A lot of people wonder why there’s so much pain and suffering in our world. If God is in control (and he is), why doesn’t he prevent more pain? Why has he made a world in which evil, not only exists, but seems to often go unchecked?
One possible option is to think of God as a sovereign puppet-master. He pulls all the strings. If this is true, then evil exists because God wills it to exist. Evil, pain, and suffering are tools in the hand of a sovereign God who uses them to accomplish his purposes. In this view, creatures have no genuine freedom, for every choice is determined by God’s own sovereign will. My choices. Your choices. Everyone’s. If God truly pulls all the strings, then I think this is the only intellectually honest explanation available to us.
But what if he doesn’t pull all the strings? That’s the other option.
Some will immediately object to this view, arguing that this possibility undermines the sovereignty of God.
It doesn’t.
In fact, quite the opposite is true. To propose that for God to create a world in which he doesn’t pull all the strings would undermine his sovereignty is to make one of two statements about God’s sovereignty: either God can’t make such a world, or merely that he hasn’t made such a world. The second option simply begs the question. The first, that God can’t have created genuinely free creatures, directly challenges his sovereignty.
I recognize that many strongly believe that God hasn’t granted genuine freedom to humans. They are free to think that way, thus affirming my point.
If it is true that God has given free will to creatures (men, angels), then there are certain concepts that follow from this. Choices require options, alternatives. These options must be real and proportional. If God gives me the very real capacity to be a powerful source of blessing in my children’s lives, then, at the same time, there are few people with a greater capactity to harm them. It is nonsensical to consider a world in which I have genuine freedom to bless with no option to do otherwise.
It is feasible to consider a world in which creatures have no capacity to harm, only to bless, but not while maintaining genuine freedom. In this hypothetical world where nothing bad ever happens, God must be pulling all the strings.
Either …
- God pulls all the strings and only good happens and therefore God is responsible for good.
- God pulls all the strings and some good happens and some evil happens; therefore God is responsible for both good and evil.
- God doesn’t pull all the strings because he has created a world in which his creatures get to choose which strings to pull.
The first option (1) is clearly not the case. The following two options (2) and (3) are the only viable alternatives.
If we hold to (2), then we must determine that God, as the source of evil, is either (a) evil, or (b) good, but using evil to accomplish a greater good. Many believers who hold that God pulls all the strings actually balance these two options. Theologically, they affirm (b), while inwardly they retain a non-verbalized resentment toward the God they blame for their pain.
If we embrace (3), then we see that God is not to blame for evil, he is not the source of evil. Instead, we find that evil exists because free creatures have chosen it. This is the only option where moral responsibility of creatures makes any sense.
Once option (3) is chosen, another question follows. Why? Why has God made a world in which creatures have the capacity to cause so much suffering and pain?
The answer, I believe, is love.
Love is the kind of thing that must be chosen. You can have love-like behavior that is compelled, but you cannot have determined love. It is in the choosing that love is given. A world in which creatures cannot choose is also a world in which creatures cannot love. Pain and suffering in my life are a direct result of my choices, the choices of other men and women, or the choices of other creatures like fallen angels.
Could God have prevented all this? Yes. He is sovereign. But he hasn’t. Why?
It’s not because God likes to use pain to teach me lessons. That’s not it. It’s because God values love. A world without choices is a world without love. Yes, it also could be a world without pain, a world of well-behaved robots. I don’t want that kind of world. I’m convinced God doesn’t either.
Having said all that, I’m continually amazed at God’s resourcefulness. He has an amazing knack for redeeming, healing, and restoring. He doesn’t ever waste my pain. He brings good from it.
He doesn’t choose it, but he has chosen to make a world within which such things occur. And when they occur, he doesn’t merely explain my pain, he enters into it; he takes it upon himself. He chooses. He loves.
“And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” ” (Matthew 26:39, ESV)
21 Comments
I need to credit Gregory A. Boyd for helping me see this with clarity in his book “Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy”. While I do not agree with his understanding of God’s relationship with time and his understanding of God’s foreknowledge that follows from that, his insights on freedom and love have been most helpful.
Dude, get out of my head! Loved this post and love how you’re able to take abstract ideas and make them tangible. Love the gift God’s given you in writing!
