On faith, reason, and theology.

Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s So Great About Christianity is a rather perceptive defense of the Christian faith. In his chapter on the problem of evil, he wrote something that triggered a “deep thought” in me. Using the Virginia Tech massacre as a case in point, D’Souza posed the enduring question, “Why does a good God allow bad things to happen?” He writes,

“God didn’t kill all those people at Virginia Tech, the shooter did. Why, however, didn’t God intervene and stop it? This is a deep question about God’s role in the world. . . . Imagine if God had intervened to prevent the homicidal maniac from doing what he did. Leave aside the violation of free will. Just focus on the consequences. The shooter would be – by miraculous intrusion – disarmed, the shootings would have been prevented, and life would go on. In other words, life would proceed as if God had not intervened in the first place.“

D’Souza asks us to imagine if God did stop the shooter before he began his killing spree – perhaps by placing a courageous (and armed) security guard at the right place at the right time. The entire tragedy would have been adverted. And what would have been the result? “Life would proceed as if God had not intervened in the first place.” Amazing.

D’Souza’s last sentence triggered a thought: How many times does God mercifully intervene to advert tragedy in our world – without us ever knowing it? Perhaps the reason why another campus massacre was not in the news today is owing to God’s merciful, miraculous intrusion. Perhaps the reason why we did not hear of another natural disaster that killed thousands today is because God prevented it? God may have intervened but we just did not know it! How sad it is that God’s mercy and God’s outworking of divine power goes unnoticed and unappreciated – until something bad actually does happen.

So the earthquake in China, the cyclone in Burma or any of the senseless crimes you read about in the local paper are instances where God – for reasons usually unbeknownst to us – allows bad things to happen. But these tragedies should always be viewed in light of the countless instances where life “proceeds as normal” because of unsung, divine intervention. So when tragedy does strike, let it sound a humble reminder of the abundant mercy God has shown you and the world – mercy that often goes unnoticed.

As our church family is grieving the loss of a dear brother and fellow member this week, consider this recent post on the Desiring God blog. It is a brief commentary on John 9 concerning the suffering of the blind man Jesus encounters. It ends with these words: “This story reminds us that our perceptions and God’s purposes can be very different, even opposite. If we are going to be skeptical, it’s best to be skeptical of our perceptions.”

“Judge not the Lord by feeble sense
But trust Him for His grace
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.”
~ William Cowper, God Moves In a Mysterious Way

I preached today, calling Christians to boast in weaknesses because we know that Christ’s power is magnified in us when we are weak (2 Cor. 12:1-10). Recognizably, this is a hard message to apply because weaknesses – in the form of hardship and suffering – often lead people to doubt God rather than thank God.

In Tim Keller’s The Reason for God, he has a chapter responding to the question, “How could a good God allow suffering?” In it he describes how C. S. Lewis originally rejected the idea of God because of the problem of suffering but then came to realize that it was even more problematic for atheists. Lewis came to see that suffering in the world was actually evidence for the existence of God. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity,

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of “just” and “unjust”? . . . What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? . . . Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too – for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies . . . . Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple.

Keller goes on to write, “Lewis recognized that modern objections to God are based on a sense of fair play and justice . . . . If you are sure that this natural world is unjust and filled with evil, you are assuming the reality of some extra-natural (or supernatural) standard by which to make your judgment.”

The fact that we even recognize suffering as a problem already suggests that there exists a God – one who gave all people an innate sense of moral judgment. But even if we acknowledge this fact, boasting in our weakness (in the suffering we experience) is still not easy. We need God to do a supernatural work in our hearts, but at least we can know that God exists to do just that.

On August 1st, John Piper wrote a post on putting his daughter to bed after the Minneapolis Bridge collapse. His main point was “that God had a purpose for not holding up that bridge, knowing all that would happen, and he is infinitely wise in all that he wills.”

Recently, Roger Olson, professor of theology at Baylor University and well-known advocate for evangelical Arminianism wrote an article in response to Piper and like-minded Calvinists. He argued that the typical Calvinistic response to such tragedies is guilty of distorting the character of God. “The God of Calvinism scares me; I’m not sure how to distinguish him from the devil.”

Last week, Steve Hayes offered an exhaustive response that countered Olson’s article practically line-per-line. He does a good job of showing how Olson simply sets up Calvinistic straw men just to knock them down – without offering any real solutions besides “comfortable abstractions” and “airy, pillowy platitudes”.

Putting my daughter to bed two hours after the bridge collapsed

“Lest You Be Consumed” — the Tragedy in Minneapolis