Here are some jottings I prepared for our mid-week meeting:
We had lots of fun discussion - e.g. does God (the Father) Suffer?!
How Can a Loving God Allow Suffering?
Towards a Christian Response to the Haiti Earthquake
The so-called “problem of evil”:
How can an all-powerful loving God allow suffering?
Responses: (1) Question God’s love: perhaps he doesn’t care?
and / or
(2) Question God’s power: perhaps he can’t do anything about it?
A very common objection to the Christian faith (1 Pt 3:15)
God’s love
God’s power / sovereignty – Am 3:6
(The “problem” implies that God is morally obliged to prevent suffering like this if he can)
God must have a good (morally sufficient) reason for (allowing) suffering; even if we can’t understand it completely we have good grounds for trusting him
The big picture of the Bible:
Creation
God made a good world – suffering is not God’s “original” / prime intention
Fall
Human beings are responsible for rebelling against God
Building on fault lines, corrupt building practices, looting, gunfire, military protection required, wrong decisions, disagreements, failure to help
God’s curse on the created order (Gen 3:17)
The groaning of creation (Rm 8:22)
Judgement
We all deserve hell
Cross
God cares about suffering and acts to save us from it
Jesus has suffered terribly – sympathises – Heb 4:15
God uses suffering for good
Resurrection
Death has lost its sting – 1 Cor 15:55-56 – death the gateway to glory for the believer
Final Judgement
God will punish all wrong doing
Suffering is a warning of the judgement to come. C. S. Lewis: “Suffering is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world” – Luke 13:1-5
Suffering teaches us the terrible seriousness of sin
New Creation
God will put the world to rights, put an end to suffering – Rev 21:4
God uses suffering in the life of the Christian for good as discipline – Heb 12:6, 10 – perseverance, character – Rm 5:3-4; James 1:3
Some suffering reveals God’s character – e.g. wrath – Rm 1:18ff; 9:22-24
Suffering is not necessarily directly connected to individual sin – Jn 9:1-2
Don A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil (IVP / Baker, 1990)
Roger Carswell, Why Me? The Problem of Suffering (Authentic Media, 1993)
Paul Williams and Barry Cooper, If You Could Ask God One Question (Christianity Explored / The Good Book Company, 2007) chapter 10 “Why Do You Allow Suffering?”
John Dickson, If I Were God – I’d End All The Pain: Struggling With Evil, Suffering and Faith (Matthias Media / Good Book Company)
I spoke today for the Middlesex Christian Union Mission on How Can a loving God allow suffering? In case its of any use or interest to anyone, here's the handout I prepared. Those in the know may recognise something of a resembalence to the 6 points of the Two Ways To Live gospel outline.
How can a loving God allow suffering?
An intellectual problem Can God prevent suffering? – God’s power? Does God want to prevent suffering? – God’s love?
A personally painful problem
Not all the answers We are not God… But God has clearly revealed himself (Bible & Jesus) Trusting God, who has good reasons
Intellectually - coherent - makes sense of our experience Emotionally satisfying
No problem for the atheist – which is a problem!
Some Christian responses:
(1) God created a good world
(2) People rebelled against God
(3) The world is under God’s judgement
(4) Jesus’ death is God’s loving answer to suffering
Humans are responsible for evil
God is in control
Jesus experiences suffering
Jesus bore the judgement of God for all who will trust him
God brings good out of suffering
(5) Jesus defeated suffering and death and rose from the dead
Here are some assorted further thoughts on the problem of evil in response to a response to a previous post:
Of course the problem of evil is not really a problem to the atheist.
In a way this commends his system: stuff happens, that's just life, we have to pull ourselves together and get on with it. Everything's random and meaningless so hey, ho.
What might give the athiest pause for thought, however, is that his system seems to have little or nothing to say in the face of the rape of a little girl or the carnage of the consentration camps. Whilst "evil" might not be an intellectual problem for his system, it is a problem that he still feels in his gut that certain things are evil and that something in the way he is hardwired cries out for justice.
Thankfully, most atheists are inconsistent and don't live as if survival of the fittest is all there is - but they can't give me a good reason why I shouldn't torture babies if I want too. They have abolished the problem of evil, which is a big problem.
* * * Satan, the serpent, was created good and fell away from that good.
* * *
Natural evils (such as hurricane Katrina) are not God’s original intention for the pre-fall world considered without sin. They are the result of God’s just curse on sin. Even these God uses for good: I think as C. S. Lewis said, “suffering is God’s megaphone to rouse a sleeping world”. For the Christian, all things work together for good. Suffering and evil provide opportunities for courage and fortitude which would not be possible in a “perfect” world.
* * *
Jesus bore the penalty of sin for all those who would trust in him and decisievely broke its power, though its presence will not be fully and finally removed until he comes again to judge the world and put it to rights.
My non-Christian correspondent responded to my 10 points on the problem of evil (9th Feb), arguing that: for a proposition to be intellectually respectable, it must be in principle falsifiable.
Of course, its worth pausing to note that a true proposition wont in fact be properly falsifiable since it is true and not false.
The Christian faith is in principle falsifiable: if you could prove that you’d dug up Jesus’ body you would have disproved the physical resurrection of Jesus and hence the historic Christian faith. You would have shown that the Christian faith did not correspond to reality.
