Easy: you redefine "good" so that it no longer precludes acts that it normally precludes when used in typical everyday speech. Making us wonder what criteria you use to decide when typical everyday speech is and isn't sufficient to meaningfully discuss "god".
To give a Christian apologetic response to school shootings, it is important to address the problem of evil. How is it possible that a perfectly good God who is in control over all things would allow such heinous acts of violence carried out against innocent children?
Of first importance is the philosophical answer to this question. By focusing on the well-received argument put forth by Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga concerning mankind’s free will to do both good and evil, it becomes evident that God can be good even though evil exists.
So apparently Lisa wants us to side with her against Calvinism....when we know that Calvinism v. Arminianism is one of Christianity's more pernicious in-house debates.
This response, however, does not always reach people who are hurting.
If quoting a bible verse to a grieving person doesn't help them, blame it on God, who often boasts that his word is powerful and sufficient. Really now, what is the Holy Spirit doing when you quote Romans 9:20 to a grieving mother who responds to her son's murder by questioning god's goodness? Is the Holy Spirit NOT using that word of God for his own glory? If he is, then the failure of a bible quote to calm the grieving parents of murdered children probably has less to do with 'wisdom' and more to do with "bible quotes are nothing but hot air in the first place".
Christian philosopher Angus Menuge offers an existential response to the problem of evil. He uses Jesus’ death on the Cross as a starting point, showing that God knows what it means to have a child die,
He should, God is the one who killed his own son by his own "hand":
27 "For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,
28 to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur. (Acts 4:27-28 NAU)
Lisa continues:
and Jesus, having died for us,
except that Christian Calvinists deny that Jesus died for absolutely all sinners...a point which causes non-Calvinist Christians to deny the Calvinist god's goodness...something us unbelievers can exploit.
has suffered every pain we as humans could suffer in this life.
False, there is no evidence that Jesus ever suffered the pain of losing a biological child or being divorced by a spouse that suddenly became unloving, or became paralyzed from the neck down in an accident and then had to endure the next 50 years of his life experiencing severe depression at his inability to move, and experiencing the guilt of becoming a significant burden on those who took care of him.
Further, a biblical approach to suffering
What about unbelievers who don't accept the doctrine of full biblical inerrancy? Can they correctly interpret a bible verse about God's morality without worrying about whether that interpretation harmonizes with everything else in the bible?
reveals that, in the midst of all of this pain, God works all things together for the good of those who love Him (Rom. 8:28), even when we receive no direct answer about how this happens.
You know it's true because "the bible says". My heart is already skipping from the great sense of guilt I have about my sin.
It is true that our suffering conforms us to the image of Christ.
The hope of the hopeless. One wonders what orientalisms about morality in the NT would have been different if life in the 1st century hadn't been as rough on Christians as it was.
While we live this side of heaven, we identify with Jesus in His suffering. When He comes again, we will identify with His resurrected and glorified self — perfect and sinless, without sadness or suffering, and forevermore participating in the Son’s holy and loving relationship with the Father.
What about preterism, you know, the eschatological doctrine that says Jesus completed his second coming before the close of the 1st century? How long does God want me to compare your futurist eschatology with Christian historicist eschatology, before He will start expecting me to discover which one is the truth? Would John the Revelator agree with most conservative Trinitarian inerrantists of today that his words about the eschaton constitute non-essential theology? Wow, he sure seemed all fired up about the whole business.
Therefore, in ministering to those affected by gun violence, we are called to a ministry of patient listening and faithful presence.
Would you be exercising patience by informing them that God in Deuteronomy 32:39 and Job 14:5 takes personal responsibility for all human murder? How would the Holy Spirit use your references to these texts to further His intentions toward the grieving survivors?
We simply should not try to present fully formed analytical answers to those who are lamenting the loss of a child. What we can do is be present in the day-to-day wrestling, listening to them in their distress, and pointing them to how Jesus has already-but-not-yet accomplished the end of suffering.
"already-but-not-yet"? I don't think hitting the grieving parents of murdered children with theological contradiction is the best way to "minister" to them. Perhaps that's because I'm an unbeliever and I don't recognize any force in the "god's ways are mysterious" excuse?
When the news of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, was posted on my Facebook account, I was eight months pregnant with my first son. Having grown up in the town next to Newtown, I knew those streets; I knew that parking lot; I knew some of the people in that community. I sat at my laptop, aghast at the live feed.
