Category Archives: Evil, Pain, and Suffering

Does God Take People’s Lives? – #9 Post of 2009

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Clearly, yes He does.  Many people express shock over the fact that God took human life in the great flood or that He commanded Israel to kill Canaanites.  There are many other instances in the Bible where God either directly or indirectly takes lives.  There is no getting around this fact.  It makes us uncomfortable to read these passages in the Bible and some of us try to avoid these passages altogether.

It’s not just an Old Testament issue either.  Anybody remember Ananias and Sapphira?  Have you ever read the book of Revelation?  No, we can’t escape the reality of God taking human life by fleeing to the New Testament.

So, as Christians, how do we deal with this fact?  Is it wrong for God to take life?  Do we have to cringe every time a critic of Christianity raises this issue?  No, we don’t.  If we truly understand who God is, then we shouldn’t be surprised by the fact that He takes people’s lives.

The Bible teaches two things about God that helps us understand why He takes human life.  First, He is ultimately just.  He hates sin and evil.  God is perfect in righteousness and goodness, so the existence of sin and evil repulses Him.  As the ultimate judge of the entire universe, He must punish sin.

If God did not punish sin, then what kind of God would He be?  A God who winked and nodded at sin would be like a deranged trial judge who lets every murderer, rapist, and child molester go free, regardless of their guilt.  Is that really the God you want?  Every single person yearns for justice, and if the ultimate Being never administered it, there would be no ultimate justice.  We’ve all sinned.  If God is going to judge sin, then all people come into His court.

Many people say that they want a God who doesn’t punish sin, who is a big, cuddly, teddy bear in heaven.  But what they really mean to say is that they don’t want a God who punishes their particular sin.  As soon as they are wronged, they immediately call for justice!  They think God should let them cheat on their taxes, but they are outraged if they are ever cheated out of money.  We all want justice, so don’t believe anybody who says they don’t.

Fine, so God has to punish sin, but why does He sometimes punish sin by ending lives?  Isn’t that murder?  Isn’t God breaking the sixth commandment?  “Thou shalt not murder.”  The truth is, God created all life, and therefore it is His right to also take life.  When you couple God’s right to take life with His justice, you start to see what is going on with those “difficult” Bible passages.  In each instance in the Bible, when God ends earthy lives, He is always punishing heinous sin.  He is meting out justice to those who are reveling in evil.  As Judge and Creator of life, He is doing what only He can do.

Here are a couple other things to remember.  First, God takes every person’s life because every person dies.  The only question is when, where, and how a person dies.  These things are in God’s hands, as they should be.

Second, when God takes life, He can bring it back.  In fact, the Bible promises that we will all be given resurrected bodies.  God can bring life back, but humans cannot.  Therefore, you cannot apply the command to not murder to God.

God is just, and He must punish sin.  God creates all life, and so it is His right to take it.  If you remember these two things, then you’ll understand how to deal with God’s command to kill the Amalekites, or the great flood, or Ananias and Sapphira.  In the end, if humans weren’t constantly producing evil, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.  Let’s take a look in the mirror instead of criticizing God for cleaning up the mess we make.

Can Evil Exist Without God?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Many skeptics of Christianity claim that the existence of evil in the world proves that a good God cannot exist.  I believe this viewpoint is exactly backwards.

If you truly believe that there is evil in the world, then you must believe that there is good in the world as well.  We can’t know what is wrong unless we know what is right.  We can’t know a crooked line unless we know a straight line.  We can’t know injustice unless we know justice.

But if there is real good and real evil in the world, then there must be an ultimate standard, a measuring stick by which to judge goodness and badness.  This measuring stick must be perfect, so that all moral activity can be compared to it, just like determining the straightness of any line requires a perfectly straight line by which to compare.

Here is the argument summarized in short from:

  1. evil implies good
  2. good implies a perfect standard by which to define it

Now, if you believe that there exists real, objective evil in the world – evil that any person from any place or time would agree is really evil – then you are stuck with admitting that there must be a perfect standard of goodness also in existence, a moral law.