While I have not abandoned my my beliefs on justification, how God saves, etc. Election is in the bible and we have to do something with it. But I do have deep questions in my heart. My little boys… I struggle with the idea that my loving Father would predestine them for destruction. I will love them, teach them the Gospel and believe that only the Holy Spirit can draw them, Jesus can save them, and Spirit seal them. But I cannot swallow my 2 little men being predestined for detruction. I am not sure where free will factors on that except that Jesus and the cross are bigger and stronger than our will. Make sense? Somewhere in my chasm of confusion lies choice, I’m just not sure where. My inability to reconcile leads me to glory in him alone.
“But I cannot swallow my 2 little men being predestined for destruction.”
Are we predestined for destruction or are all the sons of Adam destined for destruction, death and hell but yet, does God predestines His people to Him?
Joe – This is an excellent question. The way you are understanding depravity and it’s implications is a big improvement over double-predestination. You are really taking John 3:17 seriously. I like that.
I think where I deviate has to do with individual verses corporate election. Just as God sovereignly elected Israel as a nation while any individual could choose to convert (if from another ethnic origin) without any interruption of or addition to God’s sovereign choice of Israel as a whole, it seems that God’s election of a bride for his Son works in similar fasion.
That’s where I struggle. My Biblical hermeneutics have been so Christ-centric that I cannot see how God saved the entire nation of Israel prior to the cross of Christ. The way I am seeing the Old Testament, it is Jews and Gentiles alike who trust in God that one day, he will make all things right. Just like Jews and Gentiles as the NT saints, we trust in God that one day, he will make all things right.
That is my over-simplification on the salvation of the nation of Israel prior to the cross of Christ—namely it is the same as us. I do profess not to be a OT scholar. Am I missing something in the OT?
I think I see where we are talking past each other.
God elected the Jewish people in order that through them blessing would come to all the nations of the earth. They, as a people, were sovereignly elected to be the people through which Messiah would come. There is one plan for individual salvation for all men, Jew and Gentile alike: Jesus. So, when I speak of God’s election of Israel, this is not necessarily soteriological. Inclusion in God’s covenant with Israel does not then guarantee eternal life, for this is granted by faith alone. In the Old Testament this faith looked forward to Christ alone. In the New Testament this faith looks at Christ’s finished work.
God’s covenant with the Jewish people was about land, blessing, and descendents (and some other things as well). Inclusion in this covenant was through circumcision and obedience to Torah. God’s covenant toward the Jewish people in regard to land, blessing, and descendents remains intact to this day.
My point was not soteriological in nature. I’m simply comparing election in the Old Testament and New Testament, showing that in both cases, God has elected a people corporately where individual inclusion can be decided volitionally. This is about the way God elects (corporate verses individual) rather than about the result of that election (being Jewish verses having eternal life).
Great post. So many people get lost in these things because they truly do not know God. It is only a free people that can love God. That IS why He created us… to love Him, but He didn’t created us ALREADY in love with Him. Babies raised by wolves will tell you that coerced love is no love at all, but by my free will to seek and to choose, I can discover a love so deep that it breaks my heart not to dwell in it continually.
With all the brokenness and natural tragedies happening all over the world, this is a very timely post. And well done. Can’t explain just how much this resonates with me. Next week I’m beginning a three-week series called “Broken” that deals with this. Thanks for sharing, bro.
Alan,
You asked:
“A lot of people wonder why there’s so much pain and suffering in our world. If God is in control (and he is), why doesn’t he prevent more pain? Why has he made a world in which evil, not only exists, but seems to often go unchecked?”
Does Genesis 3 factor into the answer for this question? Ask this in another way, what is the weight of sin? Better still, what is the weight of our sin?
Joseph,
I think Genesis 3 has everything to do with it. The serpent chose to rebel. Adam and Eve chose to join that rebellion. God willed for them NOT to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. They chose to do so anyway. This is the genesis of sin and depravity.
So in your answer, this world is broken because of sin. We have the suffering and the pain and the death now but isn’t the mark of the Christian that we trust in God, trust in what he says and that one day he will wipe the tears from our eyes and we will be free from sin and death and get to live with in him with the fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore?
Yes. I agree. The mark of the Christian is that we trust God and anticipate New Creation. Exactly right.
Alan, awesome post! Well put and very much needed by everyone. Thanks again.
