Barney Wiget's Blog, page 31

Two Gospels?

The typical evangelical pitch to pre-Christians these days sounds something like, “Come to Jesus and when you die he will take you to a better world.” While that’s true, I believe that it should include something more like, “Come to Jesus and you’ll come alive. And when you do, come help us make this a better world!”

Of course, someday we’ll go to the best of all worlds, but today we’re tasked to make this the best world we can. Still many Christians seem to think that aside from getting people saved and warning them of certain pet sins our job is to sing songs, be polite, and hug one another until Jesus returns!

It’s not like we have two gospels, a salvation one and a social justice one. “Jesus binds the spiritual and social into a seamless fabric that shouldn’t be torn in two,” says Donald Kraybill.  We can’t rightly separate personal piety from restorative justice, otherwise known as “social justice.” This unfortunate split between spiritual and social leads to a warped view of Scripture and eludes Kingdom ethics. We cut the salvation of Jesus in half when we ignore the injustice of broken social systems and then try to serve that to famished pre-Christians who know half a meal when they see it!

This is an excerpt from a book I hope to publish in the near future on the Sermon on the Mount called: What In The World? Some Moral, Social, and Politically Disruptive Implications of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

As such, I’d appreciate your feedback on this post and others to come in order to make the final copy publish-worthy.

A Revolutionary Social Agenda

Jesus likeness is not something you tack onto the outside. His is an inside job. His way of transforming us into his likeness is from the inside out. The white-knuckle approach to Christianity only leads to frustration and failure. We can only hope to live out the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount in the power of the Savior on the Mount!

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The zeitgeist of today’s evangelicalism is more dissimilar to the Church we read about in the New Testament than I’d like to admit. It makes it difficult to recognize our own Christian tribe sometimes.

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The typical gospel of contemporary evangelicalism is predominantly individualistic. It’s about how your sins are forgiven and how you become a better person. As magnificent as this is, apart from a vision to make the world a better place, this partial gospel truncates the vision of God for the advance of his Kingdom on earth. His vision is to make better people who in turn, with his supernatural potency, make a better world.

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I can’t segregate my moral concerns between personal and social issues. I’m concerned about all things biblical, which unquestionably includes how I relate to God, my family, my church, and my own sphere of influence. But the gospel also clearly speaks to such issues as racial, economic, and political justice. In this book we’ll focus on those sorts of things often overlooked in the reading of Jesus’ famous Sermon.

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His is a revolutionary social agenda, which clearly functions not on the basis of power but of love. He doesn’t coerce but persuades. He transforms us not by force but by fascination, a playbook we would do well to emulate.

These are excerpts from a book I hope to publish in the near future on the Sermon on the Mount called: What In The World? Some Moral, Social, and Politically Disruptive Implications of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

As such, I’d appreciate your feedback on this post and others to come in order to make the final copy publish-worthy.

A Christianity That Looks Like Christ

I warn you that the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), which is a condensation of some of the primary ethical teaching of Jesus, maybe above all his other discourses preserved for us in the New Testament, challenges our presuppositions about living the Christian life and calls us into the outlandish lifestyle of the Jesus lover. Taken intravenously, these three chapters in the book of Matthew will positively upset your equilibrium, invite you to muse, and challenge you to act.

“Why question me?” Jesus said to the High Priest. “Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I said.” (John 18:21) Is that true? Surely we know what he said. Right?

Well, to our shame, a lot of us don’t. There are an awful lot of biblically illiterate churchgoers these days. But the more relevant question is, will we do what he said? Furthermore, will we try to do all that he said or simply cherry-pick those items that suit us? That happens a lot with this particular Sermon of Jesus.

It’s been said and begs to be said again that it’s time for a Christianity that looks more like Jesus! Neither Jesus’ Sermon nor this book will automatically get you there. I know this because all my years of reading and studying the Bible and reading books hasn’t mysteriously transformed me from sinner into sainthood. But biblical knowledge plus collaboration between the Spirit and our will can produce better Christians.

Many people blunt the sharp edge of the Sermon by romanticizing it as so much virtuous poetry. People have told me how much they love the Sermon on the Mount and how if everyone did what Jesus taught, this would be such a wonderful world. I have to wonder if they’ve actually read it! If they had, and I mean read it pensively with personal application in mind, I can’t see how they could laud it as so much handsomely worded oratory.

