GOD AND EVIL; EVIL AND GOD

I am the Lord; there’s no other. I form light and create darkness, make prosperity and create doom.  I am the Lord, who does all these things.  Isaiah 45: 6b-7 (CEB)

        Yesterday, Jon Steingard, lead singer for the Christian Contemporary Music band, Hawk Nelson, shared with the world that he no longer believes in God.  This follows the “coming out” of one of the young writers for Hillsong music, who made the same “confession” last year.  Years ago now, a member of Five Iron Frenzy left the band for the same reason.  After the Hillsong bombshell, John Cooper, lead singer of SKILLET made a careful, thoughtful response, which I will not repeat here.  In all three cases the loss of faith came down to failing to answer the question: If God is all-powerful, and all-loving, then why is there so much evil in the world?  The conclusion is that since there is evil, there must not be God.  I addressed this question at some length in my last blog post, so I will not repeat it here.  But I have a couple of observations regarding the recent disclosure.

        I am not Jon’s judge.  But I firmly believe he has One.  As a Christian, I believe that he (along with everyone else) will stand before a Holy Judge (“He will come again to judge the living and the dead”) and will give an account for his public testimony and then his public recanting of his faith in Jesus Christ.  So, if I were sitting with Jon over a pint or a latte, as I have with students over the years, I would have some questions to explore with him on his new-found lack.  Here are a few of the questions I would try to walk through with him.

Have you carefully reviewed the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus?  Have you come across counter evidence that has led you to now believe that Jesus did not rise from the dead as a historical fact? 

See…here’s the thing.  I am convinced that asking about evil to determine the truth of God’s existence (and sovereignty) approaches the issue the wrong way around.  Here’s what I mean.  There is a large amount of evidence that Jesus rose from the dead.  I have listed this information in my presentation on The Resurrection, but I refer the reader to “Evidence that Demands a Verdict”, and “The Case for Christ”, both of which were an important part of my research.  Evil in the world has nothing to say about the historicity of Christ’s resurrection…but… The Resurrection of Jesus has much to say about the existence of God.  Do you see?  The issue is much more fruitfully presented: Since there is very good evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, and that therefore, clearly, God exists and is both loving and powerful, what are we to make of evil in the world?

Are you aware of the discovery by an atheist microbiologist that the DNA molecule cannot form by random chance?   Have you thought through the implications that the foundational building block of life is engineered, designed, created?

        There is actually quite a bit of scientific evidence in multiple fields that point to “intelligent design” – a creator.

Have you had the opportunity to read the work of great Christian thinkers who have thoroughly delved into this difficult question from a Christian perspective and answered the concerns you raise at some length?  Wouldn’t that be worth your time?

C. S. Lewis; Ravi Zacharias; John Lennox all have works on this very question.  I find one point by C. S. Lewis particularly helpful.  If the neo-atheist is correct; thought itself is merely a combination of electrical and chemical stimuli in the brain.  If reasoning is not reliable because we are essentially talking animals controlled and determined by our genetic code, without free-will and without mind to exercise it, why would you bother making an argument that is random electrical and chemical stimuli and expect me to accept that it is true?  According to you I don’t have the power to accept or reject.  It’s all determined.  So why bother writing your book?

Share the application of this on the rest of your life as you have now “discovered” that you are an “accident of the universe” and that your life, all life, is without meaning or purpose or value.  How will that “knowledge” shape your life moving forward?

        For instance, along with meaning and purpose and value, we lose love.  Love also is supposedly just a different combination of electrical and chemical stimuli.  It’s not real.  A world with no love, and no hope? 

I don’t know Jon Steingard.  I don’t know if he has worked through all of this information in careful consideration of the position that he is now taking that will affect not only his spiritual eternity, but the spiritual eternity of so many others who have followed his mission to make Christ known for two decades.  But if not, why not?  I am in no position to put these questions to him.  But his band members are.  They have shared with him, as have many other Christian artists, that they love him unconditionally.  Well and good; so they should.  But “live and let die” is not a loving position. 

        I don’t know what to make of the verse I opened with.  That is why I chose it.  I don’t know how to explain that God said God brings catastrophe.  Now, in the original context, God was sharing to Isaiah to pass along to God’s people that mythology is wrong.  There are not a group of gods battling it out for dominance.  God needed God’s people to know that God is real, and all-powerful.  No one is competing for honor or glory.  But that’s as far as I have gotten.  There are other passages of The Bible that I don’t understand.

An interviewer asked Mark Twain if he was bothered by the verses in The Bible that were hard to understand.  He responded, “Actually, I am much more bothered by the verses that are quite clear.”  So I teach the relatively simple principle that when we don’t understand, we should always fall back on what we do understand.  God is – because Jesus rose from the dead; and, we have very good evidence for that; it is not blind faith.  And, God is Love – because Jesus died on the cross for us; God the Son felt that we were worth it.  With the rest we do our best.

GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY

"It is God's will that men should hear his Word and not stop their ears...

