Perhaps the single biggest stumbling block to those who reject Jesus and the Bible can be summed up in the phrase, “If God is good why does he allow so much suffering in our world.” If you have been following my devotions for a while you might remember that I have addressed this issue in detail in three past devotions, September 7, 2020, January 30, 2021, and January 31, 2021.
To briefly summarize the short answer is that God wanted to have a loving personal relationship with each of us so He gave us free will. And with free will comes the choice to either love or hate God and to either do good or evil.
Before we even had a universe, God existed. Since God is complete and perfect he clearly wasn’t lonely but I believe he wanted to share his awesome love and goodness with others and that’s why he created humans – he wanted relationship. So, the logical question is how could God have a relationship with us that would be two-sided where he loves us and we can love him? The only way is to make us moral agents that can exercise free will. For without free will there can be no real relationship. Loving someone is always a choice and that is exactly what God gave us – the choice to either love him or to go our own way.
And here is the dilemma God was faced with. It is not logically possible to have free will and no possibility of moral evil. And here is the keep point – God is not the creator of evil. He created the possibility of evil – people actualized that potentiality. And it is important to note that God’s permission is not the same as God’s approval. Thus, God’s desire for relationship had to allow the possibility of evil. But praise God even though we know that God’s justice demands payment for evil and sin, his love offers pardon through Jesus Christ. Thus, the wonderful news – we broke relationship with God and he restored it through Jesus Christ! For the Christian, good ultimately will trump evil.
One other important reason God allows evil is to show us that no matter how much evil exists He is able to bring about something good in the process. God often allows current evil and suffering for a future good. For example, God showed us how the very worst thing in history, the death of God Himself on the cross, resulted in the very best thing in history – our restoration into relationship with God and eternal life with Him after physical death. At Christ’s crucifixion His disciples couldn’t see how anything good could come about – but it did! And don’t forget what God said to Joseph’s brothers when they intended to destroy their brother: for we read in (Genesis 50:20): “But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.”
Thus, we can see that there are good biblical answers to this difficult question of evil and suffering. But may I pose an even more challenging question to those unbelievers in Jesus and the Bible. Perhaps the famous American conservative radio talk show host and writer Dennis Prager summed up this even bigger question when he said: “The believer in God must explain one thing, the existence of sufferings; the nonbeliever, however, must explain the existence of everything else.”1
For these unbelievers explanations for the existence of everything else would include the following big questions of life:
• How did the universe come into existence?
• Does God exist? And if so, what is He like?
• Why does man exist?
• What is our purpose for being here?
• What happens to us after we die?2
Fortunately, the Bible, unlike the fields of science, history, philosophy, and ethics provides solid answers to all of these questions. In short the Bible tells us that God spoke the universe into existence, that God always existed from eternity past, and tells us that He is a loving and compassionate God. The Bible tells us that God created man in His image, to reverence Him and keep His commandments (Ecclesiastes 12:13), and to glorify and enjoy Him forever. Finally, when we die, if Jesus is our Lord and Savior we will spend eternity with Him in heaven.
Science can only tell us that we came from nothing and when we die we go back to nothing, and somehow in between these two states of nothingness we must find meaning and our destiny. History can only tell us what man has gone through but can’t answer any of the big questions of life. Philosophy takes its best guess at these big questions of life but often really has no clue about who we are, why we are here, or where we go after we die. And finally, ethics, without the guidance of the Bible, is at best guest work with often tragic consequences.
My friends we are so blessed that God chose to reveal Himself to us through the beauty and complexity of nature and the Holy Scriptures. Nature reveals the beauty and majesty of our wonderful creation, while the Bible reveals the specifics of who God is, why we are here, where we came from, and where we go when we die.
Without the Bible mankind can never know the answers to these deep questions of life because unless God chose to reveal Himself to us through the Bible we would sadly be clueless. In fact, there is something in all of us that longs to know answers and explanations to these big questions of life. So, what does man do, he invents religion as his way of reaching out and up to God. Unfortunately, religion is just that an invention of man. Only Christianity says that we can never know God unless He reaches out and down and reveals Himself to us. And that’s what the Bible is all about. God chose to reveal Himself to us through the pages of Scripture to tell us that we are sinners in need of a Savior and that Jesus is our only way to re-establish our relationship back with our Creator.
As Christians we have the answers to the deep questions of life as well as the answers to the hard questions such as evil and suffering. And remember that the Bible is our Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.
1 Apologetics Quotes | Norman Geisler, Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel, etc. | Norman Geisler, Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel, etc. (alwaysbeready.com)
2 10 Reasons You Can Trust the Bible | Archaeology, Prophecies + more! (alwaysbeready.com)