Watch this lesson on YouTube, or listen to it here.
Access the slide deck here.
Why devote an entire class to the problem of evil?
1) This class has one goal: To get ahead of problems that will almost certainly appear.
2) e.g. Police Academy training
A) First, we would have classroom instructions.
B) Then, we would have practicals, which was role-playing through different scenarios.
C) We were required to do a certain number of ride-alongs, so we could watch how others did the job.
D) After the Academy, we had six weeks of riding with a FTO (Field Training Officer).
1) My FTO quizzed me nonstop about different situations.
2) When a call came out, he would run me through mental preparation drills. Where are we going? What is the best way to get there? How should we approach? What do we know about this kind of call?
E) The goal was to be prepared for all kinds of different situations when they came up. While you can’t replace actual experience, you don’t want to show up at a call and never even have thought about it before.
3) Discuss: Has anyone ever taken an ethics class? Business ethics? Medical ethics? Biblical ethics?
A) What was that class like?
B) Why do so many majors require some kind of ethics class?
C) We think about these things ahead of time, so not only do we know what, and how, to think, but so that we have worked through a situation and practiced it in our minds and are prepared to face it (or something like it) when it happens.
4) We are supposed to be prepared!
A) Jesus tried to prepare the apostles for what was coming.
1) Matt. 26:30-35 – “I will never fall away.”
2) Matt. 26:38-41. What did Jesus mean when he said, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
B) 1 Pet. 1:13 – “Prepare your minds for action.”
5) Warning: If we wait until we are confronted with any situation before we think about it, we have a much higher chance of failure.
A) This is why Covid was such a disaster for governments and churches. Nobody had prepared for all the what-ifs. Most of us had not even considered such a scenario before.
B) What happens if a person waits until they are pregnant out of wedlock before they think about the morality of abortion?
C) What happens if a person waits until they are diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer before they think about the morality of assisted suicide?
D) What happens if a person waits until they are in love with someone before they think about acceptable Christian behavior, or who is or is not a good person to marry?
E) “There are millions of ordinary Christians who hold that God is omnipotent, that God is perfectly good, and that suffering abounds in the world. At many stages of their experience as Christians, they do not feel that there is a problem. They have brief theological answers that satisfy them: suffering is the result of sin; free will means that God has to leave people to make their own mistakes; heaven and hell will set the record straight. Or perhaps they have not really had to think about these matters much at all. They know God loves them, and that is enough. Why bother your head about things you cannot understand, let alone improve? And then something takes place in their own life that jolts them to the core.”[1]
6) Here are several Facebook posts and comments (Jan. 2023) from someone I used to worship with who was not prepared to deal with the problem of suffering.[2] While this was terribly sad to watch, it is a perfect overview of the kinds of things we need to think about ahead of time.
A) God put the fruit in the garden knowing that people would eat it. He punished everyone for it. He created people He knows will not obey and will go to hell. He created hell. The only thing Jesus saves us from is God's wrath. If God could just chill with the being wrathful, Jesus wouldnt even have to have died.
B) Which is worse: to make humans incapable of sin or to let them sin and go to hell? If you have a fireplace and a small child, you put up barriers between the child and the fire so that the child does not get burned. It is Biblically true that all sin and fall short of the glory of God. If God doesnt like sin, then its a really bad design flaw that no one can do what He wants.
C) God is an abusive father. The choice is never relationship or no relationship. It is always relationship or burn in hell for eternity.
D) How can we be blamed if He doesnt talk to us for 2000 years? You might say, "God cant be in the presence of sin". Well, God talked with Satan. Even still, if God cant talk to us, it is not because he CANT talk to us. It is because He WONT talk to us. A loving father who just leave us a note (the Bible) and says "my regards." That isnt loving.
E) He cant inspire someone to say "God is love" and overlook the fact that He destroyed the entire world and will do it again.
F) God says He doesn’t tempt people, but we know he tested Abraham. He says he doesnt tempt people; but in Job, he just lets Satan come right up to Him and secure the right to tempt Job. If God consorts with the enemy (who God created btw), then what good is God?
G) The up and down of it is: if God is good, all powerful, and all knowing, He cannot escape the responsibility placed on him for all of existence. Every genocide, rape, child abuse, and mental illness He saw, he knew about, and decided not to intervene in. The fact that evil exists (whether in a moral or practical sense) is due to him. He could solve it. He could stop the harm. He could stop the sin, but he doesnt. That's what it boils down to.
H) If the way is wide and many there be that go by the way of destruction, then why? If God wants to save and have a relationship with everyone, he chose an objectively defunct way of doing it.
I) Announcement post: My friends, this is no happy occasion for me. In order for any two people to be able to relate to each other, honesty must be maintained. I am an atheist. There are a litany of reasons for this. In short, I do not have a positive view of God. The world I see does not seem consistent with the God described in the Bible. A God who cares supremely and has all power to take care of people does not fit with his actions or the way the world is.
7) It is not sinful or unreasonable to ask hard questions. Godly people and inspired writers asked hard questions.
A) Job 21:7-16
B) Jer. 12:1-2
C) Hab. 1:13
D) Ps. 73:1-14
8) The plan for this quarter
The quarter is divided into roughly three sections:
A) First, we will talk about the logical problem of evil and some of the theology associated with the nature of God and evil.
B) Second, we will talk about what the Bible says about WHY suffering happens. Remember, however, that as far as we know, Job never got to know why he suffered. Just because we can know why suffering happens doesn’t necessarily mean we can point to why I’m suffering at this very moment.
C) Third, we will talk about several responses to suffering. What do I do when… What do I say to someone when it’s their turn? We’ll also talk about several miscellaneous related subjects in this third section, such as justice, hell, forgiveness, etc.
[1] Carson, “How long, O Lord.”
[2] Disclaim: These are many of his stated reasons for falling away, but there was a girl involved.