Don’t be discouraged by the evil we see.

The very fact that we perceive it as evil, and despise it, rather than accepting it as just part of nature—hoof and horn, tooth and claw, is proof that it is unnatural, something other. If we were unable to perceive it as such, we would be truly lost—any belief in God would be merely a fantasy. Just as a fish doesn’t know it is wet, a world where evil was part of the intrinsic fabric of existence would be invisible to us. That we do see it and despise it tells us not only that it is not part of this world’s blueprint, but there is also a Good to which we can aspire and cling.

Indeed, by the same logic, the fact that we see and appreciate beauty, glory, joy, love and the other virtues tells us there is more to the world, and us, than mere survival of the fittest.

But is it mere dualism, just yin and yang, light and dark in an eternal contest, in conflicting balance, with us on the front line between them, with our blood serving as the lubrication of their machinations?

Defeaters

In American culture, including the academy, there are actually very few unique objections to Christianity. It is helpful to understand six basic ones and recognize when someone is proclaiming a variation and then understand a humble but solid response.

Tim Keller, the author and pastor of Redeemer Church in New York City labels these objections as ‘defeaters.’ As academics of faith, I suggest we have a certain responsibility to be able to competently discuss these defeaters with both our students and colleagues.

Walking Wounded

Tonight, I was chatting online with a friend from high school who just made tenure in another state. We were acquaintances in high school, even sitting next to each other in class sometimes, but never were close, so reconnecting at the last reunion and staying in touch with her and her new boyfriend (also a HS friend), has been a joy. She revealed tonight how unhappy her home life had been all those years ago, having to be the parent, and growing up too fast.

She is taking the time to work through the baggage and heal from that and the dissolution of her first marriage several years ago. She seems to have a fairly healthy perspective, and said that what happened was meant to be because it’s helped make her who she is today.

That comment resonated with something in me. It reminded me of the oft-quoted and misquoted Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

We often make two mistakes with this passage. 1) that it says all things are good, and 2) it works for good for all people.

#1 is wrong because not all things are good. Sin is sin, evil is evil, and their consequences are real pain, real death, real suffering. Yet, God works blessing out of them and redeems them. Does this make the events ‘good’? No. Would it have been better if they hadn’t happened? It is a dangerous thing to play ‘what if?’ It is mere speculation. God doesn’t have a Plan B—His Plan A is so robust, it allows for and corrects for things that are truly bad and evil, so there really isn’t a place for ‘what if?’

It would be easier for us in some respects if we could take refuge in a Plan B Creation—“well, He wanted Eden, but He got this mess instead and He’s making the best of it along with us.” But this is wrong. It makes God too small. The Bible is clear that the Cross was in the blueprints, not the change order, so this must be Plan A.

Doesn’t that make God some form of capricious, morally imperfect, sado-masochistic or something worse? No. Scripture doesn’t leave that option open for us either. His moral purity, holiness, righteousness, and goodness are trumpeted on nearly every page.

What Scripture teaches is that God is a God of Reality. He deals with the good, bad and ugly, and insists we do as well. Scripture is not sugar-coated. That’s what gives it its authenticity and simultaneously makes it so hard to swallow.

If He created it, and knew what was going to happen beforehand and allowed for it, then why not prevent it in the first place? That is the number one question in all of theology. There are many answers and many more attempts at answers. The answer God gives most consistently in Scripture in many ways is the least satisfying of them, but I’ll stick to it for now.

He says, “I am God. I see the big picture and know the end from the beginning. I love you enough to send My Son to redeem you from the crap. I AM good, true, holy, righteous. This is who I Am, and you will need to trust Me, even though it is hard. My character is what it is and that knowledge needs to be enough to carry you through appearances otherwise, and I make no apology for it. Will you love and trust me anyway? I promise to make it worth your while and to go through it with you if you will have Me.”

#2 is a tricky one. He clearly specifies that He works good only for those that love Him, and/or are called according to His purpose (will someday love Him?). He also says elsewhere that He will work against His enemies and defeat them. So He is consistent. In many ways, he works against His enemies to reveal them as such (even to themselves) and to give them a chance to see the futility of their path so they may turn away. Yet, He says He will harden hearts against Him to accomplish His purposes. Yet, even those are responsible to Him for their actions. To address this properly is above my pay grade! Therefore, see God’s perspective in the last paragraph. It applies here too. Not a very touchy-feely answer, but it is real. Since you can’t do much about others being enemies or lovers of God, what will you do about yourself?