Jesus didn’t offer a sweet, syrupy spirituality for people who are looking for a little more religion in their lives. The Jesus that some people seem to “love” is the one who makes no real demands on them and allows them to live any way they choose. Just be nice to everyone, go to church once in a while, take out the garbage when it’s full, and you’re good to go!

For some the Sermon contains perhaps some of Jesus’ most familiar teaching and least followed. I suppose this could be explained by both nature and nurture. We inherited a contrarian nature from Adam and absorbed a defiant posture from all his children since. That must be why he requires a death to walk in his way. If we want his way we have to “deny” our own and carry a cross around for ready access to death. (Mark 8:34)

Read it, soak in his words, observe how radical is the lifestyle he prescribes, die to any idol of comfort and convenience, and hold on to him for dear life!

This is an excerpt from the preface of a book I hope to publish in the near future on the Sermon on the Mount called: What In The World? Some Moral, Social, and Politically Disruptive Implications of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

As such, I’d appreciate your feedback on this post and others to come in order to make the final copy publish-worthy.

If God Is So Good, What’s Up With All The Bad Stuff In This World? (Part 1 of 6)

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Everyone has wrestled with the question: “How can God be perfectly loving and all powerful, and at the same time allow suffering and evil in his world?” It’s a tough one for skeptics and Jesus followers alike. The famous 18th century skeptic, David Hume asked, “Is he willing to prevent evil but not able? Then his is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”

Another trustworthy source of philosophical genius, The Simpsons, had one episode that showed a kids’ Sunday School class were the teacher says at the end of her lesson: “And that, students, is why God causes train wrecks!” Even without any backstory of her lesson, I can state categorically that train wreck causing is not the modus operandi of the God of the Bible.

Having lost my marriage of 33 years, my pastoral ministry, my income, my house and my health (I broke my neck and was diagnosed with bone cancer) all in a two month period in 2008, I’ve thought a lot about this testy topic of suffering and evil in God’s world. How does all this happen to me, let alone all those whose suffering incomprehensibly trumps my own? Where is God when bad things happen to people he loves? The God of the Bible is supposedly both great (all powerful) and good (totally loving). So what’s up with all the chaos in the world that he called “good” and the humans with which he populated his world and called them “very good”?

The stupid things we do to ourselves, the evil things we do to each other, not to mention nature when it turns on us with such fury in earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, and floods, are all problematic if we are to believe the biblical account of a good and great Creator. What about diseases like smallpox, polio, cancer, car accidents or drownings? Millions of East Africans face famine and starvation due to dictatorial and corrupt governments. Hundreds of millions have been displaced and are on the run from their persecutors or other brands of villains throughout the world. Every day, children die in childbirth, terrorists murder masses of innocents, and children are kidnapped, raped, and sold into forced labor. Over forty thousand people die of starvation and related diseases every day.

These are not abstract statistics, but realities with which we must empathetically lament as well as intellectually grapple!

In this multi-part series I’ll offer a few things for you to think about. I certainly don’t have all the answers and I’m not wedded even to my best shot at such lofty philosophical problems. Frankly, I’m finding myself circling more and “landing” less on some of these issues these days. Behind every answer seems to be another question lurking. We’ll all take our inadequately answered ambiguities to the grave. I’ve heard it said that when we’re in his Presence we won’t care about the things that puzzled us in this life, although I suspect some inquisitive types will insist on spending their first millennium or so in pursuit of answers to their questions. But I don’t know.

Paul, a pretty hefty thinker in his own right, expressed relief in knowing that we’ll all know better than we know now:

“We know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears… For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13)

The more I experience God and talk to him about the way he does stuff, the more I realize I can’t fit him in my head. If I could, he wouldn’t be big enough to worship. Oz Guinness says, “God is always bigger than our misunderstandings of him.”

With respect to the ways of the divine, formulas, 280-character tweets, or pithy Facebook memes don’t do it for me. Though as Solomon opined, “The more the words, the less the meaning,” it will take a few more than a few words to unpack how I view the problem of evil and suffering in the world. I’ll be content if just to get you to think a little bit through the lens of Scripture. At minimum, while discussing the problem of pain, I hope I don’t add to your own problem with it!

If what I say confuses more than clarifies, put this down and just read the Bible! At the end of the day, understanding God is not nearly as important as loving him and showing it by doing what he says.

In the next post we’ll begin at the beginning, way back there to a good garden with a “bad” tree in it.

