Why Bad Things Happen In God's
World
By
Rick Shrader
September 11 will long be the signal date for remembering that tragedy
can happen, even in America—one nation under God. The following has
been my response, which I shared with my own church the Sunday before
9-11. I find the Christian’s response to the presence of evil a mirror
response to the question of atheism: “If God exists, why does He allow
bad things to happen to innocent people?”
Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote that the atheist
“does not want to believe in his mind what something within him keeps
asserting.”1 Therefore the atheist continually either looks
for logical arguments against God, or dismisses the whole thought, as
Isaac Isimov once admitted, “Emotionally, I am an atheist, I don’t have
the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect
he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.”2
The perplexing dilemma for those who see evil
as inconsistent with the idea of a good God, generally think in the
following way.
If God exists, He would do good.
Bad things
happen in this world.
Therefore,
God doesn’t exist or is not good.
In his landmark book, The Problem Of Pain,
C.S. Lewis recalls his own struggle when he was an atheist: “If God
were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if
God were almighty, He would be able to do what He wished. But the
creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power,
or both.”3 In other writings Lewis (agreeing with
Lloyd-Jones) would say that the danger of such a hollow belief was
always evident: “A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot
be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere—‘Bibles laid
open, millions of surprises,’ as Herbert says, ‘fine nets and
stratagems.’ God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.”4
In my own state of Colorado, we have heard
it said, “I don’t see how God could allow such a thing as Columbine.”
For the last year we have heard the same searching question regarding
the tragic loss of innocent lives during 9-11. But can we honestly
think that our dilemma would be clearer if God did not exist? Do we
really think the world would be a better place? The Psalmist insists
that only a fool would say so (Psalm 14:1, 53:1). Unbelieving people
have not replaced God with a more satisfying alternative nor a more
moral control. To believe that there is no Ultimate Moral Being against
which we measure right and wrong, usually brings people to moral
degradation and despair. Malcolm Muggeridge said, “If God is dead,
somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or
erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, Hitler or
Hugh Heffner.”5
Christianity offers the way out of such a
dilemma. God is indeed in control and there is a reason for all things
that happen. Such confidence in God has always been a guiding light for
Christian individuals, families, churches and nations. This positive
response can be set forth as follows.
Evil does indeed
exist
We have no argument here with the atheist or
the moralist. Solomon plainly exclaims, The eyes of the LORD are in
every place, beholding the evil and the good (Prov 15:3). There are
natural evils in the world such as earthquakes, floods, droughts and
things that take people’s lives [I ought to note that Christianity
knows that the earth itself is not evil and that these things, being
themselves consequences of an Adamic fall, are the absence of good].
There are also moral evils such as murder, hatred, stealing and things
that proceed from the fallen nature of mankind.
The atheist is forced to define evil in terms
of Relativism. To him, evil or wrong exist only because people decide
to call such things evil or wrong. If society decides that killing is
wrong, it is wrong for that society. Still today, some will not admit
that 9-11 was morally wrong, PERIOD. To them a thing is only morally
wrong if our culture says it is. Francis Schaeffer wrote, “The problem
of our generation is a feeling of cosmic alienation, including the area
of morals. Man has a feeling of moral motions, yet in the universe as
it is, it is completely out of line with what is there.”6
To the believer however, all things are
measured against a universal Moral Law. Adam first violated that law,
and his descendents still do to this day. We also know the whole earth
has been affected by those wrong decisions. To think that evil does not
exist is like hitting one’s head against a wall—if feels so good when
you quit!
If evil exists, then
good must also exist
Paul’s argument is, When the Gentiles,
which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law,
these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves (Rom 2:14). As
soon as we say that 9-11 is bad, we have compared it to something that
is good. Again, C.S. Lewis writes, “The moment you say that one set of
moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them
both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard
more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things
is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them
both with some Real Morality.”7
At this point atheists have tried to deny God
exists by denying that there is such a “Good.” Nietzsche wrote, “Once
the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these
sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most
dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than
the meaning of the earth.”8 But, as Geisler has written,
“Hegel wrote that God is dead and Nietzsche took it seriously.”9
And so did Hitler, and every other mass murderer who, for at least a
brief moment, believed that what he was doing is actually a service to
the world.
Good is not
incompatible with evil
How else could Job say, Shall we receive
good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? (Job 2:10).
This is where the real disagreement with the atheist or agnostic lies.
The thought that Columbine or 9-11 or the Holocaust could happen on
“God’s watch” seems so inconsistent with God’s nature that it drives
some people to despair or even unbelief. Francis Schaeffer has shown
how this happened with famous atheists: Charles Baudelaire said, “If
there is a God, he is the Devil.”10 And Albert Camus said,
“If there is a God, we cannot fight social evil, for He made it.”11
But to think like that is to make certain assumptions about God that are
not so.