Where does this perfect standard of goodness come from?  The Christian answer is that this standard originates in the nature of God.  God’s own nature is the perfect standard of good, and God has always existed as the first cause of everything.

If you’re a person who wants to escape this answer, you can claim that this moral law just sort of exists, like a floating “cloud” of goodness that just permeates the universe.  But the Christian can ask: “Where did this floating ‘cloud’ of goodness come from?”

You could say that the objective moral law, the perfect standard of goodness, comes from blind, purposeless, natural processes (the standard atheist account of everything that exists).  The Christian can ask: “Why should anyone feel obliged to follow and obey a perfect moral standard that comes from atoms randomly banging together over billions of years?”

I don’t think there is a good answer to that question.  The person who wants to affirm the existence of evil while denying the existence of God finds himself caught in a deep hole of irrationality.  He asks us to obey moral laws that come from rocks.

Some atheists, like Nietzsche, saw where this hole was leading and bailed out quickly.  They affirmed that there is no such thing as real moral evil in the world.  What we think is evil is really just our personal preferences.  You like to kill people and I don’t.  I like red and you like blue.

The consistent person who wants to affirm the existence of evil really must affirm the existence of a personal moral lawgiver – God.  If you don’t think God exists, then you should stop complaining about all the evil in the world.  You’re not making any sense.

Will You Give Up Your Free Will to Rid the World of Evil?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most common objections to belief in God is the problem of evil.  One form of the problem of evil sounds like this: “I can’t believe in a God who allows children to be sexually molested.  If there was a God, He wouldn’t allow such things to occur.”

I can understand the objection, and it’s an objection that all Christians have struggled with one time or another.  However, there is a response to this challenge.

The sexual molester has free will and has chosen to exercise that free will to commit an act of evil against another person.  In fact, every human being has free will and makes choices every day to do good or evil.  God has given each of us this power of choice.

The objector wants God to take away the power of free choice from the molester to prevent him from doing evil.  Even though this crime is particularly heinous, the objector must surely want God to stop a variety of other acts of evil as well.  After all, why stop with child molestation when genocide, rape, and torture go on every day?

The only way for God to stop all of these crimes, these acts of evil, is to remove the power of free will from every person.  Some of you might say, “Wait a minute!  I don’t commit these horrible crimes.  Why do I have to lose my free will?”  You may not commit these kinds of crimes, but you commit acts of evil every day, most likely.  They are just more subtle.

Do you lie?  Do you steal?  Do you gossip about other people?  Are you committing adultery? If you don’t think that you ever do evil, just ask your spouse or a sibling.  I’m sure they can provide some examples to you.  The truth is that we all do bad things and that we are all capable of horrible crimes.

So, if God is going to rid the world of moral evil he is going to have to take away every person’s free will first.  Would you be willing to lose your power of free will to rid the world of evil?  If not, then you can hardly blame God for the evil in the world.  You must blame yourself.  After all, when given the chance to rid the world of evil, you declined!

If you would give up your free will, your ability to choose between good and evil, then I encourage you to become a Christian, because that’s exactly what Christians, in a sense, are doing.  Christians acknowledge that the world would be a much better place if we would follow the one man who consistently chose good for his entire human life, Jesus Christ.

When we submit to him, we are submitting our power of free choice to his direction and instruction.  We are saying to Jesus, “We want to do what you did.  We want to choose the way you chose, because you always chose good and never chose evil!”  Instead of every day demanding that our own choices be paramount, we strive to subject our free will to him, and he gives us the power to live as he did.

Our reward for submitting our free will to Jesus results in our spending eternity in heaven.  In heaven, our free will is perfected, as we will always and forever only choose the good.

The Case for Faith, the DVD

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Last night I watched the DVD, The Case for Faith, featuring Lee Strobel.  The Case for Faith DVDThe video deals with two issues from the book that bears the same name: 1) How can Jesus be the only way? and 2) How can God exist and there be so much evil, pain, and suffering?