Here are the links to each of the posts in this series:

IF GOD IS SO GOOD, WHAT’S UP WITH ALL THE BAD STUFF IN THE WORLD?
WHY PUT A BAD TREE IN A GOOD GARDEN?
HOW MUCH DO WE “NEED TO KNOW”?
HOW MUCH DO WE ACTUALLY KNOW?
DOES GOD ALWAYS GET HIS WAY?
WHAT DOES GOD EVEN KNOW ABOUT SUFFERING?

WHY PUT A BAD TREE IN A GOOD GARDEN?

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“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Genesis 2:16-17

 If God Is So Good, What’s Up With All The Bad Stuff In This World? (Part 2 of 6)

 Last time I introduced our topic that theologians call “theodicy,” which is the attempt to untangle the puzzle of how God could be Good and Great while allowing suffering and evil in the world.

Before we get to what God told Adam and Eve not to do, don’t forget two of God’s best commands: Breed and feast! That is, have a lot of sex and eat a lot of fruit! Things sure started on a good foot!

So why in the world would he put a tree in the middle of the garden and then commands Adam and Eve to keep their hands off of it? Was he teasing them? He puts a tree in their face and makes it off limits! What’s the point of that?

The “fake news” that the serpent aired, which has been his mantra ever since: “God is not good. He’s an autocrat and narcissist. Don’t risk your life to a god like that. He just doesn’t want competitors. Take a bite and be his equal!” Given all the suffering in the world, it’s such an easy lie to believe. “God is ripping us off. He’s not good. He’s cheating us out of what he wants to keep for himself! Let’s eat!”

If this is at the root of all temptation and devilish lies then buttressing our confidence that God is indeed good, might well help us avoid many fears, falls, and failures. In fact, goodness is such an integral part of he is character that he can’t help himself. He is the Quintessential Do-Gooder!

David sang: “You are good, and what you do is good; teach me Your statutes.” (Psalm 119:68) Goodness is his nature. As A.W. Tozer says, “God will always act like Himself wherever He is found at work and whatever work He is doing.”

Problem is, as Jesus said, “There is no one good but God,” therefore I wouldn’t know “good” if it slapped me in the face, which it has on a number of occasions! As flawed folks we’re limited in our evaluation of goodness. As Anne Lamott says, “A good name for God is: ‘Not me.’”

Back to the forbidden tree, why would a good God put it there if it bore bad fruit? Why this particular tree?

The tree was an alternative to everything else God put on his planet for the couple to enjoy. It gave them with a choice, something to choose against. Otherwise, their only choice would’ve been God.

Now as good as having no other choice but God sounds to me at the moment, it wasn’t going to produce the world God wanted. God is after humans, not humanoids. He wants friends, not androids. He loves us and wants his love to be reciprocated. It is in the reciprocation of his love that we find our greatest joy. It gave God his greatest pleasure to create us in such a way as to find our greatest pleasure in pleasing him!

And that requires choice. If he gave no alternative to loving him, our love for him could never be freely chosen. If he had programmed us to love him, well, that’s mechanical reaction, and not love.

Picture a dystopian story in which only two people survive, a man and woman who only discover each other after the destruction of the world. After they comb the world for others he makes the calculated decision to propose marriage to her. There’s no one else on the whole planet. His proposal doesn’t exactly swept off her feet! True love requires options––free will.

Having a choice means that a person can say “No.” Unless we can choose not to love, we can’t genuinely choose to love. God didn’t want to us to choose out of lack of choices. He wants more than a working relationship of utility. He indiscriminately sends out his love in hopes that we will freely receive and reciprocate it.

If you think about it, this arrangement with us is pretty dang risky. It could (and did) turn out to be less than ideal. An honest view of history, let alone the madness of our present day, reveal that most humans, if not stubbornly reject God’s invitation, overlook it as they busy themselves with alternative loves of their own fabrication. Why then would God take the risk of giving us the power to say “No” to him and allow the possibility of evil? “Because God honors his image in us,” says Bruxy Cavey, “he resists overriding our free choice even when our poor choices have bad consequences.”

The 60s song by Burt Bacharach came on just now in the coffee shop where I’m writing today:

What do you get when you fall in love?
A guy with a pin to burst your bubble
That’s what you get for all your trouble
I’ll never fall in love again
I’ll never fall in love again


What do you get when you kiss a guy?
You get enough germs to catch pneumonia
After you do, he’ll never phone ya
I’ll never fall in love again
Dontcha know that I’ll never fall in love again?

