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I grow weary of the argument against the existence of God concerning evil.
“God is good, God is all-powerful and loving, and evil exists” is a statement thought to include at least one fallacy, since a God that exists and is all-powerful and all-loving would not allow evil.
If we would but open our eyes and open our hearts, we would see the glory of God on display for all to see.
My wife and I saw this rainbow while we were coming home from vacation on Saturday.
11“I establish My covenant with you; and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth.”
12God said, “This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations;
13I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth.
14“It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud,
15and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh.
16“When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”
17And God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all
flesh that is on the earth.”
Genesis 9: 11-17
Rainbows are a reminder of the goodness and faithfulness of God. They are a reminder of His promise never to destroy us, never to cut us off, never flick us off the face of the earth. Such is what we deserve, insolent and selfish little creatures we are, but that is never the punishment we receive.
No.
God made a covenant with us to keep us, nourish us, seek us, provide for us.
Covenant. A bond in blood – a bond of life and death – sovereignly administered and upheld by God Himself. God has covenanted to never destroy us, and He has covenanted to uphold this promise to all the generations from Noah and beyond. That is you and me.
That God – the true God – is loving, powerful, mighty, and just.
7“Furthermore, I withheld the rain from you
While there were still three months until harvest
Then I would send rain on one city
And on another city I would not send rain;
One part would be rained on,
While the part not rained on would dry up.
8“So two or three cities would stagger to another city to drink water,
But would not be satisfied;
Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD.
9“I smote you with scorching wind and mildew;
And the caterpillar was devouring
Your many gardens and vineyards, fig trees and olive trees;
Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD.
10“I sent a plague among you after the manner of Egypt;
I slew your young men by the sword along with your captured horses,
And I made the stench of your camp rise up in your nostrils;
Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD.
11“I overthrew you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,
And you were like a firebrand snatched from a blaze;
Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD.
- Amos 4: 7-11
God speaks through the prophet Amos and proclaims to His people His desire that they would return to Him. He recalls times of trouble He allowed to come to pass, in hopes Israel would humble themselves and seek His face.
Through each hardship, however, they did not repent and they did not turn back to Him.
God desired Israel to return, and yet their hardened hearts and stubborn attitudes prevented them, and so God told of pain, angst, and suffering through the prophet Amos.
So often we do not understand God’s purposes and His plans, indeed it is impossible to do so.
Whether we are steeped in sin and need it stripped away through God’s sanctifying grace, or because God loves us enough to refine us that we would seek Him, only God knows His plans and His purposes.
For God is just that, God.
Infinite, incomprehensible, unsearchable, and always majestically and marvelously so.
John Chrysostom said it best when he said, “A God comprehended is no God at all.”
Whether because of our sin or because of God’s purposes (which are always far above us), God will have His way in our life.
Our circumstances are His design, and we have no ground from which to argue (just ask Job).
In all things, God will have His way, and our task is but to respond faithfully.
The philosophical and cultural movement known as modernity was typified by humanity’s employment of rationale and logic to pursue ultimate truth. After quite some time, the attempt was given up in favor of the declaration, “there is no truth!” (thank your favorite postmodern thinker for that). This trend was evidenced as early as Freidrich Nietzsche, who reduced truth to a “will to power”.
Now we find ourselves steeped in the trappings of postmodernity, advocated by those who place it on a pedestal and claim it to be an epistemological panacea in light of the apparent failure of modernity.
How did modernity fail? It depends on who you ask.
Some would say that ultimate, objective truth doesn’t exist, so there is no point in employing human reasoning to find it. They claim that truth is merely a social construct and relative to your circumstance. It doesn’t exist except as your community declares it so. In this sense postmodernity is modernity carried to its nihilistic ends.
Others, however, would differ.
They would argue the issue isn’t whether or not truth exists, but whether or not human reasoning ability is capable of discovering it.
Philosophical terms such as adequation and accommodation all shed light on the predicament whereby humans apprehend truth without comprehending it.
Modernity didn’t fail because ultimate truth doesn’t exist, but because humans attempt to utilize human reasoning apart from God and autonomous from His sovereign rule.
Humans live in rebellion to God, and ultimately seek truth apart from Him (an impossibility, in case you were wondering. All truth is God’s truth).
