Evil, Pain and Suffering by Paul Ross Right at the outset I want to make it perfectly clear that suffering does not invalidate the existence of God; it does not nullify, negate or refute His existence any more than termites in a house invalidate the existence of an architect. Suffering and evil is a major problem for us (this I concede), and from our present perspective I would say almost an insurmountable one. However, we need to understand that we are caught in the relativity of time in which everything is naturally (from our perspective) going to seem larger than it really is. But when our finite existence is placed into its proper perspective and context we will begin to realize that our short existence - that is the whole human species’ existence – is a micro-dot of ink on the spectrum of eternity that if we could see on a line it would be that small that it would seem invisible or non-existent. So from God’s perspective we are caught in the processes but God sees the end result and although we think we may do a better job than God we need to further realize that God’s infinite mind has chosen the processes that result in the best final outcome from an infinite amount of scenarios and choices that an infinite mind has access to. What’s more, unless we have omniscient (all knowing) minds and understand the bigger picture in relation to the universe (and us) we will never sufficiently grasp or understand the ultimate purpose of His chosen processes. I’m of the opinion that God has reasons that are beyond our comprehension; what is God’s end result? Is it our happiness and pleasure that He is exclusively concerned with, or could it be of a higher, more transcendent order such as our development and maturity into beings befitting of His likeness and glory? The Argument Raised There are many that say that if God is all good, He would DEFEAT evil, and that if God is all powerful He could DEFEAT evil, so therefore reason since evil is not DEFEATED God is not all good and all powerful. The only problem with this conclusion is that it concludes that because God hasnt defeated evil YET that He NEVER will; however the Bible makes it perfectly clear that evil and suffering has a measured dispensation of allotted time that will be brought to a close in the future. But more to the point, in a universe that is the result of impersonal mindless irrational amoral processes from whence comes the ultimate grounding for good and evil, right and wrong, justice and injustice in the first place? One cannot really ultimately call something evil or good unless there is an ultimate standard of goodness and justice behind the universe, for in an impersonal universe consisting of NOTHING MORE than dumb-irrational-mindless-amoral-unguided-matter we should not expect such things to have any ultimate meaning. After all, if the whole universe came from nothing and for no reason and will ultimately add up to zero why should I subscribe to your illusion of morality (right & wrong) or justice in the first place? If we are just the mindless chemical by-products of an impersonal irrational amoral accidental freak cause then ultimate reality could not care less about our feelings of good and evil, right and wrong. This is because all such categories would have no basis in such an impersonal irrational amoral universe and would therefore all be equally and ultimately illusory. To say that evil exists, one must appeal to and invoke a real moral law as a standard to distinguish between good and evil. However, if there is no moral lawgiver (God), then there is no moral law. So, in raising the argument of evil to disprove God’s existence, one is, in fact, assuming the existence of God to provide one’s moral objections validity and a real moral grounding outside of mere individual subjective opinion. Because one cannot ultimately point to evil and suffering as evidence of God’s non-existence without first invoking His very existence to give one’s moral categories an ultimate anchor in reality. To say that one thing is wrong and another unjust, one must first invoke an ultimate standard of wrong and right, justice and injustice to give such judgments an anchor outside of mere subjective illusion; but here’s the rub – an impersonal universe has no such ultimate standard. If God does not exist, then all such appeals to wrong and right, good and evil, justice and injustice are simply words that are without any ultimate meaning. If God does not exist, then all such cries against evil, suffering, injustice and pain are mere products of a mental and perceptional illusion that has no basis or grounding in ultimate reality. Whatever is, “just is”. Now, you may find yourself emotionally and mentally disagreeing with such a dose of sobering realism. However, in a mindless impersonal universe, your thoughts are, after all, just irrational electro-chemical impulses and the responses of a brain that is in no way at all governed by the laws of logic or rationality. But we are made in the image of God; we are morally hard-wired and so find ourselves in violent reaction against evil and injustice in the world. Even the atheist cannot help but act in a moral context; he can no more cease acting this way than a dog can help barking or a fish can stop swimming. Man, in his departure from God, would no longer be able to hide in nature, because now even nature itself would rebel in its elements. Nature would be at war with man in his war against God, ever reminding him of his finality, limitation and mortality. It isnt about to get any better, in fact, the earth shall become more intensely hostile and increasingly catastrophic in its behavior as the day of God’s rule approaches. This, from the divine perspective, should foster humility regarding our relationship with