Freedom. Love. Choice. And more Love. Yes. Dunno if I could love this whole thing more completely. Sounds familiar. Makes me want tortilla soup. Makes me even more grateful for the ridiculous amount of Amazing I’m surrounded by. Thanks, man.
Totally get the Tortilla Soup thing. Nice.
Agree w- Alex You are definately gifted thank you for blessings us with your gifts!
Thanks Alan! You grapple with some very weighty pieces here. I appreciate your ability to break it down in a very Schaeffer-esc way. When are you going to write a book? I’m like you, I agree with Piper and Boyd on a lot of levels, but I’m more in line with your mixture and it’d be great to have it in a handy book
May I say how much I miss sitting in your classes and learning from you. Thankful for your blog!
“And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” ” (Matthew 26:39, ESV)
So…. Jesus Christ subjugated his own will to the will of Yahweh. And in Elizabethan English no less! Clever lad!
Was this predestined? Did the Trinity have a discussion before this transpired? Was the Holy Spirit saying, ” Oh no you didn’t!”? Was Jesus surprised? Was he “human” when he said this or “Triune God”? Who wrote this down?
I’ve heard a lot of preachers teach that the OT foretold this… “by his stripes we are healed” (to quote the greatness of Stryper… I mean Ezekiel).
Romans chapter 8 was the last straw in my harrowing journey from Christianity to… well, freedom. (Yes, yes, Hell is a bit harrowing as well. Suffice to say, I like my odds. Also, I know the cat who owns the joint and think I may get VIP treatment if I continue to play my cards right. Which I shall.)
Calvin was a misogynistic, anti-semitic nut job. And Swiss! Have you been to Switzerland? I have. Heck, I’ve been to jail in Switzerland. They are quite focused, the Swiss. And predominately on the wrong things. But again, Calvin was misogynistic and anti-semitic. However, so was Paul. And he (Calvin) did read the text correctly.
But that’s just my never so humble opinion.
Love you Alan. A lot!
Jace,
You throw out such a hodge-podge of claims that it’s difficult to know how to reasonably respond.
1. Jesus probably didn’t say this in English. Seems unlikely. Probably said it in Aramaic. Likely was written down a few years later in Greek. Probably transmitted through oral tradition prior to that.
2. Jesus, who is fully God and fully man, definitely prayed this prayer as a human. In becoming a man, God set aside certain aspects of divinity. For instance, God is omnipresent. In the incarnation, the second person of the Triune God became limited to specific geography. In the same way, he also laid aside his omniscience. He had to learn to eat, speak, go to the bathroom, etc. At this point, for Jesus to legitimately pray in terms of what might or might not be possible, it is clear that he wasn’t all that excited about a tortuous death and was exploring other options. But in the end, he chose. He loved. Hence my point and my inclusion of these verses to illustrate it.
3. Yes, that Messiah would come was predicted in the OT with amazing accuracy. That he would die and that by his stripes we would be healed was also predicted. You can read about that in Isaiah 53 (not Ezekiel).
4. Romans 8 is one of my favorite chapters in all of scripture. No condemnation. The Spirit. Adoption. The earth, myself, and the Spirit all groaning for resurrection, God’s unfolding plan, and the power of God’s love. It’s beautiful, really.
5. If there is a hell (and I believe there is), it won’t be a party and there won’t be a VIP room.
6. Calvin was brilliant on many levels and wrong about many things. Don’t blame Paul for this. Calvin once had a guy killed for disagreeing with him. Christian history is full of figures who represented Christ well in some aspects and misrepresented him in others. I believe I have a place on this list too. But I’m trying to grow. This is no argument against Christ. It simply proves our need for him.
7. If you and Calvin have both misread Paul, then you’ve actually rejected a Christianity that doesn’t exist. Wouldn’t it be a jolt to figure out that you’re simply not a Calvinist?
8. Paul was Jewish. He wasn’t anti-semitic at all. Much of my own love for the Jewish people and Israel is rooted in reading Paul. If anything, he prioritized the Jews. See Rom 1:16.
9. Paul’s writings about women are challenging for sure. For his own day, Paul elevated the role of women beyond anything known within the Judaism of his heritage. Compared to your own enlightened state, I’m sure he, at times, seems a bit archaic. Some application of history and culture makes much sense of the statements he makes about women and such information is readily available.
I love you too, Jace. A lot!