We can know God in truth, and we can know truth exists ultimately. However, we can never know God fully and we will never know truth fully. To claim a system that fully explains our understanding of an incomprehensible issue is idolatry.
Reason itself is not necessarily evil or fallen. However as fickle, fallible, and fallen, man’s employment of it is (in the same way, a brick is not ascribed a particular moral value; what changes is my use of it: do I build a patio with it, do I build a house through habitat for humanity with it, or do I throw it through the window of a car?).
Postmodernity has rejected the authority of the overarching metanarrative afforded by a Biblical worldview, and turned instead to construct an infinite number of micronarratives capable of manipulation by human wants and desires.
Humans readily embrace postmodernity because they are sinfully in awe of its offers that one can dictate one’s own life and not have to submit to objective, ultimate truth and authority – God.
in college (i attended a liberal college and majored in religious studies with a concentration in philosophy) my junior seminar was entitled, “evil and existence;” it was an exposition of evil and the different ways philosophy tries explain it and cope with it.
one of the tantamount questions we dealt with was threefold: how is it that a) God exists, b) God is all powerful and all loving, and c) evil exists. to philosophers of an earthly perspective, such a statement did not make sense to them.
an issue we worked through extensively was that of theodicy – the vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil (Oxford American Dictionary).
we read hannah arendt and her thoughts on the holocaust, paul ricoeur and his ways to summarize evil, the horrific death by a thousand cuts, and other explanations of and traumatizing expeditions into the existence of evil.
and yet, none seemed to do justice for me; none seemed to explain the situation completely.
obviously, as a follower of Jesus Christ i see things from a different perspective and my worldview is built on a completely different set of presuppositions.
and so, as i realized the emptiness an earthly and fallen philosophy offered regarding evil, i began to see just how big my God truly is. recognizing the inadequacy of fickle, fallen, foolish, finite human reasoning, i began to worship God.
God’s plan is ultimate and perfect, His glory is transcendent above all else, and His purposes are without flaw. He orchestrates and allows all that happens despite the fact that over 6 billion people won’t understand it.
now i will admit that in recent days it has been increasingly difficult for me to rest easily and trust my God; it seems that every day another school shooting, mass murder, tragedy, or unthinkable horror occurs. Walt Mueller deals with some of these situations in a very poignant and redemptive fashion: http://learningmylines.blogspot.com
my father-in-law is a retired crime scene investigator (the show CSI is a sham, by the way), and he was actually one of the first people in the school with the SWAT team when Columbine happened to assist in crime scene reconstruction and blood spatter analysis; some of the stories he tells me about what he has experienced are beyond terrifying.
i think sometimes – admittedely very foolishly – begin to doubt God. i doubt His plan, His purpose….that He knows what He is doing….i think i doubt as a child doubts his father’s reasoning when he says, “don’t play in the street, it isnt safe.”
but then i stop and think, and i actually begin to praise my God all the more: it is so beyond my comprehension that He works all things for His good and His glory. and even though i cant understand it and dont see it, i know He is there, working and present. just because we aren’t aware of His Holy Spirit doesn’t mean He isnt there.
there is a reason soren kierkegaard said, “life is mean to be lived forward and understood backwards.”
there is a reason God is God and i am not.
there is a reason God works in us and through us and around us without our knowing.
it seems paradigmatic but i know it to be true – the more i see evil the more i am driven into the arms of my God because I know He is working for His glory. i have no other rest, no other foundation on which to stand, no other way to explain evil.
in attempting to understand evil, i am brought face to face with the reality of the very foundation for existence.
i desire to be the wise man who built his house on rock by listening to the words of the Lord and implementing them in my life (Matthew 7:24-29). and it is on that foundation that i presuppose my life and my purpose.
so it makes sense that as i turn to evil and attempt to comprehend it, i would see that my only recourse is to retreat to that very same foundation that trusts God and sees Him in and through everything.
i know my God in truth, though i will never know Him in fullness and entirety.
and in that same vein, i will understand the truth that God is always working for His own glory, and such a statement will explain every circumstance facing our world – even evil – though i will never comprehend the fullness or entirety of why or how.
8“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD.
9“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55: 8-9
29 The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.
Deuteronomy 29:29
to God be the glory, forever and ever amen.