There are more verses, but you get the point. Love is a risky business. There’s a price to pay for unrequited love. Of course God knew this and yet went for it! “Free will, though it makes evil possible,” says C.S. Lewis, “is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.”

Therein is the method to the “madness” of his risk-taking project. He risked loss because there is no such thing as love without it. To God, having the hearts of those who are willing to give them over made his method worth it. With him there is no coercion or compulsion, just persuasion. He risked it so he could invite us into his friendship and we could accept his invitation with being coerced. He put himself out there for the sake of romance (after all, we are called his “Bride”) and gave us the choice to accept or reject his proposal.

This freedom to love or not love also applies to how we treat one another. When Jesus condensed all the rules into two: “Love God and love people” he knew that we might well disappoint on both accounts. Although there’s a critical mass of true love and compassion in the world, we’ve also shown the regrettable propensity to hurt rather than help one another.

It seems that the off-limits fruit “selfed” us! Now, rather than the common good, our own good is our first concern. Herein lies the blame for most of the evil and suffering in the world.

When he made the first humans, God stepped back and whispered, “Very good!” That was our legacy until that first bite of that fruit.

God didn’t put evil and suffering in the world. He gave us the choice to “do justly and love mercy” (Micah 6:8), but insofar as we fail to “walk humbly” with him, our chances of doing so are slim. We are not exclusively victims of evil and suffering. We do our own share of victimizing others. So when asked, “What’s wrong with the world?” the novelist and philosopher, G. K. Chesterton, replied, “I am!”

So is God the author of evil and the suffering that follows? My view is that he created the fact of freedom and we perform the act of freedom. He made evil possible by giving us a choice, but we made it actual in the choices we make. Someone said, “It’s not that God made evil or makes us suffer, but he provided us with the option of rejecting him and the consequences consistent with that choice included the perversion of nature and the introduction of suffering.”

This isn’t “The Best of all Possible Worlds” that God could have created. We know it and God knows it. But he speaks of a better one––the best one actually––one without evil or suffering. If he’s as Great as he says he is he can bring about that best world. If he’s as Good as he claims he would certainly want to bring about the best world in the best way. So temporarily allowing evil in this world must be the best way to bring about that best world!

In that world I’m guessing we will freely choose to love him (since that’s what we do now) and we will freely make the loving choice all the time. Just a guess, but a pretty good one I think.

In the next post we’ll explore the question of how much we really need to know in order to live as fully human friends of God.

Here are the links to each of the posts in this series:

IF GOD IS SO GOOD, WHAT’S UP WITH ALL THE BAD STUFF IN THE WORLD?
WHY PUT A BAD TREE IN A GOOD GARDEN?
HOW MUCH DO WE “NEED TO KNOW”?
HOW MUCH DO WE ACTUALLY KNOW?
DOES GOD ALWAYS GET HIS WAY?
WHAT DOES GOD EVEN KNOW ABOUT SUFFERING?

HOW MUCH DO WE “NEED TO KNOW”?

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“I am the LORD your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go.” Isaiah 48:17

If God Is So Good, What’s Up With All The Bad Stuff In This World? (Part 3 of 6)

Last time we introduced what I describe as the “bad tree” God put in the middle of the garden. He call it the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” We (as fellow humans) ate from it in hopes that we would know as much as God knows. You know how that turned out…

The serpent got Eve and her not-so-bright husband to lust after a certain kind of knowledge that didn’t belong to them and wasn’t supposed to, which begs the question: How much do we really need to know to live here in God’s world? Put another way: What does God know that we don’t need to know in order to live fully as his sons and daughters?

Besides providing them the power of choice, why did God put this particular choice in the middle of the garden where they couldn’t help but walk past it all the time? Why not another fruit tree that entails a different sort of risk to the eaters? Knowledge is usually a good thing. So, why wouldn’t it be good in this case?

I suggest that this specific decision had to do with whether they (we) would demand to be in possession of the sort of knowledge that legitimately belongs only in the hands of God. The test involved whether or not they would honor his “otherness” as the sole proprietor of this particular brand of knowledge. Would they trust him as the one and only one who could wield it for their best interest? Would they rely on his discretion in determining what is good and what is not or would they insist on being arbiters of it themselves?

They went with Plan B and their progeny has been trying to act like God ever since! Now that we know a few things about good and evil we tend to think we know better than our Maker about what is best for us. Turns out we don’t really know that much.