God, thus leading to the logical steps towards wisdom and personal redemption. Imbalanced Viewpoint Many people often try to use the argument of suffering and evil as a justification for God’s non-existence. However, in so doing, they lay a philosophical trap for themselves. For whom do they blame for all the good in our world? Whence comes the light? Whence comes all that which is true and beautiful? For if evil is raised as an objection to invalidate the existence of God then who do we blame for all the good in the world, all the love, compassion, empathy, kindness, altruism, giving and sacrifice? From whence comes the food that we eat? The eyes that we see with? The parents and children we love? The air we breathe? The sunshine on our faces? The friends that we enjoy and a gazillion other wonderful things? To me it seems that the skeptic has tilted the scales of good and evil to one side so as to distract us from the good, true and beautiful in an effort to invalidate the existence of God. Do you hate evil? If your answer is yes then you are in agreement with God in regard to the problem of your own self-centered sin nature and the harm that it causes others. Jesus makes it quite clear that our eighty or ninety years of life are going to be punctuated with difficulties, problems, ordeals, troubles and hardships. In actual fact, struggle is the very sign of life. It’s a battle. Life is not hassle-free. A living animal struggles; a dead one knows no such thing. Mere existence implies complication; it guarantees difficulty. Jesus never guaranteed us a problem-free life, and His very own life on earth was highlighted with trials and difficulties. However, He did not leave us in the dark concerning the true cause of why we suffer, but many of us, not willing to look into the light, have struggled in our blindness and ignorance, misunderstanding at every level the true nature of human evil and pain. If there’s anything wrong with the world, it’s us. When we look at the mountains, the sea, and the stars in the night sky, we see only the beauty and grandeur of God. Everything around us moves in wonder and mathematical magnificence, from the flowing tides to the revolutions of the planets — all things bear witness to the stability and serenity of our Creator. Is there pollution? We created it. Are there wars? It is we who are fighting. Is there hunger? It is we who are withholding. Is there cruelty? It is we who are uncaring. Are there divisions? It is we who are not united. Is there self-centredness? It is we who are self-serving. (I think at this point it’s important to point out that we live in a fallen Creation – there are natural disasters – but to understand why we need to go back to the first few chapters of Genesis and realize that this world is fallen because of man’s sin. If you don’t take this into account then it’s not possible to make sense of a beautiful world but one that is marred by sin and not the original perfect creation God started out with and declared “good”.) It should be plain to see that in resisting God, we fundamentally embrace all that which is contrary to His nature — and all that which is contrary to His nature is in opposition to the way things really are now. We might not like this, but we cannot escape from its reality without incurring moral and spiritual ramifications. As much as we may disagree with God’s arrangement of things, we can no more erase and smudge out the moral reality than we can any other governing law — whether it is the law of gravity, entropy, motion or electromagnetism. Now, we may really believe that we have got away with a whole lot of things unnoticed and therefore we place no priority or importance on morality. However, it would be foolish of me not to mention in passing another governing law: the seed that is sown will continue to grow long after the sower had forgotten the sowing. Jesus made it perfectly clear that there will be a day of reaping — a day of accountability. We may be crossing our fingers that we have got on the train unnoticed and without a ticket (metaphorically speaking), but let us remember the journey has not yet ended — we are still on the train and it would be a premature celebration indeed for us to claim our escape before the last platform came into view. We may continue to resist God and occupy ourselves with the many diversions and distractions that this present world provides while treading underfoot that still, small voice of truth. But, like the pilot who continues his course while ignoring his plane’s warning lights, we too will be heading for an inescapable collision if we continue to proceed on our journey in neglect and denial of God’s warning lights. Duplicitous Motives My dear friend, it has been my continual experience, when engaging with people that reject God, that they do so not out of some superior argument that disproves His existence, but rather, from an underlying dispositional reluctance and discomfort in regards to self-will and self-determination. We all instinctively know that any form of surrender entails a perceived compromise of our freedom, and we, self-centered creatures that we are, really do want to sit on a throne with ourselves at the absolute centre. And telling ourselves that there is no God provides us, at some level, the necessary warrant and justification to do as we please, in the way that we want, and in many cases this is the underlying reason for the individual’s rejection of God. “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.” ― Thomas Nagel The atheist says that he/she doesnt believe in God due to a lack of evidence, but the Bible says that atheism is the end result of suppression (Romans 1:18). It seems we have an impasse here. In the world of psychiatry, suppression is defined as