February 19, 2006

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What’s Wrong with the World?

Romans 8:18-25

            Here’s how the argument goes.  Did God create everything that exists?  The Christian answers, “Yes.”  Well, if he created everything that exists, where did evil come from?  How can a good and loving God create a world where “natural” disasters often take an extensive toll on human life and suffering?  Why are there famines and floods, illness and death.  Since God created everything that exists, and evil exists, therefore God created evil.  Consequently, God must be evil.  The only other option is that there is no God, and everything, including what we think of as evil, is mere chance and happenstance — a cosmic accident that has no rhyme or reason.  Those who use this argument want to say that either there is no God or, if there is a God, he is evil.  Another possibility is that he exists, and he would like to do something about the evil in the world, but he is not powerful enough to do it.  The power of evil is greater than the power of God. 

            These are important questions which need to be discussed.  When a tragedy occurs I often hear people say, “Why would God do something like this?” or “Why would God allow this to happen?”  Good people, Christian people, ask these questions, not just atheists or skeptics.  How could God allow something like the Holocaust to happen?  Why didn’t he stop the terrorists on 9/11 since it was in his power to do so?  Why did God allow the tsunamis in the east and the hurricanes here in the west?  Why do we have it so good and many parts of the world live in such poverty?  Why are our babies healthy and well fed when in other places mothers hold starving babies until they die?  People want the answer to questions such as, “Why did my marriage fail?  Why did my father abuse me?  Why did my child die?  Why did as many as 1,800 people die in a mudslide this week?”  What is wrong with the world, and why is there evil in it? 

            We need to think carefully about this, and so let’s first consider this thought: Evil is more than just the absence of good.  A friend recently sent me a story about a professor who was trying to prove that God does not exist.  He was using the classic argument I referred to in the beginning.  The professor said, “Did God create everything?  Does evil exist?  If so, then God created evil, and since we are what we do, God must be evil.  And since Christianity presents God as good and loving, the Christian faith must be a myth.”  One of the students in the class replied: “Professor, may I ask a question?  Does cold exist?”  “Of course,” came the reply, “You can feel it.”  “But professor, the law of physics says that cold does not exist, it is simply the absence of heat.”  Again the student asked the professor, “Do you believe that darkness exists?”  “O course,” he answered again, “We have all experienced it.”  The student responded, “But isn’t darkness merely the absence of light?  You can study light, measure the weight and speed of the particles of light.  You can use a prism to break light apart and study the wave lengths of its various colors, but you can’t study darkness, because it is simply the absence of light.  In the same way, isn’t evil simply the absence of God?  Is it not just like darkness and cold, a word that we have created to describe the absence of God?  God did not create evil.  Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God present in his heart.  It’s like the cold that comes when there is no heat, or the darkness that comes when there is no light.” 

            It is a great story, and it does have some truth in it, but it can also be misleading.  For this reason: evil is not a negative or passive force.  It does not exist in a vacuum.  Evil is real. 

            When God created the world, he stepped back and looked at it all and the Bible says, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:3).  The creation which God made was good, but something has spoiled it.  As the Scripture today said, the creation was subjected to frustration; it is in bondage to decay, and it is groaning as if it were experiencing the pain of childbirth.  And we are groaning too as we wait for God to give the final answer and deliver the world from evil.

            It was not something passive that spoiled the world, but something that was actively at work to spoil it.  It was not the absence of God, for God has never been absent from the world — therefore evil cannot be just the absence of God.  It was something else.  We call that something “evil.”  The Bible speaks of evil as being a personal force.  It talks of the Satan or devil.  So, the question is: “Since the devil exists, didn’t God create the devil and therefore create evil?” 

            This leads to the second point: Evil exists because God created moral beings.  Both men and angels were given free will — that is, the ability and freedom to choose between good and evil.  In the beginning Satan was an angel.  In fact, he was the greatest and most glorious of all the angels.  But it was not enough for him to be the highest of all created beings.  He wanted to take God’s place.  The Bible describes what happened next: “And there was war in heaven.  Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.  But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven.  The great dragon was hurled down — that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.  He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him” (Revelation 12:7-9).  The greatest created being became the lowest created being because of his rebellion against God.  God did not create Satan as evil; he created a good and great angel of light who had moral freedom and will.  Satan is not another god or spiritual being who rivals God in power.  Satan once was an angel of God who fell from God, and led others to follow him in his rebellion.  The Bible says, “And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home — these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day” (Jude 1:6).  Lucifer, the angel of light, became Satan the ruler of darkness.  The angels who fell with him became what we commonly refer to as demons — twisted evil caricatures of what they at one time were. 

