Answering the “Whys” of Life

I hear too many horror stories. Of course, that’s part of the ministerial profession and I’m thankful I can be available to those who trust me with their personal tragedies. But I never get past hearing about the injustices and sadness of others. Yet, at the same time, every story I hear is familiar in a way. After relaying stories of betrayal, death, misfortune, disease, and suffering, people always take the next logical step: they ask me questions of theodicy. Theodicy is just a fancy theological word for the issue of why evil exists in a world where a caring God is present. I recently finished reading this book and at the end, the author puts down some candid thoughts on this very issue. He says:

I am a theist…and must reconcile my belief in God with the existence of evil. In a word, I cannot. In spite of years of thinking and teaching about this topic…I cannot reconcile the existence of a good God with the existence of evil…I cannot fathom why God does what he does, and thus I will never understand why this God permits evil. The author of Job had to accept his ignorance and trust in his God. So do I.

I talk to people constantly who struggle with their faith in the midst of having these very same thoughts. I also find that behind the hardened exterior of the most objective atheist exists a story of personal betrayal or pain. But it’s those that follow Christ that worry me the most. They say, “I’ve committed my life to God. Why was he not there in the midst of my pain?” Good question. I’ll let you in on a secret. I don’t have an answer for that. Maybe I should, but I don’t. Sure, I’ve got some good theories. We’ll sit down sometime and I’ll tell you about them…and watch your eyes glaze over after 15 minutes of theologizing. But I don’t have one simple, definitive answer. Our world teaches us that by understanding something, we can diminish it’s power over us. Education eradicates poverty or war or suffering, etc. But in moments of tragedy, knowing why something happens rarely numbs the pain of loss. That’s when it becomes clear that we don’t need answers as much as we need healing.

I can tell you this. God wants to build relationships with us that are bigger than the “why” questions we face. You see, from what I can tell, God wants to create a dynamic, living, growing level of interaction with you that eclipses that pain and confusion felt in a particular moment. Intimacy that will swallow the circumstances of a moment in time.  But there’s a catch: Christianity, to withstand heartache and tragedy, cannot be nominal. It must be the center of existence for living. Otherwise, tragedy will easily swallow a fledgling faith. The question is not “Why did this happen, God?” but rather, “Is my love relationship with God strong enough that it can absorb the “whys” and unknowns of living on this planet?” In other words, is my trust in God unfazed by what I don’t understand about God? And that, my friends, is why theology only works inside the context of dynamic relationship.

Let me explain it this way. I am a minister at a church. My “job” is to foster a deeper walk with God for my congregation and create chances for them to know God in a more intimate way. But that role as a minister is only as valuable and fulfilling as my role as husband and father. The husband and father roles are much more important. I know, I know. I’m ”called” to the ministry, right? Nope. I’m called to be a Christ-follower, a husband, and a father. My professional life is only a result of those deeper, more important relationships. Some truths have such significance that they inform and shape our understanding of our world. And that’s what matters in the midst of the “whys.” I believe confusion and pain and tragedy in our lives can take a back seat to the overflowing abundance of God’s grace and love. The unknowns can be swallowed up in the definitively known: the security of God’s unconquerable love. That may not tell you why tragedy happens…but it may help you survive in the midst of it.

On God and Haiti

Brian over at συνεσταύρωμαι: living the crucified life has put together some valid thoughts on God, the problem of evil, and Haiti. My favorite quote: “One thing is for sure, according to the Apostle Paul, creation longs to be free just as bad as we do.”

Simple and honest, it’s worth a read…

http://sunestauromai.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/on-god-and-haiti/

As with all natural evil, the reality of Christianity is not found in reflecting upon why God allowed it to happen, but rather becoming a reflection of God by asking, “What are we going to do about it?”

God and Tornadoes

Excellent post by Jonathan that tackles the issue of God’s use of natural disaster in the Old Testament:

http://jonathangroover.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/old-testament-prophecy-and-tornadoes/

I Like Atheists

I came across an atheist site the other day and read for a while. Most of what I saw was standard atheist fare. But I perked up when a well-meaning Christian on the site asked the others for proof from the Bible that God wasn’t perfect. The atheists happily obliged with several answers, two of which interested me.

I like atheists. They are usually good people. And many of the questions they pose concerning Christianity are valid. I have had some of the same questions and have aggressively searched for good answers to them. But in the end, religion requires faith. Even if I could “prove” ninety-nine percent of Christianity to a person, they would still have to believe in one percent. That one percent is whopper though – it encompasses things like the existence of God and the problem of evil.

Most atheist writings I’ve seen are deeply concerned with the character of God. What makes God worth following? Good question. I have found that most atheists are not full atheists. Actually, some would like to believe in deity. But most atheists reject a particular view of God. They see him as controlling of all events, yet unwilling to take responsibility when bad things happen or refuse to alleviate human suffering. Any “educational” lesson humans could derive from a God ordained disaster is immediately swallowed up by the horror of death, famine, disease, etc. Is the death of thousands worth any morality lesson? Honestly, I don’t blame them for rejecting that view of God. That’s not what I’ve come to understand about God anyway.