Where does all of this leave us? It means we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. We do not know how God is moving behind the scenes in the lives of our students and colleagues (or even our family members!). Are they vessels of mercy or wrath? Dunno. So love them. As some less charitable souls have said, “Let God sort them out.” Yep. That’s about the size of it. In the meantime, love them.

SDG

Hard Questions

A reader commented on last week’s post about ‘American Foreign Policy and Islam’ with “Ummmm....ouch?” I emailed her for clarification. Essentially, she was acknowledging the truth of the idea that the truth does hurt sometimes. Our conversation resulted in the following thoughts.

There were some squishy spots for me as I wrote that post. I want to believe that we usually do the right thing as a nation. I am convinced we do a better job than most other super powers in history, but not as good as we would like. It is strange that no matter how paradisaical a human institution is, there is a dark underbelly to it that supports and sustains the alabaster beneficence. That's one reason why we long for heaven, because we cannot create it here.

The more difficult question is--the people that do the work in the underbelly do things that most people find reprehensible. Are they bad people? Are they good people doing bad things for the greater good? Does that last question even make sense morally? Should we support a system that requires those choices be made? When the actions of these people are brought to light, how do we and, separately, how should we, handle them? Are they heroes, or villains, or something in-between--servants who carry out disagreeable work and made the mistake of allowing their work to be seen by the wrong people? At what point do they bear moral responsibility of their actions and at what point are they given a pass for following orders? Where should the buck stop? Especially in a nation "of the people, by the people and for the people."

What do we as a people need to sacrifice in order to have a morally consistent government? Are we willing to give those things up? It is easy to get outraged, for example, when a group of soldiers torture a prisoner, but is it justifiable to prevent further attacks? What if you found out YOU were the one who would have been killed had that attack been done? Does that change your view of torture? If it does, how do you respond to those who would have been safe anyway when they condemn the soldiers who saved your life? How do we even define torture?

I'm not asking or grilling you--these are what float through my head. I picked torture as a flashpoint issue more than as a personal one, but pick your favorite abuse of power or morality. I don't have an answer for these questions. I believe I am fairly wise for my age, but many of these are beyond me. This is why we need to let God be judge.

What guidance do we see from Scripture? Off the top of my head, Paul explains that government wields the sword by God's authority, so some things are 'ok' for government that aren't ok for individuals, apparently. Jesus and John the Baptist did not condemn soldiers for their profession, and mostly gave them restrictions on abusing their authority over civilians. When we look at the warfare in the Bible, we see Israel using spies, covert operations, and many different things at which we squirm today. Does that make those actions right? In some cases, God told them to. In others, there is no comment, for or against, so it is hard to discern.

Let’s raise the stakes even higher. God is judged by us humans for a large number of things we view as atrocities. A short list:

·         The Indonesian tidal wave that killed hundreds of thousands

·         The Haitian earthquake 1 year ago

·         Disease

·         Killing His own Son on a cross

·         Asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, then condemning people who do it as pagans, saying, “Such things never even occurred to me.”

·         Putting Job through hell on earth, destroying his wealth, killing his 10 grown children all at once and giving him disease, all as some sort of celestial bet with Satan. Yeah, sure, he gave it all back to Job including 10 new kids, but that doesn’t help the first ten all that much.

·         Commanding the Hebrews as they invade Canaan to kill every human, even women, infants, children and the old. (and even in some cases, the livestock!)

·         And so on.

Ultimately, God's moral perfection is more real, wilder, and not as clean cut as we would like it. Once again, He blows our expectations out of the water. We equate goodness with naïveté, with niceness, and so on, and God is anything but. As Western Christians, we seem to spend a lot of time defending strange actions and words by God to non-believers. Maybe we should spend that time trying to understand why He does them and conform our image to His rather than His to ours.

Then Job replied to the LORD:

“I know that you can do all things;

no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’

Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me to know.

“You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;

I will question you,

and you shall answer me.’

My ears had heard of you

but now my eyes have seen you.

Therefore I despise myself

and repent in dust and ashes.”

                                                Job 42:1-6

“He is not a tame Lion.”

                                C.S. Lewis

SDG

Overcorrection

I have often found that the truth of an issue often lies somewhere between the extremes, and requires somewhat of a balancing act to avoid straying too far down a path that leads to a completely incorrect understanding of the issues. Furthermore, sometimes when one encounters a person out of balance, it is necessary to pull them to the other side so they can settle into a proper equilibrium among views. The challenge when doing this is avoiding pulling them too far to the other side or letting yourself go too far in the attempt to help them. Let me clarify with an example.

