Epicurus, the Greek philosopher (c. 306 B.C.) raised the question: “Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to; or he cannot and does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, and does not want to, he is wicked. But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil, then how does evil come into the world?” St. Augustine put it simpler when he asked, “If there is no God, why is there so much good? If there is a God, why is there so much evil?” Katie Couric, in quizzing Franklin Graham about the recent terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, put it in more basic terms. More than once she asked the question that so many are asking: “Why would God allow something like this to happen?”
Ever since the terrorist attacks on September 11, seven out of every ten people are reporting struggles with depression. Nearly half the U.S. population is reporting having trouble concentrating, and a third say they are having trouble sleeping, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center. Women were more likely than men to be depressed — four out of five — and parents were more likely than those without children to feel depressed. “Clearly, people are devastated by what happened,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the research project. So, if you are having problems like this, you are not alone. These are uncertain times. I have noticed that I am reacting to the sounds of sirens and airplanes in an entirely different way than I used to respond.
The day before Rachel was to go into the outpatient clinic at Children’s Hospital for her treatment this week, there was a bomb scare when someone threw a package with protruding wires through the doors. When we are faced with this kind of evil, it causes us to ask some serious questions. The Barna Research Group polled the nation earlier this year with the question: “If you could ask God only one question and you knew he would give you an answer, what would you ask?” The top response was this: “Why is there pain and suffering in the world?” At the heart of this question is the concern about whether God can both be good, and at the same time permit evil in the world.
There is an interesting parallel in the New Testament to our current tragedy with the World Trade towers. Some people came to Jesus one day asking about a tragedy in Jerusalem that had taken place. There had been a senseless killing spree. They wanted to get Jesus’ opinion of why it happened. They suspected that the people involved were terrible sinners, or that God was especially angry with them, since God allowed it to happen. But Jesus told them they were mistaken, and reminded them of another tragedy when a tower fell on some people and killed them near the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem. Jesus said to them, “those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them — do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no!” (Luke 13:4-5). What he was saying was that God does not act out of vengeance and punish people out of spite. Quite the opposite. For Jesus taught us to pray for our enemies, “that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45).
So where was God in all of this? There are several truths we need to understand as we try to grapple with this important issue, if we are going to arrive at a place of trust. How do we know that God is good? The first truth that we need to absorb in order to understand all this is: God has given us freedom. The possibility of evil in the world is inseparably linked to the personal freedom which God, in his love, has entrusted us. When we use our power as free moral agents to go against God’s will, sin and evil enter the world.
There is a way to assure that evil will never again enter the world — remove all freedom of choice from the human family. Here is how it would work. When a person would decide to hijack a plane, God would do one of several things. He would kill them on the spot. He would disable them in some way. He would remove the thought from their brain. He would appear to them in an appalling vision, and tell them not to carry out their plans, so that they would be so gripped with fear they would be unable to act. He would crush them with overwhelming guilt and override their desire to do something wrong — in other words, he would stomp them into submission. An important part of being human would be lost as God turned us into puppets forced to do his will.
God could do away with evil merely by taking away our ability to choose it, but he does not do that. The problem with personal freedom is that it brings with it an enormous potential for evil, because it gives us the freedom to choose evil and carry it out. If we only have the freedom to do what is right, we no longer have freedom. The terrible thing about God is that he has given us the dangerous ability to choose evil and act on it. And once we choose, God does not step in to stop us. However, it is not that God does not do anything. There is, what theologians call, the “restraining influence of the Holy Spirit.” This works in several ways. He has created us with a conscience. Our conscience is the megaphone whereby God addresses our behavior. He does not crush us, but he does speak to us. He urges us to do the right thing and to reject what is wrong and evil. Sometimes he arranges events to make it more difficult for us to do the wrong thing. He puts within us a certain amount of fear of getting caught or being found out. He reminds people of how good he has treated them. It is as the Bible says, “God’s kindness leads you toward repentance” (Romans 2:4). But most of all, God puts within our hearts the desire to do the right thing, the good thing, the loving thing. We have to go against our God-given desire in order to do evil. God does all of this, but in the end, he will not interfere with the freedom of our will. He will be at work and he will influence us, but he will not coerce us, and because of that evil sometimes happens.
