust in you. We have our trust in God on our coins, we need to practice it."

In a picturesque Swiss village full of tourists, hotels, and restaurants, a 21-year-old woman was taken to the hospital with undiagnosed stomach pain. Twenty-four hours later she was dead of a highly unusual infection.

Her parents had never shown much evidence of faith, attending church only at Christmas and Easter or for weddings and funerals. After her death, they were bitter. “We can’t believe in God,” they said. “No good God could ever permit this to happen.”

Well-meaning comforters offered remarks that were true enough but hardly a consolation: “At least she went quickly. It could have been cancer.” “Remember the bus full of children that fell into the ravine.” “A hundred years ago one child in four died before age 5.” “At least you still have another child.”

The organist at the village church was gruff: “They ought to have thought of God sooner.”

AN INTUITIVE AWARENESS

In a day when many people never think of God except to blame Him when things go wrong, the organist’s comment does make some sense. If we have not paid enough attention to God to know and trust Him, we really do not know to whom to complain — or whether we are entitled to complain.

The fact that most people do complain after tragedy shows that they have at least an intuitive awareness of God. If there were no Creator and no divine purpose to life, the sudden death of a young woman would not be the least bit surprising. If the cosmos were the blind product of “chance and necessity,” to use the words of one Nobel Prize winner, the late biochemist Jacques Monod, then the universe would be both mindless and heartless. Whatever happens, simply happens. There is no one to blame, no one to whom to appeal for relief, and nothing to be surprised about. Heartless affliction is just what we ought to expect.

The reason people cry out, as these bereaved parents did, is because in our innermost thoughts we do not really believe the universe is blind. We sense there really is a Creator. In addition, we think of ourselves as decent and deserving — so we blame the Creator for not treating us fairly. “God is not fair to me, so I refuse to acknowledge Him.”

Unfortunately, an unfocused, intuitive awareness of God, without knowing Him personally, leaves us totally bewildered by and unprepared for the suffering of this world.

TO THOSE WHO LOVE GOD

When people do know and trust God, the problem of pain and evil does not disappear. At first it may be harder to handle. “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God,” the apostle wrote (Rom. 8:28 nasb). If this promise does not directly apply to those who ignore God, what of those who do love Him, who serve Him faithfully, who in every way exemplify what Christians ought to be and do?

Sometimes it helps to think of what we learn through suffering. Even Jesus “learned obedience from what He suffered” (Heb. 5:8). But what do we learn through drawn-out, apparently pointless suffering at the end of life? What about the beloved seminary professor who contracted cancer and died after months of intense suffering? What did he learn by it, or his loved ones who watched his agony?

THE ABUSE OF FREEDOM

Philosophers and theologians refer to “the problem of evil.” Many books have been written in an effort to explain how evil can be so present and powerful in a world created by a good and omnipotent God. It would be foolish to attempt a thorough answer in these two pages, but it is possible to lay down some helpful guidelines. The two key words are freedom and Satan.

God’s Word tells us that He created the world good, but because of man’s rebellion — the Fall — it is now in an unnatural, distorted condition. Our guilty abuse of freedom has blighted it. Much if not all of the evil that we encounter, from AIDS to genocide, is attributable to this abuse of human freedom. Human evil, both individual and collective, casts long shadows and afflicts countless people who had nothing to do with causing the evil, or who may even have resisted it.

Much has been made of the dangers of secondhand cigarette smoke; there is even greater danger from what we might call secondhand sin. A careful driver can be killed in an accident caused by a drunk. A chaste adult can contract AIDS from a blood transfusion. In such cases, although the immediate victim did not sin, someone else’s abuse of freedom set the deadly chain of events in motion.

Many diseases, such as most cancers, can strike without warning and without any direct link to behavior. But if we look further into the past, we see that some sin somewhere, or many sins in many places, is the root cause. Because of Adam’s sin, and all the other sins of history, the human body and psyche are vulnerable. We cannot always avoid the consequences of evil.

THE REALITY OF SATAN

Human sin by itself explains much. But the power of evil and the way it strikes the “undeserving,” even those who sincerely trust God and try to live as He would have them live, requires a fuller explanation. The answer lies in the reality of Satan — a real and powerful adversary, one who is determined to do us as much harm as he can. Though he cannot ultimately separate believers from the love of God, he will hurt us as much as he can.

