DTTO

SHOWING YOU THE WORLD IN SCRIPTURE

This page was last updated: August 27, 2009

Introduction: Objections to God based on Evil and Suffering

It is often reasoned, alluding to a famous quote from David Hume: “If God is all powerful and good, then why does evil and suffering exist?  If He was all powerful then He must be able to stop it, and if He doesn’t then He mustn’t be good.  However, if He is good but cannot stop it then He is not all powerful.”

It is an interesting aside to just note that the person saying this must be open to there being an objective good God for there to be any conception of evil not being the way things should be – otherwise for the atheist naturalist suffering is just the status quo and always has been throughout evolutionary history.  Evil is the corruption of good as it cannot exist in and of itself, argues Norman Geisler.  We can only measure good from evil if we have an objective standard: a good God.  The Bible doesn’t dismiss the problem of evil but grapples directly with it.

The Bible also teaches in response that God is both all powerful and perfect in goodness, but that He also allows evil and suffering.  This is a difficult issue for a Christian, let alone a non-Christian, to get their head around.  So we need to have a biblical framework to be able to consider how we are to think about answering these questions. 

Caution and Gentleness as we Answer People:

As we approach it we must realise that people asking this question to us will often be motivated not out of philosophical argument, but genuine unexplained painful experiences in their own lives.  1 Peter 3:16 says that while we must be able to answer this question we must do it with gentleness and respect!  We are all sufferers from the Fall and the curse imposed on this world which is passing away so share in its evils and pains.  Christians are not exempt from pain and suffering, see the Apostle Paul’s life for an example. 

In the Old Testament Job suffered also and we will be looking at his sufferings tonight, but let us learn the lesson that his friends learnt far too late: sometimes it’s better to say nothing than to come out with righteous platitudes.  Almost every commentary or sermon you hear on Job will usually start with the comment that the best thing his friends did was stay silent for the first 7 days when they came to see him!  When people are genuinely suffering we should warmly support them in the pain and trouble, rather than be quick to throw cold theology at them.  We have faith that God is working all things together for our good as His children (Romans 8:28) and according to the purpose of His will (Ephesians 1:11).  We have that confident faith in His goodness and His plan is ultimately our foundation to stand upon, and Jesus warned even on that place we would still be battered as the storms of life come crashing against us (Matthew 7:27).

A Biblical framework #1: Compatibilism:

We have a potentially difficult concept we have to get our heads around as Christians, which is defined by D.A. Carson as “Compatibilism”.  We have to hold and believe two things to be truly taught throughout God’s word:

1)God is completely sovereign; there is nothing in all of creation that is outside of His ultimate control.  Also He is entirely good and is not an accomplice of evil: “He is the Rock, His works are perfect, and all His ways are just.  A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is He” (Deuteronomy 32:4)

2)While God is sovereign, human beings are morally responsible for their actions and their wrongdoing is never attributable to God as a result.

An example is necessary to get our heads thinking this through.  Habakkuk wrestles with the issue that the sovereign good God sovereignly uses a wicked nation, Babylon, to punish Israel!  He writes: “O Lord, you have ordained them [Babylon] as a judgment, and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof.  You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors, and are silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?” (1:12-13)  Yet despite God having used the Babylonian nation as His rod of discipline against the rebellious Israel, His holy character has not been tainted because the Babylonians did what they wanted to, and He still prophesies judgment upon the Babylonians holding them responsible for these evil murderous things they have willingly done.

Wayne Grudem suggests that we use a different type of example to understand things.  In the Shakespearean play “Macbeth”, the eponymous hero, Macbeth, kills King Duncan willingly in lust for power which is encouraged by his wife.  There are two truths evident about this example:

1)Shakespeare is sovereign in the play as he is writing it and it is all under his control, but he is not morally responsible for King Duncan’s death despite having written it

2)Macbeth, despite being used by Shakespeare’s sovereign dramatic plan, is morally responsible for wilfully killing King Duncan in pursuit of power

Both of these things are true simultaneously and work to demonstrate how God can stand behind evil as sovereign but not be responsible for it.  This is difficult and we will get onto some more Biblical examples of it momentarily, but let us just remind ourselves of one other very important fact: God is good.  The scriptures from beginning to end declare this truth, and we have already read what Moses and Habakkuk have to say about God’s goodness being absolute.  As a result, Carson argues that this means God cannot stand between good and evil equally in the same way; rather He does so “asymmetrically”.  Yes He is sovereignly standing behind evil but He is not behind it so as to be morally blameworthy of it!  At the same time He sovereignly stands behind good in such a way that it is always chargeable to Him! 

How does this work?  I do not know, Grudem and Carson both agree that they also do not know either.  God is beyond our comprehension, He is outside space and time; He is all powerful and all knowing; His ways and nature are mysterious to us (Romans 11:33-34).  He has revealed Himself to us in the Bible and He does speak of Himself in these hard to reconcile ways.  While His ways are a mystery they do make sense, especially if we think in terms of the Macbeth example whereby we are free willing agents responsible for what we have willingly done while under God’s sovereign providence!

