"DEAR GOD, YOU SURE DON'T ACT LIKE YOU'RE ALIVE" - Day 28

Day 28 – the beast of suffering

It is a Christian conviction that evil is permitted by a sovereign God in some way that is ultimately compatible with his goodness.  –WILLIAM DYRNESS

 The mention of God’s grace usually yields a quick response from atheists and agnostics. Even believers must admit that only half the story has been told. The breath-taking beauty of this world is admixed with the most horrific natural calamity. The radiant sunset is followed the next day by the devastating tornado. The wonderful relationship between mother and baby is enjoyed for a season then taken away by that child’s death in infancy or rebellion in adolescence. Great and noble deeds of kindness are witnessed across the globe every minute, but gruesome acts of cruelty abound as well. One moment we are healthy and prosperous, and life is good. The next moment we are sick and impoverished, and life is not good at all. Many—consider Jeremiah and Job¹—begin to wish life had never been granted them. Truly, in our lives, as in nature, the rose also bears the thorn. And the subject of God's goodness, if not answered with a resounding “no,” becomes in many minds an interrogative sentence.

The time has now come to try to answer this question. We must address the problem of evil and suffering in the world. Thus far on our journey, it may have seemed that we were trying to avoid the subject. When we ascended the slope of God’s existence, we refused to answer such questions because we determined they were questions relevant to God’s nature, not His existence. And up to now along our second leg, it may seem that we have tiptoed around them as if afraid to confront them. This, however, is not the truth. We have not yet delved into the problem of pain and suffering simply because it was not the appropriate time to ask. That time has now come. We know that God exists and have determined that He is the all-powerful, all-knowing, righteous Creator. We know that He transcends us but has chosen to reveal Himself and relate to us. And it’s when we try to explain the nature of this relationship that we are thrown into the arena with the beast of suffering. Because God does relate to us, we must deal with this subject now. We ignore it at our own peril.

In the next few days we will consider the questions raised by suffering. Why is there such evil and pain in the world God created? Did God put them there? If so, how can we refer to Him as good and gracious? If, on the other hand, pain and suffering are not from God, how and why did they enter His creation? Did He want to exclude them but did not possess the power? Or did He have the power to remove them but did not care enough about us to do so? In summary, how can we mesh the omnipotence of God with the love of God in a world so infiltrated with evil? These are questions as old as the human race. They have been raised by God-fearers like Job and atheists like David Hume. A library of books has been written in an attempt to give them answers. Still, the questions remain.

To think that I in the following pages will set the record straight is laughable. I cannot promise that I will be able to answer all the questions raised by suffering, for I will not. But I do promise to look at the subject as honestly and objectively as I can and relate what makes sense to me.

With this disclaimer in mind, let us in the arena now turn to the beast and do battle.    

¹Jeremiah 20:14-18; Job 3:1-26

 

Daily Quotation

Quoted in Steve Kumar, Christianity for Skeptics, 51.