I think planting the verboten tree in the garden was an act of love on God’s part. It was his way of saying, “Trust me. Be content with being my creations. Don’t try to be me. Resist the temptation of attempting to do what I alone can do and you’ll be happy.”

He knew that to live most fully as humans we have to respect his distinctiveness, trust his goodness, and rely on his wisdom to show us what is best. It was his intention all along to share with us a limited yet wonderful domain of responsibility.

No mystery then that the sly snake would twist the narrative to make it look as if God, by outlawing that fruit, were less than loving. “Go ahead and partake. He’s afraid of competition. He doesn’t want you to know what he knows, because then you’ll have no real need for him!”

They believed his lie and ever since we’ve relied on our own wits to distinguish right from wrong rather than trusting God to “lead us in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” He really does have our best interests in mind, but since we ate the forbidden fruit we have a hard time leaning into his trustworthiness.

He is the best, knows the best, wants the best for us, and directs in such a way as to get the best from us:

“I am the LORD your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go.” (Isaiah 48:17)

Being “like God,” as the lying snake promised is quite an appealing prospect to us in at least in one sense, the sense in which we can serve as our own authority on our ethics, not to mention the ethics of others. This gets us into trouble every time. Believe me, I know. Of course there’s that other way to lean into his likeness, i.e., emulate his character. Imitating the personality of Jesus is a virtue, whereas insinuating ourselves into the role of judging everyone else’s performance is a vice! There’s only one throne and it only has room for One!

There’s only one “wise God” (Romans 16:27) and it’s not us! When we try to assume what only belongs to him, we lose what belongs to us.

Eating from the toxic tree has affected all of our relationships––with God, ourselves, and with others.

Though only God can love and judge at the same time, we assume the role of judge and jury, and get more practice accusing than loving. Like Job’s friends we indict one another or like Job, we indict God.

God is the only one with enough information to judge, so he warns us to get out of his way and leave some “room or his wrath,” because “vengeance belongs only to him” (Romans 12:19)!

So there are limits to what we need to know. The question remains: How much do we actually know? That’s the theme for our next post.

Here are the links to each of the posts in this series:

IF GOD IS SO GOOD, WHAT’S UP WITH ALL THE BAD STUFF IN THE WORLD?
WHY PUT A BAD TREE IN A GOOD GARDEN?
HOW MUCH DO WE “NEED TO KNOW”?
HOW MUCH DO WE ACTUALLY KNOW?
DOES GOD ALWAYS GET HIS WAY?
WHAT DOES GOD EVEN KNOW ABOUT SUFFERING?

HOW MUCH DO WE ACTUALLY KNOW?

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“Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” Romans 11:33

If God Is So Good, What’s Up With All The Bad Stuff In This World? (Part 4 of 6)

 Last time we decided that what we consider to be our “need to know” isn’t really a need at all. Now let’s check out how much we actually do know about God and his way of running his world.

So Adam and Eve each took a bite from the outlawed “knowledge” fruit, the consequence of which turned out to be less than they were led to believe. It made a nice appearance on the branches and probably was quite flavorsome but it didn’t yield the God-size knowledge that the snake promised. They now were acquainted with some “good” but were hampered more than ever to do it and some “evil” but couldn’t help themselves from doing it. Instead, they got kicked out of their hood and got much more grief in the process than they bargained for.

Ever since, through the grid of our fallenness and our finitude, we experience life here as arbitrary. In spite of what we think, we don’t usually know why goodness and evil can be so perplexingly random as they play out in the world. Yet arrogantly we deny it and insist that we know more than we can. As a consequence we tend toward indicting people (as Job’s friends did) or indicting God (as Job did) for the bad stuff that happens. [As a study of the book of Job would be beyond the scope of this writing, you’ll either have to do a careful reading of it or, for the time being, take my word for it.]

“Behind every particular event in history lies an impenetrably vast matrix of interlocking free decisions made by humans and angels,” says Greg Boyd in his discussion on Job. “We experience life as largely arbitrary because we can’t fathom the causal chains that lie behind every particular event.”

I don’t know about you but I don’t tend to enjoy the ambiguous nature of life here on planet Earth. So, like Job’s friends, the masters of prefab answers to complex problems, I’m tempted to demand that everything fall into tidy categories. I like it when I know, or think I know, who to blame when things don’t turn out well. In our fallenness we just can’t seem to accept our finitude. With the DNA of the forbidden fruit still in our system we make judgments that we have no business making. This is our legacy of eating from that blasted tree!