Our fallen world “lieth in wickedness,” the King James Version explains (1 John 5:19). Some modern translations personalize the text: “The whole world is under the control of the evil one” (niv). Satan’s final defeat is certain, but he still has tremendous power. He uses it against the unconverted to keep them as far as possible from faith, striking at their vulnerability and seeking to make them blame God for their hurts.

People such as the bereaved couple mentioned above are sometimes easy prey. If they knew the Scriptures, “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27 nkjv), they could more easily find the way out of bitterness to faith. But even those who know the Bible and seek to walk by faith are not beyond Satan’s attacks. Satan will do all he can to make us doubt God’s love and drive us to disillusionment, depression, and if possible, despair.

PAIN IN PERSPECTIVE

The Christian life is often filled with evidence of God’s grace, love, and mercy, but sometimes the evidence is not so clear. Though we can experience great joy in serving God, this does not eliminate the potential for sorrow. Jesus warned, “In the world you have tribulation” (John 16:33). Hardly anyone experiences a completely healthy and harmonious life. And except for those still living when Christ returns, we will all have to spend time in the dark valley of the shadow of death.

The scope of human sin from Adam to the present, the pain it caused and continues to cause, is an incredible burden. As the Lutheran theologian Paul Althaus expressed it, the burden would be too much to bear except for two world-transforming facts: first, the victory Christ won on the cross over Satan and sin; second, His impending return in glory. These truths do not solve the problem of evil or answer all of the questions it forces on us here in time, but they do put everything into perspective. Philosophers and theologians can help us deal with the problem of evil, but the ultimate answer will come only when “God will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes” (Rev. 7:17).

_________

Dr. Brown is professor of biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Deerfield, Illinois) and director of the Rockford Institute Center on Religion and Society.

Bethany Hamilton, the 14-year-old surfer who lost her left arm when she was attacked by a shark nearly a year ago, has written a book in which she credits her relationship with Christ for providing the strength necessary to recover.

Hamilton recently appeared on NBC's “Today Show” to discuss the book she coauthored with her pastor, titled “Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family, and Fighting to Get Back on the Board.”

“To be honest, I never wanted to write a book,” Hamilton said. But after encouragement from her family and friends, she decided it was the right thing to do in order to provide people with a larger picture of her faith and the people who have helped her get back into the water after the attack.

In the book's forward, Hamilton tells how she spent many hours pouring her heart out to Rick Bundschuh, her spiritual adviser and pastor at Kauai Christian Fellowship Church in Koloa, Hawaii.

“In the end, I'm really proud of what I've written here,” Hamilton writes. “...I hope it helps people find faith in God and in their own strength and ability. I hope it motivates someone going through a tough time right now to keep on fighting until they rise above it.”

Hamilton said she doesn't want people to pity her for losing an arm at such a young age. She wants them to see an example of how to cope when life doesn't go as planned. And she clearly states what her sources of strength have been.

“My strength came from my relationship with Christ and from the love and encouragement of my family and friends,” she writes.

The teenager even has an answer for those who wonder why God would allow such a tragedy to happen to a young, vibrant surfer who showed so much promise as a professional competitor.

“I don't pretend to have all the answers to why bad things happen to good people,” Hamilton writes. “But I do know that God knows all those answers, and sometimes He lets you know in this life, and sometimes He asks you to wait so that you can have a face-to-face talk about it.

“What I do know is that I want to use what happened to me as an opportunity to tell people that God is worthy of our trust, and to show them that you can go on and do wonderful things in spite of terrible events that happen,” she adds.

*

The tragedy unfolding in the Indian Ocean demands the world's attention -- and calls for a clear Christian response. In the aftermath of the disaster, some religious leaders suggested that God was simply unable to prevent the tsunamis that destroyed so many lives. Some secularists jumped on the opportunity to argue that the tragedy is further proof that God does not exist. Others simply blamed the earthquake and tidal waves on fate or claimed that God had sent the destruction as punishment for the victims' sins.

How are we to deal with this? What approach will affirm the full measure of Christian truth while taking the disaster into honest account?

