Taking On Tough Issues Raised in the Real World

In This Chapter

Sorting through the problem of evil

Uncovering absolute and relative morality

Viewing Darwinism from a Christian perspective

Have you ever had poison ivy? Just the thought of it makes me itch all over. If the truth be told, I’ve never had poison ivy – a fact I attribute in large part to a story my mom told me growing up. When she was young, one of her friends was so convinced that she wasn’t allergic to poison ivy that she put on a bathing suit, found a patch of it, and proceeded to roll through it, covering her entire body. Unfortunately for her, like most everyone, she was allergic to the three-leafed plant o’ poison. Breaking out all over in an itchy rash, she spent the next few days in the local hospital recovering. Growing up, I learned two lessons from that story. First, never take poison ivy lightly. Second, my mom didn’t always pick the most intelligent of friends.

As I explore tough issues related to Christianity and the world, I take the same approach as I do with poison ivy – I don’t treat them lightly. The world has some thorny questions that you can’t playfully roll around in. This chapter focuses on three important topics that non-Christians and Christians raise concerning Christianity. (Flip back to Chapter 15 for a discussion on three Church-related thorny issues.)

Wondering Why Bad Things Happen

There will come one day a personal and direct touch from God when every tear and perplexity, every oppression and distress, every suffering and pain, and wrong and injustice will have a complete and ample and overwhelming explanation.

-Oswald Chambers, Shade of His Hand (Discovery House Publishers, 1991)

If you turn on the evening news, you see bad things happening every day. A 4-year-old boy gets a rare virus that has no cure. Sweet 6-year-old Janice gets deathly sick when she accidentally eats cleaning detergent. A 34-year-old mother of four is tragically killed in a car crash. Terrorists hijack a plane and cause the deaths of hundreds of innocent people.

The problem for Christians is how to reconcile the inescapable fact of evil in the world with the God they believe is in control. After all, as I discuss in Chapter 7, the Bible says that God is all-powerful, all-loving, and all-knowing. But how can evil coexist with a God who has these awesome qualities? If you turn to the Bible for answers, you see that it tells how evil came into the world and how to deal with it (see Chapter 4), but it doesn’t talk much about why God allows the bad stuff to happen. Consequently, from a logical standpoint, one can explain this dilemma in one of five ways:

God wants evil to happen. So he’s not all-loving.

God hates evil, but he can’t do anything to prevent it. So he’s not all-powerful.

God hates evil and would like to prevent it, but doesn’t know when it’s going to happen. So he’s not all-knowing.

God hates evil and actively prevents it from occurring. So the evil that you and I experience must, therefore, not be real but must be an illusion.

God hates evil and has the power and foresight to stop it, but to achieve a greater good or for some other reason, he doesn’t stop all evil from occurring.

None of the first three are consistent with biblical teaching. And compared to the wealth of evidence that supports a God who is all-powerful, all-loving, and all-knowing, no compelling reason to assume their validity exists. The fourth option isn’t realistic, because evil is very tangible, and every person experiences it at some point. That leaves the final option – that God can stop evil, but he doesn’t always do it. And that’s what biblical Christianity claims is true.

Christians believe that God hates evil and that evil is never part of his deliberate will (what he intentionally accomplishes). However, because of the nature of the universe, he permits evil to occur through his permissive will (what he allows to happen). At the same time, he’s not a God who has his hands tied behind his back. When a circumstance is contrary to his deliberate will, God intervenes in the world and overrides an evil from occurring or cancels out its effects. The Bible shows time and time again that prayer is a definite factor in God’s intervention in the world with evil and suffering. To see how this plays out, check out another of my books, Christian Prayer For Dummies (Wiley).