Death and Destruction and God
We have "good" all mixed up. We wonder about the
goodness of God in light of natural disasters, and even more so in light of
Biblical stories of his acting in judgment. Part of our problem is starting from
the wrong perspective. Part of the problem, too, is how seldom we ask the
hardest question of all.
This series began
with questions about how God could claim to be good, yet also call for a nation
to be destroyed without mercy. It was also asked, how can suffering be (at least
in some ways) a good thing, as the Bible
says?
Throughout this series I've said that if we're going to ask a Biblical question, we need to go all the way and answer it Biblically. Now I'm going to raise the bar; to pose a question even harder than the ones we started with.
The Bible says humankind started out in a state of perfection, without disease, distress, or death. Now look where we are. What happened? Did God do this to us? Yes, for good reason.
The Genesis account tells us God created humans in his image, including the ability to make moral choices. In Eden there was only one prohibition: not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Whether this was a literal fruit, I do not know, although there's no particular reason to doubt that it was. Its purpose was to create the condition of a choice. The original couple could obey, by not eating the fruit, or they could choose not to obey and follow God.
There was plenty of good food there, and much to delight the eyes, the mind, and the taste, but they were fooled into thinking that they were missing something. The temptation even included a false promise of "being like God." So they tasted, and for the first time, had experiential knowledge of the contrast of good and evil.
What followed immediately after makes all other complaints about the destruction of nations, or cancers and plagues, pale into the background. God pronounced death on the couple and on all their descendants. He put a curse on the earth, making it no longer as friendly. From that point forward, all the rest has been simply working out the details. Anyone who wants to complain about how God treats people ought to go back here and get to the heart of it.
Why? Why would he do this? Is there even the slightest aspect of good in it? Yes, there was.
There was grace in it
What Adam and Eve did was an act of rebellion against God, the beginning of an attempt to set up a new moral order independent of God's. (That attempt continues to this day.) Genuine good is impossible, however, without a right relationship with God. Had God allowed a deathless race to continue in this, unmitigated, unending evil would have resulted. Who would want to live at all--much less, live forever--with horrors unchecked? Consider relatively recent, familiar history: would the world be better off if Mao, Stalin, and Hitler were immortal?
Instead, death entered the world with sin, and incredibly, hope came with it. There is hope for the defeat of evil, and hope for redemption. "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin," says the book of Hebrews, but for those who trust in Christ, God regards his death as sufficient payment.
Correction and preparation
The pains we endure are partly an outworking of our continuing rebellion against God. To those who ask, "why should we be punished for what Adam and Eve did?" the answer is, we aren't. Each one is punished for his or her own sin, and only if you have no sin of your own (no trace of disregarding or rebelling against God) can you make that complaint.
Suffering and loss are both correctives. We use them with our children, denying them privileges when they misbehave. God the Father disciplines his children (Hebrews 12 tells about this). Suffering produces character, which hardly needs Biblical texts for proof; we all recognize the truth of it. Some people turn bitter under suffering, some better; the true mettle of a person is revealed and deepened.
Those who continue to rebel against God will not escape the death that entered the world at the beginning (which as we saw earlier, is a painful yet real good). They are denied eternity with God in paradise by their own choice. C. S. Lewis said in The Great Divorce, about heaven and hell:
"Ultimately there are two kinds of people in the world: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'thy will be done.'"
A person who shows no desire for God through his entire earthly life will be permitted to continue without Him after. One who submits to God will be prepared, partly through suffering, for life in eternity with Him.
I can hear objections rumbling even as I write this:
But isn't all the pain and death extreme? Not in view of what we deserve, as a race of rebels against the loving ruler of all creation. It is God's grace that allows us to experience any good at all.
Isn't it unfair that entire nations were punished in the Old Testament? The nations that God specially punished deserved it specially. We have little or no conception today of how degraded they could be. I have more evidence to present for this in a future post.
Why couldn't God have created a world without all this pain? He did. We rebelled against him. He could have created us incapable of rebelling, but he chose not to do that, apparently because he wanted us to be more than robots without free choice. The fruit of our rebellion is pain and loss.
I can't stand it! Whenever I talk or write theologically about pain and loss, I bear in mind how real it is. Neighbors across the street called at 6:30 this morning to say they're rushing to Illinois to be with the husband's mother, who is at the edge of death. Somebody near to you and me is always at the edge of death, it seems. Sometimes I can't stand it either.
There's something revealed in this kind of pain, though, that would never be known otherwise: God is big enough for it. He gives grace to the hurting who seek him, and they testify of his goodness. I wish I had time and space to tell you the stories. One who comes to mind is retired Admiral Richard Denton, who spent longer than any other American as a P.O.W. in Vietnam. I've heard him speak of God's grace and goodness to him in that experience. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who spent many horrible years in the Soviet Gulag, said, "Thank you, prison!" because it was there that he met God, and it was well worth it to him.
Just about anyone would love to see God work in miraculous power. He does this by coming through when he is most needed. His greatest work in history was the resurrection of Christ, and his greatest work today is the resurrection of hopeless, dead hearts. Every resurrection is a great work of God; every one is preceded by a death. God's greatness and glory is revealed in the way he turns around despair and prepares an eternity of joy for those willing to enter it.
Sixth in a series
1. Two Worlds
2. Another View of the Two Worlds
3. Is God Good?
4. Might Makes Right: The Basis of God's Goodness?
5. What is Good in God's Eyes?
6. Death and Destruction and God
7. Why Did God Order the Destruction of Nations?
(to be continued)
Throughout this series I've said that if we're going to ask a Biblical question, we need to go all the way and answer it Biblically. Now I'm going to raise the bar; to pose a question even harder than the ones we started with.