First, a faithful Christian response must affirm the true character and power of God. The Bible leaves no room for doubting either the omnipotence or the benevolence of God. The God of the Bible is not a passive bystander, nor a deistic Creator who has withdrawn from His creation and is simply watching it unfold. Just as creation itself was a trinitarian event, so also the triune God reigns over His creation. There is not one atom or molecule in the entire cosmos that is not under the sovereign rule of God. As the Christian tradition has always affirmed, God's active lordship over the universe is the sole explanation for why the cosmos even holds together.

At the center of this universe is the fundamental fact of the supremacy of Jesus Christ. As the Apostle Paul noted in Colossians 1:15-17, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities -- all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” Jesus Christ is the explanatory principle of the universe, and any effort to understand the creation apart from its Creator can lead only to confusion.

Liberal theology attempts to solve this problem by cutting God down to size and removing Him from the equation. Having established a truce with the naturalistic worldview, liberal theology simply accommodates itself to the secular temptation by denying God's active and sovereign rule. In other words, God's goodness is affirmed while His greatness is denied. Process theology does this by putting God within the created order, struggling along with His creation toward maturity. At the popular level, this theological approach was turned into a bestseller several years ago by Rabbi Harold Kushner in his book, “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People.” The rabbi simply asserted that God is doing the best He can under the circumstances. He would like to prevent tragedies like cancer, hurricanes and earthquakes from happening -- He is simply unable to do so.

This is not the God who revealed Himself in the Bible. God's omnipotence is clearly revealed and unconditionally asserted. At the same time, God's goodness is equally affirmed. Christians must point to these conjoined truths as the very basis for our confidence that life is worth living and that God is ultimately in control of the universe.

Second, in affirming the full measure of Christian truth in light of the tsunamis, we must avoid attempting to explain what God has not explained. In the end, the Christian knows that all suffering -- indeed every experience of life - - is meaningful. We understand that God is revealing Himself in every moment of our existence. We also know that all suffering is ultimately caused by sin. That's about as politically incorrect an assertion as we can now imagine -- but it is profoundly true.

Even so, we must be very careful in how we present this truth. In the Gospel of John (John 9:1-7), Jesus and His disciples were confronted with a man blind from birth. His disciples, posing the conventional question of their day, asked Jesus: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” Jesus responded that it was neither the sin of this man nor the sin of his parents that explained his blindness; rather, “It was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” In other words, Jesus boldly explained that this man was born blind so that in the miracle Jesus was about to perform, his restored sight would be evidence of the dawning of the Kingdom and of the glory of God.

Armed with this knowledge, we must be very circumspect in assigning blame for natural evil. Were the people of Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India more sinful than all others? Did God send this tsunami because of the paganisms so prevalent in southern Asia? English newspaper columnist Martin Kettle posed an interesting observation: “Certainly the giant waves generated by the quake made no attempt to differentiate between the religions of those whom it made its victims. Hindus were swept away in India, Muslims were carried off in Indonesia, Buddhists in Thailand. Visiting Christians and Jews received no special treatment either.”

We are in absolutely no position to argue that there is no link between human sin and this awful tragedy. The Bible makes clear that God sometimes does respond to specific sin with cataclysmic natural disaster. Just ask the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. Nevertheless, in the Bible's book most centrally concerned with the issue of suffering, it is Job's friends, who tried to offer detailed theological explanations, who end up looking foolish -- and worse. Job himself was censured by God for “darkened counsel by words without knowledge.” In the end, Job is vindicated by God's grace and mercy, and Job can only respond, “I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. 'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know.... I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You; therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes.” Job's humility should serve as a model for our own.

As Paul reminds us, the judgments of God are unsearchable and unfathomable (Romans 11:33). Unless God reveals the purpose of His acts and the working of His will among us, we would do well to affirm His sovereignty and goodness, while holding back from placing blame on human agents for disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes.

