Healthy plants have deep roots and strong pillars have solid foundations. If we are to be Christians who are deeply rooted in Christ and built on the solid Rock, then we need more than mere sound bites. One means that the Lord has used throughout church history to strengthen His people’s faith and witness is reading good books. This book review series is identifying books that can serve as shovels that help you dig deeper in your Christian life.
Book: Surviving Religion 101 – Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College - Michael J. Kruger
The longer we live the more we are exposed to evil in this world. This might hit you in a fresh way at college because you may hear of the horrors of world history from the classes you take and learn of stories of personal suffering from the friends you make. Some have lost loved ones, been abused, or suffered serious illness. As you hear these hard stories, you want to walk alongside those who are suffering – to love them, pray for them, and sympathize with them.
As you care for suffering people, you may begin wrestling with intellectual questions. If God is good, then why doesn’t He stop all this suffering? Is He not able to stop it? Or does He not want to? These challenging questions take us to the heart of one of the primary reasons people reject Christianity. In Chapter 7 of Surviving Religion 101, Michael Kruger supplies the biblical response to the problem of evil.
1) The Posture of Humility
We must begin with this basic principle: We are not God. That sounds obvious but is often overlooked. Some people demand to understand everything before they are willing to assent to the existence (or goodness) of God. But that is an unreasonable standard, which proudly puts us in the place of God! These are complex issues, and we are finite, fallen people. In the end, we may not have all the answers we want, but we can trust in the Lord and trust that He knows best.
The Apostle Paul expressed this posture of humility in Romans 11:33-34: “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor?” Even though he doesn’t understand everything, Paul still praises the Lord in the next sentence: “For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen” (Rom 11:36).
2) Defining the Problem of Evil
The atheist argument typically runs as follows:
a. If God were all-good, the He would want to prevent all evil
b. If God were all-powerful, then he would be able to prevent all evil.
c. Evil exists.
d. Therefore, an all-good and all-powerful God cannot exist.
At first glance, this sounds pretty compelling; but as we will see the problem of evil is more of a problem for atheists than for Christians.
Christians have thought about the problem of evil for centuries and not always come up with great solutions. Some Christians have tried to solve the problem by conceding that God is not all-powerful. They claim that when evil things happen, God is upset but unable to stop the suffering. This argument might technically solve the problem of evil but leaves us with something other than the Christian God. The God of the Bible is not weak, impotent, and incapable of stopping evil (Jer. 32:26).
Another attempted solution is known as the ‘free-will defense.’ According to this view, God is all-powerful, but He voluntarily restricts His power so as not to interfere with the free decisions of human beings. This is a better option that denying that God is all-powerful, but it to clashes with the clear revelation of scripture. In the Bible, God raises up human armies (Josh. 11:20; Hab. 1:6), steers the hearts of kings (Ezra 6:22; Prov. 21:1), and even hardens people’s hearts (Deut. 2:30; Rom 9:18). Paul plainly states that God “works all things according to the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11), which includes human decisions. While the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility is complex (and even mysterious), there is no indication that God lacks control over such a huge part of the created world. Study the Canons of Dort to find a beautiful, biblical summary of this topic!
3) A Better Solution
When we look closer at the argument above, we see a serious problem with premise 1: “If God were all-good, then He would want to prevent all evil.” That only works if God has no good reason for allowing evil.
Imagine if we said good parents would never let their child feel pain. We know that’s foolish because there are many good reasons why a parent might allow pain. They will allow the pain of an emergency surgery, or the pain of discipline to keep a young child from running onto the road. It’s possible for a parent to be good and allow pain at the same time. In essence, the atheist is arguing, “Since I personally can see no reason for pain, there can’t be a reason.”
However, just because we don’t know all the reasons God has for allowing evil, that doesn’t mean He does not have them. Unless the skeptic can prove that God could not possibly have a good reason for allowing evil – which is impossible – then his argument falls apart. Of course, some skeptics will just insist that God could not have a good reason for allowing evil. But this just reveals a skeptic taking a blind leap of faith. They are insisting on believing something even with no reason to do so.