a conscious exclusion of unacceptable desires, thoughts, or memories from the mind. So the active rejection of God may be a phenomenon happening at the subconscious level - existing but without one’s awareness - so as to provide comfort against the unwelcoming idea of a Creator that would directly challenge the exalted, moral, self-autonomous rule of a created being. According to the Bible, the gravitation towards atheism is directly empowered, undergirded and fueled by emotional reasons and motives – whether they are subconscious, conscious or unconscious - that in turn provide powerful impulses and barriers against God at every level of expression. If this is true, then the adoption of atheism as a worldview and philosophical position may not in fact be the end result of enlightenment, rationality, reason and intelligence. Rather it may be the end result of disorder and rebellion, manifesting in delusion and a gut-instinct, knee jerk-rejection against God. Atheistic unbelief at its basis is a closed door, double bolted by a judgment. It’s not that unbelief renders God’s power impotent but rather unwelcome. God, in accordance with human free will, will not force Himself upon a person. In this sense, the person is debarring himself/herself from the potentiality and possibilities that such an encounter will afford. People who pretend not to believe in God (reject God), debar and alienate themselves through their own hidden agendas that in turn creates their own path in life. The first step in helping such a person towards a contrary worldview is to have long talks about humility supplemented with challenges against the philosophical, materialistic a priori prejudices that undergird and bolster their present rebellion. The Solution: Get Rid of Religion It has been my personal experience when talking with particular dissenters of the Christian faith that they almost always passionately launch into a moral attack against Christianity by pointing out the historical misconducts of certain Christians. They do this to undermine Christianity’s credibility and thereby deem it fundamentally wicked. I’m personally surprised how many particular individuals (in their talks, debates and books) have launched into these kinds of emotional attacks against certain historical crimes of history such as the Crusades, the Inquisitions and the Salem witch trials, while remaining virtually silent in regard to the atrocities committed by movements and individuals that have championed an atheistic agenda. One needs to look at the recorded facts of such Christian atrocities, for the facts are not as grim as argued by the opposition. The infamous Christian crusades were perpetrated by a large group of individuals that pledged no allegiance to Christ on any personal level but were simply a motley crew of struggling peasants and farmers that were hired by the Pope to take geographical positions of land for wages. (Furthermore, they were a defensive war in response to the spread of Islam and their invasions and attacks on the Holy Land and brutal slaughtering of Jews.) The Inquisitions that occurred over the space of four centuries killed a maximum of two thousand individuals. That is around five people a year. The Salem witch trials were responsible for the killing of twenty individuals. While all these things are truly horrible, if not embarrassing, for the present-day Christian, they are mere fairy floss in comparison to the terrible brutalities perpetrated upon individuals through the schemes and political systems of atheistic tyrants and dictators. All the religions of the world put together have in 2,000 years not managed to murder as many people as have been killed in the name of atheism in the past few decades. Over 100 million people have been killed in state authorized purges by a long line of atheistic leaders: 65 million people killed in China, 20 million in the former USSR, 2 million in North Korea, 2 million in Cambodia, 1.7 million in Africa, 1.5 million in Afghanistan, 1 million in Vietnam, 150 thousand in Latin America by leaders such as Mao, Stalin, the Cambodian communist leader Pol Pot, the Albanian communist leader Enver Hoxha, Prime minister of Cuba Fidel Castro, Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu, Kim Jong-il, … On and on the list goes. It is understandable that atheists are not at all comfortable with these facts of modern history. They shy away from such conclusions and tell us that the evils done by such leaders were, in fact, merely secondary to their atheism, and not because of it. In other words, the fact that these leaders happened to be atheists had little to do with the evils that they perpetrated upon Christians. This is the false and deceitful claim that Richard Dawkins champions. It is an argument without any basis or grounding in history but is rather pure atheistic fictional fundamentalism. The brutal truth of history stands, unchallenged and unmovable; all these regimes and leaders were under the direct influence of the ideas of Karl Marx. They were driven by a grand vision to impose an ideological package onto the whole world. Part of that package included the eradication of religion, which translated to systematic atheistic, materialistic indoctrination in all state schools as well as the closing down of all places of worship. It incorporated the subsequent pursuit and state arrests of all enemies of the state followed by their torture and/or death. Religion, according to Karl Marx, was a crippling mass delusion that impeded social progress. Marx proclaimed that religion and God were the “opiate of the people,” and that it made the masses passive and stupid, blinding them to social injustice, thereby preventing the advancement of civilization. To Marx, the solution was simple - religion