Suffering is a topic that comes up quite often. This topic seems to come up for one of two reasons: someone is trying to undermine the belief in the all-powerful, all-loving God of the Bible; or someone is going through a horrible time in their life and are trying to figure out why God is allowing them to suffer so much physical or emotional pain. I'll touch on both of them here.
God made a promise to Israel, “For I know the plans I have for you…plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11)
Paul was confident that a similar promise from God now extends to the Body of Christ, “…he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6)
This is a big issue. I see it all the time in Christian circles and in naturalist circles. If a Christian expresses doubt about God (for instance), he is shunned and accused of not believing in God. As soon as a scientist raises doubts about evolution (for instance), the same happens to him.
I have a few things to say about this. First, for both situations, the people doing the shunning are afraid to be challenged. They are scared that if their precious ideas are questioned, then they might be found to be lacking or even false. These people tend to be committed to an idea rather than the truth. This is not good for anyone. Read my post "Why Should I Challenge My Own Views?" for more information.
I would like to say that just because someone doubts something does not mean that they disbelieve it. What this comes down to is confidence and certainty. Certainty requires that you be 100% sure of whatever belief you hold. As long as challenges are around, 100% certainty is not possible. So, we have to fall back on confidence. Based on evidence, we can hold that we are, say, 90% sure and 10% unsure. If we are 90/10, then we can confidently believe something. However, if we are 40/60 (40% sure and 60% unsure) then we cannot confidently believe it. Most Christians and scientists fall into the 90/10 category for their beliefs. If they doubt a certain piece of evidence, question a detail, or challenge the existing form of the idea, they are only changing their percentages to, say, 80/20 or 70/30, they are not likely taking it to 50/50 (agnostic- don't know) or 40/60 (disbelief).
Now, I must say that the more a view goes challenged or questioned without those challenges and questions being answered, the percentages will continue to shift until they hit that "magic" 49/51. Then the person is disbelieving, but not because they challenged or questioned, but because they were not adequately responded to.
When someone asks a tough question its because they are struggling with it, not because they are ready to "jump ship". In both the Church and the scientific community, we need to stop accusing those who are challenging us of being "traitors", and help them along. If an idea is true, then all challenges and questions to and about it have an adequate response. By ignoring those people, we only show that we don't believe that last statement ourselves.
Michael Patton from Reclaiming the Mind Ministries wrote a blog post about this same issue: Can Christians Doubt. Please read the comments (19-103, specifically). A reader challenges Michael on the biblical merits of his claim (same as mine). Michael defends his position, and with the help of another reader, the offended reader realizes they are saying the same thing, just with different nuances that took focus.
Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason is asked if one can still be a Christian, yet have some doubts. Here is his answer:
Koukl is also asked "How could struggling with doubt be good".
Here are some great Christian podcasts I have found that address the deep questions and tough challenges to its worldview (pretty much every podcast on the right side of my blog):
Greg Koukl has written a fantastic book for conversational apologetics. Koukl starts out this book by explaining that the intent of this book is not to be manipulative or make the other person look like a fool in conversation. He explains the importance of a coherent worldview and the importance of being able to identify incoherence. He provides a defense of the reasons for being able to provide a defense for the Christian faith. All of which are very important to anyone who wishes to engage someone in conversation about their faith. Koukl then starts the reader on his list of ways to progress through conversation. Before Koukl describes a tactic, how to use it, and how not to use it; he explains why each tactic is important.
Its been quite interesting to see how many atheists there are who believe that objective morality exists. Actually, I would say that the majority believe in objective morality. However, objective morality is inconsistent with the atheist worldview; they don't have a foundation for acting in a "moral" way versus an "immoral" way. I'm not saying that atheists can't be moral; they can. I'm just saying that they can't justify it. Here's why.
Morality implies "oughtness". How something ought to behave. That implies that you understand that that thing (that ought to behave in a certain way) was designed to behave in the expected way. Example: A watch ought to keep time. It is designed to keep time; therefore, it ought to. If it were not designed to do anything, it ought (is expected) to do nothing.
