Christmas is right around the corner and there’s a song called “Christmas Shoes” that debuted in the year 2000. I’m glad it’s played very sparingly during the Christmas season because it is a heart wrenching song. If you have never heard of it, then you’ve been living under a rock for the past twenty five years.
The song is sung from a man’s perceptive as he stands in line to get his Christmas gifts. In front of the man is a little boy who is anxiously holding a pair of shoes. The man describes the boy as dirt from head to toe. The boy tells the man that he is buying the shoes for his mom because there’s not much time before she goes and meets Jesus and he wants her to look beautiful for when she passes.
As he counts out his pennies, the boy ends up not having enough money to pay for the shoes and the song grabs you to have the man pay for the dang shoes! He does and he sings this little bridge:
I knew I'd caught a glimpse of Heaven's love
As he thanked me and ran out
I knew that God had sent that little boy
To remind me what Christmas is all about
In the song, sorrow and joy are mixed together. It’s a hard song to listen to because it challenges you not to have your heartbroken.
And it’s this idea of sorrow and joy which brings us back to our series where we’re looking at several issues that the New Testament scholar, Bart Ehrman, has with the orthodox Christian belief that we can trust the Bible as the word of God. Over the past four weeks we have looked at four issues that go along with Ehrman’s rejection of this central doctrine to the Christian faith.
In week one, we tackled the first question of whether Jesus was even a historical person. We looked at the evidence from an atheist historian and saw how Jesus is a well attested to person that Ehrman agrees lived. Jesus’ historicity is important because the Christian faith is not a belief in the teachings of a person who may or may not have lived. No, it’s a living trust in the God who descended to earth, took on human flesh, lived a perfect life alongside his creation, allowed that creation to crucify him, then bodily resurrected, offering eternal life to whoever would place their trust in him. If Jesus wasn’t historical real, then the Christian faith is false from the get-go. But since he is, we then began to look at the collection of documents, known as the New Testament, to see if we can trust what it says about him.
In week two we began looking at the evidence for the New Testament. Dividing our approach between the external and the internal evidence. From looking at the external evidence we saw how the documents that make up the New Testament can be traced to the time of the people who were said to have written them. And compared to other well attested to ancient documents, the New Testament is earlier in surviving copies, to the original times they were written. After looking at the external evidences, we could concluded that what we have as our New Testament did indeed come from the time of Jesus’ eyewitnesses.
Then in week three we looked at the internal evidences. We looked at the supposed errors that scholars like Ehrman point to, seeing how there are roughly 6,600 root errors to consider. 99% of those were grammatical or not very significant, and out of those, the 1%, did not change Christian teaching. What we concluded was that the New Testament is the word of God, inerrant in that it is trustworthy and authoritative, and infallible in that it communicates God’s purpose of pointing us to his salvation.
Finally last week we addressed the question, what about the other books that didn’t make the cut. We first looked at the criteria that the early Church used in its process of receiving and recognizing what was inspired works. Then we looked at three categories of where these works fell into. The first was Heretical, which were those that didn’t match any of the criteria, and went going against well established teaching. Reasonably Rejected was the second category, where there were books that were not necessarily heretical, but they over emphasized minute issues of the Church, and they were obviously written well after the time periods they said they were covering. Finally, there were those documents that are of Good Use which the early Church read, didn’t find authoritative, but can still be of use to us today to understand the world of the New Testament.
However, through all of this, we have to understand that none of this is actually why Ehrman rejects the orthodox Christian faith. No, everything we covered in the last four weeks are Ehrman’s scholarly attempts to undermine other people’s faith, because of a deeper issue he has with God.
In Jesus, Interrupted, Ehrman shares the real reason he left the Christian faith, “There came a time when I left the faith. This was not because of what I learned through the historical criticism, but because I could no longer reconcile my faith in God with the state of the world that I saw all around me …. There is so much senseless pain and misery in the world that I came to find it impossible to believe that there is a good and loving God who is in control, despite my knowing all of the standard rejoinders that people give …. In my case, historical criticism led me to question my faith. Not just its superficial aspects but its very heart. Yet it was the problem of suffering, not a historical approach to the Bible, that led me to agnosticism.”
And there it is. The issues we have covered over the last four weeks, the issues that Ehrman says local churches do not talk about, are not the issues that Ehrman points to as breaking his faith. Though these were issues that soften his faith, it was the problem of suffering that truly broke Ehrman.
And that’s understandable. The issue of, why does God allow evil, is one of the most difficult issues of this world. Why is there death? Why is there pain? Why do children suffer? Why do animals suffer? If God is good, then why is there evil? If God is all powerful, why doesn’t he stop it?
There is a deep theological and philosophical conversation about this very question that in one sermon we’re not going to be able to answer. So for this final sermon, I’m going to give you two parts of the problem and how I deal with the problem of evil.
