|
The Only
Believable
Reason
for Not Believing
by David
R. Larson
The
following paragraphs are drawn from a sermon presented at the new Centennial
Hills Seventh-day Adventist Congregation at Las Vegas, Nevada, in the
United States, on July 27, 2002.
I believe that
there is only one believable reason for not believing. Most
objections to Jewish, Christian and Islamic faith are either misplaced,
superficial or answerable. There is one question that is difficult
to resolve, however: In view of the pervasiveness
of the evil of pointless pain and suffering, how can we believe that God
is both wholly loving and supremely powerful?
This question
is as old as the story of Job in Scripture and as new as the crimes and
disasters reported in this morning's newspapers. It is theoretical
enough to attract the finest scholars, yet practical enough to rivet the
attention of those who are not academics. Adults can feel the force
of this query, and so can many children. It is often the first
theological question we ask; just as often it is also the last.
We cannot hope
to answer this question in full this morning, if ever! Nevertheless,
we can consider six suggestions, each one based on a portion of Scripture,
that might help us as we continue discussing it. Three of these
suggestions focus on how we might consider this cluster of issues,
the other three emphasize what we might think. Taken
together, all six suggestions may make a positive contribution to
our continuing conversations.
How to
Think About God and Evil: Three Suggestions
1. John
11: 35: Sometimes it is more important to feel than to think.
When Jesus arrived at the grave of his friend Lazarus, he wept. He
did not launch a lecture on "God and Human Suffering." He
entered into the feelings of those who were mourning. They wept, he
wept and they were all the better for it.
This is
usually the best thing to do when people are in the midst of intense pain
or sorrow. If we can remove the sources of their discomfort without
making things worse, we should. If we can't, we should empathize
with them. Insofar as it is possible and appropriate, we
should help them bear their burdens by identifying with their feelings and
by offering practical assistance. Scripture says that there is a
time for everything. In times of acute pain, whether physical or
emotional, theological discussions are not helpful. Sometimes they are
even damaging.
2. Luke
13: 1-5: Sometimes it is more important to think than to feel.
When Jesus and his friends learned of two disasters, one caused by
deliberate wrong doing, the other by an inadvertent accident, he
repeatedly asked them "What do you think?" Like every good
teacher, Jesus pressed and probed. He was not content to think for
his friends. He wanted them to think for themselves. He wanted
them to activate their minds, to use their imaginations, to examine and
evaluate their assumptions. Jesus wanted his closest friends to
reason as widely and deeply as possible about the most challenging issues.
Let us note,
however, that Jesus prodded his friends in relatively comfortable
circumstances. They were in a relaxed
setting. They had time to speak, listen and ponder
without feeling rushed. Although each one probably knew the bitter
taste of loss, at those moments no one was overcome by sorrow. These
are the kinds of circumstances we try to create in our classrooms and
churches. In such settings, it is not merely permissible to think
openly and honestly about difficult issues; as the example of Jesus
demonstrates, it is imperative that we do so.
3. John
9: 1-5: We may find it helpful to expand our list of possible
answers and questions. Some of the friends of Jesus asked him
whether a man was blind because he or his parents had sinned.
"Neither" Jesus replied. These friends of Jesus thought
they had considered all the possibilities, all two of them! Jesus
worked with a longer list of options. His friends needed to consider
some alternatives that had not yet crossed their minds. They needed
to think more comprehensively and imaginatively.
This story
also reveals that these friends of Jesus weren't even asking the same
questions Jesus was. They were interested in the past; they wanted to
know what factors in this man's history had caused his blindness.
Jesus was more interested in the future; he wanted to know what could be
done that would improve things from here on out. The past was
important to Jesus, but only in so far as it helped him bring about a
better future.
This is my
understanding of what Jesus meant when he said, according to the Gospel of
John, that the man "was born blind so that God's works might be
revealed in him." This interpretation is based on an analysis
of the Greek text, particularly the little Greek word hina that can
mean both "in order that" and "with the result
that." It is also based upon everything else we know about
Jesus and his picture of God.
As I
understand it, Jesus was not saying that God caused this man to be born
blind in order that God would be praised when he was healed but
that this would be the result. At this juncture, Jesus held, the
most important question is not, "how did we get into this
situation," but "how do we get out of it, and what will be the
consequences if we do?" The friends of Jesus had a list of both
answers and questions that was too short. Sometimes this is also
true of us!
What to
Think About God and Evil: Three Suggestions
1. Romans
8: 22, 23. We do well to keep in mind the ecological pervasiveness
of pain and suffering. When we think about these matters, we
often begin with our own sorrows and incrementally widen the circle to
include the heartaches of others. In these two lines from his letter
to his friends at Rome, Paul the Apostle reasons the other way
around. Like a woman who is experiencing the agony of an excruciating
delivery, the "whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until
now," he writes. Almost as an afterthought, he adds, "and
not only the whole creation, but we ourselves."
