Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 200

Steve Saint, Mincaye, and the Redemptive Power of the Gospel

In a post last June, I shared a video about Steve Saint, son of one of the five missionaries who were murdered in Ecuador in 1956. Steve, who is founder of ITEC (Indigenous People's Technology and Education Center) was seriously injured during a test flight of his flying car.

Some of you may have wondered how Steve was doing in his recovery. I want to share with you a very touching 8.5 minute video, titled “‘Nanicabo’ (Family).” It shows Steve during a recent visit from Mincaye and his wife.

Mincaye is the former warrior who was one of the murderers of Nate Saint and the other missionaries, and who later came to faith in Christ. Several years ago Nanci and I spent an unforgettable day with Steve and Mincaye. I interviewed them in three church services, then spent the afternoon at the home in Portland where Jim Elliot grew up, with members of three of the five families of the murdered missionaries.

If you have time to view the video in the post last summer, shortly after Steve’s serious accident, you will be moved even to see Steve walking in the new video, weak though he may be. Enjoy this remarkable depiction of God’s wondrous grace in the lives of His people from different parts of the world that He has forged into one family:

As I wrote in my previous blog, the story of the five missionaries touched me deeply as a brand new Christian. (And years later, meeting Bert Elliot, Jim Elliot’s brother, also had a profound impact on me.) I’d like to close this blog with a 3-minute clip from an interview I did with Steve Saint and Mincaye at my home church in 2005. Steve shared a touching story related to his dad’s and the other missionaries’ deaths:

And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation (Revelation 5:9).

      

Safely Home the Musical Drama

Last year I received a letter and DVD from Darcy DeLeon, who teaches at Temple Christian School in Lima, Ohio. Darcy and her team turned my novel Safely Home into a musical drama, which was performed by the school’s students last March. A lot of effort went into producing it, and I really appreciate it!

Darcy writes, “The whole process was a very large endeavor for a few amateurs that just wanted to please our Lord. I taught at this small Christian school (total high school is less than 80) that love musicals but I believed with all my heart that the Lord wanted them to use their talents to participate in a Christian production... My two daughters and I read your book and God brought it to mind as we were praying and asking God’s direction in this process.” She adds, “It was quite a challenge to turn a primarily Midwest Caucasian cast into Chinese people, but I had a Chinese woman helping me capture the look on stage. It truly was amazing.” 

Below is a 2-minute clip from a scene where Ben Fielding visits his friend Li Quan in prison:

Darcy has graciously offered to make the script and materials available to others who might be interested in putting on a play based on Safely Home. (You can download them via the links at the top of this blog.) She writes, “I am hoping and praying that...the Gospel message is received and an awareness of the persecuted church becomes prevalent in the hearts of those who watch.”

      

The Least of These: Those without Clean Water and Sanitation

In today’s blog we ask the question again: how can we as Christians help the most vulnerable people in the world? (See my previous blogs in the series we’re calling The Least of These.) This post focuses on those who lack access to clean drinking water and basic sanitation.

According to the World Health Organization, 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation. Christians have a special responsibility (and privilege) to care for those affected, who are in desperate need of sanitation and salvation.

Access to clean water is one first step a community must take to overcome poverty. Children who spend their mornings fetching water often miss school. Also, drinking dirty water can infect children with preventable diseases that then keep them out of school.

In this four-minute video from Living Water International, a pastor from India explains how the gift of clean water allowed the gospel to spread in the midst of opposition:

More Information and Statistics (from Compassion.com )

Approximately 1.8 million children die each year as a result of diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. This is around 5,000 deaths a day.
Diarrheal diseases can be reduced by more than 40 percent through the simple practice of washing hands with soap and water.
Water-related diseases are the second biggest killer of children worldwide. Number one is acute respiratory infections, such as tuberculosis.
Approximately 97.5 percent of the water on earth is saltwater. If all the world's water could fit in an average bucket, only 1 teaspoon would be drinkable.
Nearly 90 percent of water-related diseases are due to unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene; and most victims are children in developing countries.
The average person in the developing world uses a little more than 2.5 gallons of water each day for drinking, washing and cooking. Whereas the average person in the developed world uses 13 gallons per day only for toilet flushing.

Sources: www.who.int ,  www.wateraid.org ,  www.unicef.org

How Can You Get Involved?