Atheism posits that humans and the universe have no design or purpose, period. Therefore, it must be concluded that atheism has no room for moral (among other types of) "oughtness".
Does "oughtness" flow logically from "design" or "expectation"? The atheist might be able to get away from the conclusion above by claiming "oughtness" just implies an expectation. But I would have to question what they base their "expectation" on. If they want to base it on history (rather than design) then, they must determine which parts of history they want to base the expectation on, and I would ask them why they choose those certain parts of history and not others.
Now, some atheists have tried to explain the foundation for their belief in objective morality by pointing to examples in the world. They argue along the lines of "look at society; obviously, murder is wrong" or "obviously, stealing is wrong". They use examples to prove "why". The problem is examples don't prove "why" something is true; they only prove "that" something is true. Atheists still need to provide a reason "why" they ought to act a certain way.
Once again, I'm not saying that atheists can't be moral. I'm saying there is no objective foundation for determining why a certain behavior is moral or immoral in their worldview.
Not only does Christianity explain "why" objective morality exists (it is the very nature of God), but it explains "how" an atheist can be moral, yet believe something completely opposite.
With all the inclimate weather Oklahoma has been having lately (tornadoes in Feb), I've been thinking about natural evil in the world. This will probably touch a bit on a couple things that I already covered in "Suffering Sucks...or Does it?". If you haven't already, check that post out before you continue with this one.
Many people have asked why an omnibenevolent (all-loving) God would allow such disasters to happen. These people tend to associate anything that causes pain with being evil. In my post about suffering I addressed why this argument does not logically follow. But on this post I would like to provide a short defense of why God would allow such things to happen at all (whether they affect people or not), and why this is actually the opposite case- these are, in fact, the works expected of an omnibenevolent God.
This argument is pretty much weighted on the impression of extreme design of our planet specifically for the existence of intelligent life.
One of the necessary factors required for a planet to support advanced life forms is "plate tectonics". In short, plate tectonics is the movement of a planet's rocky material. The way most planets form is that they start out as complete "water-worlds". Basically, they are nothing but a ball of water with a rocky center. Movement of the planet's crust allows the rocky material to come to the surface and produce landmasses.
Unfortunately, another effect of plate tectonics is that is that it interacts with the atmosphere (another just-right component) and produces natural disasters such as tornadoes and hurricanes. Plate tectonics, by itself, can also produce earthquakes and tsunamis.
All of these disasters are side effects of have a planet that can sustain our living here. We are stuck with them, if we want to live.
Some prominent Christians have said that recent natural disasters are "divine judgment" on humanity. They base this claim on the fact that God did use some natural disasters in the Bible as judgment. However, it does not follow that God used these natural disasters for this purpose.
If you take a look at the damage from natural disasters in the past, they did much more damage (in monetary terms) in the early 1900's than they do now. This is because humanity has been able to develop technologies that can keep them safe(r). Some have said that today, these same "natural evils" may be considered "moral evils" because of the fact that the more advanced nations have not implemented the same technologies in the poorer nations of the earth, and thus the loss of life may be indirectly the responsibility of the more advanced nations. So, an argument could be made for this. I don't know that I quite agree with that, but I digress.
My point in all this is that God created the universe with fixed laws of physics that have certain requirements in order to support life. God created our planet specifically so that the human race could not only live, but thrive. This is what is to be expected of an omnibenevolent God. Here's a quick video from Greg Koukl from Stand to Reason:
But this brings up another question: "Why did God not choose laws of physics that would allow for us to thrive without all the natural evils?" Here is an episode of the podcast "Why The Universe Is The Way It Is" in which Dr. Hugh Ross answers that question.
If you would like to do more research into this check out these great resources:
Suffering is a topic that comes up quite often. This topic seems to come up for one of two reasons: someone is trying to undermine the belief in the all-powerful, all-loving God of the Bible; or someone is going through a horrible time in their life and are trying to figure out why God is allowing them to suffer so much physical or emotional pain. I'll touch on both of them here.
God made a promise to Israel, “For I know the plans I have for you…plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11)
Paul was confident that the promise from God now extends to the Body of Christ, “…he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6)