One could also show that the Christian faith were nonsense if it contained a logical contradiction. You would have shown that the Christian faith was incoherent.
A great deal of ink could be spilt on how one would know that one had demonstrated that the Christian faith erred.
Much of the work of the Christian apologist will be to show how he makes sense of Christianity as a system. It is not narrow minded, but perfectly reasonable for the Christian to say “since I am convinced on good grounds that God is loving and omnipotent I reason that he must have some morally sufficient reason for allowing suffering and evil”.
Many of the claims of Christianity concern special or even unique historical events such as miracles and so are not susceptible to scientific experimental dis-proof since you can’t go to a lab and repeat something to see if it wont work.
(1) We cannot hope to completely "solve" the "problem" of evil. God is infitely above and beyond us so he will always remain the great Incomprehensible Mystery to us. Yet we can describe the Mystery: we can say what is not so and mark out the area where the truth lies. If you like, we can know God like a sketch (an outline with features and shading) not a photograph (in every detail).
I didn’t mean it to be an endorsement of strong / thorough-going apophaticism.
A soft kind of apophatic theology / via negativa, which says what God is not (immortal, immutable, impassible, independent, uncreated, immense, incomprehensible, infallible, atemporal, aspacial, incorporeal etc.) is extremely helpful.
But we can also make true statements about God because he has clearly revealed himself in human words in the Bible. Our statements about God can be true and adequate but not exhaustive or entirely precise.
God’s revelation involves accommodation: he graciously condescends to describe himself to us in “creaturely” language that we creatures might understand something of the creator, rather as we might explain something to a 5 year old.
All language about God is analogical not univocal. God is a rock (he is strong, stable and reliable) but he is not a rock (he is not an inanimate lump of minerals). God is a lion, but not in the same way that Leo the Lion is a lion. God’s power is not exactly like human power (e.g. he is never tyrannical) and his power is one perspective on the simple God (considered from God's point of view his power is his love, wisdom, goodness, pity etc).
The fact that God is three persons (the Son reflects the Father but is not the Father) and has made us in his image gives a deep theological basis for analogical knowledge of God.
To predicate anything of God is less than straightforward. For example, to say “God is…” sounds like a statement about the present tense, whereas God is atemporal and eternal, so he has all his attributes in that mode, something that its not easy to capture in English.
Deuteronmoy 29:29 is a helpful verse: “The secret things belong to God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
Its worth noticing that the verse implies that God’s revelation is given that we might obey it and live in the light of it, rather than to answer all our questions, to satisfy our intellectual curiosity or for the sake of argument.
God is the creator (the potter) and we are the creatures (lumps of clay). Though he has graciously revealed himself to us, accommodated himself to our weakness and bears with us, he is not ultimately answerable to us. We need to remember our place and watch our words when it come to questioning God. God is and will be the just judge of all the earth. We are not!
The Christian approach is “faith seeking understanding”, not, “God, answer all my questions and then I’ll (condescend to) believe in you (if I reckon you’ve done a good enough job to convince me)”.
Nevertheless, the Christian should explain and defend the faith to non-Christians. The aim here is to show the coherence of the Christian faith and ways in which it can be seen to correspond to reality as we experience it, while showing the incoherence of other world views and their lack of ability to explain the world. If the non-Christian is to accept the reasonable revealed faith of the Christian, God must open his eyes and change his heart.
My theological correspondent (a non-Christian who asked about the omnipotence of God and my doubts) said he found the problem of evil (almost?) insurmountable. Here are some thughts (numbered for convenience not logical order) which may help:
(1) We cannot hope to completely "solve" the "problem" of evil. God is infitely above and beyond us so he will always remain the great Incomprehensible Mystery to us. Yet we can describe the Mystery: we can say what is not so and mark out the area where the truth lies. If you like, we can know God like a sketch (an outline with features and shading) not a photograph (in every detail).
(2) God is all loving, all powerful, all wise and all good. He really does govern the world. God must have a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.
(3) God must have made the best of all possible worlds considered as a whole, because of (2).
(4) God did not create evil. Evil is a privation (a falling away from good) not a thing that exists in itself.
(5) God is not the immediate responsible author of sin. Satan and humans are real responsible moral agents and all the blame for sin attaches to them.
(6) No one is really innocent. We all deserve hell.
(7) God uses evil for good. Without evil there could not be certain types of good: there is no making up without breaking up, no wrath or redemption without sin or loss.
(8) In the Person of Jesus Christ as a Man, God entered our world and took the full force of evil and sin. God sympathises with us in our human sin and suffering since he has been there.
(9) in (8) Jesus defeated sin and death and all their harmful consequences. He drew the sting of death. His resurrection proves his victory and guarentees it to all his people.
(10) God will judge the world with justice and every wrong will be put right.
Anything to add or change?
Do you find this intellectually and emotionally satisfying?
I am a Bible believing Christian, husband to Mrs Lloyd, father to four children.
I am the Rector of Warbleton, Bodle Street Green & Dallington and Rural Dean of Dallington, Diocese of Chichester. I also edit the book reviews for The Global Anglican.
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