Giving financially to improve sanitation in developing companies is one of the most effective ways to help. According to the World Health Organization, every $1 invested in improved sanitation translates into an average return of $9. Those benefits are experienced specifically by poor children and in the disadvantaged communities that need them most.

Providing clean water not only offers numerous physical benefits for people, but also opens the door for the gospel, so people can hear about Jesus, and quench their spiritual thirst: “Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,  but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life’” (John 4:13).

Organizations EPM Recommends

Samaritan’s Purse
www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/articles/life_giving_water/

Living Water International
www.water.cc

The Water Project
www.thewaterproject.org

Water Missions International
www.watermissions.org

“And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward” (Matthew 10:24).

My thanks to EPM staffer Julia Stager for assembling the facts and resources for this blog.

      

Photo credit

Girl drinking: Sacca via photopin cc | Boys with water: uncultured via photopin cc

John Piper Speaks about God’s Goodness in 2012

In light of the horrors of the Newtown school shooting, I wrote recently about my belief that God sovereignly keeps an immense amount of evil from happening, and infuses the world with a great deal of goodness every day. In If God is Good, I suggest that instead of just being amazed at all the evil in the world, we should be amazed at all the goodness that surrounds us sinners, goodness which we are often blind to.

When it is so common to ask “Where is God When Evil Happens?” I can’t think of a better way to end 2012 than to post this from John Piper, who asks “Where Was God in All the Goodness of 2012?”

As this year ends, the question I am asking is: Where was God when so many good things happened this past year?

How can God be a God of justice, yet allow so much good to happen to people who dishonor him by disbelieving in him, or giving lip service to his existence, or paying no more attention to him than the carpet in their den, or rejecting the kingship of his Son, or scorning his word, or preferring a hundred pleasures before him?

How can God be righteous and do so much good to us who are so unrighteous?

Where was God in 2012?

Where was God when nine million planes landed safely in the United States?
Where was God when the world revolved around the sun so accurately that it achieved the Winter solstice perfectly at 5:12 AM December 21 and headed back toward Spring?
Where was God when the President was not shot at a thousand public appearances?
Where was God when American farms produced ten million bushels of corn, and 2.8 million bushels of soybeans — enough food to sell $100 billions worth to other nations?
Where was God when no terrorist plot brought down a single American building or plane or industry?
Where was God when the sun maintained its heat and its gravitational pull precisely enough that we were not incinerated or frozen?
Where was God when three hundred million Americans drank water in homes and restaurants without getting sick?
Where was God when no new plague swept away a third of our race?
Where was God when Americans drove three trillion accident free miles?
Where was God when over three million healthy babies were born in America?

Here are a few of the answers given by God himself in his word.

1. God was reigning from his throne to do his sovereign will.

“Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.” (Psalm 115:3)

“He works all things according to the counsel of his will.” (Ephesians 1:11)

2. God was reigning from his throne to prevent much sin and harm in the world.

“God said to [Abimelech, the king of Gerar], it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her.” (Genesis 20:6)

“You know what is restraining [the man of lawlessness] now.” (2 Thessalonians 2:6)

3. God was reigning from his throne to give a witness to his goodness and his patience.

“God did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” (Acts 14:17)

4. God was reigning from his throne to summon the world to repentance.

“Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4)

So as the year ends, I bow my head as an undeserving sinner, amazed that I have not been swept away. And even more, that because of Jesus, I am forgiven, adopted into God’s family, and destined for eternal life.

God has been good to us. And his best gift is the one that will be there when all the others fail. Jesus, crucified, risen, reigning.

      

photo credit

Chuck Colson, the “Untouchables”, and the Great Reunion

As 2012 winds up, I am pondering the departure this year of many Christ-followers, including our brother Chuck Colson. As I shared in a post after Chuck’s death, I have the highest regard for him. He was one of my heroes. Many of his books, including Kingdoms in Conflict, had a profound effect on me.

I’ll never forget years ago when we crossed paths at a booksellers convention and Chuck stopped because he wanted to talk with me. He was late for an interview, but just wanted to share his heart and see how I was doing. I was deeply touched. He sent me many personal notes over the years, and kindly endorsed several of my books. Far more importantly, he was used of God to reach countless people for Christ, especially prisoners.

