Category: Hope

Why Does Goes God Allow Suffering: Eternal Decisions

Sometimes the rational answer doesn’t satisfy the emotional problem, but there is an answer to the emotional problem of suffering.

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I often listen to podcasts in the morning as I shave, shower, brush my teeth and get ready for work. Today I was listening to Dr. William Lane Craig respond to some questions about free will and suffering, and his comments prompt this blog piece.

He made the following statement

“Natural suffering forms the arena in which the drama is played out of people being freely called to come into the kingdom of God and find an eternal relationship with God. It is not at all improbable that only in a world infused with natural suffering would an optimal number of people freely respond to God’s gracious initiatives and come to enjoy a relationship with God and eternal salvation.”

Dr. Craig represents the Molinist view of the tension between God’s sovereignty, knowledge and power and man’s free will. On the Molinist view, God knows the future, but he does not determine it. Knowing the future, God chose to set the universe in motion, but he does not determine every aspect of it, including the choices that people make.

Knowing the future, God chose to set the universe in motion, and to that extent, He determines the outcome, because He knows the outcome. He does not determine it, however, to the extent of interfering with the free will He gave humans who are created in His image.

The fact that he knows the outcome, does not mean that He determines the choices each person makes. Each person is free to choose as they will, but God knows how they will choose from the beginning, and so He can be said to have willed it.

This is (my simple version of) the Molinist view. It respects God’s sovereignty, while acknowledging the clear implication of free will and moral responsibility to which God holds us that is reflected from beginning to end in the Bible.

I tend to like the Molinist view, but I am always somewhat cautioned in my own thinking not to be overly concerned with doctrinal nuances on matters that are, frankly, beyond us. I don’t want to die on a Molinist hill, or any other hill than the Gospel.

The Calvinist resurgence in the church today stands in contrast to a more Armenian view of inviolate free will. Many have been the discussions and debates between these two views. I fear we spend too much time and energy on debating when we should spend more time living out the Gospel. I think Paul might lump these debates in the category of vain discussions.

Still, I think it is good to chew on these things as they may be beneficial to our knowledge and understanding of God. As I thought about Dr. Craig’s comment above, I could not help think that this is a kind of divine utilitarianism – what is optimal for generating the most free will responses of love for, relationship with God, and eternal life with God.

Dr. Craig’s thesis is an attempt to explain why suffering exists in the world when God is supposed to be good, all-powerful and sovereign. Why doesn’t God stop suffering if He is all those things? Why does he allow suffering at all?

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The 2nd Amendment, Freedom & Responsibility

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Second Amendment to the Constitution
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If faith without works is dead, then our thoughts, prayers and condolences are meaningless at some point if we aren’t willing to take some action to address the societal problem of school shootings and mass shootings in general. What is the Christian response to these tragedies? Is the 2nd Amendment greater than the 6th commandment (though shall not murder), the greatest commandment (to love God with all our hearts, souls and minds) and the second greatest commandment (to love others as ourselves)? How do we balance the 2nd Amendment with God’s commandments? Are guns really the issue? Below is an article with some thoughts to consider as we mourn the victims of another school shooting.

via The 2nd Amendment, Freedom & Responsibility

 

Hope: In My Time of Dying

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Photo courtesy of yours truly, Budapest Hungary

I have experienced an awful lot of dying in my world recently. People that I know, friends and family of people that I know, one after another, many people in my world are dying lately.

Frankly, from the moment we are born, we begin to die. This isn’t a pleasant thought, but this is where my head is going as I read my Facebook feed, offering condolences, prayers and thoughts, one after another.

Our cells begin to die off from the moment we are born. Sure, they regenerate. Our cells die off and regenerate throughout our lives. As our lives go on, however, the dying process speeds up, it picks up in intensity, the dying outpaces the regeneration and it results, eventually, in our natural deaths… if something doesn’t kill us sooner.

It could be depressing to think about. On the other hand, it is natural. This is the way it is.

Why do we even care?

Really, why does death bother us so much? Does my dog think about dying?

If death is simply a fact, a matter of life, a natural phenomenon, what’s gotten into our heads about it? How do we explain our preoccupation with death?

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Our Transcendent Hope

Llife is short and tenuous. Whether we live to be a hundred or 80 or only 8, life will end. What, then, is our hope?

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A very close friend of mine was expressing concern about the state of the world recently. He expressed concern about Donald Trump the Korean dictator, like a bully provokes a mass murderer. I was not prepared for such an existential discussion, and I did not respond very well.

I recognize, though, the the concerns are real. I was haunted by the specter of nuclear war as a child growing up in the 60’s and 70’s. I even bought a poster of a mushroom cloud to hang on my wall, not because I wanted the world to end in a ball of fire, but because it was a reality I couldn’t ignore.

But we do learn to ignore realities like that. I no longer have a poster of a mushroom cloud, and the threat of nuclear war no longer looms in my psyche like it did in my teenage years. Though it is no less likely to happen. (Maybe even more likely now!)

Maybe we lose our angst over these things because they are hard to live with them. We learn to push them back into the recesses of our consciousness. We displace the angst with busyness, entertainment and other distractions.

The fact is that life is short and tenuous. Whether we live to be a hundred or 80 or only 8, life will end. This is a harsh, but true, reality, though I’m afraid it isn’t very helpful “advice” for someone who is laboring under the burden of the weight of the world. I wish I had said something different (or, at least, more).

I firmly believe this world is not all there is. We thirst, and water exists to quench our thirst. We hunger, and food exists to sate our hunger. It makes sense that, if we yearn for something transcendent, something transcendental exists to satisfy our existential longing.

We all seem to “know” this, but the world is so full of a thousand superficial answers to the ultimate existential question that we hardly have any idea what to believe. We might be tempted to seize on the first or closest one or easiest answer, like responding to that Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes mailer declaring you might be the winner. For some people, hope springs eternal.

Others are tempted to abandon any hope of an existential answer. The resign ourselves to the material world, trying to squeeze whatever temporal pleasure and benefits while they can out of this myopic existence.

Is there proof of something transcendent? How can we know? These are serious and heartfelt questions.

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Back to the Tree of Life

The hope that is deferred is not just eternal life, but fullness of life.

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The tree of life is mentioned only three places in the Bible. The first and most prominent appearance of the tree of life is in Genesis. The tree of life appears in Proverbs (three times) and again in the Book of Revelation (on either side of the “river of the water of life… flowing from the throne of God….”[1])

The tree of life was there in the beginning, and it will be reappear in the end. In between, where we are now, between Genesis and Revelations, we are presently cut off from the tree of life.

The tree of life obviously figures into God’s ultimate plan and purpose. But how? Where is the tree of life between the Garden of Eden and standing beside the river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God? Let’s take a look.

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