The Bible says humankind started out in a state of perfection, without disease, distress, or death. Now look where we are. What happened? Did God do this to us? Yes, for good reason.
The Genesis account tells us God created humans in his image, including the ability to make moral choices. In Eden there was only one prohibition: not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Whether this was a literal fruit, I do not know, although there's no particular reason to doubt that it was. Its purpose was to create the condition of a choice. The original couple could obey, by not eating the fruit, or they could choose not to obey and follow God.
There was plenty of good food there, and much to delight the eyes, the mind, and the taste, but they were fooled into thinking that they were missing something. The temptation even included a false promise of "being like God." So they tasted, and for the first time, had experiential knowledge of the contrast of good and evil.
What followed immediately after makes all other complaints about the destruction of nations, or cancers and plagues, pale into the background. God pronounced death on the couple and on all their descendants. He put a curse on the earth, making it no longer as friendly. From that point forward, all the rest has been simply working out the details. Anyone who wants to complain about how God treats people ought to go back here and get to the heart of it.
Why? Why would he do this? Is there even the slightest aspect of good in it? Yes, there was.
There was grace in it
What Adam and Eve did was an act of rebellion against God, the beginning of an attempt to set up a new moral order independent of God's. (That attempt continues to this day.) Genuine good is impossible, however, without a right relationship with God. Had God allowed a deathless race to continue in this, unmitigated, unending evil would have resulted. Who would want to live at all--much less, live forever--with horrors unchecked? Consider relatively recent, familiar history: would the world be better off if Mao, Stalin, and Hitler were immortal?
Instead, death entered the world with sin, and incredibly, hope came with it. There is hope for the defeat of evil, and hope for redemption. "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin," says the book of Hebrews, but for those who trust in Christ, God regards his death as sufficient payment.
Correction and preparation
The pains we endure are partly an outworking of our continuing rebellion against God. To those who ask, "why should we be punished for what Adam and Eve did?" the answer is, we aren't. Each one is punished for his or her own sin, and only if you have no sin of your own (no trace of disregarding or rebelling against God) can you make that complaint.
Suffering and loss are both correctives. We use them with our children, denying them privileges when they misbehave. God the Father disciplines his children (Hebrews 12 tells about this). Suffering produces character, which hardly needs Biblical texts for proof; we all recognize the truth of it. Some people turn bitter under suffering, some better; the true mettle of a person is revealed and deepened.
Those who continue to rebel against God will not escape the death that entered the world at the beginning (which as we saw earlier, is a painful yet real good). They are denied eternity with God in paradise by their own choice. C. S. Lewis said in The Great Divorce, about heaven and hell:
"Ultimately there are two kinds of people in the world: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'thy will be done.'"
A person who shows no desire for God through his entire earthly life will be permitted to continue without Him after. One who submits to God will be prepared, partly through suffering, for life in eternity with Him.
I can hear objections rumbling even as I write this:
But isn't all the pain and death extreme? Not in view of what we deserve, as a race of rebels against the loving ruler of all creation. It is God's grace that allows us to experience any good at all.
Isn't it unfair that entire nations were punished in the Old Testament? The nations that God specially punished deserved it specially. We have little or no conception today of how degraded they could be. I have more evidence to present for this in a future post.
Why couldn't God have created a world without all this pain? He did. We rebelled against him. He could have created us incapable of rebelling, but he chose not to do that, apparently because he wanted us to be more than robots without free choice. The fruit of our rebellion is pain and loss.
I can't stand it! Whenever I talk or write theologically about pain and loss, I bear in mind how real it is. Neighbors across the street called at 6:30 this morning to say they're rushing to Illinois to be with the husband's mother, who is at the edge of death. Somebody near to you and me is always at the edge of death, it seems. Sometimes I can't stand it either.
There's something revealed in this kind of pain, though, that would never be known otherwise: God is big enough for it. He gives grace to the hurting who seek him, and they testify of his goodness. I wish I had time and space to tell you the stories. One who comes to mind is retired Admiral Richard Denton, who spent longer than any other American as a P.O.W. in Vietnam. I've heard him speak of God's grace and goodness to him in that experience. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who spent many horrible years in the Soviet Gulag, said, "Thank you, prison!" because it was there that he met God, and it was well worth it to him.
Just about anyone would love to see God work in miraculous power. He does this by coming through when he is most needed. His greatest work in history was the resurrection of Christ, and his greatest work today is the resurrection of hopeless, dead hearts. Every resurrection is a great work of God; every one is preceded by a death. God's greatness and glory is revealed in the way he turns around despair and prepares an eternity of joy for those willing to enter it.
Sixth in a series
1. Two Worlds
2. Another View of the Two Worlds
3. Is God Good?
4. Might Makes Right: The Basis of God's Goodness?
5. What is Good in God's Eyes?
6. Death and Destruction and God
7. Why Did God Order the Destruction of Nations?
(to be continued)
Posted: Sat - November 12, 2005 at 11:34 AM |
Quick Links
Categories
"Do Christians believe we hold the truth? No, it holds us; we submit to it and to the One who gives it. We seek the truth to know it and follow it, that it may grip us tighter yet."
Personal Profile
Guest Speaking
Articles Published Elsewhere
Frequently Discussed Topics
My Other Blog
Email this link to a friend
XML/RSS Feed: Blog Entries
Feedburner Feed
XML/RSS Feed: Comments
Guest Speaking
Articles Published Elsewhere
Frequently Discussed Topics
My Other Blog
Email this link to a friend
XML/RSS Feed: Blog Entries
Feedburner Feed
XML/RSS Feed: Comments
Archives
Knowing God
Recent Comments
Blogroll
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Dec 06, 2007 01:04 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Dec 06, 2007 01:04 PM