Timothy George gave the homily at Chuck’s memorial service in May. (You can read or watch the entire thing at the Colson Center website.) I was touched by this particular story he shared:

Once while visiting Trivandrum, India, Chuck Colson was taken to a camp with more than a thousand inmates, most of them “untouchables.” Caged in squalid holes, with no toilets or running water, they were totally dehumanized, treated as outcasts. Speaking through a Hindi translator, Chuck shared his own testimony of grace and forgiveness. After the closing prayer, acting against the advice he had been given, he jumped down from the platform and ran to touch the men before him. Later, he wrote about this event: “Suddenly, like a flight of birds, men rose to their feet and circled around me. I shook every hand I could. Most of the men just reached and touched; they were desperate to ‘touch,’ to know that the love God offers is real.” Later, they went back to their grim cells. But that night, through the witness of Chuck Colson, they had received some good news: in Jesus Christ there are no untouchables. All of us bear that message whenever we walk the thin edge of costly discipleship. 

I can’t wait to see Chuck again, in the presence of Jesus. And I look forward to meeting many others, including his personal hero William Wilberforce, and C. S. Lewis, who wrote Mere Christianity, the book through which Chuck came to faith in Jesus. In fact, while they were all out of my league on this earth, on the New Earth I’d like to have lunch with Wilberforce, Lewis and Colson—and countless names unknown to me but well known to their Lord and Savior.

And the King will answer them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).

      

Photo credits: www.chuckcolson.org

A Child’s Life-Saving Heart Surgery

One of the ministries EPM supports is Action International. Devendra and Koko Rai work with Action in India, and in November, Devendra sent out a prayer request for the daughter of an Indian pastor.  Changpi (who turned 7 on December 8) was diagnosed with a hole in her heart that created complications in her liver. She needed an operation as soon as possible, which needed to be performed in a city 60 hours away by train. (In the picture, she is between the girl in the blue dress and the girl with a flower in her hair.)

Her father was at his wit’s end; with an income of only $130 a month, a surgery costing $8,000 seemed impossible. But without the operation, it would soon be too late for Changpi. (Devendra explained that more than 90% of people in India don’t have health insurance, or for that matter, any kind of insurance.)

EPM was able to join others in sending funds for Changpi’s surgery. Two weeks later, her father reported that the operation was successful, and his daughter’s life was spared. Devendra wrote, “Thank you all for your prayers and for your generous help to this dear pastor. Pastor Langshukyu is very thankful to all of you for your help.”

What a privilege and joy to invest in the life of this precious child, and ultimately in God’s kingdom. As Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Thank you, Lord. “Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand” (1 Chronicles 29).

      

From Eternal Perspective Ministries

If you’re interested in supporting some of the wonderful ministries who specifically provide life-saving health care for children and the needy around the world, we recommend the following:

Mercy Ships - Through free, basic, health-care and transformative surgeries, Mercy Ships becomes the face of love in action. The hospital ship - Africa Mercy - provides first-rate medical professionals, state-of-the-art medical and surgical facilities and health-care training to communities in West Africa that lack those critical services.

Samaritan’s Purse: Children’s Heart Project – This outreach works with top-quality hospitals to provide surgery for children who live in countries where the medical expertise and equipment are not available. Since 1997, CHP has arranged life-saving operations for more than 800 children.

MedSend – This ministry enables highly qualified and dedicated healthcare professionals to serve spiritually and physically needy people around the world in the name of Christ. 

Pondering God’s Giving Heart This Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Nanci and me, and from all the staff at Eternal Perspective Ministries! I want to thank you for all the ways you support this ministry, especially through your prayers.

I share more thoughts in this 1 1/2 minute video:

One of the things I love most about Christmas is that it’s all about giving—with the ultimate gifts being Christ’s incarnation and His atonement. 2 Corinthians 8:9 says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” Scripture says we love Him because He first loved us, and it’s also true that we give to Him because He first gave to us.  

Jesus said in Acts 20:35, “It’s more blessed to give than to receive.” The translated blessed means “happy-making.” This verse literally says, “It is more happy-making to give than to receive!”

So I encourage you to ponder God’s giving heart this Christmas, and to celebrate all He has done for you.

Merry Christmas!

      

Photo credit: mysza831 via photopin cc

Why Doesn’t God Do More to Restrain Evil and Suffering? Part 2

In order to understand this blog, it would be helpful for you to have read the previous one. 

Severe suffering seems unacceptable to us precisely because we are unaccustomed to it.

Susanna Wesley had nineteen children; nine of them died before they reached the age of two. Puritan Cotton Mather had fifteen children and outlived all but two. Ironically, the problem of evil and suffering seems worse to us who live in affluent cultures precisely because we face less of it than many people have throughout history.