Aghast at God performing his will (Job 14:5)? How could something you are supposed to pray for ("thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven") be something you were 'aghast' at? Maybe I didn't notice that CRI is so anti-Calvinist that they take the Arminian approach absolutely for granted?
Aerial views of the school, panicked parents searching the crowds for their kids, kids’ faces flushed red from crying; it was all too much to take in.
Perhaps you are spiritually immature to pray that God perform his will, then find it too much to take when you God starts answering that prayer?
I kept reminding myself to breathe. All the while, a phrase repeated in my mind: “How can I bring a child into this world?”
People can be so utterly evil. How can I allow this child to exist in a world where sin has so infected people that a twenty-year-old man could think it was a good idea to murder first his own mother and then as many children as he could before turning the gun on himself?
You can't, because you are a good person. So the only way "god" could allow it is if you redefine "good" so that it doesn't preclude acts that it normally would preclude in typical daily conversation. Remember: God must always be a special exception to the rules...that's the only hope you have of salvaging any theodicy.
In the news since that horrific day, December 14, 2012, we see murder after murder, school shooting after school shooting. Educators are heard relaying hiding tactics to news reporters, while others have died protecting students, having used their bodies as human shields.1 According to the K–12 School Shooting Database, since January of 2013, the month following the Sandy Hook shootings, there have been 328 incidents of gun violence on school premises. Not all of these incidents involved an active shooter, but in the active shooter incidents, there have been 132 injuries and fatalities including the shooter, with a whopping 92 of those taking place from 2018 to now.
Then why don't you praise God for acting like God and deciding for himself when it is time to terminate a person's earthly life? Could it be that there will always be a contradiction between your mammalian desire to preserve life, and your more philosophy that says some higher being is always good whenever he kills anybody?
And yet I, along with the historic Christian church, have the audacity to believe in a sovereign God who rules over all of this? Even more outrageous, I call this sovereign God good!
"Outrageous" is correct. But in reality the issue is not that you are foolish to call such a bloody god "good", but rather whether unbelievers can be reasonable to say such a god is evil.
First, the philosophical question must be addressed: how can God be good if evil like this exists?
I prefer to first ensure we are talking about a real god before we start wading into the muddy waters of what he is like. That's how I fuck up most Christian apologists. If I refuse to discuss the traits of the toothfairy until I am sure she exists, I'm reasonable. Nothing about the bible's existence imposes the slightest obligation to either refute it or agree with it.
Next, the practical issue: how can Christians bring the gospel to those who have been affected by school shootings?
In other words, how can we manipulate the grieving surviving family members of murdered children so that these tragedies become opportunities to promote our religion?
The problem of evil consistently has been an issue for apologetics and evangelism. In America, however, due to the rise in school shootings in recent years, it has become a politically charged national conversation. As time goes on, with each incident, more people have connections to these shootings, and so these attacks have started reaching us on a personal level.
Just tell yourself that the god who takes personal responsibility for causing all murder (Job 14:5) is "trying" to reach those people on a personal level. Problem solved. Spiritually mature people always happily praise god when he works his will in the world, since to become upset at what god is doing would contradict the witness of the Holy Spirit, correct?
In the years since the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting, I have known two people directly who have been the targets of random gun violence, and four more indirectly (relatives or friends of friends). For me, as for many, unjustified evil has become a serious philosophical prohibition to the spreading of the gospel in our culture.
Then you aren't remembering who you are or what you believe. Your biblical world view does not allow you to believe in "unjustified" evil. See Deut. 32:39 and Job 14:5. If some crazy person walks into an elementary school and shoots dead several kids, your theology does not call this unjustified evil. Your theology says "God is calling them home".
Nonbelievers, rather than merely considering whether or not God exists, are now asking whether or not God is simply absent, woefully neglectful, or even overtly evil.
But because the bible says God is "good", there is potential to reasonably conclude that no "good" god would allow such evils, therefore, god may exist, but the biblical description of him is wrong therefore he cannot possibly exist as described.
And now, due to the prevalence of these shootings, even people who have not been tied personally to an injury or death caused by a school shooting are asking these questions. Christians must be prepared to engage both abstract questions about the nature of God and to practice practical evangelism with tact, proper listening, and continued care.