A Biblical framework #2: Examples of Compatibilism in Scripture:

Let us look at just three examples:

1) Joseph: We see a great injustice in Joseph’s story of his betrayal by his jealous brothers and sale into slavery in Egypt.  When the family is all brought back together and their father dies, the brothers fear that Joseph will use this withdrawal of their father’s protection to get revenge on them.  However, to their surprise Joseph assures them: “As for you, you meant evil against me, But God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today” (Genesis 50:20).  God was standing behind their evil actions, but was not morally responsible for what they willingly did in their jealousy and He used it to bring about great good!  (This is an important consideration we will come to momentarily)

2) Job: We get an inside look into the spiritual realms as Satan is given permission by God to cause tremendous suffering to Job as a test.  God sovereignly was in control of allowing Satan to attack Job by withdrawing protection and giving permission; but yet was not morally responsible for it (as hard as it might be to accept this truth) and never does Job accuse God of being morally blameworthy, despite counsel to that effect from those close to him.  Rather God reveals Himself to Job and reminds Him that His sovereign control of events is something Job can take rest in no matter how difficult the circumstances.

3) The Cross: There can be no greater injustice in human history than for a perfect man who was guilty of no wrong to be put to death after a gross miscarriage of justice and declaration of innocence.  What happened to the Son of God was evil, how He has betrayed by a close friend, how at His trial the Jewish legal protections of an accused were ignored, how He was humiliated by soldiers, how He was nailed to a Cross of wood as the lowest of all criminals next to real criminals, and how He died there totally innocent of anything wrong on His own part.  However, the whole Old Testament picks up from Genesis 3:15 after the Fall when God promises that He will send the Messiah to save the world from the curse, and then goes on to point towards the sacrificial death once and for all of Jesus Christ.  The Bible prophesies some 700 years in advance of the Crucifixion that: “He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all…He bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:5-6, 12b).  The Apostles writing in the New Testament keep coming back to the fact that Christ died according to the definite of God (“This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” Acts 2:23) but yet they also attribute His death as being morally responsible to His enemies.  They were compatibilists seeing God’s sovereign control of events but the moral responsibility being attributable to wicked humans because God does not stand behind evil injustice in the same way as He does good!

Answering the Objection to God Based on Evil and Suffering:

This brings us full circle to the initial charge that is sometimes levelled at us as Christians, that God is either not all powerful or good if He allows evil.  What if there is another possibility, which the scriptures clearly allude to: that God is both all powerful and always good, but that He sovereignly allows evil and suffering to bring about good.  God has an ultimate purpose in allowing evil.  Geisler suggests that God has made things not as the best out of all possible worlds; but as the best way to the best possible world.  In a similar vein C.S. Lewis said that God “saw that from a world of free creatures, even though they fell, he could work out…a deeper happiness and a fuller splendour than any world of automata would permit”.  God is all powerful and good and consequently will one day destroy evil!

Let’s go back to the Cross.  God always planned to use the absolute injustice and evil of that event to bring about the most important event in human history by opening up the way for a spiritually dead human race to be reborn into fellowship with God through the propitiatory death of His Son on the Cross at Calvary!  God used Joseph’s sufferings in His plan to bring about good.  God used Job’s sufferings to demonstrate the reality of faith to Satan, and also to cause Job to recognise and repent of pride that he didn’t realise was there.  He also used the wicked Babylonian empire to discipline the disobedient nation of Israel.  These are but a few examples we have considered tonight of God working in this way throughout human history.  Please do note this: we cannot do things this way because we are not God, and we are morally responsible for the bad things we do so we cannot use the justification that our evil will be used for good by God – that is not what the scriptures teach about how we are to live!

This is a hard thing to get our heads around, let us be honest about that!  God’s ways are above ours!

For the Christian, God sometimes allows suffering into our lives to discipline us as our loving Father: “My Son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by Him.  For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son whom He receives.  It is for discipline that you have to endure.  God is treating you as sons.  For what son is there whom his Father does not discipline…He disciplines us for our good that we may share His holiness.  For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:5b-7, 10b-11).  Also Paul writes of suffering’s place in our Christian development: “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5).

The Christian needs to just step back and realise like Job that we are not God and we do not comprehend His ways.  We do not know how He does all the things He does in creation, and if He were to ask us the list of questions He asked Job then none of us could answer Him any differently: “I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.  Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?  Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.  Hear and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to me.  I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:1-6).  We must be like Job, who never got explained to him the spiritual drama behind the scenes in Heaven; rather we must see God’s goodness in the scriptures and His love for us displayed on the Cross and just trust Him that He is working out His purposes for good and they cannot be thwarted.  We trust in His promise that He is working out all things for our good as His beloved children.  Habakkuk himself was told by God that the righteous are to live by faith (Habakkuk 2:4b), even though they do not understand how God in His sovereignty is working out His purposes.

The only good place to be when suffering and evil strike is knowing the Lord Jesus Christ and having confident faith in Him, even when we do not understand what is going on around us.  We are here to point people to Him, to His Cross, where there is forgiveness of sins and everlasting fellowship with the one in whose image were are created and who loved us more than anything else.

Why does God allow evil and suffering?  I do not know exactly why and how it is better that we endure suffering in this life, but I do trust that He is working all things out for His glory and for good and is not morally blameworthy in sovereignly standing behind it all!  I know a good God, and I trust Him, and while the storms of life crash around me my house is built upon the firm rock of Jesus Christ.

Suggested Reading:

- Don Carson, “How Long, O Lord” Ch.11

- Don Carson, “A Call to Spiritual Reformation” Ch.9

- Wayne Grudem, “Systematic Theology” Ch.16

- C.S. Lewis, “The Problem of Pain”

- John Piper, “Suffering and the Sovereignty of God”

- John Piper, “The Sufferings of Job: 5 Studies”

- John Stott, “The Cross of Christ” Ch.2

- Lee Strobel, “The Case for Faith” Ch.1

- Ravi Zacharias, “Who Made God?  And Answers to Over 100 Other Tough Questions of Faith” Ch.2

The Difficult Question of Evil and Suffering

David J. Nixon

www.revelationtoday.blogspot.com/