I heard an exasperated woman at a restaurant table loudly proclaim that her Porsche had to be taken in for repairs and now she had to drive her Audi. In contrast I have met devout Christians in Africa and Southeast Asia who have endured famine, genocide, and persecution, yet smile genuinely as they affirm God’s goodness and grace.

C. S. Lewis wrote,

Imagine a set of people all living in the same building. Half of them think it is a hotel, the other half think it is a prison. Those who think it is a hotel might regard it as quite intolerable, and those who thought it was a prison might decide that it was really surprisingly comfortable. So that what seems the ugly doctrine is one that comforts and strengthens you in the end. The people who try to hold an optimistic view of this world would become pessimists: the people who hold a pretty stern view of it become optimistic. [1]

People who ask why God allowed their house to burn down likely never thanked God for not letting their house burn down the previous ten thousand days of their lives. Why does God get blame when it burns, but no credit when it doesn’t? Many pastors and church members have experienced church splits, feeling the agony of betrayal and disillusionment. But where were the prayers of gratitude back when the church was unified? Our suffering seems extreme in the present only because God has graciously minimized many of our past sufferings.

Dorothy Sayers wrote,

“Why doesn’t God smite this dictator dead?” is a question a little remote from us. Why, madam, did he not strike you dumb and imbecile before you uttered that baseless and unkind slander the day before yesterday? Or me, before I behaved with such a cruel lack of consideration to that well-meaning friend? And why sir, did he not cause your hand to rot off at the wrist before you signed your name to that dirty bit of financial trickery? You did not quite mean that? But why not? Your misdeeds and mine are none the less repellent because our opportunities for doing damage are less spectacular than those of some other people. Do you suggest that your doings and mine are too trivial for God to bother about? That cuts both ways; for in that case, it would make precious little difference to his creation if he wiped us both out tomorrow. [2]

Our birthright does not include pain-free living. Only those who understand that this world languishes under a curse will marvel at its beauties despite that curse. C. S. Lewis’s final article, published after his death, carried the title “We Have No Right to Happiness.” Believing that we do have such a right sets us up for bitterness.

Fallen beings could not survive in a perfectly just world where God punished evil immediately.

What if every time I gave a hundred dollars to feed the hungry, two hundred dollars appeared in my wallet? Or when I spoke a kind word to a weary supermarket checker, I received a Starbucks gift card?

Suppose that every time a man yelled at a child or looked at a woman lustfully, a painful shock jolted his frontal lobe? Or when he lied, he got an instant toothache or was struck dead by lightning?

If we think we want all evil judged now, we’re not thinking clearly.

Were such rewards and punishments built into our lives, the world would cer­tainly be more just—but at what cost? We would base our obedience on instant payoffs or the avoidance of instant pain, not on loving God. Our behavior might improve, but our hearts wouldn’t. Faith would fade, because faith means trusting God to eventually make right what is now wrong.

Do you believe the world would be a better place if people immediately paid the just penalty for every sin? In God’s sight, every evil is a capital crime (see Romans 6:23). The woman who tells a “little white lie,” the teenager who shoplifts, the greedy man, the gossiper, all would instantly die. D. A. Carson writes, “Do you really want nothing but totally effective, instantaneous justice? Then go to hell.” [3]

God restrains suffering through our limited life spans—people don’t endure eons, millennia, or centuries of suffering, but only decades, years, months, weeks, days, and hours.

Take the total number of years you believe human life has existed. Now, ask yourself what portion of that time any one human being has suffered.

Suppose God permitted evil and suffering, yet limited them to one ghastly year of human history. Would we consider that duration of evil and suffering acceptable? What about one month? If someone could prove that we would become greater and happier beings for all eternity as a result, would you think it right for God to allow ten seconds of intense suffering? Likely you would.

Once we make that admission, do you see where it puts us? If we could justify ten seconds, then why not ten hours, ten days, or ten years? And in eternity, as we look back, how much longer will ninety years seem than ninety minutes?

Who holds the record for suffering among all human beings alive today? As I write, the oldest person in the world is 114 years old. She hasn’t suffered her whole life. But suppose she suffered significantly for a century. Most people, obviously, will endure much less. Some suffer severely for five days, weeks, months, or years; some, perhaps, for fifty years. However, no one in this world suffers for 10,000, 1,000, or even 130 years.

