Until recently, I was involved in a small group Bible study at my church. I have a few close friends who have been asking me why I haven't been showing up, but I can't imagine I'd be a good addition to the group anymore. I haven't yet "come out" as a non-believer to most of my church friends and I know if I go to this small group, I'll say something that reveals my lack of belief. I did find out, however, that they are reading Lee Strobel's Case for Faith. I had read the book several years ago and certainly wouldn't mind getting into lively discussion about it, but church small group isn't exactly the best place. I thought maybe I would find a summary of some of Strobel's main arguments and post my thoughts here.
Chapter 1- The Problem of Evil
Strobel interviews Dr. Peter Kreef, who replies with a few key arguments. One, "How can a mere finite human be sure that infinite wisdom would not tolerate certain short-range evils in order for more long-range goods that we couldn’t foresee?” He argues that since God claims to be all knowing and all powerful, he allows us to go through painful experiences because we learn from them and grow, or because He needed to accomplish something and pain was required in order for that task to be accomplished (as in Jesus' painful death for our absolvement). There are two main points in this argument I would like to address; God allows evil in order for us to grow and learn from painful experiences, and He allows evil in order to accomplish some greater good that we cannot yet see. Kreef uses the example of teaching his daughter to thread a needle; she stuck herself and experienced pain several times before getting right, but if Kreef had stepped in and prevented the pain, his daughter would not have learned. While I understand this argument for small struggles we have in our lives, I can't imagine this logic holds up for truly evil or terrible circumstances. For example, thousands of children in Africa starve to death because of drought each year; a problem which could be significantly mitigated if God would just send rain. Is God allowing this evil in order that the mothers can learn from the painful experience and trust God more? I would bet anything that a mother who has lost a child would gladly give up any character development she gained from the experience so that her child could live.
Secondly, Kreef argues that maybe God allows evil temporarily in order to accomplish something good that we cannot conceive yet. This argument is a bit of a cop-out because we can never know for sure all future outcomes of a given event. It is possible that every evil thing does somehow lead to something good, but that requires an enormous amount of trust or assumption with very little evidence. If I am expected to just believe that all the evil is part of a greater plan for good, then there should be plenty of examples either in scripture or in our everyday lives. When I look at the history of the Israelites, there certainly is plenty of evil, both committed by God's chosen people and to them. First, when God is trying to establish a nation with this people group, he commands them basically to wipe out everyone around them so they won't be influenced by their sinful ways. The entire scenario screams injustice to me, especially since we all are supposed to be born with a sin nature and God admits he chose his people through no merit of their own. So, in the grand scope of things, genocide is committed, a temporary evil in which we should later see the greater good that came out of that evil. However, throughout the Israelites' history they mostly encounter war and enslavement. Should we all be saying "Good thing God wiped out all those people groups or the Israel wouldn't be the established nation it is today."
Kreef also makes the argument that evil isn't really God's fault; its ours. He gave us the choice to sin, and therefore evil is caused by humans and God can't or won't do anything about it. First, I disagree with the assumption that if there was no evil, we would be robots with no choice and no free will. Were Adam and Eve robots while in the garden? They were allowed to live in paradise, tended to the garden and walked with God each evening. They had things to do, relationships to enjoy and things to hope for in the future (the next meeting with God, perhaps development of the garden they tended to etc.) It appears that they had the choice to engage with God (he didn't force them) but He was readily available to them if they were interested, which they were. Kreef also touches on the fact that having difficulty in life gives us something to do and that if there were no problems, we would be bored. This begs the question 'what does he expect heaven to be like?' If it is possible to exist in communication with God without sin and evil in heaven, why is that not possible on earth? A topic perhaps for another post is why did God cause all of us to be born with a sin nature? Why does Adam and Eve's action doom the rest of us? The argument that evil is caused by our sin also doesn't cover things like natural disasters. Why did God allow the earthquake in Haiti? Did hundreds of thousands of people die so that we could all go down to help and improve our character? Did God wipe out all those people because it was necessary in order to accomplish something else? If God is all powerful, why does he need to kill in order to do good?I have heard the argument that even natural disasters are apart of sin; that Adam's sin caused the world to be "broken" and set on a course that allows natural disasters, even though that wasn't God original design. That also sounds like God's fault to me. Why did Adam's sin have to be so catastrophic? God created the world and created the laws that govern it, so couldn't he have said, "It's alright Adam. I forgive you" instead of dooming the planet?
I'm quickly realizing that trying to pin down Christian apologists regarding God's evil is like nailing Jello to a wall. Kreef uses the argument that it's all part of God's master plan, which we humans are incable of understanding. We can't judge the creator, because being the creator gives God the right to do whatever he wants.
ReplyDeleteAnother one I've heard is that we can't declare God to be good or evil, God just "is," sort of like gravity. You can't say gravity is good when it keeps you from floating up into space, then turn around and say gravity is evil when it causes a busload of children to speed out of control down a hill and go over a cliff.
What I find interesting is that Christians are very quick to declare that God is good, great, loving, caring, etc., in spite of all their arguments that say we are incapable of evaluating his actions.
I suppose if people were still as superstitious as they were 2000 years ago, they would just accept the stories in the Bible as proof that God will reward you if you obey him and punish you if you don't. But when the Bible starts looking like a series of fear-based tactics to get people to believe in God, the believers need to justify God's apparently evil actions somehow.
I like the "nailing Jello to a wall" analogy. It's my new favorite.
ReplyDeleteMy problem with Kreef's argument is that it does not even begin to address suffering in the non-human world. Why do animals in the natural world, completely apart from human beings' knowledge or experience (and for millions of years before our existence) suffer and die horribly? What does that have to do with our fallen condition? How could this be part of a plan for character development, or some greater good, when it happens apart from us altogether?