The most difficult question that I believe every Christian has to wrestle with is not, was the tomb empty? Was their a resurrection appearance? Not even did God create the universe? All these questions are becoming increasingly clear. New Testament scholars agree that the tomb was empty. They agree that, at the least, the disciples had encounters with Jesus after his death, and more and more scientists are rethinking their naturalistic positions on the origin of the universe thanks to things like the Fine Tuning argument.
These questions are not as difficult as they have been in the past, because of what we know of the evidence today. No, I believe that the most difficult question the Christian faces is, in light of the overwhelming evidence that there is a God, why then do we have evil in the world? In our Judges series, we come face-to-face with evil and we must ask the question why?
Why did God allow this concubine to be brutally abused to the point of death? Why did he allow the these evil men to exist? Why did he allow the Levite to make her a concubine? Why did he allow Jephthah to make a vow that led to him to sacrificing his daughter? Why did he allow the Canaanites to sacrifice their children to Moloch? And those are just some of the brutal moments we’ve read about in the book of Judges.
This question of evil, or what theologians call Theodicy, deals with the idea of, if God is all-good and all-powerful why then is there evil in the world? As atheist Sam Harris stated in his debate against Christian apologist William Lane Craig, “Given all this that your God does not accomplish, in the lives of others. Given the misery that is being imposed on some helpless child at this instant. This kind of faith is obscene. To think in this way is to fail to reason honestly, or to care sufficiently about the suffering of other human beings.”
Harris’ words are cutting, and if you would hear his final argument, it would hit you in the heart, because few in our culture wants the suffering of others, and fewer still want the suffering of children. Yet in our world, that’s what we see. Suffering abounds. From the famine stricken countries, where children are seen walking around as skin on living skeletons, to the massive Tsunamis that kill tens of thousands of people.
As Christians we must wrestle with this idea of, why do these horrific things happen, especially when the Bible tells us that God is loving, mighty in power, knowing all things. The question must be wrestled with.
And the answer that I’ve come to is, God can’t win in this situation. What I mean by that is, not everyone will be satisfied with the answer, and so God won’t win them over.
If God created us, as the Scripture reveals, to have the ability to choose to follow him, which is goodness and righteousness and leads to eternal life, or choose to disobey him which is choosing not to follow him, being what is called sin, which leads to death. Then we question God, why would he do such a thing knowing that sin would lead so many into destruction? And if the answer is, because love is a free choice and God loves us, and gives us that ability to love in return, then God is accused of being complacent in the actions of his creation.
People would then say God should just override that sinful choice and make people love him, or at the very least, not make the choice that hurt others. But then, if God did that, he would then be accused of forcing his love upon others, committing the same evil that he was trying to prevent. And so God can’t win in the eyes of someone who won’t accept the answer.
But then there are others that say, God shouldn’t have made a world in which people could choose to disobey him. Yet in such a world love couldn’t occur, because real love is choice. To force someone to love is to abuse them as a person. You might have a facade of love, but no real love occurs, because it wasn’t chosen by the person to be extended to the other. We could then accuse God of abusing his creation, not allowing them to have a choice. And so God can’t win in the eyes of a person who takes that stand.
So what can God do? To do anything at all means that God has to make an initial decision on how to proceed with his creation. God has the choice of creating a universe where love is either real or an illusion. Because evil comes down to the choice of love. God choose to create a universe in which his image bearers could make a choice for love. By giving them that choice, however means that both good and evil could be chosen.
And in so doing, sin can enter the world, and when sin enters, l death follows. And now we have the world we do. Sin’s infectiousness can be seen in all facets of the world around us. On the micro level of human interaction, we see sin’s infection through the abusive language we use, or the inner thoughts of deceit we contemplate. Personal sin, then effects others, through broken relationships of abuse and neglect. On the macro level, we see not just how sin infects our society, with the injustices, but also how that sin infects the very planted we live on. Humanity is not just infected, but through our sinful acts, creation itself has been distorted, and so the hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, floods, and all the intense and destructive events that destroy on a massive scale all have their roots in the sinful actions of humans. Because in Geneses 3, when the consequences of Adam and Eve’s sin are laid out by God, both the humans and the planet they live on, fell under the curse of sin.
So why is there evil, it stems, not from God himself, who acts in goodness, but by the actions of human beings. But even here, to the one that doesn’t want to take responsibility for themselves, God can’t win. He gave us the choice, it’s his fault, and we’re right back where we started, blaming God for not overriding our bad choices, which in turn destroys love.
But what we see in our world is a world of choice, and because of that choice, we see both good and evil. And the Bible doesn’t shy away from this choice and it’s ramifications. The Scriptures show the horrors of our choice of engaging with sin. From the men at Sodom paralleled with the men of Gibeah, who desired unnatural sexual relations with men, and who in turn abused women when they couldn’t get what they wanted. To Amnon and the raping of Tamar his sister. To the slavery of the Israelites, and the sacrificing of children to Canaanite deities. And the murdering of children by the hand of the king of Egypt and his parallel in Herod the king of Judah. The Bible doesn’t shy, nor gloss over, the horrific actions of God’s image bearers. The Bible doesn’t show us perfect people, who never act unlike the people that surround us today. That’s why the writer of Ecclesiastes states his famous line, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun (v.1:9, ESV).” And Paul echos this sentiment when he writes in 1st Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man (ESV).”
