Posted on 04/24/2011 8:32:40 AM PDT by Kaslin
It’s easy to spot militant atheists who attend my presentation called I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. They usually sit with their arms folded and scowls on their faces. During a recent presentation at Michigan State, I knew I’d get push back from one such scowling student sitting to my right. He looked mad and was mad. (He wouldn’t even smile at a hilarious Homer Simpson clip!)
He shot his hand up during the Q&A and yelled out, “You mentioned the problem of evil during your presentation but you didn’t answer it! If there is a good God, then why does evil exist? Why doesn’t God stop it?”
I said, “Sir, that is an excellent question. Sometimes I bluntly answer this way. ‘If God stopped all evil, he might start with you . . . and me because we both do evil every day.’ To end evil on earth God would have to take away our free will. But if he takes away our free will, he takes away our ability to love as well. Allow me to show you a video that beautifully illustrates this in less than two minutes.” I then played this outstanding video (developed by my friend and fellow seminary graduate, Jim Zangmeister), which traces evil back to free will.
Most in the audience appreciated the clip and applauded. But the atheist was unmoved. “Why do babies die, why do tsunamis occur? These aren’t the result of free will!” he protested.
“True, they are not the result of someone’s free will today,” I explained. “But Christianity traces all of our trouble back to a free will choice by Adam. As a result, we live in a fallen world where bad things happen, but God takes the initiative to bring good from evil. In fact, you can sum up the entire Bible in one word—redemption. Paradise lost in Genesis is paradise regained in Revelation. God initiated and achieved this redemption by sending Jesus Christ who suffered and died on our behalf. So we can question God about suffering as the biblical writers did, but God didn’t exempt Himself from it. Jesus was the only completely innocent person in the history of the world, yet he suffered horribly for our redemption. He brought good from evil.”
The atheist didn’t like that either. He interrupted me several times, so I finally asked him, “Are you an atheist?”
He refused to answer but then blurted out, “It doesn’t matter!”
I said, “It does matter because if you are an atheist (I later learned from his blog he is), then you have no grounds by which to judge anything evil. Objective evil doesn’t exist unless objective good exists and objective good doesn’t exist unless God exists. You can have good without evil, but you can’t have evil without good. In other words, the shadows prove the sunshine. You can have sunshine without shadows, but you can’t have shadows without sunshine. So evil doesn’t disprove God—it actually shows there must be a God because it presupposes Good. Evil may prove there’s a devil out there, but it doesn’t disprove God.”
The atheist persisted, “But if God exists, why do some babies die such horrible deaths?”
Well, if the atheist is granting that God exists, then he has a valid question. While he can’t explain evil and suffering from his atheistic worldview, I need to explain it from mine.
My explanation went this way. Although I know why evil in general occurs (see the video), I don’t know why every specific evil occurs. But I know why I don’t know why—because I’m finite and can’t see into the future. Since God is infinite and can see all the way into eternity, he may allow evil events that ultimately work together for good. In other words, he can still bring good from evil even if we can’t see how.
To illustrate, I referred back to the classic Christmas movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” That’s where George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, falls on hard times, becomes despondent and tries to commit suicide. He’s saved by an angel and is permitted to see how life in his town would have turned out if he had never existed. George sees that everything would have turned out far worse without him, and thus realizes that even though evil infects life, good can prevail in the end. George could only see this with God’s timeless perspective. Only God can see how trillions of free choices and events can interact ultimately for good even if some of them seem hopelessly negative at the time. (In fact, that’s one reason why God told Job to trust him.)
At that point, a man sitting ten feet from the atheist raised his hand.
“Go ahead, sir.”
He first looked over at the atheist, then back at me and said, “I know of a young woman who was raped and became pregnant. The rape nearly destroyed her.” His voice began to crack . . . “But she decided that she would not punish the baby for the sin of the father. She later gave birth to a baby boy.” (By this point he was weeping openly.) “And that boy grew up to be a pastor whom God has used to help bring many people to Christ. He ministers to people to this day. That boy grew up to be me.”
He then looked back at the atheist and said, “My mother turned evil into good, and God can too.”
