Defending God

Maybe you've heard of the term, "theodicy". The term is built on "God's Justice" (theo = God, and dice = "just") and is the term used for the particular apologetic field of the vindication of God's goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil. Many anti-Christians see this as the Achilles Heel of Christianity. They suggest that it is not possible to have the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, good, loving, holy God of the Bible while still allowing for evil in the world. I say "anti-Christian" because it is precisely the God of the Bible that is the problem here. You see, if there is a god, it can't be the God of the Bible because He would have to be lacking something of the list I just made. It's possible, for instance, that evil could exist for an omnipotent, omnipresent, good, loving, holy God who just doesn't know everything (omniscience) and, as such, has had to deal with stuff He didn't anticipate. Or it could be that an omniscient, omnipresent, good, loving, holy God simply lacks the power (omnipotent) to stop evil. Maybe an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, loving, holy God exists who isn't actually good, and that would explain it. Or there is always the possibility that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, good, holy God isn't actually loving and just doesn't care enough to fix things. In other words, something on that list is problematic. Conclusion: God doesn't exist as the Bible portrays Him.

Lots of effort has been expended trying to answer this problem from lots of directions. Liberal theologians have decided that the God of the Bible does not exist. Instead, the biblical God isn't the actual God, but simply a construct of human myth. So their "defense" is actually a capitulation to the opposition and, calling themselves "Christians", they fall on the anti-Christian side. Others are more subtle. There is the process theologians who claim that God is in process. He is changing all the time, trying to reach His full potential. He has made mistakes but is getting better and better. In other words, no, the God of the Bible ("I change not") doesn't exist, and these, too, become anti-Christians. There is another group known as Open Theists. This group is much more generous. They uphold a God of the Bible who is omnipotent, omnipresent, good, loving, and holy. The only thing on the list that He lacks is the classic omniscience. They claim that He cannot know what has not occurred, so He cannot know the future. This God is always following up on Man's poor choices, making the best of things as well as He can. He does a fairly good job of it, but He's not to blame for evil because He didn't know it would happen. The problem with this is that the Bible says otherwise, and this perspective becomes anti-Christian as well. Any perspective that says, "The God of the Bible doesn't exist" either overtly or by omission is anti-Christian. All of these, trying to rescue God from the evil He seems to have allowed, end up an enemy of the God that the Bible portrays.

There are more benign groups. Most of these agree with all of those attributes ... essentially. They might say, "We believe in the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, good, loving, holy God of the Bible. We just believe that He didn't want to stop evil because His ultimate goal was to give Man autonomy. Man's Free Will is sacrosanct, and God must allow evil if He is to allow Free Will." In this perspective, the value of Free Will outweighs the cost of evil. This group will argue that God is Sovereign in His removal of His Sovereignty by making Man sovereign over himself. The problem, unfortunately, is that this doesn't get God off the hook. Even if God gave Man Free Will as the ultimate good thing, He seems either unable or unwilling to stop evil. Beyond that, He will still need to ultimately deal with this Free Will problem if He is ever going to wind up this Creation thing like He says He is. So God is back under the gun. Others try giving short answers to big problems. "Well, we can't really understand God, can we? I mean, 'The secret things belong to the LORD' (Deut. 29:29)." Perhaps this is true, but it is not an answer to the dilemma. Or, "Sin wasn't God's fault; it was Adam who sinned." While this may be true as well, God is still not off the hook because He must have known that Adam would sin and He didn't prevent it. Then there's, "It wasn't God or Adam that was the problem; it was Satan. He was the originator of evil." That, too, may be true, but we're still left with the same problem. If God knew Satan would fall, and threw him to Earth, we're back to the same problem.

I believe that the problem is in a wrong-headed question. Antagonists ask their questions from the perspective of Man at the center. Man decides what is "good" and "bad". God fails to conform to Man's value system. God, therefore, is bad. And, too often, believers answer from the wrong perspective. They remind me of one of Jesus's exchanges with the Jewish leaders. They wanted to know His authority to teach. He responded with a question. "The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?" (Matt. 21:25). Notice that the chief priests and elders never addressed the question. They only considered the outcome. "If we say, 'From heaven,' He will say to us, 'Why then did you not believe him?' But if we say, 'From man,' we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet" (Matt. 21:25-26). Their answer was "We don't know" because it was the only answer that would produce a result they could tolerate. I think that too often Christians' answers are based less on what there is to see of the truth and more on what makes them feel good. If, however, the Bible is the Word of God, then we should be able to answer the question from what God says and it will be accurate. We may not feel good about it, but it will be accurate.

The problem, you see, is that the defense of the justice and goodness of God is wrong-headed to start with. It assumes that we get to judge it. The Bible, on the other hand, assumes that God is at the center of all things. All things, then, must be judged by Him. He is not subject to judgment because He is the source of determining what is good and bad, right and wrong. What does God's Word say about God and evil? It says, "Our God is in the heavens; He does all that He pleases" (Psa. 115:3). It says, "He is unchangeable, and who can turn Him back? What He desires, that He does" (Job 23:13). It says, "The LORD has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble" (Prov. 16:4). God says about Himself, "I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things" (Isa. 45:6-7). Later in the same chapter He anticipates the "but" that must follow and says, "Woe to him who strives with Him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, 'What are you making?' or 'Your work has no handles'? Woe to him who says to a father, 'What are you begetting?' or to a woman, 'With what are you in labor?'" (Isa. 45:9-10). God, it seems, has no problem for taking responsibility for allowing evil. He doesn't seem to mind at all that He is being blamed for the existence of evil. Instead He says, "Yeah, so?"

The answer, then, would seem to be this. How can an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, good, loving, holy God of the Bible allow evil? Because He wants to. Any questions? That would be Paul's response. Any questions? "You will say to me then, 'Why does He still find fault? For who can resist His will?' But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?" (Rom. 9:19-20). Oh, we can suggest some reasons as to why He allows evil. We see in Rom. 5:8 that "God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." No sinners, no demonstration of divine love. Paul says in Rom. 3:5 that our unrighteousness reveals God's righteousness. In Rom. 9:22 it is abundantly clear that it is God's will to demonstrate His power and wrath on "vessels of wrath prepared for destruction". Quickly, then, we see that without evil there would be no demonstration of God's love for sinners, God's righteousness, or God's power and wrath against sin.

Unfortunately, that likely doesn't leave Christians feeling too good. Like the chief priests, most Christians likely don't like the answer that "Evil exists in the world because God intended it to exist." It doesn't ease things when we say, "God intended for evil to exist so He could more fully demonstrate His glory." But that dis-ease can't be the determiner of what is true. Perhaps we need to begin to redefine what we think based on the revealed character of God rather than defining God by what makes us feel better. Perhaps the problem of the wrong-headed question -- a Man-centered perspective on God -- is precisely the problem some Christians have with God's self-revelation. I would say, however, in this case, "Let God be true though every man is a liar" (Rom. 3:4). We cannot afford to place ourselves in the position of judging God. That would be unwise.