Yet though we’ve taken our ability to choose and corrupted this world, God has not abandon us. In Genesis 6:5-6 were told that, “5 The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thought of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD was grieved that he has made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain (NIV, 1984).” But even though God is grieved by our choices, he still works to bring us out of the eternal consequences of those choices. In every instance of evil choice, there’s a choice to turn back to God. When the evil of the world became so great, and God decided to use a flood as judgment, he gave an ark as a choice to escape the coming judgment, but only eight people got on. Later on when the nation of Israel was enslaved to the Egyptians, God sent a judgment of taking the first born child of the Egyptians and gave the choice to both the Israelites and their enslavers to put lamb’s blood on their door posts, so that the judgment might passover all those who obeyed God, but many of the Egyptians didn’t obey, most notably the Pharaoh. Again and again throughout the ages of human history, for every choice of evil that is before humanity, the choice to follow God’s path is laid out by God himself. The greatest of these choices is whether to follow Jesus, God himself come down to be the final great choice to follow God or not. Jesus is ark of Noah. Jesus is the lamb’s blood on the doorposts.
God does not gloss over evil, giving punishment for it, yet at the same time giving the choice to turn away from that evil, receiving forgiveness of the choice to sin, and saving us from the punishment that our evil choice has garnered.
God has not abandon us to the choice of evil, he has and all ways will present us with the alternative of his goodness. This is why Jesus spoke these famous words in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” That is the choice that is rooted in love, that God gives humanity the option of choosing him or not. To choose the path that leads to life eternal in joy and peace, or to life eternal of separation from God which leads to suffering.
But to the person that doesn’t like that answer, the answer that matches what we see in the world right now, God can’t win. God won’t win us over, when we want to blame him for being given the choice. God can’t win when we want to choose something other than him and not face the consequences of that choice. But God’s not out to simply win, he’s out to transform. Paul wrote to a slave-master these words in the letter to Titus, “3 For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. 4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life (3:3-7).”
God wants us to experience the best things he has made, but that experience is rooted in the choice of love. To love God by choice is true love on our part, and being given the choice to reject God’s love is true love on God’s part.
The answer to why is their evil in the world when God is all-good and all-powerful, is that humans have the choice and God won’t over power us, because choice is rooted in love and he would be unloving if he forced us to choose. In reality, this question seeks to shift responsibly from us to God, and so the counter question, the real question is, “why do I allow evil in this world?” Why do I not stand up for the oppressed as God tells me to (Psalm 82:3)? Why do I let injustice prevail (Isaiah 10:1)? Why do I let hate, and envy, and selfishness reign in me and through me bring destruction to the world (Romans 6:11-23)? If we really want to deal with evil in this world, we need to start with the evil I produce through my own actions, and the only way that can be dealt with is through the working of God’s Holy Spirit in us. And the only way we can receive the Holy Spirit is to make the choice to accept Jesus as our Savior.
Accepting Jesus as Savior is accepting that I have chosen evil. I have chosen my own way instead of God’s. I have chosen to sinful desire and wicked thoughts over God’s desires and his thoughts. And those choices have not only added to the evil that surrounds me, but is leading me to an evil end, where God will finally correct all evil in the lake of fire, which is an eternal judgment and punishment for the evil we chose. But Jesus on the other hand chose the things of God as he walked this earth. No judgment was warranted on his life, like it is on ours, and yet he was killed by the very people he came to save, and because of that willing death, he opens the path to choosing eternal life. And as the Scriptures says, “For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:13).’”
When we encounter instances like we did last week, where the men of Gibeah and the Levite priest’s action led to the abuse and death of an innocent woman, and we are faced with the question, why does God allow such things, the better question is, would we have allowed it? If we say, I would never, then we must look at our lives and if we are letting injustices happened, if we are allowing past hurts to hurt others now, if we are making choices that are evil, then we might not do the same actions, but we participate just as much in evil as those people did. The world of the judges isn’t a world unique to the past, but it is alive and well today, and the choices we make as individuals can either add to it, or bring about the alternative.
We are being called to choose the goodness of God. That choice is based in the love God has for every one of his image bearers. In a world that choses the things that stand against God, our choice to follow God’s word is the only thing that brings light into the darkness that oozes from evil choices.
So my challenge this week is two fold: If you haven’t, the choice of choosing Jesus as Savior stands before you. This is the central choice to turn to God and embracing his love for you. Our choices apart from God lead to the ever increasing evil in this world; we have no one to blame for that evil except for humans seeking their own selfish desire. But Jesus not only paved the way for us to make good choices, he also pays for the evil choices we have made. Sin is dealt with on the cross, because once we sin, we can’t make enough good choices to fix it. But until we choose to accept Jesus as our Savior and move forward following him, our choices will continue to add to evil in this world. So the choice is before you, God is calling you to choose good, which begins with Jesus.
For those who have accepted Jesus as your Savior, take a real look at the choices you have made in the last week. Take a piece of paper and make two columns, one of sinful choices and one of godly choices. In the godly choices column, put the things that you have chosen to do that God has said to do that you can back up from his word. In the sinful choices column put everything else. An example, in the godly column I could put, I encouraged a brother in their struggle. In the sinful column, I chose to hold anger against that politician or gossip about that neighbor.
In doing this let us not sugar coat our choices, making excuses on why we did it, but just accept the personal responsibly that we did it. Then take the paper before God and rip it in half. Take the sinful column and praise Jesus for the sacrifice he did to pay for those sinful choices, asking the Holy Spirit to transform you to make the choices he desires.
Let us be people who choose the goodness of God, because in doing so, we choose life, we choose joy, we choose peace, and we choose eternity in a future where sin no longer infects, and God’s love is fully experienced. Amen.
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