The atheist left immediately after the event ended, but I did get to meet that brave pastor who spoke up. His name is Gary Bingham, and he’s the pastor of Hillside Wesleyan Church in Marion, Indiana. Gary told me that his mom had self-confidence issues for many years but is doing much better since becoming a Christian a few years ago. I thanked him and asked him to let his mom know that she touched many for good that night. I hope through this column she has touched many more today.
You are doing the same fallacy. You are ascribing to a Christian God those attributes that you think such a God must have.
But you point out that in heaven, there will be all those things plus free will. Instead, God has decided to allow torment.
But, I know, I know...I'm just Job, not God, so I couldn't possibly understand. (But, couldn't an omnipotent God be a good enough teacher to allow Job to understand?)
So you are claiming that a Christian God might not be benevolent, loving, and/or compassionate?
I am saying that if one is to be a true searcher of truth, one must not start with preconditions on what the nature of God is. I am saying that you apparently are doing just that.
Is helping a person who falls a "good" act if you do it out of kindness instead of the glory of God? Some would say that it isn't..that "good" is redefined as having to be done in love for God.
Thanks for the post! Happy blessed Easter.
I’m responding to the story. The story and video use an argument based upon assumptions and I was responding to that, not attempting to derive the actual nature of God, nor to determine whether or not He exists.
We as humans generally interact with the universe according to Newtonian assumptions. Even though we know they’re false, they work fine as an approximation for everyday activities. But we are to get rigorous in discussions of God, we have to face the assumptions of causality, etc., and even break down and examine what our definition of “God” is.
“Can there be no objective good in heaven because there’s no objective evil there?”
The article already addressed this. There can be light without shadows, but no shadows without light. Good can exist without evil, but evil cannot exist without Good.
“God could have created a world where we have free will without the suffering of the innocent.”
Could he? Let’s ask that question. What would a world without suffering look like? We are here on earth. We are made of fragile human bodies that fail, that suffer, that die. It is the nature of the bodies which we are made that suffering of the innocent is an invariable part of our existence.
Your question presumes that the suffering of an innocent serves no purpose. I would argue that the suffering of an innocent draws us to God in order to right the wrongs, and the evils of this world. That he permits us to sin so that we can come to love and redemption through him. That he permitted Adam and Eve to disobey him, out of free will, and cursed them such that they would suffer.
“What an arbitrary (and dare I say “evil”?) behavior!”
That he permits us to reject him? Hardly arbitrary. Ultimately wisdom.
Are you suggesting he isn’t Just? Is it not Just that we are punished for sin?
God always wins.
The fact that we look upon such things when they happen to humans differently shows clearly that some of God's teachings of what innocent life is have begun to stick.
Great questions, Gondring. And, a great attempt at an answer BenKenobi.
But, in the case of the good vs. evil and what-is-God question I don’t think we ever get close to a good answer. We have faith, we know that there is a reason, but I have yet to see an answer that made me go “Ah ha! Now I get it!” And, like most of us, I have searched.
As dumb as this sounds, the closest I can get is to use my dog as an explanation. He wants to get out of the yard and run around. He loves to run. He’s baffled at the efforts I go to keep him in his (very adequate) yard. He knows to avoid the pit bull down the road. He doesn’t comprehend many of the other reasons I have to keep him in the yard; the neighbors don’t appreciate him chasing their chickens and will call the sheriff, cars on the road, ranchers who shoot strange dogs upon sight, etc. I’m sure he thinks I’m being mean and arbitrary, and trying to curb his true spirit. I’m really not. Because I care about his well-being, I insist that he stay in his yard.
I know, a seriously imperfect metaphor, but that’s about as close as I ever get. But, I have faith, and am certain that someday God will give me to understand.
And, I suspect that the well-thought out, seemingly pat answers can actually alienate some people, particularly those who do not have a faith background.
Excellent article.
But we should remember this: our free will allowed us to CHOOSE the awful things that happen in this world. No one wants to be reminded that we CHOSE the type of evil that allows babies to die and good people to suffer. We WANTED to know good AND evil and to “be as gods”. Those that choose to blame God cannot accept that WE are to blame.