To say God takes too long to bring final judgment on evil and suffering imposes an artificial timetable on someone time cannot contain. God’s Son entered time in his incarnation. Though he understands our impatience, he won’t yield to it—and one day we’ll be grateful that he didn’t.

God allows substantial evil and suffering because he values our sense of neediness and trust as we turn to him for his grace.

Each year before Christmas we look forward to our church choir singing “Send the Messiah.” The haunting lyrics and powerful presentation resonate within us:

The cry of generations echoes in the heart of heaven....

I need a Savior who will walk the earth down here with me.... Send the Messiah, I need his love to own me. [4]

God sent the Messiah once, but he will send him again to deliver us. Paul, likely within months of his death, said God will grant a special eternal reward “to all who have longed for his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:8). What makes us long for our Lord? Isn’t much of it because of the evil and suffering we face in this life?

Thankfully, while the Messiah may not return to Earth as soon as we’d like, he promises, “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). So while we long for and pray for God to send the Messiah to bring an end to this age of evil and suffering, we need not wait until then to enter his presence.

In light of the work done by Christ, our sympathetic high priest, we’re told, “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

Until God sends the Messiah to rescue this world, or he rescues us through our deaths, may we approach his throne confidently, seeking his fellowship, comfort, mercy, and grace in our time of need... today, this very hour.

      

This is an excerpt from  If God is Good , by Randy Alcorn.

Sources

[1] C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 52.

[2] Dorothy L. Sayers, “The Triumph of Easter,” in Creed or Chaos (London: Methuen, 1954).

[3] D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 161.

[4] Daniel Perrin, “Send the Messiah,” https://www.cedarpark.org/resources/m... html.php?id=60.

Photo Credits

Crying tear: torli via sxc.hu | Gift card: cafemama via photopin cc | man and the sea: photo credit: Hop-Frog via photopin cc| flowers and worship: {Salt of the Earth} via photopin cc

Why Doesn’t God Do More to Restrain Evil and Suffering? Part 1

God may already be restraining 99.99 percent of evil and suffering.

Why does the chaos that breaks out in some corner of the world always prove the exception rather than the rule? Why haven’t tyrants, with access to powerful weapons, destroyed this planet? What has kept infectious diseases and natural disasters from killing 99 percent of the world’s population rather than less than 1 percent?

In the collapse of New York’s Twin Towers, fifteen thousand people came out alive. While this doesn’t remove the pain felt by families of the nearly three thousand who died, it shows that even on that terrible day, suffering was limited.

Nanci said to me, “Given what Scripture tells us about the evil of the human heart, you’d think that there would be thousands of Jack the Rippers in every city.” Her statement stopped me in my tracks. Might God be limiting sin all around us, all the time? Second Thessalonians 2:7 declares that God is in fact restraining lawlessness in this world. For this we should thank him daily.

If God permitted people to follow their every evil inclination all the time, life on this planet would screech to a halt. Sometimes God permits evil by giving people over to their sins (see Romans 1:24–32), and this itself leads to the deterioration and ultimate death of an evil culture, which is a mercy to surrounding cultures. The most morally corrupt ancient cultures no longer exist.

“But many children suffer; why doesn’t God protect them?” We don’t know the answer, but we also don’t know how often God does protect children. The concept of guardian angels seems to be suggested by various passages (see, for example, Matthew 18:10).

God gives us a brief, dramatic look into the unseen world in which righteous angels battle evil ones, intervening on behalf of God’s people (see Daniel 10:12–13, 20). How many angels has God sent to preserve the lives of children and shield them from harm?

My earliest memory is of falling into deep water and nearly drowning; someone my family didn’t know rescued me. As a parent and a grandparent I have seen many “close calls” where it appears a child should have died or suffered a terrible injury, but somehow escaped both.

This thought, of course, doesn’t keep a parent’s heart from breaking when her child suffers or dies. Still, though I can’t prove it, I’m convinced God prevents far more evil than he allows.

God may also be preventing 99.99 percent of tragedies.

Great though they may be, God actively restrains the tests and temptations that come our way so that we will not experience anything greater than we can bear (see 1 Corinthians 10:13).

Fatal car and airplane accidents bring awful devastation, but statistically these are rare. On January 15, 2009, what should have brought certain death to passengers aboard Flight 1549, and catastrophe to Manhattan, turned into what secular reporters labeled a “miracle.” The pilot, Chesley Sullenberger, safely landed a crippled plane in New York’s Hudson River, with no serious injuries.