I have chosen to answer two objections of God given in response to the Christian on that site. The first is biblical and the second philosophical. These answers are out there for anyone to read. Unfortunately most atheists are too busy reading very angry books by Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris that reinforce their predetermined assumptions. And we know everything in those books is “spin-free,” right? Christians often do the same, refusing to interact with people who disagree with them and reading only Christian material for the sake of “strengthening their faith.” But our books aren’t spin-free either.

Response #1: God is not good because Jesus cursed the fig tree (Mark 11).

The gospel of Mark doesn’t tell us why Jesus did this. And it does seem kind of mean – what did that fig tree do to him anyway? Mark says that Jesus looked at the tree and only found leaves. What Jesus actually saw is that there were no taqsh on the fig tree. No what? Taqsh - the Palestinian word for little nodules that appear on a fig tree in early Spring, six weeks before the real figs start to grow. When Jesus saw only leaves (no taqsh), he knew the tree would never bear fruit again. It was barren and taking up ground where a perfectly good fig tree might bear fruit to feed the people. So Jesus cursed it, not because he was being rude or showing off to his friends, but because he was being eco-friendly. Jesus, the environmentalist. How about that? The misunderstanding occurs when people don’t look for the context that informs the biblical passage. How many more of those do you think we might have missed?

Response #2: God is not good/violent because Jesus got angry at the merchants in the temple (Matthew 21).

This response philosophically assumes certain things about God, mainly that a God who gets angry can’t be perfect. God must be free of all passion since passion denotes weakness. If you believe that, you’re not worshipping the God of the Bible, you’re more into what the Peripatetics and the Stoics were into. Atheists often assume (because Christians who don’t any different have told them so) that the Judeo-Christian God is calm, serene, and unaffected by the actions of human beings. The big fancy word for this is impassibility. People who believe this way allegorize the passages in the Bible where God gets angry, changes his mind, and expresses distress over the actions of humans. Unfortunately, to do this (and everyone from Tertullian to Luther has) is to cheapen the biblical view of God. Jesus was angry because the merchants were exploiting the worship of the Jews for money – people made in God’s image. That made him very angry and he did something about it. If anything, by acting out of emotional response similar to that recorded in the OT prophets, anger supports the divinity of Jesus, not dismisses it. And that’s the reason God is so great – he cares enough about you to get angry over injustice.

I’m not against atheism in the least. Most of them (not all – those who have made atheism their religion) are open to honest discussion as to why God does the things he does. They’re inquisitive and honest and authentic in their search. Christians should run to dialogue with them. If they ask something you don’t know, please don’t tell them they are going to hell. Go look it up and answer their question! They are on a journey…just like you.

Did God Kill My Friend?

I had a friend pass away this past year unexpectedly. The initial shock was overwhelming – I didn’t cry for a couple of days until I overcame the numbness. This guy was older than me and was influential in my understanding of the Christian faith as well as what is appropriate within a ministerial setting and what may not be.  For that reason, I looked up to him alot. Sometimes when people pass away unexpectedly and they were particularly “good” people, you feel like the planet was robbed in some way – like we’re all gonna be worse for his absence and, in many ways, the town I live in will be.

However, in the course of all the eulogies and funeral stuff, there are bound to be people asking questions about why such a saintly man would pass away, someone who seemed to be significantly impacting his community for God. Most people assume that God in his omnicausal deterministic theocentric bliss - if he didn’t cause the tragedy - certainly allowed it for reasons unknown to the rest of us. As a pastor I used to have a sick feeling in my stomach as I attempted to explain why God didn’t save someone’s life. Honestly, theology has not produced any satisfactory answers and any answer I supplied a family member would have logical “holes” that they would discover if they thought long enough about it.

Some theologians believe that God is his sovereignty has ordained every single detail of life (including the bad parts) for his mysterious purposes. I know, I know…even writing it down makes it look ridiculous. That viewpoint is quite laughable and never makes any practical sense to anyone.  All it does is make people hate God silently when honestly they probably would fare better by hating him out loud. Peripatetic influence upon Christianity certainly played a large role in defining the attributes of God, but what really strikes me about such a position is that it runs cross-grain to the supposed goodness of God. If God is good, why does he cause or indirectly sanction evil? Others endorse the free-will model yet still believe that God “knows” everything that will occur in the future.  Atheists (for good reason) say, “If God knows about bad stuff but still lets it happen, where’s the love in that?” Good point – I certainly don’t blame them for asking. Process theologians emphasize the dependence of God upon humanity to the point where God is basically helpless in the face of potential tragedy. Obviously that belittles the sovereignty of God, which is not acceptable either.  Open theism attempts to rid Christianity of its Hellenistic presuppositions but still allow God to “be God.” It’s probably the healthiest theodicy available (and the one I most readily subscribe to), but it takes too long to explain to people when they are crying in your office.

