Category: Christian

The Problem of Evil and Mystery of Will

Why did God allow us a choice that would lead to our own corruption?

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I am reading a book by Clay Jones called Why Does God Allow Evil? I highly recommend it. The “problem of evil” is one of the more challenging questions that we face in life, and difficulties struggling with that question have led many people to abandon or refuse to embrace faith in God.

Why does God allow pain and suffering? If God is good, how can He allow people to suffer? Why doesn’t God stop evil? If God exists, why does He allow evil to exist? These are just some of the variations of the problem of evil.

The problem of evil is a challenge for every worldview. Responses include that there is no God, and that’s just the way it is (a naturalistic world view); evil is just an illusion of unenlightened souls (a Buddhist or eastern view); evil is result of bad karma (Hindu); or evil is the result of rebellsion against God – sin (Christian). We all struggle with the conviction that things simply aren’t the way they ought to be. That Utopian disconnect urges us to ask, “Why not?”

I think, personally, that the Christian worldview makes the most sense of this question. It begins with the story of God and Adam and Eve. Whether the story is allegorical or historical, the answer involves God’s purpose in creating man, man’s finite, corruptible character (compared to God’s infinite, pure character) and a plan to develop this corruptible creature (man) who is created in God’s own image into a pure, loving relationship with God that is defined by God’s pure character, and not the corruptible nature of man.

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The Significance of the Resurrection

Flesh gives birth to flesh, but spirit gives birth to spirit.

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I have written about the central importance of the resurrection of Jesus many times, but I come back to it again. Nothing could be more important. Of this Paul, was crystal clear in his writing.

If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain;

If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins;

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are evolved people most to be pitied;

If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”;

What you sow does not come to life until you die.

These are all statements made by Paul in his first letter to the people in Corinth.[1] These statements underscore and highlight the importance of the resurrection in Christian thought.

Jesus is the center of the Christian faith, and the gospel is at the center of Christianity and the resurrection is at the center of the Gospel. If Jesus was not raised from the dead, everything falls apart. The claims of Christianity are bankrupt because they rise or fall on this one point.

If Jesus was raised from the dead, Jesus is who he said he was and no other event in human history is more significant; no  religion or philosophy lays a claim to hope in the present and the future like words of Jesus. Jesus truly is the “light of men”[2] and the “bread of life”[3].

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Faith Requires a Personal Encounter

We have a hard time believing on the basis of someone else’s experience.

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This is a prologue to a previously published piece, Room for Doubters & Skeptics. In that original piece, I explored the fact that Jesus invited, embraced and nurtured doubters and skeptics, even in his inner circle of followers. We see this in the accounts of Nathanael (also known as Bartholomew) and Thomas (who we call “Doubting Thomas).

We meet Nathanael early on when Philip introduces him to Jesus. Nathanael was skeptical. Thomas we get to know in more detail in the middle of his time with Jesus and at the end. Even at the end of his time with Jesus, Thomas still doubted.

The stories of these two men leave us with a few important takeaways. First, honest doubt was no issue for Jesus, and should be no issue for us. This was the point of the initial piece that to which I linked above. In this piece we will see the importance of asking the critical questions and being genuinely interested in the answers. There are answers, but, more importantly, the answers lie in more than bare facts and reason; genuine faith requires a personal encounter.

Whether God exists is the most important question we can ask. Whether God exists, or not, is (or should be) the foundation for everything we do and everything we think about the world. On this point, we are either hot or cold. Lukewarm is the same as being cold because it means we haven’t’ cared or been thoughtful enough to be interested in the question.

There is no such thing as a follower of God who doesn’t seek him. There is a difference between intellectual ascent and faith (commitment) to God. Someone famously said that even Satan believes in God. Nathanael and Thomas provide us an example of the importance of persistence in getting answers to the questions that arise from our doubt and skepticism.

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Room for Doubters & Skeptics

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Jesus formed an inner circle of people who were called apostles, and that group included doubters. Yes, Jesus invited doubters and included them in His inner circle. Two of those people were Thomas and Bartholomew (also known as Nathanael).

There is nothing wrong with doubt. Honest doubt is always better than false faith. We should never trade our integrity for something that isn’t genuine. It’s better to have no hope than a false hope.

I recently wrote about a statement made about Stephen Hawking: “A great scientist, even like Stephen Hawking, if he had to admit a creator, it would be unavoidable, he would have to seek him because he is a great scientist.” I don’t know if that statement is really true. I’m not sure if Stephen Hawking would really seek God if he thought God existed, but a person should seek God if God exists. There could be no greater or more important finding than that!

Ultimate truth for finite beings like us, however, is always accompanied by doubt. We don’t know what we don’t know. We don’t know everything, and we never will. Yet, we seek for something solid, something we can trust and something in which we can put our faith. We all do that, even atheists, even if all we trust is science (and the human intellectual capacity to understand it).

For these reasons, the stories of Nathanael and Thomas are so significant.

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Loving God with Our Minds

The ability to reason is God-given and stems from the rational mind of God that created the universe by speaking it into existence.

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We should not check our intellect at the church door. Jesus instructs us to love God with our minds as part of the greatest commandment.[1] To some extent, however, many Christians have adopted a view of faith that might be characterized as anti-intellectual, to the point of abdicating the realm of the intellect to secularists and materialists.

We Christians seem to be skeptical about our own minds. I find this interesting because, according to Scripture, we should arguably be more skeptical about our hearts![2] Jeremiah identifies the heart as “deceitful above all things”.  Jeremiah doesn’t say this about the mind.

There is an interesting parallel with Charles Darwin here. Darwin said that he could not trust his inner convictions (intuition, perhaps heart) because his inner convictions evolved from lower life forms. To drive his point home, Darwin posits the question: “Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”[3] Darwin, ironically, didn’t seem to share the same doubt about his intellect, though his intellect also “developed from the mind of the lower animals”, as Darwin put it.

A materialist like Charles Darwin should have much less confidence trusting human intellect than a Christian. Darwin should have been as skeptical of his own intellect as he was skeptical of his inner convictions because both his “convictions” and his ability to reason derived from lower life forms. Christians should have much more confidence in their intellect because they believe human intellect is created in the image of God who is, Himself, rational, mindful and intellectual.

The ability to reason is God-given and stems from the rational mind of God that created the universe by speaking it into existence.[4] We should have a healthy distrust of the heart, of emotions, of raw, unguided, reactionary instinct, not because it derives from a monkey’s mind, but because it is tainted by sin. We should have more confidence in intellect, reason, and logic because these are human abilities that are more directly tied into the nature and character of God.

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