Accordingly, we reject and condemn all the following errors as being contrary to the norm of the Word of God:
8. Likewise, when these statements are made without explanation that man's will before, in, and after conversion resists the Holy Spirit, and that the Holy Spirit is given to such as resist him purposely and persistently."
Formula of Concord; Epitome II Free Will

"7. This Christ calls all sinners to himself and promises them refreshment.  He earnestly desires that all men should come to him and let themselves be helped.  To these he offers himself in his Word, and it is his will that they hear his Word and do not stop their ears or despise it."
[Here rejecting double predestination: editorial note]
Formula of Concord; Epitome XI God's Eternal Foreknowledge and Election

If God is both all powerful and all loving there would not be evil in the world.
There is evil in the world.
Therefore God is either not all powerful or not all loving.
This is the syllogism set forth in Harold Kushner's famous book, "Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People?"  Of course, this argument has existed for a very long time.  But it is still raised today.
Rabbi Kushner is Jewish.  Some years ago a response was written by a Christian author, "Why do Bad Things Happen to God's People?"

These questions raise issues of God's SOVEREIGNTY.  What does it mean when someone says, "God is in control" (the title of a song years ago by Twila Paris)?  Now, the Bible is replete with references that God is "All Mighty" (all powerful, omnipotent).  And the Apostle John wanted there to be no mistake in his letter: God Is Love.  So to teach that God is either not all-loving or not all-powerful, is basically to teach that Scripture is wrong about the nature of God.  By now you know that I will not go there.  But I have heard this very thing taught to pastors.

I share two anecdotes from my second call.
That little Norwegian country church was one of four pieces of shrapnel from the explosion of the Mother Congregation in 1892.  The explosion occurred when a speaker from Europe came to lecture on the controversy of Predestination in The Lutheran Church.  In an oversimplification the argument that ensued between the speaker and the local pastor (in a planned debate format) was: Does God's Love predominate over God's Sovereignty, or does God's Sovereignty trump God's Love?  Does God want everyone to be saved, but in some cases God does not get what God wants?  Or, does God NOT want everyone to be saved and God saves the ones God chooses to save?   This debate ended up not just splitting the congregation, but exploding it into four pieces.
In my last post, last month, I shared on God's Love.  So I promised to follow with this post on God's Sovereignty.

NOTE: For my Master's Thesis from seminary I wrote 80 pages on the human role in justification from a Lutheran perspective as an argument against universal salvation.  This is a complicated issue that I cannot explore fully here.  I risk oversimplification to raise the sign posts or guide markers.

While serving that congregation, I arranged for a then well-known Christian band to come and play a concert in town for our area young people.  We received the support of the community and we booked the date. The band was RAZE DANCE, and our young people were excited that the band was coming.  But a couple months before the date set, I was contacted by the band representative and informed that the band had decided that they wanted to open the tour in their home town of Oklahoma City.  As a result, they were moving all early dates forward to accommodate this.  I explained to them that unlike their other venues, we were a tiny site without the flexibility of bigger venues.  They graciously cancelled our date, returning our earnest money.
On opening night in Oklahoma City, the group's lead male vocalist was arrested by FBI following the performance for sex with minor, namely, a 15 year-old dancer, with whom he had had sexual relations on tour (across the country) for about two years.
One of the financial sponsors shared with me that God is Sovereign and all things happen according to God's will.  God had protected us from bearing the brunt of this scandal through the events resulting in cancelling our date.  I stopped him.  While the latter part of his conclusion may very well be the case.  God may have protected us from the scandal by the new arrangement.  But clearly, not all happens according to God's Sovereign Will.  I can confidently state that it was not God's will that this adult engage in sexual relations with a young teenager for almost two years on tour.  Now, someone might doubt that what I just typed is justified; and sadly, our culture may be reaching that point at some time soon.  But the important point is this: a common definition of SIN is that which humans do that is against God's will.  Sin, acting against the sovereign will of God, has been going on since the beginning.  This is part of the answer to Kushner's Syllogism.  Could God prevent all sin.  Well, since God is all-powerful, certainly.  But what would that mean?  It would mean a world without choice, without free will on any meaningful level.  If human beings are allowed to choose at all, they must be allowed to choose badly, i.e., things that are against God's will.  We would not be human at all.  I think that many people would very happy in a world where they could do whatever they wanted to and yet somehow everything bad was somehow God's fault; a world without responsibility or accountability.  But that is not the world in which we live.  So the problem with the syllogism that has caused so much consternation and confusion for so many for so long is that the first premise is flawed.  It places us in the position of God.  So point one is: the persistent existence of sin demonstrates that God has placed a limit on God's own sovereignty.  It is a self-imposed limit.

Point two is this: the reality that people reject God, reject God's love and grace, reject God's existence at all, demonstrates that God has placed a limit on God's own sovereignty.  It is self-imposed.  It is for this point that I chose the quotes from Formula of Concord.  The Lutheran position is that it is God's will that everyone be saved, receive eternal salvation and eternal life.  But God does not get God's way, God's will.  God gives human beings the freedom to reject: "to stop their ears" to God's call of Love.  The conclusion of my Master's Thesis is that this must be so.  Faith that is compelled is not faith.  Obedience that is compelled is not obedience.  Love that is compelled is not love.  God created a world, and a redemption in that world, so that faith, obedience, and love can be chosen or rejected.

We have a King.  Jesus is The King of the Universe, who astoundingly wants to be our Dearest Friend.  But like earthly kings, this King can be disobeyed and rejected.  By God's own Sovereignty, God limited God's sovereignty.  But God is still Sovereign King, the King of Love.

28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.  Romans 8:28 (NASB)

This does not mean that God makes evil into good.  Evil is evil.  Evil happens in our fallen world.  God is nonetheless both all-powerful and all-loving.
Sovereign God works the miracle of bringing good from evil.  God's promise.