Some of you may remember the old television show The Twilight Zone. One of the episodes has a group of bank robbers going into a bank, and all of them are killed in a shootout with the police. One robber wakes to find himself walking over fluffy clouds into the golden gate of a celestial city. A kind looking man in a long white robe offers him anything he wants. But it isn’t long until he is bored. The gold is no longer special because everything is free, and there is no excitement in getting it. He has a sadistic bent, but the beautiful girls that he is given only laugh when he tries to hurt them. Finally, he calls to the man in the white robe and says, “There must be some mistake here.” “We don’t make mistakes here,” comes the reply. “Well, can’t you send me back to earth,” he says. “Of course not, you’re dead,” the robed man tells him. “Well, then, send me to be with my friends in the Other Place.” “Oh, we can’t do that,” says the man, “Rules you know.” “What is this place?” asks the robber. “Don’t you know?” says the bearded man in sandals. “This is the place where you get everything you want.” The robber groans and says, “But I thought I was supposed to like heaven.” “Heaven?” exclaims the man in the robe. “Who said anything about heaven? Heaven is the Other Place.”
The point is that hell is the place where everyone has complete freedom to do anything they wish without God’s interference. Hell is a place absent of God where there is total freedom for everyone to do whatever they will with no controls. If restrained freedom of will causes evil here, the absence of any restraint is the reason for hell being what it is.
The second truth we need to understand is: God created a good world. When God finished creating the world, the Bible says, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning — the sixth day” (Genesis 1:31). God created a good world. It was very good and wonderful, but sin entered the world when the human family exercised their will and go against God’s will. They rejected God’s good, and invited evil into the world. Yet the world is still a very good place. There is beauty all around us. The universe is based on order rather than chaos. There is a design to life. It is full of good and pleasurable things. In fact, the reason we notice evil is that it is in such stark contrast with the great amount of good that exists in the world. As terrible as things are at times, there is still much more good than bad.
As I walk in the woods I am overcome at times by the powerful beauty that exists there. Awesome sights are available in the most remote places and in the smallest things: the pattern of moss growing on a fallen tree; intricate design in a flower so small that it is only a speck of color on the floor of the woods; plants growing on top of a rock; the pattern in a leaf; the wonderful smell of pine and peat; the sound of water; the sun shining in streams through the woods. The goodness of life is found in the simplest of things: the smell of dew drenched morning air, or steaks on the grill; the feel of a rose petal; the sound of music and laughter; the sight of a sunrise; the crisp taste of an apple that has just come off the tree; the emotion of love. These are the things we think of when we repeat the words of the 23rd Psalm: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever” (Psalm 23:6).
If we are bothered by the idea of evil, it is evidence that we understand that the world was intended to be good. Evil is the exception. We notice evil because it is not the rule. The world around us tells us that it has deviated from its original design. We see traces of heaven all around us, but it is as though it has somehow been spoiled, so that it is not all it should be. There is more good than bad, and that is what makes evil so egregious.
The third truth we need to understand is: God can redeem evil. The prophet Isaiah describes the purpose of the coming Messiah with these words: “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted. . . . to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion — to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair” (Isaiah 61:1-3).
We are living out this truth at this very moment. Even though we have seen a staggering act of evil, we are seeing good rise from the rubble. God is giving us beauty for ashes. I read a piece this week by Brett Blair, who said: “Where was God this week? Hear me now. God was not in the cockpit of those four planes. I’ll tell where God has been. He has been in the fireman’s suit. Behind police badges. Holding a scalpel and a syringe. He is near the heart of all who, in the face of this tragedy, love their neighbor and turn to God in repentance.”