While chunks of ice and busy ferries filled most of the river, the place where the plane came down remained clear of both ice and boats. It landed without breaking apart. Ferryboat captains rescued all 155 people from the frigid river within minutes. The New York Times suggested “more than luck” brought the plane down mere minutes from experts trained in water rescues. Passengers who said they hadn’t believed in God nevertheless prayed to him on the plane, then publicly thanked him for sparing their lives. [1]

I tell this story to raise a question—isn’t it likely that a kind and all-powerful God routinely prevents terrible tragedies in ways that we do not see and therefore do not credit as miracles?

While the miracle of Flight 1549 appears to be the exception, not the rule, we cannot know about most of the equally miraculous interventions of God that may have invisibly prevented other catastrophes. Perhaps one day we’ll hear those stories and marvel at how often God intervened when we imagined him uninvolved in our world.

God exercises wisdom and purpose by not always intervening in miraculous ways.

As a young Christian, a teenager, I often asked God to show me signs. In the darkness of my room at night I would light a match and ask him to blow it out. What a simple miracle I requested! Nothing on the level of raising the dead, not even turning water to wine. But he never granted my request. And though I didn’t understand why at the time, now I have a better idea. What would I have asked him to do once he blew out the match? Levitate the pool table? And then what would I ask him to do to top that? Where would it end?

How many magician’s tricks would we call upon Jesus to do? As we share Christ with a neighbor who says, “I don’t believe in God,” we might say, “Oh yeah? Watch this.” Then we’d call on God to torch the man’s maple tree. Seeing the tree vaporize would get his attention! And surely it would generate faith-oriented conversion, right?

No. That’s not how faith works, and it’s not how God works.

God did bring down fire from Heaven on occasions (see Numbers 16:35; 1 Kings 18:38). He even opened the earth to swallow up his enemies (see Numbers 16:31–33). Did this result in people turning to him for the long run? No. Jesus fed the multitudes and many followed for a while, but they turned away recoiling from his demanding words (see John 6:1–66). Abraham told the rich man that his brothers “will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (see Luke 16:27–31).

We say, “Show me a miracle and I’ll believe,” yet countless people who have seen miracles continue to disbelieve.

In our eagerness to see greater miracles, we regard “natural processes” as minor and secondary, missing God’s marvelous daily interventions on our behalf.

Focusing on God’s “big miracles”—like curing cancer and making brain tumors disappear—causes us to overlook his small, daily miracles of providence in which he holds the universe together, provides us with air to breathe and lungs to breathe it, and food to eat and stomachs to digest it.

Years ago when I became an insulin-dependent diabetic, it dawned on me that I had never once, in the fifteen years I’d known him, thanked God for a pancreas that had worked perfectly until then.

No matter how much God reduced world suffering, we’d still think he did too little.

Evil and suffering make up part of a world in which God allows fallen people to go on living. How much evil and suffering is too much? Could God reduce the amount without restricting meaningful human choice, or decreasing the urgency of the message that the world’s gone desperately wrong and we need to turn to the Redeemer before we die?

Suppose we rated all pain on a scale of one to ten, with ten representing the worst and most intense pain, and one describing the unpleasant yet quite tolerable. Say “engulfed in flames” got a ten rating while “mild sunburn” received a one. If God eliminated level ten pain, then level nine pain would become the worst. God could reduce the worst suffering to level three, but then level three, now the worst, would seem unbearable. Any argument that judges God’s goodness strictly by his elimination of pain will, in the end, not leave us satisfied if he permits any pain at all.

In Part 2 on Friday, we’ll look at whether we would really want God to punish evil immediately, and at how God allows substantial evil and suffering because he values our sense of neediness and trust as we turn to him for his grace.

      

This is an excerpt from If God is Good , by Randy Alcorn.

Source

[1] Michael Wilson, “Flight 1549 Pilot Tells of Terror and Intense Focus,” New York Times, February 9, 2009.

Photo Credits

9/11: wstera2 via photopin cc | | city: casch | flight 1549: derek7272 via photopin cc | lit match: Micah Taylor via photopin cc | sunset: macisaguy via photopin cc

 

How Great Evil Confirms the Biblical Teaching about Demons

I can mourn with and pray for the families in Connecticut who lost their children (and in a few cases their spouses) in the school shooting. I certainly cannot offer any definitive explanation. I am dedicating this week’s three blogs to perspectives that may be helpful to some. Keep in mind that we are treating only a few aspects of the problem of evil, and therefore much will remain unaddressed. For a larger perspective, see my books on this issue, in particular If God is Good.