            So God did not create the devil as the devil.  He created a good, powerful and glorious being who used his moral freedom to rebel against God.  And he is the source of much of the evil, tragedy and hardship in the world.  But there is another source, and it is again from free moral agents — the men and women of earth.  We have joined in the devil’s rebellion and revolt against God.  We have agreed that we want to be free from God and have our own way.  We want to be like God without being subject to God.  That was the sin of Adam and Eve.  The Bible tells what happened: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.  He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden”?’  The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, “You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.”’ ‘You will not surely die,’ the serpent said to the woman.  ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’” (Genesis 3:3-5).  When Adam and Eve fell to the temptation of wanting to be like God and rebelled against him, something terrible happened to them and the world.  Theologians call it the “Fall.”  Adam and Eve’s appearance changed.  They were no longer naked and unashamed; they were covered and ashamed.  They hid from God.  The world around them changed.  It lost much of its beauty and friendliness.  Nature was now set against man.  His work would become hard and there would no longer be a paradise, but an unpredictable and dangerous world.  Life would be hard in this world that had now set itself against God.  We can actually feel the world groaning under the weight of sin. 

            So God did not create evil, but he did create free moral agents who chose evil.  And you and I have joined the rebellion.  Every one of us in our own lives have in some way said no to God and yes to sin.  The result is that sin and evil entered the world through us.  It began with a rebellion in heaven, it culminated in a rebellion on earth with the earth’s first human inhabitants, and it has continued down to this very day.  God did not create evil, but he did create moral beings who could choose evil.  God could have prevented evil, but it would have been at the expense of having no truly moral beings in the universe.  It would have meant that you and everyone else would have been a robot who would have had no choice but to obey God.  It would have meant that no one could be bad, but it would have also meant that no one could truly be good.  You would not have freedom of will.  But your freedom is so important to God that he is willing to tolerate the evil in the world for a time rather than deny it to you.  If you are not free to rebel against God, neither are you free to love him.  God did not create an evil world, but he did create a world with a potential for evil.  He created a free and moral world, and when people have the power of choice they will sometimes choose the wrong thing.  And when people choose the wrong things, it affects the world around us.  There are consequences to our behavior which affect us personally and the world around us in general. 

            What this means is that each of us struggles with evil every day in some way.  Temptation happens to the best of us.  C. S. Lewis once wrote: “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.  A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means.  This is an obvious lie.  Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.  After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting it, not by giving in.  A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later.  That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness.  They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.  We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it.” 

            So if your are struggling with temptation, congratulations.  If you are finding the struggle difficult then you are doing the right thing.  The more you resist evil the more you understand its power, and if you always give in then you never know the joy of a victorious life, and what it means to live for God. 

            But there is good news here.  The third point is: Evil is coming to an end.  Why is the world groaning in the pains of childbirth?  Because it knows it is about to give birth to a new world.  Why are we groaning inwardly?  Because we are waiting eagerly “for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”  We are groaning in hope and expectation, and this hope leads us to live triumphantly.  Philip Yancey wrote: “The people of God are not merely to mark time, waiting for God to step in and set right all that is wrong.  Rather; they are to model the new heaven and new earth, and by so doing awaken longings for what God will someday bring to pass.” 

            This is what all the saints have understood, that this world is not all there is.  There is more to come.  God is not through with the world.  He will accomplish what he started out to do.  This is why the Bible talks about Abraham saying, “By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.  For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:9-10).  No matter how good this world was or how well life treated him, Abraham knew that something better was coming. 

            The apostle Peter said, “But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.  So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him” (2 Peter 3:13-14).  So our attitude should be based in hope.  Evil is on its way out.  A day is coming when there will be a new world where evil will no longer exist.  The Bible tells us what it will be like: “Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst.  The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat.  For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water.  And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 7:16-17). 

            Fred Craddock explains it this way: “There is at the center of reality a groan.  And the closer to the center you live, the more you will hear it and the more you will share in it: the center of creation, the center of the church, the center of ministry, the center of those things that belong to the people of God, and the center of the human race.  The closer you move there, the more you will hear the groan — the more you will share the groan.  And you will recognize it. . . .  Paul says that the groan in creation, in us, in God, is a groan not of death, not the death throes; but a groan of childbirth.  God is giving birth to something new.  God is doing something fresh.  God is creating new heaven, new earth, and by the time I have mastered the groan, I will have to exchange it — for a WOW!” 

Rodney J. Buchanan

February 19, 2006