How do people come to have faith in God? Paul says, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom. 10:13 ESV throughout). Fair enough. Call out to God, place faith in Him, and be saved. However, that leads to an obvious question, which Paul asks in the very next verse: “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” (Rom. 10:14,15). God saves whomever would call on His name, but He allows us, the church, to be a part of that process. Our job is to tell people about God and give them a reason to believe in Him. Now we know that no one comes to the Father unless they are called by the Holy Spirit. However, some people suppress that call with their minds. They have objections in their minds that prevent them from answering the call of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is knocking, but they are not opening the door.
Hence, Paul also told us, “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each one.” (Col. 4:6, emphasis added). Church, we must stand ready to refute all objections to Christianity. Peter seconded Paul’s counsel when he wrote, “In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet. 3:15, emphasis added). In honor of the God we love, we need to be prepared to answer the questions, doubts, and objections that people have to the faith, and we need to be prepared to do so graciously with gentleness and respect, not with arrogance, quarreling, or anger.
That last bit about gentleness and respect is important because I know sometimes when we hear people talk badly about Christianity or about Jesus, it upsets us. We feel like they are talking badly about our family member, and we want to respond in kind. Resist that impulse. It is not your job to answer harshly. God does not need you to fight for His honor. Someone said that Christians should be steel wrapped in velvet. Do not let your defense of the faith push people away from the faith.
Today, in attempting to be faithful to these commands in Colossians and 1 Peter, I want to start a brief series to discuss some of the most common objections people have to Christianity and explain the Biblical answer to these objections. I have come up with five common questions that people tend to present against Christianity:
Why does God allow evil?
Why do natural disasters happen?
Why does God not overtly show himself?
What about all of the atrocities in the name of Christianity?
Why Christianity instead of another religion?
Today and over the next couple months, I plan to issue a brief biblical response to each of these questions. The Bible answers those questions better than any other worldview men have created. We will begin, as beginnings should go, with Number One.
If there is an all-powerful, good, loving God, why is there evil in the world? First, we need to define the word evil. Generally, when people have an issue with evil, they are referring to bad things happening to good people. It could be about some good person dying young. It could be a question about bad things happening to innocent children. It could be the classic question about Hitler or some other tyrant like that. These are examples of evil events, but what does evil mean? Augustine stated that evil is the privation or the absence of the good, and I think that is a good working definition. The definition of evil will become important when we get deeper into this conversation.
The problem of evil is an important question that a valid worldview must answer, and the Bible certainly answers it. Essentially, it goes back to original creation. God created man in his image, giving him dominion over Creation (Gen. 1:26). In so doing, God gave humans the freedom of will that is shared only by us, God, and the angels. Thus, in this physical realm where we live, we are the only entities that have free will.
In making humans in His image, God gave mankind the ability to rebel against Him. Adam and Eve, the first people, exercised their free will in rebellion against God’s instructions. They could not rest assured that God’s way was the best way, so they tried the devil’s way. Since then, every human has been born with a tendency to sin. That is what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote, “Sin came into the world through one man, and dead through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12).
In giving man the opportunity to choose Him or not, God opened the door for evil to enter into His creation. When people continue to choose to rebel against their Creator, they introduce more evil into this world. This is not God-ordained evil but is quite the opposite. No one whose will aligns with God’s will does evil. According to the apostle John, “Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, ‘I know him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:3,4). God never commands evil. That was James’ point when he stated, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17). Good comes from God; evil comes from rebellion against God. Only those who are following God’s will do good; only those who are rebelling against God do evil.
In fact, God defines good, so rebellion against God defines evil. Earlier we defined evil as the absence of good. We could also remove one letter and accurately call evil the absence of God because without God, we would not even know the difference between good and evil. Many non-believers claim that they would believe in God if not for the problem of evil. The famous atheist philosopher Albert Camus claimed that the only thing stopping him from becoming a Christian was the problem of evil. However, apart from God, Camus would not even understand evil. Assume no Creator exists. Then, humans are the result of impersonal time and chance. That means that every events that plagues humans is the result of impersonal time and chance. In that chain of thought, evil becomes something some individual does not like. Then, what is evil to one person might be good to the next. Evil to the Jews was good to Hitler. With no God, might is right. If you deny the existence of God, you cannot call anything objectively evil without committing the logical fallacy of begging the question.
However, we do know the difference between good and evil because God set the standard. Evil is rebellion against God. God’s holy nature is the only objective definition of good. God provides the objective foundation by which we can laud some events as good and decry other events as evil. Good is God’s will. Then evil is everything in rebellion against God. That is how we define evil.