At the same time, the Bible is clear that sin is the fundamental explanation for these awful disasters. Not sin that is immediately traceable to one individual or another, or even to a specific culture, but the sin that is so clearly indicted in the biblical account of the fall of man. According to Genesis chapter 3, Adam's sin had cosmic implications and effects. The effects of sin are evident all around us, most clearly in the undeniable fact of death. This is why the redemptive work of God in Christ points to a new heaven and a new earth as coming realities. As Paul explains, “We know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.” In Revelation 21, we are told of a new heaven and a new earth and of a day when God will wipe away every tear from the eyes of the redeemed, “and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”

Third, Christians must respond with the love of Christ and the power of the Gospel. Jesus is our great example in responding to such crises. When confronted with the man born blind, Jesus healed the man and showed the glory of God. In response to the death of Lazarus, Jesus brought life out of death, even as He had mourned with Lazarus' sisters.

While Christians are not empowered to perform similar miracles, we are called to be agents of Christ's love and mercy. Following our Lord's example, we must first mourn with those who mourn. The unspeakable grief and incalculable suffering experienced by literally millions of persons in southern Asia should prompt every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ to fervent prayer, concern, generosity and sympathy.

Relief efforts are now under way, and Christians should be at the forefront of this response. Churches, denominations and Christian agencies are sending support in the form of food, medical care, reconstruction programs and other forms of humanitarian assistance. In offering concrete help and assistance, Christians are doing nothing less than following the express command and example of Jesus Christ.

Beyond this, Christians must seize this opportunity to confront this awful disaster with the life-changing power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Christians are to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty and clothe the naked in the name of Christ. This is a powerful testimony, but acts of compassion must be accompanied by words of conviction. Our answer to this reality of unspeakable tragedy must be witness to the Gospel of unfathomable power -- the power to bring life out of death.

Furthermore, we must indeed point to this disaster as only a hint of the cataclysm that is yet to come -- the holy judgment of God. On that day, the tidal waves of December 26, 2004, will be understood to have been one of the warnings all humanity should have heeded.

This is no time for Christian equivocation or cowardice. In the face of tragedy and suffering on this scale, we must answer with the full measure of Christian conviction and the undiluted truth of Christianity. In this life, we are not given all the answers to the questions we might pose, but God has given us all that we need to know in order to understand our peril and His provision for us in Christ.

So, let us weep with those who weep, pray for those who suffer, give and go in missions of mercy, and bear bold witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not only in southern Asia, but right here at home.

Throughout the United Kingdom, following the Christmas tsunami that killed at least 150,000 people and changed the lives of their surviving relatives forever, some are asking how a “loving” God, if He exists, could allow such a catastrophe to happen. Another question is, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

The questions are mostly rhetorical, since by asking them, the questioners don't actually expect, or even desire, an answer. They are asked in an accusatory way, as if the questions themselves indict, try and convict as fools those who believe in God.

One counterquestion should be: Why do GOOD things happen to BAD people? The Scriptures say, “Only God is good.” All humanity is diagnosed as “sinful” and “not righteous.” Our desires are “only evil all the time.” Look it up.

What about a “good God” allowing bad things? Death is the destination of all living organisms. Some die sooner than others. Shouldn't a “good God” provide a way to escape the grave? He has, but that requires faith, which critics and skeptics lack.

Here's another question for those who ask the other questions: If catastrophe proves there is no God, does charity prove He exists? Individuals in Britain have contributed millions of pounds to the tsunami survivors, more than their government. Most of the world's charities helping in the effort are Christian and American.

Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim nation, yet Muslim nations, including the fabulously wealthy Saudi regime, have given chump change compared to those countries with majority Christian populations. Don't expect Christians, or Americans, to gain points with those who believe America is the “Great Satan.”

Human tragedy is bad enough, but listening to some theologians trying to explain it is doubly irritating. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, wrote a Jan. 2 column for The Sunday Telegraph about the tsunami disaster. The front-page headline about the column proclaimed, “Archbishop of Canterbury admits: This makes me doubt the existence of God.”

The headline writer misrepresented the archbishop's view, but so convoluted was Dr. Williams' statement about the disaster (as noted by an editorial the next day) it is understandable how the writer of the headline reached his conclusion. Theologians should offer hope and truth. The pagans serve up enough doubt.

Rather than attempt to bring mankind up to God's level, many skeptics try to bring God down to man's level, remaking Him in a human image and thus encouraging the false view that God is someone who is supposed to make us happy and prosperous. If we are unhappy and not rich (or not rich enough), we will deny He exists. Prosperity and good health provide their own motives for unbelief, as C.S. Lewis and numerous other thinkers have eloquently written.