When thinking
about the evil of pointless pain and suffering, and even more so when
experiencing it, it is easy to become preoccupied with our own
discomforts. These lines from Paul's letter invite us to cultivate a
greater sense of proportion without denying the significance of our own
sorrows.
We suffer, so
does every other human person, and so do countless other living beings
with whom we share planet earth. As indicated in our frequent
"why me?" questions, when we suffer we often feel isolated and
unusual. Yet few things link us more securely with others,
human and non-human alike, than the experience of suffering. Each
experience of suffering is unique, experiencing suffering isn't.
2. Romans
8: 28: In two specific ways, we may find it helpful to update our
understandings of how God prefers to work in our lives. This
sentence from Paul's letter to his friends at Rome comes down through the
centuries to us in at least three different forms. The one that
makes the most sense to me, all things considered, reads as follows:
"We know that in all things God works for good for those who
love God, who are called according to his purpose" (New Revised
Standard Version, alternative translation. Emphasis supplied).
In other words, in every event, no matter how disappointing or difficult, God is a
positive but non-coercive influence who fosters health and healing.
This is good news!
This good news
requires us to think of God as one who would rather participate than
intervene. A deity who intervenes lets events unfold pretty much on
their own and now and then steps in to change the direction of
things. By contrast, a deity who participates is active in every
event, not merely some of them. I think the second alternative is
how Paul understood God's activity in our lives.
If so, our problem is not that God
is preoccupied with other things until we make known our
difficulties. It is that we are so often blind and deaf to God's
active and positive presence in every moment of every life, even the most
painful ones.
This good news
also requires us to think of God's participation in every moment of every
life as non-coercive. A coercive deity unilaterally determines what
happens and precisely how it will occur in every detail. Those who
view things along these lines continue to discuss whether God unilaterally
determines all events or only some of them. Either way, the tendency
is to think that God specializes in overruling and overriding
others. The opposite is actually the case: God prefers to
co-operate with others, not to overpower them, to foster their freedom,
not to frustrate it.
We therefore
possess a double opportunity: (1) increasingly to think of God as
one who would rather participate than intervene and (2) increasingly to
picture God as one who would prefer to do so non-coercively in ways that
respect our freedom. If we take advantage of both opportunities, we
may discover that we pray less for God's presence in our lives and more
for our own willingness and ability to discern it, and to follow its
guidance.
3. Romans
8: 35-39: Even though we may sometimes feel as though God has
condemned or abandoned us, this is not so. In these lines, also
from his letter to his friends at Rome, Paul cites every circumstance he
can think of ("hardship," "distress,"
"persecution," "famine," "nakedness,"
"peril," "sword," "death," "life,"
"angels," "rulers," "things present,"
"things to come," "powers," "height,"
"depth," "anything else in all creation") and insists
that not one of them, and no combination of them, can separate anyone from
God's love.
I have a
hypothesis as to why we sometimes feel condemned or abandoned by God when
we suffer. Just as our bodies often prompt us to eat too much food
and drink not enough water, so also they often do not clearly and
consistently distinguish the feeling of grief from the feeling of
guilt. Our bodies are marvelous in many ways; however, in this
respect a number of us might wish for updated editions!
Perhaps it is
often appropriate to feel "sad" when we feel "bad,"
particularly when we have good reasons to feel the latter! The
opposite is less frequently the case, however. It is possible, and
often essential, to feel grief about something without
necessarily feeling guilty about it. If a number of us do not
improve our ability consciously to distinguish these feelings, we may
continue to feel condemned or abandoned by God on difficult days, when in
fact nothing could be further from the truth!
Are These
Suggestions Valid?
This morning
we have not tried to provide a comprehensive interpretation of God and the
evil of pointless suffering; however, we have surveyed six suggestions,
three as to how we might we might consider this cluster of issues
and three about what we might think. This is a start and only
a start; nevertheless, it is enough to prompt an appropriate
question: Are these suggestions sound? Are they valid?
There are a
number of ways theoretically to test such suggestions, all of which are
helpful. Yet even if it is not the most important one, often the
most convincing test is the practical one of experience. For this
reason, I wish for myself exactly what I wish for you: the
willingness and ability to test these and similar suggestions in daily
life.
I anticipate
that if we take such suggestions seriously, particularly if we live our
lives as though God would rather participate than intervene, and that God
prefers to do so non-coercively as one who respects our freedom, over time
the outcomes will more than confirm their validity.
Why not give
it a try?
|