This is one of the reasons we are inclined toward simplistic, formulaic theologies. Bracketing off the complexity of the world and telling ourselves that everything unfolds according to a divine blueprint may make us feel secure but it doesn’t necessarily correspond with reality. There are far too many unknowable variables influencing the unfolding of events here, and those variables can only be fully known by one Person.

Moses admitted that he didn’t know all there was to know: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us… that we may follow all the words of this law.” (Deuteronomy 29:29)
Paul too knew how limited is our knowledge of God’s ways: “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” (Romans 11:33)
Joab, when rallying his troops to fight, acknowledged that at the end of the day: “The Lord will do what is good in his sight.” (1 Chronicles 19:13)

The faith of many Christian seems to rest more on the sinking sand of the “magic” of their spiritual spells or on what they assume they know about the ways of God, Soverrather than on the wild and unpredictable Person that he is. Jesus told us simply to “Have faith in God” (Mark 11:22), which I take to mean that we’re to trust in his character and not necessarily in a certain outcome of our prayers. He wants us to believe in the God who is, not the one we wish he were. His paths can’t be “traced out,” and his mind cannot be completely known; and yet we tend to want a God that we can, if not control, if not calculate.

If God is as unpredictable as I propose, how can we feel safe with him? How can we feel secure enough to love him back if we can’t predict what he’s going to do or when he’s going to do it?

The answer lies in rooting our faith as much in his character (especially his goodness) as his capability. It helps to remember that though he is unpredictable, he is predictably good. We may not know what he’s going to do, but we can be sure that whatever he does or doesn’t do finds its impetus in his character, which is unremittingly good. God is a good God, and that’s all we really need to know in order to love him back.

Next time, I’m going to wade into risky waters and ask the question: Does God Always Get His Way? I hope you’ll give it a read and see if my argument doesn’t have some merit…

Here are the links to each of the posts in this series:

IF GOD IS SO GOOD, WHAT’S UP WITH ALL THE BAD STUFF IN THE WORLD?
WHY PUT A BAD TREE IN A GOOD GARDEN?
HOW MUCH DO WE “NEED TO KNOW”?
HOW MUCH DO WE ACTUALLY KNOW?
DOES GOD ALWAYS GET HIS WAY?
WHAT DOES GOD EVEN KNOW ABOUT SUFFERING?

DOES GOD ALWAYS GET HIS WAY?

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37)

 If God Is So Good, What’s Up With All The Bad Stuff In This World? (Part 5 of 6)

 Last time we talked about, in contrast to God our treasury of knowledge is less than a penny compared to all the coins and bills ever printed. Now let’s see if God is limited sometimes and in some ways.

According to a number of places in Scripture, we have the power to resist God and when we do, he mourns our poor decision. Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem put God’s pained heart on display. He was brought to tears when his people weren’t willing to hide under his wings for protection.

No, God doesn’t always get his way. He didn’t get his way when our first parents trespassed or ever since then as we’ve lived as trespassers and renegades.

It’s tough for me to imagine how some of history’s most horrific examples of evil could support the notion that he does always get his way. The excruciating suffering and death of each Holocaust victim, the helpless little children abused by adults, or the millions of victims of famine or political corruption can’t be God’s “way” for his beloveds. No, he doesn’t always get his way, at least not in the short run.

Of course, in the long run he will accomplish what he set out to do. Like an aircraft carrier captained by Jesus will eventually by decree arrive at its destination (the better world). His sovereignty assures the accomplishment of the ship’s ultimate objective. But in the short run (during this imperfect world’s existence), on the way to his chosen destination, the ship’s crew have the choice to follow the Captain’s orders or not, and endure or enjoy the consequences commensurate with those choices.

Greg Boyd says:

“If God decided to create a world where love is possible, he thereby ruled out a world in which his will is always done. If he chooses to create this kind of world, he can’t guarantee that his will is always done, not because he lacks power but because of the kind of world he created. Just as a triangle can’t be round, so too a world that includes love can’t guarantee that God’s will always comes to pass.”

God didn’t put Adam and Eve in a “perfect” world. He said repeatedly that it was “good,” even “very good,” but not perfect. A world with a toxic tree in the middle of it and a slimy serpent lurking about can’t be a perfect one. Thank God, in the perfect world that’s on its way neither noxious food and poisonous snakes will be conspicuously absent!