had to be eradicated so that the creation of the new man and the new utopia, freed from the shackles of God and religion, could be birthed, leading to the liberation of man and the advancement of civilization. Jesus said, “My Kingdom is not of this world.” Throughout the whole of human history, war and conflict has always gone on — wherever the heart of man is found, intolerance and killings are also found. Ancient and modern history reveals a world where there has always been conflict, conquest and war. This is true whether the empires were Persian, Roman, Mongol, Japanese, Russian or the Empire Strikes Back, and whether this conquest was at the hands of Alexander the Great, Nebuchadnezzar, Pompey the Great, Hitler or Genghis Khan. “You cant say that civilization doesnt advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.” - Will Rogers The enforcement of atheism had to be implemented at all cost. Religion was deemed illegal, paving the way for relentless waves of political state killings. The leaders of the communist fraternity justified the bloodbath by declaring that the ends justified the means. Accordingly, they could do whatever was necessary to bring about a “workers’ paradise,” a cherished saying that was lauded by prison officers as they beat, tortured and murdered the God-fearing. To them it was plain to see that these Christians were a really ‘bad’ thing because they stood in the way of atheist-communist utopian expansion. Moreover, the Christians were considered fully conscientious class enemies of the state and the congress declared unrelenting war against them. This was coupled with anti-religious education to be instituted from pre-school through to university. Marx wrote that the abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of man is a requisite for their real happiness. In his famous poem, Invocation of One in Despair, he wrote: “I wish to avenge myself against the one who rules above” and further on: “I shall build my throne high overhead.” In another poem called The Player, Karl Marx wrote: “See this sword? The prince of darkness gave it to me.” The darkness continued as atheistic regimes treated religious believers as subversives and abnormal and relegated them to psychiatric hospitals and death camps. The state that envisioned this grand new world, (the new utopia freed from the shackles of God and religion) recruited a mass of volunteers, including party members, members of the Komsomol Youth Movement and army veterans. They were indoctrinated to absorb themselves in anti-religious persecution and harassment under the slogan: the struggle against religion is a struggle for socialism. Marching under this banner were atheistic groups such as the Society of the Godless, The Union of Belligerent Atheists, The League of the Militant Godless, The Union of the Godless, The Young Pioneer Organisation, and others. They were involved in nationwide atheistic propaganda and acts of terror; although they stressed that it had nothing to do with atheism or a godless new utopia. Do not be duped, friends. Communism was and is an explicitly atheistic worldview. In Article 37 of the Albanian Constitution (1976), it stated: “The state recognizes no religion, and supports atheistic propaganda in order to implant a scientific materialistic world outlook in people.” Jesus cautioned against such political abuse when he stated emphatically to Pilate, the Roman governor: “My kingdom is not of this world.” Jesus was making it as clear as possible that his kingdom would not come about through political enforcement or via ethical legislation. The Scriptures remind us that true Christians are ‘aliens’, whose ultimate citizenship is not of this world (Phil. 3:20; 1 Pet. 2:11). The non-nationalistic, multi-ethnic church is now called to live as salt and light in this world, revealing by lives of love, peacemaking, and unity that they are Christs disciples (John 13:35). The Jesus of history is just as much against the Inquisitions and Crusades as any contemporary respectable person would and should be today. Jesus stressed that all acts of brutality and cruelty have nothing whatsoever to do with His message of love. He stated that all those that commit these atrocities in His name will face the harshest of judgments on that great day. Atheists today like to besmirch Christianity but are blind, dumb and deaf when it comes to their own dark history and, almost always, confuse Christianity with the actions of radical Moslems. But if Christianity is so evil then where today is the Christian Bin Laden? Where is the Christian Saddam Hussein? Where is the Christian Hamas or Hezbollah? Where is the Christian Palestinian Islamic Jihad or the Christian PLO? Where is the Christian nation today that runs along the lines of Iran or Iraq or North Korea? Where are the Christian suicide bombers? They do not exist. Instead, all that we have are a list of over 400,000 Christian charitable organisations worldwide that make it their full time occupation attending to the world’s needy, desperate and poor, all done to help people in the name of Christ. To conclude, when we look at the supposed problem of suffering and evil in the world from a biblical perspective we find that it is not really a problem for Christians in terms of explaining God’s existence – it is a massive problem for professed atheists. Far from being proof of God’s non-existence, suffering is one of the greatest proofs for His existence – because without God there is no basis for objective morality. So in order to challenge the Christian worldview atheists actually have to borrow from it because it is in the Christian worldview alone that anything can be called objectively morally wrong.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 02:51:32 +0000