Acts of extreme evil, though routinely used as arguments against God, are actually arguments for supernaturalism.

I spent hours walking through Cambodia’s Killing Fields. Vek and Samoeun Taing, a gentle Cambodian couple who had survived there with a young child for two years, escorted our small group. Feeling numb, I saw the skulls piled up and stood by the mud pits where killers threw hundreds of bodies. A human jawbone lay at my feet. I picked it up, held it in my hand, and wept.

The darkness felt overwhelming. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge murdered nearly one-third of the country’s population. Yet the three million slaughtered in Cambodia amount to less than one-fiftieth of the murders by twentieth century tyrants, who killed mostly their own people. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao accounted for most of the carnage, but the ongoing state-sponsored killing in Sudan, including the Darfur region, follows the same script. (And this figure ignores the staggering number of preborn children aborted throughout the world.)

Samoeun’s parents both starved to death. One of her brothers was murdered; they never again heard from another brother. Vek’s brother and sister-in-law and six of their children all perished. We stood together at a tree where Khmer Rouge soldiers held children by their little feet, swinging them into the tree to smash their heads. Unthinkable evil! Who could imagine such horrible crimes?

I just looked again at a photograph of one sign written in Cambodian, referring to the “sea of blood and tears.” The sign reads as follows, its awkward English translation powerfully capturing the sentiment:

We are hearing the grievous voice of the victims who were beaten by Pol Pot men with canes, bamboo stumps or heads of hoes. Who were stabbed with knives or swords. We seem to be looking at the horrifying scenes and the panic-stricken faces of the people who were dying of starvation, forced labour or torture without mercy upon the skinny body.... How bitter they were when seeing their beloved children, wives, husbands, brothers or sisters were seized and tightly bound before being taken to mass grave! While they were waiting for their turn to come and share the same tragic lot.

The method of massacre which the clique of Pol Pot criminals was carried upon the innocent people of Kampuchea [Cambodia] cannot be described fully and clearly in words because the invention of this killing method was strangely cruel. So it is difficult for us to determine who they are for they have the human form but their hearts are demon’s hearts.

After all the horrors I’d learned of on that unforgettable day, human skulls at my feet, that one sentence rocked me: “They have the human form but their hearts are demon’s hearts.”

Yes! That was it. Nothing on a merely human level could explain the gratuitous torture, the tireless cruelty inflicted even on helpless children. This was superhuman evil.

Nanci and I felt overwhelmed as we walked through the Holocaust Memorial in Washington, D.C. Years before we’d had an even more unforgettable experience at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem’s Holocaust museum. The burning candles and the reading of the names of children killed in the Holocaust remain among the most haunting and unforgettable experiences of my life. We watched sobbing men and women poring through books to find the names of their murdered relatives. What surrounded us cried out for an explanation even bigger than human depravity.

I think often of a young man I met on a plane who told me he didn’t believe in evil. When I asked him whether the Holocaust was evil, he replied, “I guess it was a mistake.” But his body language betrayed him. It was evil... and he knew it.

One test of a worldview is whether you sometimes have to borrow from another because yours doesn’t work. That’s what this young man had to do. I believe he recognized what he refused to verbalize. To admit the Holocaust was evil, he would have to abandon his worldview and borrow the concepts of both human and demonic evil from a worldview he didn’t want to believe.

Extreme evil committed by “regular” people demands a superhuman explanation.

Emmanuel Ndikumana is a Hutu married to a Tutsi. This is remarkable, since in the 1994 Rwandan slaughters, Hutu militia massacred a million Tutsis, many of them hacked to death with machetes. Tutsis then took revenge on Hutus. Teenage classmates at Emmanuel’s school targeted him for murder.

Do you know what struck me most when Emmanuel told me of his survival? It was that the Tutsi students who tried to murder him were, in every respect, very normal young people. So were most of those Hutus who butchered innocent Tutsis. Yet the gruesome murders perpetrated by both sides transcend natural explanation—so what explanation remains but a supernatural one?

And once we affirm there is supernatural evil, can we fail to recognize supernatural good? God and Satan are not equal opposites, but if there is a Satan and demons who do evil, then doesn’t it make sense that there is a God and righteous angels who do good?