So, what do you do? I think the best thing to do is to tell them you don’t know the answer. Because no one really has the answer. Wrangling over compatibilism or levels of omniscience does jack squat for everyday people.  As much as I would like for them to care, they just don’t. I’m finding myself, after seriously studying methods of theodicy, adopting the same position.  There’s something refreshing about saying, “I don’t know.” In the particular case of my friend, there were circumstances of free-will that led to his demise. Why were they not cancelled out by some other natural complexity within temporality? Beats the heck out of me! If God didn’t ordain the event, why didn’t he respond to prayers of loved ones for protection “quick enough” to save his life?  I have no clue. Sometimes, it’s appropriate to say, “It wasn’t the devil, and it wasn’t God, it was (in this case) a traffic accident and that’s all.” In previous years I would have shied away from that comment because I would not have defended God in saying it. As if saying “I don’t know” leaves God exposed in some way. But God really doesn’t need me to defend him, does he? 

All theology (including atheism) is speculative and informed by the personal experiences of the theologian. The theologians who fail to grasp this are the scariest ones. Once you determine that theology doesn’t have to be objective in order to be valid, you’re well on your way to finding answers to some difficult questions. Chances are that in the process, you’ll aggressively pursue God to understand your relationship with him as well. And the answers to questions like, “Did God kill my friend?” lie in a relationship, not in a system.

Did God kill my friend?

Okay…you don’t know me and I don’t know you. I’m generally not one to engage in small talk so let’s ponder the mysteries of life together, shall we?

I had a friend pass away this week unexpectedly. The initial shock was overwhelming – I didn’t cry for a couple of days until I overcame the numbness. This guy was older than me and has been influential in my understanding of the Christian faith as well as what is appropriate within a ministerial setting and what may not be.  For that reason, I looked up to him alot. Sometimes when people pass away unexpectedly and they were particularly “good” people, you feel like the planet was robbed in some way – like we’re all gonna be worse for his absence and, in many ways, the town I live in will be.

However, in the course of all the eulogies and funeral stuff, there are bound to be people asking questions about why such a saintly man would pass away, someone who seemd to be significantly impacting his community for God. Most people assume that God in his omnicausal deterministic theocentric bliss - if he didn’t cause the tragedy - certainly allowed it for reasons unknown to the rest of us. As a pastor I used to have a sick feeling in my stomach as I attempted to explain why God didn’t save someone’s life. Honestly, theology has not produced any satisfactory answers and any answer I supplied a family member would have logical “holes” that they would discover if they thought long enough about it.

Some theolgians believe that God is his sovereignty has ordained every single detail of life (including the bad parts) for his mysterious purposes. I know, I know…even writing it down makes it look ridiculous. That viewpoint is quite laughable and never makes any practical sense to anyone.  All it does is make people hate God silently when honestly they probably would fare better by hating him out loud. Peripatetic influence upon Christianity certainly played a large role in defining the attributes of God, but honestly, what strikes me about such a position is that it runs cross-grain to the supposed goodness of God. If God is good, why does he cause or indirectly sanction evil? Others endorse the free-will model yet still believe that God “knows” everything that will occur in the future.  Atheists (for good reason) say, “If God knows about bad stuff but still lets it happen, where’s the love in that?” Good point – I certainly don’t blame them for asking. Process theologians emphasize the dependence of God upon humanity to the point where God is basically helpless in the face of potential tragedy. Obviously that belittles the sovereignty of God, which is not acceptable either.  Open theism attempts to rid Christianity of its Hellenistic presuppositions but still allow God to “be God.” It’s probably the healthiest theodicy available, but it takes too long to explain to people when they are crying in your office.

So, what do you do? I think the best thing to do is to tell them you don’t know the answer. Because no one really has the answer. Wrangling over compatibilism or levels of omniscience does jack squat for everyday people.  As much as I would like for them to care, they just don’t. I’m finding myself, after seriously studying methods of theodicy, adopting the same position.  There’s something refreshing about saying, “I don’t know.” In the particular case of my friend, there were circumstances of free-will that led to his demise. Why were they not cancelled out by some other natural complexity within temporality? Beats the heck out of me! If God didn’t ordain the event, why didn’t he respond to prayers of loved ones for protection “quick enough” to save his life?  I have no clue. Sometimes, it’s appropriate to say, “It wasn’t the devil, and it wasn’t God, it was (in this case) a traffic accident and that’s all.” In previous years I would have shied away from that comment because I would not have defended God in saying it. But God really doesn’t need me to defend him, does he? Idiots who say stuff like, “Hey, if God will prove his existence to me by levitating this table” are experts in missing the point. 

All theology (including atheism) is speculative and informed by the personal experiences of the theologian. Once you determine that theology doesn’t have to be objective in order to be valid, you’re well on your way to finding answers to some difficult questions. Chances are that in the process, you’ll agressively pursue God to understand your relationship with him as well. And the answers lie in a relationship, not in a system.