First, there’s the theoretical problem of evil. Philosophers such as David Hume, an eighteenth century Scottish philosopher, and others like him have proposed a philosophical framework for the argument as follows:
If there is a wholly good and all-powerful God, then there should be no evil or suffering. However, there is evil and suffering therefore there is no wholly good and all-powerful God. Even if there were such a being as God he is either not wholly good, or he is not all-powerful.
Over the course of theological and philosophical debates four stances have been taken by theists in response to this issue: 1) The first stance is that, evil is necessary as a counter point to good. This means that good cannot exist without there being evil. The emblem of the Yin and Yang capture this belief. 2) The second stance is that evil is necessary as to bring about good. This sees evil, not as a counterpart to good, but a means about which God brings good to his creation. Think of the passages of Scripture that speak of suffering bringing about character, such as Romans 5:3, where Paul writes, “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance.” 3) The third stance is that the universe is better with at least some evil, than it would be without it. From this stance one can make the argument that you can only see the stars when the light isn’t shining. Or you only know what courage is when faced with something to fear. 4) The final stance is that evil comes from human will. It isn’t that God created evil, but that human beings create evil out of their own will to do so.
Out of the four stances, I hold to the last. First, I do this because I do not see in the Scriptures a good God who is vexed by evil. Evil is not an equal to the God of the Bible, so it cannot be the first. Secondly, though I do see the God of the Bible bringing good out of evil, it doesn’t answer the issue of what is the root cause of evil. If this were the case, then God wouldn’t be good for he created evil, and Scripture rejects this, as God only works in goodness. The third stance is similar to the second and I believe it holds some weight in helping us understand why we live in the universe we do and not a perfect one, but again it doesn’t get to the root of evil, and again the blame ends with God. Finally, it is the will of God’s creatures where the Scriptures rest the problem of evil. It is from our actions that evil and suffering sprout. The Bible calls this root sin, and spends the course of its pages to show how God works through our evil to bring about his good.
This is the theoretical problem of evil. We can discuss it, we can argue it, but the reality is, when suffering comes to our door, these might give us a foundation from where to work from, but they can be empty words.
We see this in the life of Job. When suffering came to Job’s door, the theoretical broke upon the concrete pain he was feeling. His friends proceeded to give him the theoretical answers, but his concrete pain and their glib responses were not what he needed to hear.
Its the case of Job that brings us to the practical question of evil, and this is where the idea of suffering really comes to a head. Does it matter where evil comes from, God or humans, when a mother has a miscarriage? Does it matter when a family member dies in a car crash by a drunk driver? Does it matter when a tsunami hits a beach and hundreds, if not thousands of people, die in its wake? The question of, Why God, comes in moments like this and wrecks us. If God is good why did he allow the miscarriage to happen? If God is all-powerful, why did he not stop that man from drinking? If God is all-knowing, why didn’t he foresee where people were and redirect the wave?
The practical issue of suffering is what the Bible deals with most directly. It doesn’t give glib reasons as to answer all the hard questions, rather it rests in verses like Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” Or Galatians 6:2, “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Or Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:35-36, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’”
The Bible doesn’t answer all the theoretical questions nor answers all the why’s of why why evil and suffering occurs. Job, through forty-two chapters never found out why he suffered. However, the Bible does seek to answer the practical question of suffering, which is to love people in their pain as we love Jesus who suffered for us. God calls his people to sit and cry with those who are hurting. We are to have compassion and carry the burdens of each other.
Here’s the reality, there’s suffering in the world, the Bible doesn’t shy away from it, but rather shows it for all its horridness. Those like Ehrman look at differing and say, because there’s suffering there is no God. But remove God from the equation and you’re still stuck with the problem. There’s still suffering.
Yet if the God of the Bible is true that means suffering was not brought about by him, but by his creatures. It is us who have caused the suffering of the world through our actions. And there is such a deep spiritual connection between our actions and things like future generations and natural evils, that the evil we cause through sin can bring suffering to those we’ll never even know. Yet, what we also see from the God of the Bible is his actions to minimize the effects of sin, and who has put in place a plan to end all evil and suffering.
Ehrman looks at the God of the Bible and says, there’s suffering so he doesn’t exist. I look at suffering and reply, because it exists I trust there is a God.
Today, we haven’t answered the question of evil, we simply addressed it, but my trust in God’s inerrant and infallible word directs me to trust a God who cares for the suffering of his creation, and I hold to this great teaching from the Book of Hebrews, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin (v.4:15).” God has met us in our suffering through the person of Jesus, and desires to be there for us. Let us therefore draw close to him to find his peace in the suffering.
My challenge for you this week is to take the various stances I gave to you and wrestle with the problem of evil. Bring these stances to the pages of Scriptures and see which one best is answered by the God who spoke this universe into being.
Let us be a people who grows in our trust in the Lord, and when evil assails us or those around, we run closer to him in it. Amen.
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