The first is to assume that God can do
anything! That is, that God acts without limitations for purposes of
this world. When God made a time-and-space world, He set Himself to
certain boundaries. There are physical limitations. God does not make
a square peg fit a round hole, nor make a valley without two mountains.
[Christians know that at certain times God can intervene, and we call
those miracles. But, by definition, they are intrusions from outside
this world. That is why we do not call all wonderful things within time
and space “miracles.” If everything were a miracle, nothing would be a
miracle] There are also moral limitations. God cannot lie or bare
false witness against Himself. God also cannot make a free moral
creature and then not allow him to choose the evil.
The second assumption is that God always acts
immediately when the evil occurs. He does not and this is not
inconsistent with all we know about God’s nature. God knew that the bad
choice would have to be made (by Adam first of all) in order for free
creatures to also make the right choice. This is why we have time and
space. God is longsuffering so that we have time to repent (2 Peter
3:9).
Every parent deals this way with his child.
When a child misbehaves badly at a friend’s house, he may wait until he
gets home to mete out the punishment. If the misbehavior is small, he
may correct it immediately. Sometimes he lets the natural consequences
happen, as when the host corrects the child. In such cases, the child
gets the punishment from the host, and also from the parent when he gets
home. God does the same thing. The sinner suffers the natural
consequences of a sinful world now, and also later, where he suffers
eternally for his sin. Maybe the older disciplinarians understood this
more than we, when kids got spanked at school and at home.
Good is greater than
evil
When Abraham discoursed with God over the
destruction of Sodom, for his nephew Lot’s sake, he finally rested on
the thought: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? (Gen
18:25). He knew that God existed and therefore that God (being the
ultimate Good) would ultimately win out over evil.
The war between good and evil is not a civil
war between equals, it is a revolutionary war between One who has the
right to rule and a usurper. We do not live in a dualistic world of
positive—negative, yin—yang, eternal evil—eternal good. We live in a
good world that has been spoiled by the entrance of sin and that God
will eventually gain back. He will eternally punish the usurpers,
reward the faithful, and return His creation to its original purpose.
God is what we call a “necessary” Being. He
is not contingent on anything but Himself. All else is contingent on
Him. Aquinas said, “Therefore, we cannot but admit the existence of
some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from
another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men
speak of as God.”12
It would be practically impossible to talk at
all if we could not compare good and evil, right and wrong. Our minds
are made to think in terms of non-contradiction, seeking the good above
the evil.
God is Good
Jesus reminded His hearers that There is
none good but one, that is, God (Matt 19:17). Francis Schaeffer,
during the unsettled atheism of the ‘60s, wrote, “It is not that this is
the best answer to existence; it is the only answer. That is why we may
hold our Christianity with intellectual integrity. The only answer for
what exists is that He, the infinite-personal God, really is there.”13
If evil exists in this world, then good must
also exist so that we may call evil bad. Since that is so, good is the
better thing and evil is the bad thing. And if there is any good at all
in the universe, it is given by God who is the Ultimate Standard for all
good and evil.
And So . . . .
In order for God to have a heaven populated
by free-will beings, it was necessary to have this world first and to
let us make our choice. Having fallen into sin, our only choice now can
be imputed righteousness through Jesus Christ. If we choose Him, we
will still endure the “light affliction” of this life, but live forever
in heaven, not in hell. I choose to think that God is working all these
things together for good for those who believe.
Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the
throne;
Yet that scaffold
sways the future,
And behind the dim
unknown,
Standeth God within
the shadows,
Keeping watch above
His own.14
Notes:
1. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, quoted in a
biography by Tony Sargent, The Sacred Anointing (Wheaton:
Crossway Books, 1994) 136.
2. Quoted by Henry and John Morris,
The Modern Creation Trilogy. A CD book from Institute for Creation
Research, El Cajon, CA.
3. C.S. Lewis, The Problem Of Pain
(New York: Macmillan, 1962) 26.
4. C.S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy
(New York: HBJ, 1988) 191.
5. Quoted by Ravi Zacharias, A
Shattered Visage (Brentwood, TN: Wogemuth & Hyatt, 1990) 25.
6. Francis Schaeffer, He Is There And
He Is Not Silent (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1972) 23.
7. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
(New York: Macmillan, 1960) 25.
8. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke
Zarathustra (New York: Penguin Books, 1978) 13.
9. Norman Geisler, Philosophy of
Religion, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974) 52.
10. Francis Schaeffer, 27.
11. Ibid, 28.
12. Aquinas, Summa Theologica Q3,
Art 3 (Chicago: U. of Chicago, 1952) 13.
13. Francis Schaeffer, 15.
14. James Russell Lowell, in The Present Crisis,
written during the Civil War.
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