Many people share this predicament when considering Christian faith. If God is good and has power over all, why does he allow evil and suffering? Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of the last Century saw the orderly and designed nature of the universe as revealing intelligence superior to all of human intelligence – the result of a mind not coincidence. But Einstein could not come to understand the contradiction of why a God this powerful would allow evil and suffering. A deeper look at Einstein’s premise that humans are essentially robots severely limited his ability to think his dilemma through to a Christian conclusion. Any conclusion is only as good as the premise on which it is based. A number of books are available which explain Einstein’s’ grappling with God. However this is a problem people throughout history have tried to answer with something other than a biblical solution.
In their book, How Now Shall We Live, Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcy detail five of the most common false solutions and the explanation that comes from Scripture. This is just one chapter in a powerful book. Briefly here are their points.
The most common false solution is that God doesn’t exist. This means that events are just natures’ random actions, not good or evil. So look at this. If we’re just part of nature (which is what we are if we are not created by God and put on this earth by Him for a purpose) why does evil and suffering deeply disturb us? Why do we cry out, “Why is this happening to me?” Why do atheists get angry at a God that doesn’t exist or out of instinct point blame for bad things at some unknown force and possibly look skyward when they do it?
There are others, and this is the second false solution, deny suffering exists. This is a particular view point of Christian Science and other religions. This line of thought literally convinces you that it’s all in your mind. Denying reality can have serious consequences. You probably don’t know that four of Richard Nixon’s closest advisors were Christian Scientists. Charles Colson mentions this fact in the book I referred to a few moments ago. Mr. Colson admits he made his own mistakes, as a close Nixon advisor and he went to jail for them, but his observation is insightful, that if we do not believe in evil we cannot cope with reality when it hits us in the face. Realistically, do you think you can make suffering go away by convincing yourself it doesn’t exist?
The third false solution some people come to is that God is at a place totally above anything we humans can comprehend. So what’s the point of getting angry with God if he’s not even connected to our reality? How could God understand our pain and our suffering if He is a universe unto Himself? If that were the case talking to God wouldn’t change anything.
Solution # four: God’s power is limited. This line of thinking rationalizes that God is still working on becoming all-powerful and that someday he will be able to prevent bad things from happening. Like He’s still trying to figure how to be all-powerful. That won’t make us feel any better today or maybe for generations. Be patient. I’m still evolving. It sounds a little bit like Tim the tool man Taylor.
The fifth false solution is that God created evil to achieve a greater good. Philosopher John Hick has described this position in a book titled Evil and the God of Love. He states that struggle for good is necessary for us to freely choose God. However this draws the conclusion that God created evil. What would be the sense or logic in worshipping a God that requires evil as part of human destiny? This is not to say that God doesn’t get good things from bad. But that is different than saying God put the bad things there as part of the plan.
So none of these explanations properly answer what every sensitive person asks. Why does God allow evil and suffering?
What the Bible teaches is that God is good and he created a universe that was very good.
Scripture also teaches that the universe is marred by evil and suffering. For both of these statements to be true then there must be a source of sin, outside of God. And that is what the Bible tells us. A part of human intelligence is freedom. This is the right to choose to obey or disobey the goodness and the perfection of God. When Adam and Eve made their first decisions to disobey, sin was created which is the spiritual realm of Satan. This establishes that sin entered the world at a particular point in history, not in the beginning.
The reason God can comfort us is because he did not create evil. Don’t you think that God hates what sin has done? However, fully creating humans meant that they must be able to make choices and therein lay the risk of choosing between good and evil.
Being that he is the God of goodness also meant that when he looked ahead to the evil and suffering we would suffer in consequence to sinfulness, he decided to create us anyway. The alternative would have been to end human history with Adam and Eve.
In addition He turned sin into the means of salvation. He took on all the punishment Satan dished out through the God-man Jesus Christ. Who but God could have figured out a Divine Justice whereby Jesus would die on the cross for all sins until the end of time?
This is how much God loves us.
Only the Bible explains the true meaning and true significance of evil and suffering
When we fully trust this truth, we can come to worship our Creator with every fibre in our being.
We can submit to a feeling of completeness that no other lesser explanation achieves when we accept Jesus Christ dieing on the cross and being resurrected as the single expression of God’s will that reconnects us to the good and perfect creation that we were in the beginning. It is nothing that we can earn. It is a gift given to us by our Heavenly Father. All we must do is accept it.
Saturday, June 03, 2006
DON'T LEAVE ANYTHING TO CHANCE
Don’t leave anything to chance…
Isn’t that an expression we use when we’re trying to make sure something works out?
We try to foresee every possibility; pay close attention to the smallest detail.
Isn’t this really a process whereby we see ourselves achieving perfection which we believe represents the highest level of success…when what we are trying to do works out perfectly.
When I heard this phrase used recently, it resounded as a piece of potentially irrefutable evidence in the ongoing discourse that debates the origin of the human race.