The world we’re in now is not the best of all possible worlds, but I do believe it is the best of all possible ways to that perfect world. God is not the sort to just throw a bunch of mud on the wall to see if any of it sticks. His freewill scheme was, to my mind, the best way he could share himself with willing takers and ultimately usher us into the perfect eternal state with him.

Rather than make a practice of overpowering us in order to make us be good, his M.O. is to empower us to be better than we would be on our own. I have to admit that I’ve often secretly wished that he would take me out of the equation and do my job for me. My wish notwithstanding, I have a job and God has a job. I can’t do his and he won’t do mine.

Many who object to the idea that God’s short-run will is subject to being thwarted will appeal to his “sovereignty.” “God is sovereign,” they say, “and therefore does always get his way. Everything that happens is part of his plan.” Well, yes, God is absolutely sovereign. But in my view, for reasons stated above with reference to his freewill project, it was his sovereign prerogative to make a world in which his image bearers possess the frightful freedom to choose for against his will. He sovereignly concocted the best way to bring about the best possible world.

Of course God has a plan and is in control. But the idea that as the Sovereign he controls everything (at least in the “particular” sense) is, in my opinion, not true to Scripture. I believe that he is in control but is not controlling. Not everything that happens in the world is part of some eternal blueprint God drew up to which he makes everything in his universe conform. I refer you to my paper: “Loving An Unpredictable God.”

Surely God possesses unlimited power, yet he is entitled for love’s sake to concoct a system in which he wields his power in a limited way (for the limited period of human history). That is, God is in charge of everything, but he doesn’t necessarily control everything that he’s in charge of.

Yet, there will be a day (initiated by what is often called “The Day of the Lord”) when he will conform all things to his glory. In the meantime, however (and believe me, some of these times can be pretty mean), he doesn’t always get his way. He doesn’t always intervene to prevent each natural or human-caused disaster. He does however, have a way of digging deep down into any pile of some very nasty smelling manure and growing something good in it! Though he doesn’t cause everything to happen the way he wants, he does work “in everything for the good of those who love him.” (Romans 8:28) The ultimate good awaits us in the ultimately good place.

No doubt he often supernaturally intervenes to alter the course of individual lives and of history. Yet at other times he doesn’t. It’s way above my pay grade and beyond the scope of this discussion to speculate about his intervention or non-intervention in particular events as they unfold in human history. But if we take Jesus Christ as our starting point, it’s a no-brainer to conclude that God does intervene in the world. After all, Jesus is “God with us!” He’s the supreme example of God inserting himself in human affairs. If that doesn’t constitute supernatural intervention I don’t know what does!

So if God is Great he can make a better world without evil and suffering. If he’s Good he will just that. For our part, then it’s a simple matter of waiting until he does. (By simple, I don’t mean easy, but straightforward.) The question the patriarchs, poets, and prophets of the Bible often ask is: “How long? How long do we have to wait till evil is vanquished and suffering is no more?” He can and he will make his Kingdom come and his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. But when? As he is apt to do, he answers our question with a question: “How patient are you?”

Let’s discuss one more question next time: What Does God Even Know About Suffering?

Here are the links to each of the posts in this series:

IF GOD IS SO GOOD, WHAT’S UP WITH ALL THE BAD STUFF IN THE WORLD?
WHY PUT A BAD TREE IN A GOOD GARDEN?
HOW MUCH DO WE “NEED TO KNOW”?
HOW MUCH DO WE ACTUALLY KNOW?
DOES GOD ALWAYS GET HIS WAY?
WHAT DOES GOD EVEN KNOW ABOUT SUFFERING?

WHAT DOES GOD EVEN KNOW ABOUT SUFFERING?

He was despised and rejected by mankind,  a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.  Like one from whom people hide their faces  he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.  Surely he took up our pain  and bore our suffering,  yet we considered him punished by God,  stricken by him, and afflicted. Isaiah 53:3-4

If God Is So Good, What’s Up With All The Bad Stuff In This World? (Part 6 of 6)

 Throughout this series we’ve talked about evil and suffering finding its way into our world and how, though God isn’t directly to blame for it, he did exercise his sovereign prerogative to create a risky system wherein we have free choice whether or not to receive and reciprocate his love. Since there is so much evil and suffering in God’s world, it begs our final question, “What does God even know about suffering?”