This definition of evil in terms of God’s will leads to an important question. If the definition of evil is rebellion against God, why does God not simply snuff the evil out or stop the evil men in their tracks? Why does the all-powerful God allow rebellion? Why does God allow evil men to carry out their evil desires? This question resonates throughout the Bible. The prophet Habakkuk asked, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise” (Hab. 1:2-3). The Psalmist cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?” (Ps. 22:1). Why did God make the world this way? He is the all-powerful Creator, so He did not have to make the world in such a way that rebellion results in suffering, right? Why might God have allowed the emergence of evil? There seem to be three main reasons why God permits the existence of evil.
First, He allows some seemingly evil things to happen to people as punishment to prevent future rebellion. Someone commits an evil act. They receive punishment. They do not commit more evil acts. That’s the purpose of punishment. You, as a parent, punish your sons and daughters for wrongdoing to teach them that is not the correct way, and God does the same. You see this concept play out in many of the military campaigns in which the Hebrews participated over the years, from their time in the desert to their Babylonian captivity. God would have the prophets inform them, “You lost here because you did x. You are being punished,” or “I need you to defeat these people here to punish them for y.”
Second, God allows bad things to happen to people in this world sometimes to prepare them for something better to come. One example is Joseph being sold into slavery. Another is Jesus’ crucifixion. Each of these nasty events ultimately led to good. Joseph told his brothers, “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” (Gen. 50:20). The crucifixion probably stands as the most evil thing ever. The people killed God. However, as the atoning sacrifice for the sin of all humankind, the crucifixion turned into the greatest blessing in the history of the world.
Although the devil attempts to work evil against us to hurt us, God works all things our for our good (Rom. 8:28). As we worship God through the storms, we learn to rely on Him. Our faith becomes stronger as a result of the pain. Paul’s thorn serves as the classic example. “My grace is sufficient for you because my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). On the same subject, Peter encouraged, “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:6-7). No person that God used mightily ever went through life easily. There is just something about suffering that builds character. Malcolm Muggeridge claimed, “Everything that has truly enhanced my existence has been through afflictions and not through happiness whether pursued or attained.” You see that concept repeated throughout the Bible. Since the Fall of Man, it is necessary, but an astute person might ask, “Well why did God make the world this way at all?”
That question leads to the third, and arguably most important, reason God permitted the existence of evil. Granting that God is as powerful as the Bible claims, why did He not make a perfect world without any possibility for sin at all? Let’s think about that. When God decided to create, He really had three choices. First, He could create a world without humans. It would have been a world of animals, and there would have been no possibility for the rebellion Satan initiated in Adam and Eve. I am glad He did not go that route. I like living. Second, God could have made humans who were incapable of sinning. Think about what it might have looked like if God had made humans incapable of sin. Evil would not exist. However, what would we be like? We would be robots or slaves basically. God did not desire to make human slaves. Therefore, He chose the third option. He made humans free actors who, along with the potential for rebellion, also have the potential for love. Without freedom, love cannot exist. God made a world with the potential for evil so we could experience love. For God to remove the possibility of evil, he would have to remove freedom of choice. What would we be if we did not have freedom of choice? We would be loveless robots. In God’s mind, love was more important.
Someone might say these don’t seem like sufficient answers. Again, what about the children? Well, the final answer to this question, which wraps it all together, is answering that person’s misaligned perception of life. This world is not all there is and is worthless compared to eternity. Paul explained, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18). We need to transform the way we look at life. If you are lucky, you might live to be 100. What are 100 years compared to eternity? You will experience some troubles during your life on earth. You will also experience some good times. But, you need always to remember that this is your temporary home. The person who seeks perfection here will be ever disappointed. However, our permanent home in Paradise with God will never disappoint.
Obviously, the problem of evil is a challenging problem. We have ọnly scratched the surface here. If you are interested in delving deeper into this issue, I can recommend some excellent books on the topic. The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis is a classic. Lewis compared pain to a megaphone that God uses to get people’s attention. Disappointment with God by Philip Yancey is also excellent and a pretty quick read. If you really want to get deep into it, you can tackle City of God by St. Augustine. It is over 1000 pages, but it is one of the best books ever written regarding the Christian worldview and the problem of evil. Also, here is a pretty cool video where William Lane Craig responded over the course of about eight minutes to the issue.
Stay tuned. Next week, we will look at the related question of why diseases and natural disasters happen.