In the DVD, Strobel features the words of Charles Templeton prominently and lets his challenges to the Christian faith drive the discussion.  Templeton, if you recall, was a co-evangelist with Billy Graham back in the 1940’s.  Templeton suffered a crisis of faith and eventually turned his back on Christianity.  Strobel interviewed Templeton for his book, The Case for Faith, which quickly became a Christian apologetics classic.

The DVD answers these tough questions by interviewing some of Christianity’s greatest living apologists and scholars.  Some of those who participated were Craig Hazen, Greg Koukl, J. P. Moreland, N. T. Wright, Ben Witherington, and Peter Kreeft.  I may be leaving some out, but those are the ones that come to mind.

Along with these scholars, the film also features the stories of two people who suffered greatly, and how their suffering affected their relationship with God.  These stories are truly powerful and balance the documentary between intellectual arguments and heart-felt experience.

All in all, I highly commend this DVD to all Christians who have ever thought about these two key issues and to skeptics who are open to hearing for themselves from some of Christianity’s best and brightest.  This DVD was truly fantastic.  I regret waiting so long to see it.

Is God’s Power Limited?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

The classical Judeo-Christian belief has always been that God is all-powerful, or omnipotent.  He can do whatever is actually possible to do, but not what is actually impossible to do.  We previously covered this topic in “Can God Make a Rock So Big He Can’t Lift It?

But there are some who deny that God is all-powerful because of the problem of evil.  An all-powerful God, they say, could defeat evil, but there is still evil in the world.  Therefore, God cannot be all-powerful.

This is exactly the view that Rabbi Harold Kushner took in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People.  Kushner’s son died of a horrible disease at the age of 14, and Kushner decided that even though God loved his son and wanted him to live, God could do nothing to stop the onslaught of the disease.  God is handcuffed by the laws of nature.

In essence, Kushner believed that God was either limited in power or not infinitely loving.  Kushner could not stand to worship a God who was not infinitely loving (a God who didn’t care about his son’s suffering and death), but he could stand a God who wanted goodness to reign on earth, but could not make it happen.

Contrary to what Kushner believes, there is another option.  God could be all-loving and all-powerful.  In fact, Christians believe that if God is not all-powerful, then his love is impotent.  Why should we worship a God that wills goodness but can do nothing about making sure that goodness will be victorious?  The God Kushner worships cannot guarantee that evil will ever be defeated and that good will prevail.

The true God is allowing evil for a time, but promises that in the future, all accounts will be settled.  Evil will be defeated and the suffering that humans endure in this earthly life will seem trivial.  Those that love God will spend their afterlife with him, and those who reject God will spend their afterlife away from him.

Rabbi Kushner’s dilemma is resolved by the future promises of God.  This is the blessed hope that all Christians have.

Note: If you would like to see Rabbi Kushner debate the issue of God’s omnipotence, in light of the problem of evil, with Norman Geisler, please order the DVD’s from The John Ankerberg Show.  It is a fascinating discussion.

Who or What Is the Cause of Moral Evil?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

In a previous post, we showed that God is not the direct cause of moral evil.  But if God is not the cause, then who is?

Christians answer that free creatures are the direct cause of moral evil.  How does this work?  God gave human beings the power of free will.  Free will is defined as self-determinism.  It is the ability to make choices that are not forced by an external state or condition.

Free will is a good power that God gave human beings.  Nobody marches against free will.  In fact, to argue against free will is to use free will!  Every one of us is happy that God has given us this power.  It was supposedly Socrates who said, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.”

But there was a price to be paid for giving finite creatures free will.  By giving us this power, God introduced the possibility that we would abuse or misuse this good power.  According to Christianity, that is exactly what happened.  When given the choice to love God or to reject God, humans rejected him.  This is known as theFall.  Ever since the Fall, humans have been actualizing moral evil upon themselves and one another.  Every person who searches his heart for even a moment realizes that they are tinged or stained with evil.  We think evil thoughts and we often act on those evil thoughts.

God is responsible for creating the possibility of evil, but free creatures are responsible for making it actual.