Let’s look at the problem of evil, pain and suffering (EPS)—the hardest single issue facing any worldview. There are a number of perspectives within Christendom about why God allows His people to suffer. Some say that since God works His ultimate plan through all that occurs, then we should not grieve when we have suffering, pain, evil in our lives because God intends it for good. Critics of this view argue that it implies that God is sadistic, and therefore not good. Others say that God is incapable for various reasons of stopping all EPS. Critics say this view denies God’s omnipotence. Still others say that God is completely sovereign, but has also allowed freedom and therefore cannot lift all consequences of sin upon innocent parties without violating the principles of freedom, and so allows some tragedy. This is often viewed as completely unsatisfactory. There are other variations and theories, but I think these cover most of them. They all have some level of problems with them, which is why there is so much debate about the issue.

Personally, I lean towards the last, but with the understanding that it is at best a two dimensional, flat understanding of what is both paradox and mystery. (Deut.29:29) Scripture deliberately leaves this critical question pretty vague, saying basically, trust God because He is holy, righteous, and good, and that He has established justice and it will be carried out completely and satisfactorily in the end. This is difficult for both the skeptic and the thoughtful believer alike to accept, especially in the midst of such times. Yet, repeatedly in Scripture, we see God grieving over EPS, even when He is about to relieve it. The account of Jesus raising Lazarus is a key example of this. He allowed the tragedy of Lazarus’ death, but in His sovereignty restored him to life.

An example of the first view was related by a friend who did college missionary work and stayed with a pastor and his family, which included the couple, their kids and the wife’s mother. The routine was he would get up, play with the young kids until breakfast, join them for breakfast and then go do his missionary work. One morning at breakfast, the wife announced with a smile that the night before her mom had passed to be with the Lord. My friend instantly shared his condolences and apologized for the normal rambunctious antics he’d done earlier in the morning with the children. The wife jumped down his throat, rebuking him for grieving her mother because it was God’s will that she go, and if it was His will, it must be good and therefore grief had no place in their hearts. I fear for this woman and her family and hope that deep psychological wounds did not arise from this attitude, but I am not optimistic.

 If Jesus grieved over both Lazarus’ and His own deaths and tribulations, then I feel very comfortable in doing the same in an appropriate manner. When we have surgery, we take pain medicine post-op because the pain is real—our bodies have been insulted, regardless of whether it was for good or ill. We don’t refuse the medicine and pretend the pain doesn’t exist simply because the surgery was for our benefit. That is foolish and nonsensical—the pain is real and must be dealt with appropriately as a real issue, even though we know it will eventually go away. The same is true for emotional pain. We do have hope, and so the grieving is tempered by it, but the loss is still a real loss.

 I have an acquaintance who is internationally known in Christian circles. In his objection to what he views as the Pollyanna-ish, psychologically disturbing view that we should refuse to grieve because it shows God’s Hand moving in our lives, he attempts to pull people over towards the idea that God is limited, that He is not really sovereign and wishes you well, but is unable to protect you from all wrong. I agree that it is sometimes helpful in convincing people of wrong attitudes or beliefs to present a stronger case than it exists in reality, but it is also incumbent on the convincer to be able to recognize when they are stepping beyond what is acceptable and true doctrine and moving over to an unbiblical extreme. My acquaintance doesn’t just merely argue a view that is beyond typical understandings of the Biblical perspective, he actually believes it and holds to it firmly and vociferously, going so far as to saying that God is not sovereign and there are things He is unable to do. He developed this view in reaction to the Pollyanna view, but in my opinion goes too far with it.

In our academic fields, much the same dynamic occurs—people hold differing views on controversial issues and, in arguing with those of different persuasions, hold their arguments more and more firmly until they wind up at the extreme view out of sheer stubbornness or defensiveness. Logic and reasoned thought no longer reign, but dogma.

Once we lose the teachability of humility, and descend into blind dogmatic insistence, we lose much objectivity and reduce the effectiveness of our authority on the topic. We also tend to lose the ability to discern between primary, secondary and tertiary issues—we make mountains out of molehills.

It is one thing to be emphatic or even dramatic in helping to correct others. It is quite another to over correct, and thus need correcting ourselves.

SDG