“Why do bad things happen to good people?” I suspect that pretty much everyone has asked that question at one time or another. Maybe the better question is: “Why do good things happen to bad people like us?” Plus if you think about it, there has been only one time in history when bad things happened to a totally good Person, history’s only totally good Person!

This wise and perfect God chose to suffer. It could be said he is unique in that he lost on purpose! He has suffered ever since his first two image bearers trade the warning of a good God for the word of a liar. He suffered when he removed them from his Paradise, again when one son of theirs murdered the other, again when their progeny became so crooked that starting over trumped straightening them out as his only choice. He’s been suffering all along with the evil and suffering of his sons and daughters.

You hear it in his voice as he pleads with us to leave our own ill-advised path and return to the one he laid out for us. He suffers with the stillborn child’s mother, with the victim of sexual abuse, and those subject to gang-related violence. His compassionate heart aches for tsunami and earthquake victims, with each starving African, with his persecuted saints, and with refugees and asylum seekers displaced by war and famine.

But most shocking of all, he chose to be the greatest victim of evil and suffering at a brutal crucifixion. This God and no other entered our corruption, became evil, and punished himself (2 Corinthians 5:19-21)! In his wisdom and love he chose to suffer the sentence our sin deserves. The omnipotent God created a world in which he ends up suffering a dreadful death at the hands of his creation!

As “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3), Jesus gives us a peek at the Father’s propensity to suffer. Like Son like Father. The Son suffered sin’s sentence and the Father suffered the suffering of a father viewing the torment of his son.

Michael Green posits that the best answer to the problem of undeserved human suffering is found in the sacrifice of Jesus: “In Jesus, God has come to share our pain. God is no absent academic who writes a book on the problem of pain. He got involved. He has allowed pain at its most severe to strike him. We worship a suffering God.”

Greg Boyd again:

“The cross reveals that God’s omnipotence is displayed in self-sacrificial love, not sheer might. God conquers sin and the devil not by a sovereign decree but by a wise and humble submission to crucifixion. In doing this, the cross reveals that God’s omnipotence is not primarily about control but about his compelling love. God conquers evil and wins the heart of people by self-sacrificial love, not by coercive force.”

He can and often does intervene in our suffering, but when he doesn’t, I’m convinced he weeps with us I such a way that we can almost feel his tears dropping on us from above. He’s never aloof from the sufferer. Before he breathed into our lungs he determined to experience everything that his beloveds experience. When we suffer he can truthfully say, “I know, I’ve been there––and worse.”

A reporter asked Mother Teresa, “When a baby dies alone in a dark alley in Calcutta, where was God?” She said, “God was there suffering with that baby. The question really is, where were you?”

 Let’s conclude at the point we began, in that opening scene where God planted, not one, but two trees in center of his the original garden paradise. After eating from the illicit one they were barred by a big scary angel from eating from the other (the tree of life). We who follow Jesus and live as overcomers in this world, will eat our fill of this tree forever in the ultimate paradise of God (Revelation 2:2,7; 22:14). This privilege is entirely due to another tree, one that was planned before creation but not planted till millennia later, the one on which Jesus suffered the curse in our place (Galatians 3:13). On that tree he agonized under the weight of our evil and provided a way back into God’s lush garden to eat the fruit that is Life.

Here are the links to each of the posts in this series:

IF GOD IS SO GOOD, WHAT’S UP WITH ALL THE BAD STUFF IN THE WORLD?
WHY PUT A BAD TREE IN A GOOD GARDEN?
HOW MUCH DO WE “NEED TO KNOW”?
HOW MUCH DO WE ACTUALLY KNOW?
DOES GOD ALWAYS GET HIS WAY?
WHAT DOES GOD EVEN KNOW ABOUT SUFFERING?

Friends

In my wilderness, as in the Hebrew Exodus, manna appeared in the morning, a pillar of cloud rose up to shade me in the sweltering afternoon desert sun, and a pillar of fire warmed me and lighted my way through the darkness of night.

Literally “manna” means, “What is this?” The first manna recipients wondered what it was and how it got there, since it appeared everyday but the Sabbath and satisfied their hunger till the next delivery from the sky. My wonders have come in a similarly inexplicable way—only enough for the day, never enough to be stockpiled for the future.

During this hell of mercy, God has fed me, led me, and sent friends my way when I needed them most, with hope spilling from their pockets.

– Originally published in The Other End of the Dark: A Memoir About Divorce, Cancer, and Things God Does Anyway