Okay, friends - I traveled to Florida yesterday to arrive and find there was quite an interest in what I wrote in yesterday's blog about suffering. Here's a follow-up which will probably stir the pot more but at least will clarify my thinking :)
Theodicy is the word used to describe our attempts to explain the existence of evil given the fact that our God is a good God. "How can a loving God allow evil?" Since the ancient prophets raised the question, no satisfactory answers have been offered. So I suppose it may be idiocy on my part to even touch on the subject, not one time but twice!
First, let me say that I make certain assumptions when I write my blog. Foremost is the assumption that those who read it already know some things about me - things that I don't have to assure readers about before setting forth potentially controversial ideas. So in writing the blog yesterday, I assumed that you, the reader, know what I believe about the basic underlying goodness of God and I assumed that I don't have to put that into the record again before proceeding.
I enjoy wrestling with hard truths and ambiguous issues in Scripture. In the case of suffering, it isn't a question of whether or not our Father is good and loving. The question concerns how we sort out in our minds how He can either "allow" or "cause" what seems to us to be horrible things to happen.
I don't claim to have a definitive answer on this matter any more than the countless others who have addressed the matter throughout history. I do have an opinion though. If I'm wrong, that's okay. It's neither the first nor the last time. My attempt to address the topic here is nothing more than "thinking out loud" and here are my thoughts:
1. Our God is Sovereign over every detail of everything that happens in this world. Nothing happens outside of His control. If that isn't true, we're in big trouble, because if one thing can happen that He had no control over, what else might happen that could have catastrophic and even eternal consequences for us all? Either God is in complete charge or He is not. Again, if He is not, we're all screwed - plain and simple.
2. Under the umbrella of God's sovereignty is the reality that this whole world is under the power of "the wicked one." (See 1 John 5:19) God has allowed Satan and his minions to have run of the house for a time. However, this run of the house isn't without limitations. There are boundaries to what Satan can and cannot do. Those boundaries are set by Almighty God.
3. Does God "cause" or "allow" bad things to happen? First, we have to affirm that God doesn't tempt anybody to do evil. (See James 1:13) Left to himself, apart from the intervening grace of God, mankind will do evil as surely as water runs downhill. That has been true since the Garden of Eden. Then the question comes, "Does God allow evil?" and the answer is, "Of course, He does!" How else would it happen?
4. Could God prevent the evil things that happen from happening? Certainly. Does He always prevent them? No, He does not. Why doesn't He prevent them? Because the things that we see as horrible and evil fit into a greater plan than the vision of short-sighted humanity can see. In other words, God allows evil events to happen because in some way the dark threads of man's sinful behavior fits into the greater plan that God has.
A perfect example is the crucifixion of Jesus. Had we have been there that day, nobody could have ever convinced us that God had anything to do with this, but He did. Did God tempt Judas to betray Jesus? Of course not. Did God tempt the soldiers to crucify Him? No. However, by virtue of the fact that He allowed it, He is complicit in the whole event. After, all Jesus is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. What happened that day had to happen.
As the sign on President Truman's desk used to read, "The buck stops here." If somebody allows something that they could have stopped, it really makes no sense to argue whether they "allowed it" or "caused it." The answer becomes a moot point. Again, if God can stop something and doesn't stop it, we must acknowledge that there was a reason for His choice. If somebody tried to hurt Melanie, I would fly into that person in a rage to stop it from happening. However, when medical doctors hurt my children during physical treatments they needed as children, I stood by and watched it happen because I understood the greater cause present that my children couldn't see at the time.
5. That point brings me to the issue of our trying to defend God's reputation. We can't make sense out of why some things happen. The events violate our sense of justice so we sometimes say, "God had nothing to do with that!" (Billy Graham said that shortly after 9/11 and, though I love the man, I cringed when I heard it.) Something in the world got out of hand - God's hand - for a moment??? What a terrifying thought! If that were true, how could we know when He will have control over everything and when He won't??? No, our loving God is in full control at every moment - even in the darkest and worst times of life. He walks through those moments with us, holding us in His loving arms and saying to us, "You can't understand, but you can trust."
Some play the free-will card when they try to explain the apparent horrors of life. "God gave man free will and he can do what he wants," they argue. I know my next statement will probably set off an alarm with many people but here it is: I don't believe in free will. Free will? What does that mean? I'll try to be careful how I say this so as to not be misunderstood: We do make choices in life, so please don't give me the worn-out "robot argument." However, those choices don't don't emerge from a will that is free. Every person's will has been shaped, influenced, and directed by the stimuli that has come into their lives. There is a reason people make the choices they do. Choices aren't made in a vacuum. They are made in conjunction with influences that move our wills in one direction or another. Again, there is a reason why people make the choices they do. Could God have protected a person from the influences that led him to make a wrong choice? Of course. Then why didn't He? That is the question of the ancients as well as contemporaries and, to our dismay, has no satisfactory answer. When we reach a dead end on the street of reason, we have to take a sharp turn onto the road of trust. It's that simple.
Why does God allow rape, incest, murder, torture, etc? I don't know! But if He could stop it (and He could!) and He doesn't, we must assume it serves a greater purpose than our finite minds can comprehend. Don't think for a moment that I come to this conclusion with callous disregard for those who hurt. My own wife was repeatedly molested as a child by her grandfather - a man I long wanted to kill and hoped would one day go to hell - a man whose grave I imagined writing "child molester" on with Round Up (a weed killer that would kill the grass wherever it touched.) Yes, I have known anger about injustices and evil in this world. (As an aside, both Melanie and I forgave him and have recorded a teaching that gives the details. It's called, "Freedom Through Forgiveness.)
The bottom line is that if God doesn't stop something that He could stop, the existence of that event must serve an eternal purpose. We don't have to understand it, but to come to peace with the event, with ourselves and even with God, we must trust.
The older I get and the deeper I go with biblical truth and with my pursuit of theology, the more I realize there are many paradoxes (two facts that are equally true but appear to be in contradiction) with our God and His ways. We must learn to be content with those paradoxes and not insist on finding definitive answers to every question. God doesn't need us to defend Him nor explain Him. He just wants us to trust Him. He is good. That's a given. How terrible events can be reconciled with that fact is a question that most likely will linger as long as the world stands.
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