Judges 9:22-10:18Luke 24:13-53
Psalm 100:1-5
Proverbs 14:11-12
Psalm 100: 5 The Lord is good. His unfailing love continues forever, and his faithfulness continues to each generation.
Today I sat across from someone who is dying of cancer. As this person spoke, she told of a hard life, difficult times, and broken relationships. And then at the end, this person told me how good God was to love her, save her, and offer her peace that passes understanding. So, this brings up a great question... How can God be considered good, when so much pain exists in this world? Understand... I agree with her... God is good! I just want to know what you think! How have people reconciled these challenges and differences as they observe painful life and a gracious God? I want to know what your ideas are! How is God both good while life is at times so negative? Tell me your thoughts...
10 comments:
I've seen the same thing before with cancer patients. And I've seen the same response from people at church. And I've heard "Even if a situation is bad, God can use it for good."
Here's my response. If God can use a bad situation for good, then why not prevent the bad thing from happening at all? If he has plans to prosper us and not to harm us, then what the heck is up with genocide and famine and kids who die for lack of tylenol or some basic antibiotic?
I've heard people talk about Job sometimes when they talk about this- how great his faith was even when his life sucked. Yeah, well, I think that the God in there is pretty brutal. "Hey, sorry I let Satan kill all of your kids in a kinda chess game, but here! Look! Have some more kids." So. Does. Not. Fix. The. Problem.
I just don't buy it. It's not that I don't WANT to believe that God is good, it's that where I'm at right now I believe that God (if he is up there) is fickle. Either He can't intervene to keep away the bad stuff, which would seem to make him weak, or he won't intervene, which would seem to make Him cruel. I'm willing to accept the premise that we live in a fallen world, and that some suffering comes as a sort of combo meal of fallenness and free will. But some of it doesn't.
So why doesn't God save people from that? That's why I can't get the idea of God being good.
Hey Anonymous. I really appreciate you sharing from your heart. The fact is, so many of us fall into this same category of not truly understanding how a good God would do the things that he does. Like you, I can go back and forth on the issue. However, I do find the life of Jesus to be very interesting. Jesus, claiming to be God in the flesh, was anything but evil. Jesus seemed to always behave good, do right things, and serve his world in any way possible. If God is the God of Jesus, then my impression of God is that he is genuinely good and always seeks to do right. Any thoughts on that?
I feel for you guys. You picked a difficult subject.
YHWH's answer to Job is that YHWH is God. What Job wants is basically irrelevant compared to what YHWH wants, whatever that is. In the book of Job, what YHWH appears to want is difficult to justify from a human perspective.
According to Christianity, YHWH's purpose in all of this is to make a holy people for himself who will live with him throughout eternity. The cost of making this omelette is a world of suffering and evil, a painful, though temporary, divine suicide, and 90% of humanity tortured or obliterated for eternity.
Theodicy problems in Christianity revolve around the math of that recipe. And all theisms that pose a benevolent deity have to wrestle with the math. In the end, is there more good than bad? Is all this suffering necessary? Is evil part of God's plan? What in the world is Free Will anyway?
Good luck, and may your equations balance.
Hmmmm. The life of Jesus does bring up an interesting point. He certainly had his moments of righteous indignation (hello, money changers), for the most part from the records that we have he seems to have been a pretty good guy. There are a couple of occassions, though, where he did the very thing that makes me nuts about God- like lollygagging around instead of hurrying to Lazarus before he died, for example. Yeah, Lazarus came back, but Jesus could have kept him from dying in the first place. I can't imagine that dying was fun, or that Mary and Martha had a happy few days. I would say it's probably a 90-10 split as far as stuff that he did that seems "good" vs. stuff he did that seems "bad". I know those are very subjective terms.
When it comes to God being the God of Jesus...and I may be totally off-base on this one...but my understanding is that while Jesus was on earth he was separate from God. That he had to walk around and be human. I don't know that it necessarily follows that if a person's followers are good, then their leader must also be good. I mean, I'm sure that there were some Germans back in the 1930's who were pretty good people who joined the Nazi party out of political expediency or to protect their families, but you couldn't say that because they were good, Hitler was good.
I agree with Brien that all I can look at is a limited human perspective. And that may be what's getting me. It's hard to hear "God loves everybody" and then turn on the news. It's very difficult to reconcile what seem to be two competing ideas of the divine.
I really appreciate all of the conversation that everyone has contributed. Clearly the issue of God being good or evil is a difficult topic. God's sovereignty clearly plays into this (as I believe Brien's argument is). God can basically do as he wants. The story of Lazarus raises some interesting points too. After all, this is the place where we find the words "Jesus wept." However, I don't feel Christ is weeping here over his own incompetence... honestly, I think this just shows us more of his character. Possibly, there are times when God desires to act a certain way, but ultimately doesn't for whatever reason. We know Jesus loved Lazarus (that's the claim of his sister in the text), he planned to work a miracle, was emotionally moved, and yet didn't respond as everyone thought he should. What does this say to us about God? And yes, I parallel Jesus to God because so many of Jesus' claims indicate that he desires to behave as God would in a circumstance. A follower of Hitler may not have behaved like Hitler, but there were some who gave their lives to follow Hitler and claim to be like him. Jesus claimed to follow God and be like (or be) him. So, Christ's view was God would largely do the right thing when asked. Hey... great discussion!
I'm not really trying to argue either side. I have some feelings about it, but I think there is a certain amount of chasing after the wind here.
The problem with the sovereignty argument is that it invalidates human moral reasoning. It says you are neither qualified nor authorized to make moral judgments about God. And that means you can't meaningfully judge God as bad...or good. You have to accept his word for it, or the word of those who speak for him.
This empties good and evil of normative principles and reduces them to mean 'that which God wants or doesn't want.' Acceptance of that value system is as a subject, not as an evaluator. And the choice of submission comes out of self-preservation, out of the absurdity of aligning oneself against an all-powerful being, however much much he violates one's own personal values. The question of whether or not God is good becomes meaningless and boils down to whether or not God exists.
Asking whether or not God is good presumes a value system God is subject to.
Great comments Brien! Thanks for the thoughts.
I probably gave a few cents too many, but, hey, there it is.
Btw, your blog looks nice. I like some of the quirky photo choices.
Thanks man. By the way, I assume this is Brien W. and not some other Brien.... right?
Wright on. <:)
Post a Comment