We have seen Republicans and Democrats stand together united and put aside partisan bickering. We have seen people of every race and color run to help the victims, sometimes at the cost of their own lives. The nation has lined up at blood banks and donated millions of dollars. Flags are flying and our patriotism has been revived. People are thinking about God and eternal issues. Four hundred people turned out on the square in our town to pray. Four hundred and fifty students gathered around the flag pole to pray at Mount Vernon High School this week.
I heard about a person this week who had four friends who were to be at the World Trade Center on Tuesday, September 11. Two of them died. However, one of them slept through their alarm that morning and arrived for the meeting late enough that his life was spared. The fourth friend fell asleep on the subway ride to work and missed his stop. By the time he got back, he was prevented from entering the building. Why were these two spared and others not? I don’t know. They were probably no better or worse than the others. But it does mean that God was at work through this whole thing. How many would be lost if he hadn’t been? The death toll could have been in the tens of thousands.
More heros have come out of this past couple of weeks than we have seen in decades. One example is Todd Beamer, whose widow was invited to the President’s address to Congress last Thursday. Todd Beamer was a passenger on United Flight 93 which crashed in rural Pennsylvania. He was a 32-year-old father of two, and his wife Lisa is expecting their third child. Beamer was an employee of Oracle Corporation and a member of a large church where he worked with the youth group and taught Sunday School. Todd and Lisa were a part of a small group Bible study where they found their support. Todd witnessed to his faith openly. Vice President Dick Cheney told NBC’s Meet the Press: “What they did was to foil, I think, the attack on Washington. Without question, the attack would’ve been much worse if it hadn’t been for the courageous actions of those individuals on United 93.” On board the plane, Beamer called a GTE Airfone operator about the hijacking, recited the Lord’s Prayer, and said, “Let’s roll.” We will never know how many lives Beamer and the others who acted with him saved. Where was God? He was in the heart and life of Todd Beamer and the many others like him.
The great thing about knowing God is that our lives are tied to the One, the only one, who can take the tragedies and sufferings of this world and redeem them. If God could not bring good out of our suffering there would be no meaning or purpose to them. But God gives beauty for ashes.
Finally, the fourth point we need to understand if we are going to trust the goodness of God is this: God is with us. Our God’s name is Immanuel, which means, “God with us.” And so we can say with Job, the man who faced enormous suffering: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth” (Job 19:25). Because God is with us we know that there is meaning in the universe and a purpose for our personal lives. We trust the goodness of God because there are no other options. The only other choices are fear, despair, and a belief in absurdity. The choice to live believing in the goodness of God is the only way to make sense of life. There is too much evidence to discount.
Without the cross Christianity does not make sense, because the cross tells us that God is not afraid of suffering and has entered into suffering with us. The cross reminds us that God knows what it is like to experience pain and injustice. Billy Graham, speaking at the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance last Friday, said, “Here in this majestic National Cathedral we see all around us symbols of the Cross. For the Christian, I’m speaking for the Christian now, the Cross tells us that God understands our sin and our suffering, for He took upon Himself in the person of Jesus Christ our sins and our suffering. And from the Cross, God declares, ‘I love you. I know the heartaches and the sorrows and the pains that you feel. But I love you.’ The story does not end with the Cross, for Easter points us beyond the tragedy of the Cross to the empty tomb. It tells us that there is hope for eternal life, for Christ has conquered evil and death, and hell. Yes, there is hope.”
There is hope, because God is good.
Rodney J. Buchanan
September 23, 2001
Mulberry Street UMC
Mt. Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION (Sept 23, 2001)
1. What in life has made you question the goodness of God most?
2. What in life has brought you the greatest assurance that God is good?
3. Why is evil necessary in a world where there is choice?
4. If you were God, where would you draw the line in stopping evil in the world? How would you do this?
5. Have you ever thanked God for some aspect of suffering in your life? Why?
6. Read Genesis 1:31. What kind of world did God make in the beginning? Is it still that way?
7. Is there any good that comes out of suffering? Think of some examples?
8. Where would Christianity be without the cross? What does it tell us about God?
9. What part do we play in the presence of good and evil in the world?
10. When evil happens in our lives, is it because God is punishing us? Why do really bad things happen to really good people?