Did we evolve – are we the result of random, sequential events against all reasonable mathematical odds…
Or:
Are we Gods’ creation - begun in the Garden of Eden as described in the Bible; part of an exactly executed plan by the Lord of the universe?
Sometimes rational people try combining these divergent lines of thinking. I have heard a ‘devout’ Christian express the belief that evolution occurred as the scientists say but at a certain period in history God entered the picture and in a magic kind of way changed these evolved creatures into His people and at that point the story in the Bible began.
Is this not a severe questioning of the Bible?
Non acceptance of God as Creator and Ruler of the universe was less challenged by Albert Einstein. As he developed his deep knowledge of the universe around him he became convinced that the perfection he always discovered was no accident. It had to be the work of someone with a master plan.
Einsteins’ problems with God laid within his inability to reconcile that kind of power with the realities of good and evil and pain and suffering he saw in the human condition and why if there was a God with such power He allowed pain in the world.
The fact we as humans desire perfection is a total validation that humanity is a God Creation. Perfection leaves nothing to chance.
Whereas if you truly believe we have evolved – by chance- why would your core belief not be that random, accidental chains of events over time are what produces perfection?
I think that when we believe: Thy will be done…………..Gods’ will be done;
That is the acknowledgement of the real truth at our center – from the day of our creation onwards.
When we attempt to apply a human standard of perfection we are falling far, far short of what perfection really means.
Doing what comes natural to us is to try for perfection.
Knowing and understanding that only Jesus Christ who walked as one of us achieved that goal frees us from the bondage of believing that perfection is attainable on earth by humans.
Believing that human endeavor can encompass and envision every eventuality goes against the very supposition that the human process began in the slime and followed along an evolutionary pathway leading to a time of human perfection.
Leaving nothing to chance mean the exact opposite. It means putting trust in our Creator who controls the final outcome and already knows what that outcome will be.
Leaving nothing to chance is the way we should try to live our lives especially because we are dealing with our eternity. We are more than a microscopic, evolutionary pixel on the high resolution screen of nature. We are Gods’ children and he wants us all, of our own free will to turn towards Him.
When you truly aspire to leave nothing to chance, you reach for perfection in every thing you do knowing Gods will means understanding that you will not achieve perfection until you move up to heaven. God put the quest for perfection in our hearts and he allows us to see glimpses of it in the universe that surrounds us..
Isn’t that an expression we use when we’re trying to make sure something works out?
We try to foresee every possibility; pay close attention to the smallest detail.
Isn’t this really a process whereby we see ourselves achieving perfection which we believe represents the highest level of success…when what we are trying to do works out perfectly.
When I heard this phrase used recently, it resounded as a piece of potentially irrefutable evidence in the ongoing discourse that debates the origin of the human race.
Did we evolve – are we the result of random, sequential events against all reasonable mathematical odds…
Or:
Are we Gods’ creation - begun in the Garden of Eden as described in the Bible; part of an exactly executed plan by the Lord of the universe?
Sometimes rational people try combining these divergent lines of thinking. I have heard a ‘devout’ Christian express the belief that evolution occurred as the scientists say but at a certain period in history God entered the picture and in a magic kind of way changed these evolved creatures into His people and at that point the story in the Bible began.
Is this not a severe questioning of the Bible?
Non acceptance of God as Creator and Ruler of the universe was less challenged by Albert Einstein. As he developed his deep knowledge of the universe around him he became convinced that the perfection he always discovered was no accident. It had to be the work of someone with a master plan.
Einsteins’ problems with God laid within his inability to reconcile that kind of power with the realities of good and evil and pain and suffering he saw in the human condition and why if there was a God with such power He allowed pain in the world.
The fact we as humans desire perfection is a total validation that humanity is a God Creation. Perfection leaves nothing to chance.
Whereas if you truly believe we have evolved – by chance- why would your core belief not be that random, accidental chains of events over time are what produces perfection?
I think that when we believe: Thy will be done…………..Gods’ will be done;
That is the acknowledgement of the real truth at our center – from the day of our creation onwards.
When we attempt to apply a human standard of perfection we are falling far, far short of what perfection really means.
Doing what comes natural to us is to try for perfection.
Knowing and understanding that only Jesus Christ who walked as one of us achieved that goal frees us from the bondage of believing that perfection is attainable on earth by humans.
Believing that human endeavor can encompass and envision every eventuality goes against the very supposition that the human process began in the slime and followed along an evolutionary pathway leading to a time of human perfection.
Leaving nothing to chance mean the exact opposite. It means putting trust in our Creator who controls the final outcome and already knows what that outcome will be.
Leaving nothing to chance is the way we should try to live our lives especially because we are dealing with our eternity. We are more than a microscopic, evolutionary pixel on the high resolution screen of nature. We are Gods’ children and he wants us all, of our own free will to turn towards Him.
When you truly aspire to leave nothing to chance, you reach for perfection in every thing you do knowing Gods will means understanding that you will not achieve perfection until you move up to heaven. God put the quest for perfection in our hearts and he allows us to see glimpses of it in the universe that surrounds us..
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