This past summer, on my way to the MU, Chip asked me a rather blunt question after spending a few minutes talking about some spiritual things. As he sat on the bench with Josh outside of Southern 12, he asked me, “So what do you struggle with? What is it for you?” While there is more than one answer to that question, the one that I gave that night was the freshest on my mind. When things do not go my way, it is not difficult for me to become very angry with God. I tend to become very cynical of God’s promise to cause all things to work together for good. I challenge Him asking, “What good is a good that doesn’t feel good? You say you love me, but what good is a love that doesn’t feel like love?” My problem, at times, with God is that His world is really messed up. His world hurts and I don’t like that.
This sort of thinking is familiar to most people. Perhaps it is experienced to varying degrees of intensity, but I think it is the common human experience that life does not always feel good. If God is sovereign, then it certainly seems easiest to blame Him for what happens to us. Why the evil and suffering? For a greater good? Was He not smart enough to figure out a way to accomplish the same good without all the pain?
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov (from The Brothers Karamazov – read it, it’s a Russian novel, so it is long, but it’s worth it) asked, “Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature – that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance – and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell me the truth.” Ivan is not the only one to ask this question. The presence of evil in the world is the one argument against God. If you pay attention to what atheists say, it is the one and only argument that they have against a good and all-powerful God. I think we fool ourselves if we don’t understand at least a little bit where they are coming from.
How will we answer the question for ourselves and for others?
What Scripture says about creation and the Fall is an important part of how one deals with the issue of God and evil. People have differing ways of saying why God allowed man to sin, but the key point of Scripture is that man sinned. Man was placed in a good world and he ate from the one tree that he was told to not eat from. Any answer to the question of evil that does not speak within the storyline of Scripture is going to be a deficient answer. The Christian answer to the question must include Scripture’s account of creation and the Fall. If it does, it will naturally lead into the next part of the Story: Redemption. When the answer leads into the part of the story about redemption then the Gospel is presented. This is how we need to deal with these sort of questions. We have to talk about the Gospel. It is the Spirit by the power of the Gospel that changes lives. Not arguments or answers to objections. Let us answer the objections, but may we do it in a way that leads to the Gospel.
People don’t reject God for intellectual reasons. They might hide behind intellectual objections, but the issue is an issue of the heart. I think this is the point of Psalm 14:1. Denial of God comes from a heart that is opposed to Him. It is a heart that is suppressing the truth that is clearly visible in the world around us (Romans 1:18-23). That heart is changed by the Gospel for it “is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).
This is a point that I tried to emphasize this summer. While I think there is a benefit to understanding objections raised to Christianity and the answers given to those objections, in the end, the most important thing you can do is share the Gospel. This is why I think a familiarity with the storyline of Scripture is crucial. The Gospel is best understood within the context of the Creation – Fall – Redemption – New Creation metanarrative.
If you can talk about the storyline of Scripture then you have a ready defense for those who question why you believe what you believe. I think it is the best way to think through and respond to challenges like that of Ivan Karamazov. It has proven to me to be helpful is wrestling with personal hurt and disappointment. Yeah, there is evil in the world. Man has a hand in that evil. If I God were to get rid of evil today then those who have not been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb would face His wrath. That day will come. There will not always be evil, but He tarries. He waits, that more may come in...
"'Well, my dear Pangloss,’ Candide said to them, ‘when you were hanged, dissected, whipped, and tugging at the oar, did you continue to think that everything in this world happens for the best?’”
Voltaire in Candide
Voltaire in Candide
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