Robert Lifton’s The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide documents how intelligent medical professionals participated in cruel and deadly experimental surgeries on Jewish children, with appalling ease. Among the best-trained medical personnel in Europe, they enjoyed normal family lives and loved their children and pets; but day after day, they committed shockingly cruel evils.

Susan Smith went to prison after drowning her two small sons because a man she was dating hinted that he didn’t like children. When Chuck Colson visited that prison, he heard that Smith had signed up to hear him speak. Colson looked for her in the audience but never saw her. Afterward he found out she’d been sitting right in front of him. His point? “The face of evil is frighteningly ordinary.” [1]

I’ve watched interviews with family, friends, and classmates of serial killers who all say the same chilling words: “He was such a nice boy.”

In People of the Lie, psychologist Scott Peck tells the story of Bobby, a young man suffering from depression. Bobby struggled with the recent suicide of his older brother, Stuart. His condition plummeted after Christmas.

Dr. Peck asked him what presents he’d received for Christmas. Bobby told him, “A gun.” This alarmed Peck because of Bobby’s depression, and especially since the boy’s brother had shot himself. Then came the horrifying truth: his parents gave Bobby the same gun Stuart had used to commit suicide. Bobby’s post-Christmas depression suddenly made sense. His seemingly normal parents, with their Christmas gift, had invited him to take his life like his brother had.

Satan and demons provide the most rational explanation for unnatural evil.

In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan cites terrible evil after evil to his Christian brother, Alyosha. He speaks of Turks nailing their prisoners by the ears to fences, only to let them suffer all night and then hang them in the morning. He says,

People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that’s all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it. These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children, too; cutting the unborn child from the mother’s womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mothers’ eyes. [2]

While Ivan considered this an argument against God, it actually provides a compelling argument against naturalism. Ivan is right. Mere animals would never do such a thing.

Ivan speaks of apparently normal people, responsible and civil to fellow adults, who delight in torturing children:

It is a peculiar characteristic of many people, this love of torturing children, and children only. To all other types of humanity these torturers behave mildly and benevolently, like cultivated and humane Europeans; but they are very fond of tormenting children.... It’s just their defenselessness that tempts the tormentor, just the angelic confidence of the child who has no refuge and no appeal, that sets his vile blood on fire. In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden—the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain. [3]

Where did the ideas for such malignant evil come from? Read the Bible and C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters and you’ll discover the answer.

Demons prompt the killing of children. The false god Molech, a demon, demanded the sacrifice of children. In the first of a dozen passages warning against this bloodthirsty demon, God says, “Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God” (Leviticus 18:2 1). God loves children, his tiniest image-bearers. Demons hate them. In killing them, demons lash out at God. It’s true of school shootings, and it’s true of abortion.

The atheistic worldview simply cannot account for superhuman evil. Death, yes; suffering, yes. But calculated, relentless, exhausting brutality toward the weak and innocent? The death camps? The Nazi doctors? The Killing Fields? The despicable acts of apparently “normal” people such as Bobby and Stuart’s parents? Jesus gave us the answer when he said of Satan, “He was a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44).

Three times in my life, each unexpected, I have faced the palpable presence of supernatural evil. In each case it was distinctly not of this world. Given the world’s atrocities, should it surprise us that supernatural powers can influence human beings?

After witnessing the members of Sudan’s so-called Lord’s Resistance Army force children to hack their parents to death with machetes (or be killed along with them), my friend heard one man respond, “I now believe in God, for I have met the devil.”

Extreme evil can wake us up to the reality of both good and evil, testifying to the invisible realities of God and Satan.

Unbelievers and believers both call certain things utterly evil, including child abuse. Some will cite such evil as evidence against God. But others will see things for what they are and come face to face with the supernatural. When evil grows awful enough, the unbeliever may abandon the sinking ship of moral relativism and its conviction that supernatural evil doesn’t exist.

Because the Christian worldview offers a well-grounded explanation for both human and superhuman evil, and a solid basis for moral outrage, those who find themselves morally outraged at atrocities owe themselves a careful look at it.

In the next two blogs I’ll address the question of, “Why doesn’t God prevent more evil?”

      

Sources

[1] Charles Colson, How Now Shall We Live? (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 1999), 185.

[2] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (New York: Modern Library, 1995), 265.

[3] Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 268.

Photo credits

prayer image | killing fields: istolethetv via photopin cc | Holocaust Memorial: teachandlearn via photopin cc | Rwandan boy: expressionposthumus via photopin cc | unborn child