4) God’s Purposes for Evil
The Bible hints at a few good reasons why God allows evil. First, God uses suffering to make us more Christlike. Our character is most effectively shaped not by pleasure but by pain. It teaches us to deny ourselves and depend more on God and generates sympathy towards others (1 Pet. 1:6-7). Even Jesus was made ‘perfect through suffering’ (Heb. 2:10).
Second, God often uses suffering as a form of divine judgment. The Bible is clear that God uses a range of calamities – from natural disasters, to diseases, to foreign armies – to judge people for their sins (Gen 6:5). This does not mean that all suffering is directly related to a person’s sin, but sometimes it is.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, God uses suffering as an opportunity to display His glory in redemption. Without evil in the world, we would not be able to experience (and praise God for) His salvation, mercy and grace. In John 9, Jesus is clear that the man was born blind not because he or his parents sinned, but “that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3). Thus, the suffering of the world provides an opportunity for a greater good, namely, the magnification of God as Redeemer.
These are just three ways that God uses suffering for His purposes. They are not meant to explain every instance of evil in the world. God may have many more reasons for allowing the suffering that He allows. Furthermore, have you given thanks recently for all the evil that He restrains and goodness that He grants (Gen 20:6; Ps. 33:11; Luke 6:35-36; James 1:17)?
5) Two Examples of God’s Good Purpose in Suffering
The classic Old Testament example is the story of Joseph. He experienced immense suffering by being betrayed by his brothers and sold into slavery. It would have seemed meaningless and purposeless to Joseph. Only later God revealed it had a good purpose, namely, to get Joseph to Egypt so that he could later rescue his family members from a coming famine. This was crucial because the future Messiah, the Saviour of the World was coming from his family! This allowed Joseph to say, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive” (Gen. 50:20).
The best example of God using evil to bring about a greater good is Jesus’s death. The cross accomplishes the greatest good – bringing peace between a holy God and sinful people, and eventually the restoration of creation. And yet, God accomplished this good result through various sorts of evils and suffering that He hates! The Eternal Son of God in the Person of Jesus Christ was falsely accused, given a sham trial, beaten and tortured, and publicly executed by the Romans. All these evils were done by the hands of wicked men and according to God’s eternal plan (Acts 4:28). The gospel tells us that God entered into a world of evil and used that evil against Himself to bring about the greatest good for His enemies (Rom 5:6-8)!
Right now, our experience is like that of the disciples on the Road to Emmaus. All their hopes appear dashed as the Messiah has been crucified. No doubt, they would have struggled with despairing assumptions about God’s lack of sovereignty or goodness. But later, after the risen Christ appeared to them, all those assumptions about God were proved wrong. The Christian finds stability by running again and again to the cross, where God took the greatest evil in the world and used it for the greatest good.
6) Who Really Has a Problem Explaining Evil?
Every worldview has to offer an explanation for evil. Since atheists use this as a main reason for rejecting God, they need to explain how we can know good and evil when we see it. This is a major problem for atheists because most of them believe that the universe is made up of only matter and energy. But in a materialistic universe, on what basis could we declare one action “evil” and another action “good”? Physics can only explain how things behave, but it cannot explain how they ought to behave. If the universe is really the result of chance, there’s no reason think things ought to be one way as opposed to another.
This dilemma led C.S. Lewis to abandon his atheism and turn to Christianity. Lewis writes, “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing the universe to when I called it unjust?” Either God exists and there’s good and evil in the world, or God doesn’t exist and there’s no good and evil in the world. In the end, the problem of evil is more of a problem for the atheist.
Conclusion: The existence of evil should not make us reject God but embrace Him. He is the only foundation for distinguishing good and evil. And He is the only One who has done anything to solve the problem of evil. Let every sight of sin and suffering lead you to the Saviour of sinners, who will return to vanquish evil forever (Rev. 21:4).
Surviving Religion 101 – Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College by Michael J. Kruger. Published by Crossway, Wheaton, Illinois, 2021. Softcover, 262 pages.