When Dr. Williams says prayer provides no “magical solutions” and most of the stock Christian answers to human suffering do not “go very far in helping us, one week on, with the intolerable grief and devastation in front of us,” where would he suggest we turn, if not to God?

As with most liberal clerics who question God, more than trust Him, Dr. Williams offers nothing from Scripture for comfort and explanation. It was the same when Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed in that Paris car crash. Clergymen were interviewed, but none offered more than empty platitudes. What good are the clergy if this is the best they can do? Why are they drawing salaries paid by parishioners who might properly expect, even demand, more?

Let me, a nontheologian, offer some help to the skeptics. In Job, Chapter 1, Job suffers a catastrophe when God allows Satan to take away his children and worldly goods to test his faith. Job makes two statements that ought to be remembered and repeated in times like these.

The first is, “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised.” Job also says in response to his skeptical and nagging wife, “Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?”

If you prefer a secular source, consider Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address. Seeking to understand the Civil War catastrophe, Lincoln concluded, “The Almighty has His own purposes.”

Those are answers (and questions) that resonate far better than the pap coming from the skeptics and certain theologians who have their degrees, but seem to know less about God and His nature than what causes an undersea earthquake.

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©2005 Tribune Media Services

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“Where was God during the tsunami? How could He cause so much suffering?”

When death occurs in such large proportions it should, as it has, bring mourning to the world. It should capture our attention on the frailty of human life and remind us that no matter how sophisticated humankind has become, we are still not as strong as we think we are.

There is no easy answer to these questions; they must be treated tenderly. The answers are complicated and even mysterious. Who knows but the fully aware mind of God of what the tsunami means for the history of the world. Only God knows what the tsunami means for individuals still living and for individuals who were taken. Each life is valued in the eyes of God. But we do our best to keep God's perspective. We cannot force Him to see things from our limited necrophobic viewpoint. We must know that life, despite the atheist's beliefs, does not end when the body stops functioning.

Some say that God “caused” the tsunami. Yet, just because God could have prevented the tsunami (because He is powerful enough to do this), does not mean that God “caused” the tsunami.

In one sense, the tsunami was caused because intense pressure moved against the earth's tectonic plates which led to an earthquake. The earthquake caused waves. The waves swept ashore.

In another sense, God is the only one with eyes able to see beyond the horizon of our own. He sees purposes that span distances broader than the Universe. And He sees the extension of the lives of humans to span beyond the grave.

Philosopher H. Rolston says, “Life is a paradox of suffering and glory, and this 'secret of life' remains hidden in God, unresolved by biochemistry or revolutionary theory. The way of nature is the way of the cross.”

Christ bore upon himself the full weight of evil and suffering, enough to unburden the whole world. His love makes sense of our suffering and softens the blow of death's sting. These words will not comfort you, however, if you cannot grasp the significance of conquered death.

We must also remember why we were made. Our culture has clouded our vision with the illusion that we are made for circumstantial happiness and biological pleasure.

This is false. The joy that comes through being identified with Christ, both in suffering and at ease, and the reality of the vigorous vitality beyond death is far better than the flimsy dreams of the kingdoms of men. Falling before Him, who is not only worthy but who satisfies the last modicum of our spiritual thirst, fulfills our purpose. The endurance of this life is worthwhile, whether it be painful, weary, short or even mundane.

When my grandfather died two years ago, my mother was angry at the doctor. It was speculated that the doctor's knife “slipped.” But when Ravi Zacharias spoke at my grandfather's memorial service, he said something that settled my mother's heart. In fact, 11 months later, before she died, she wrote in her journal the phrase that Ravi shared: “Each of us has an appointment with God.” It comforted her. It comforted me. I hope it comforts you.

No death is purposeless in the eyes of God. Just because we may not know the purpose, does not mean there is no purpose. We must trust the character of Him who can make beauty from ashes, joy from suffering, and life from death. He calls us to be part of his redemption. We are neither early nor late for our appointment, whether it comes by disease, traffic accident, or natural disaster. Are we turning to Him who holds our times in his hands? Are we in turn bringing his love - the only love - that can salvage those who are hurting?

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Copyright © 2005 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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