One final note.  Many people, when they hear this argument, blame God for giving humans free will.  They argue that he could have done better.  I’ve noticed, however, that the very people who blame God for allowing evil to exist refuse to relinquish their own free will in order to make the world a better place.  The truth is, almost every person would rather live in this world which contains both good and evil than live in a world where they aren’t free.  Until the critic of God agrees to be the first to give up his free will, his protests ring hollow.

Did God Create Evil?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Now here is a question that many people struggle with.  Here is how the argument generally goes:

  1. God is the Author of everything.
  2. Evil is something.
  3. Therefore, God is the Author of evil.

This is a valid syllogism, meaning that if premises 1 and 2 are correct, then the conclusion follows.

Looking at premise 1, is God the author of everything?  Well, if he isn’t, then we don’t have a sovereign creator, but that’s what the Bible teaches.  We can’t reject this premise.

Looking at premise 2, if we deny that evil exists, then we deny a basic truth about reality.  There clearly is evil in the world and we all know it.  To deny the existence of evil would be to deny a fundamental aspect of life.

Are we stuck?  Not exactly.  It turns out that premise 2 is problematic because it misunderstands the nature of evil.

Christians argue that evil is not a thing or a substance.  There is no glob of evil floating around the universe.  Instead, evil is a perversion of a good thing.  It is a privation or lack in something good.  Evil takes what ought to be and twists it into what ought not to be.  According to Norm Geisler, “Evil is like rust to a car or rot to a tree.  It is a lack in good things, but it is not a thing in itself.  Evil is like a wound in an arm or moth-holes in a garment.  It exists only in another but not in itself.”

That last statement is extremely important to understand.  Evil cannot exist by itself.  It can only exist where there is already good.  You cannot imagine a creature who is pure evil, for instance.  Even Satan has many good qualities: 1) he is persistent, 2) he is beautiful, and 3) he is intelligent.  What makes Satan so evil is that he was originally created so good!

Good and evil are not opposites, contrary to what many believe.  You can have good without evil and that is, indeed, what God promises to those who believe in Christ and dwell in heaven with him.  Evil is truly a parasite that leeches on to good and ruins it.  Evil is not a real substance, but it is a privation or lack in a good substance.  If evil completely destroyed a good thing, then there would be no evil left, because nothing would be left.  According to Geisler, “A totally rusty car is no car at all. And a totally moth-eaten garment is only a hanger in a closet.”

So how would the Christian re-frame the argument?

  1. God created every substance.
  2. Evil is not a substance (but a privation in a substance).
  3. Therefore, God did not create evil. 

Who is responsible for the evil in the world if God did not create it?  That’s a question for another post!

Does Being a Christian Guarantee the Good Life?

I hear some Christians complain that God hasn’t blessed them even though they are praying and reading the Bible every day.  By blessing, they mean good health, financial success, job success, good relationships, and so forth.  However, when you read the entire Bible, it does not promise that your life is going to be easy if you will just do what God says.  In fact, there are numerous counter-examples.

What about Job?  He was righteous and yet God allowed Satan to virtually destroy his life.

What about Paul?  Are you more dedicated to God than Paul?  He was beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked, and ultimately beheaded for his obedience to God.

Virtually all the Old Testament prophets were mocked and ridiculed, and many of them killed for following God’s lead.  Just read Jeremiah to see if he was living the easy life.

The truth is that God only guarantees that we will live with Him in paradise after this life.  This world is riddled with sin and evil, and God is not going to place a protective bubble around you for your whole life.  You will face hardship.

Now, if we are obedient to God in this life, then generally speaking, our lives will be better.  No doubt about that.  God keeps us from sin and sin will make our lives miserable.  So if you don’t sin, then you will generally avoid many of life’s pitfalls.  And many of us will be materially blessed, but not all of us.

There is not a direct correlation between your material blessings and your obedience to God.  I saw a TV special the other day about one high-ranking Nazi officer at Auschwitz who lived to a ripe old age before dying peacefully in the year 2000.

Good people sometimes suffer and bad people sometimes prosper.  That is not going to change until we are in heaven.

What we are called to do in this life is to trust God and obey Him in every situation.  That is the essence of loving God in this life.