Since God knows the future and allows babies to die, he may see that baby to grow up and do a great evil, like say Hitler. He may also so inspire the family of the baby to find a cure for the cause of death, thus saving millions in the future.
I think you phrase the question a bit off.
The accurate question is: could God make a man who had total free will but only choose the good?
I believe if that were possible God would have done that. “Made perfect” does not necessarily mean they cannot choose to do the wrong thing - as the bible relates to us. If they could never choose the wrong thing, and only choose the good, there is no choice involved, they can only choose the good.
There is no choice involved if you are hardwired only to do good. There has to be a real choice, otherwise nobody could be blamed for what they do, they would not be able to help themselves. Since the bible says we do have a choice, we have enough (not unlimited to fly or fry people with a thought) free will to make critical choices without coercion or inability to say yes or no.
Why do most Christians do good deeds? What is their ultimate motivation?
I've concluded that most of us do almost everything we do for some self-interested reason.
What percentage of good deeds are done by Christians because they either want to avoid hell (=personal avoidance of pain) or gain heaven (=personal gain), or because they want to gain blessings in this life (or the next one) (=personal gain again)?
Sometimes our self-interested motivation is complicated. Why do people willingly go and risk their lives and fight in wars? Often, it's because of a desire for importance or glory. In other instances, it's a desire to have a particular kind of experience. In both cases, there's a perceived gain of some kind.
What's the other possible motivation? Doing something because it's right, or because it will benefit other people.
Yet most of the time, people do what's right, or what will benefit other people, because they feel that in some way they are likely to be compensated and will eventually gain personally themselves: somehow, somewhere, the universe (or God) will reward them for so doing.
Here's a great test of the ability of Christians to be self-uninterested: How many Christians would be willing to be personally damned to hell forever if by so doing all other people in the world would get to go to heaven?
Now that's a very difficult proposition for any sane and reasonable Christian to swallow. It goes far beyond the saying "greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."
And in fact, that saying itself seems to acknowledge that there is indeed a limit to the ability of a sane Christian to sacrifice himself or herself for the benefit of others.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing that human beings are motivated from self-interested motivations. It isn't really in human nature to truly be self-uninterested. And that's a pretty healthy and necessary thing, because if human beings didn't care at all about themselves, then there would be no human race.
In fact, no race or species can survive long if its individual members have no sense of self-interest.
So, not saying it's a bad thing. Just noting that when you look at apparently altruistic acts, they almost always have a self-interested reason behind them - IF you dig deep enough.
Fair enough. But that shows that there could be the same thing here on earth.
Your question presumes that the suffering of an innocent serves no purpose.
I disagree with that statement, but it does lead to some questions.
What purpose does it serve to have innocent suffer without anyone knowing of the suffering?
What purpose does it serve to create a life that ends without anyone knowing it even exists? (More than half of conceived eggs are passed from the mother's body.)
I would argue that the suffering of an innocent draws us to God in order to right the wrongs, and the evils of this world.
Why did God wait until a couple thousand years ago before sending His Son to earth? What about the people before then?
Why is there a wait of thousands of years before the Second Coming?
“Of course, that’s the need for Adam & Eve—to claim none of us are innocent, even the tormented babe who has done nothing evil himself. Regardless of our own actions, we carry that sin because of being born human, right? “
I struggled with this a bunch myself....until clarity came.
It’s not so much carrying a sin as it is losing your heritage.
Suppose your granfather had been blessed with great fortune and was rich...and then squandered it...There would be nothing to hand down to you.
Same with Adam...many blessings in the story of Eden...but he squandered it...not just for himself..but for his descendants.
You can’t bang on the doors of the casino and demand your grandfathers money back because it should have come to you.
Nor can humans demand back what Adam once had. They do not have a right to it.
“So you feel there’s no reason to be angry at someone unless they owe you something?”
No, you misunderstand.
We have not right to be angry at God. He has done us no disservice.
Will you be angry at the man next door for not giving you his lawnmower? He didn’t owe it to you. He has done you no wrong. Does your teacher owe you her car? Does the President owe you a birthday cake? Does GM owe you a job?
No. And God does not owe you salvation. So you have no right to be angry at Him. He has done you no wrong.
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