"Christians must be prepared"? Where are you getting that from? I see nothing in the NT indicating anything therein "applies to us today". Shall I wade through in-house Christian debates on which parts of the NT do and don't apply in 2023 (eschatology, dispensationalism, theonomy)? If so, what source imposes any moral, spiritual or intellectual obligation on me to so wade? And how do you know that source is talking about anybody living in the year 2023?
THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM OF EVIL
If God were truly all-knowing (omniscient), truly everywhere (omnipresent), truly powerful (omnipotent), and truly good (omnibenevolent), why would He not intervene and stop these shootings from happening?
Just tell yourself that "goodness" for god isn't always the same as "goodness" for human beings, and presto, behold the magic that can be achieved by simply defining a problem out of existence.
He could part the clouds and strike the gunman dead. He could have caused the gunman never to have been born. He could have created a universe in which this shooting did not occur. But He didn’t.
The toothfairy also didn't do anything to stop those murders. Maybe the toothfairy's ways are higher than our ways?
He gave us these children, and then He let these precious children die.
Because he wanted them to die (Deut. 32:39, Job 14:5), and you are forced to concede that every act of God is "good". Sounds like your problem, not mine, it's not even near a problem for unbelievers. Your only possible explanation would be that God has the right to take life as he chooses, but the fact that such answer is comforting to you doesn't dictate that it be reasonable for unbelievers.
The Logical Problem of Evil
In response to the question of evil and suffering in this world, the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga demonstrates in his book God, Freedom, and Evil that there is no logical contradiction in saying that God is good while evil persists. The set of three propositions, “(1) God is omnipotent; (2) God is wholly good; and (3) Evil exists,” is neither explicitly nor implicitly contradictory.
Sure, if you define "goodness" for God different from how you define "goodness" for human beings. But all that would prove is that if you give a lawyer long enough, he can turn night into day by clever use of words. We do not presuppose that "god" exists, nor that he is "good", nor that his alleged power suddenly renders his maximally wise in everything he does. We interpret Genesis 6:5-6 literally as opposed to your non-literal and knee-jerk reactionary "anthropomorphic" interpretation, which is necessitated by absolutely nothing but a need to make that passage harmonize with everything else in the bible in the name of inerrancy. We have atheist philosophers who insist your three propositions do result in contradiction. See J. L. Mackie, "Evil and Omnipotence," Mind, New Series, Vol. 64, No. 254. (Apr., 1955), pp. 200-212.
What’s more, Plantinga sets forth a Free Will Defense, which negates any supposed inconsistency between the aforementioned set of propositions, and shows that any world with significantly free creatures necessarily has potential for those creatures to choose evil. He contends, “A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all.”
Except that there are two biblical paradigms that show that your god could have actually achieved a sinless world full of sinners, i.e., the world is not full of sin because we are sinners, its full of sin because God merely wants it to be that way when he doesn't "need" it to be that way:
a) Numbers 23:26, God causes the pagan prophet Balaam to refrain from cursing Israel, and since it is biblical, however that happened must surely be harmoninous with God's ideas about the need for human freedom. Therefore if your god is all-powerful, he could similarly prevent similarly unbelieving people today from sinning.
b) Did God take away somebody's freewill in Daniel 4:33? If I did to you all that was necessary to cause you to start doing what that king did after being cursed by god, would most Christians say I took away your freewill?
c) In Ezekiel 38:4 and other passages before chap. 40, God's level of sovereignty over the wills of unbelievers is taught with the metaphor that says God puts hooks in their jaws and turns them around. The mental image of a fisherman forcing a fish into the boat against its will after hooking it, is perfectly consistent with the apparent intention of the metaphor.
Should you start balking that ancient Semitic people typically exaggerated for rhetorical effect, you throw into question most conservative Evangelical, Reformed and Catholic beliefs about God, each of which rest upon a decidedly literal interpretation of a theological statement in the bible. If the book of Revelation says God is "omnipotent", is that literally true, or is that just an ancient Semitic exaggerated way of saying God has massive power?
Other philosophers attack Plantinga's Freewill Defense. See Justin Ykema, A Critique of the Free Will Defense A Comprehensive Look at Alvin Plantinga’s Solution To the Problem of Evil.
Through his Free Will Defense, Plantinga does not seek to give an explanation of God’s motives behind allowing the suffering or evil that He allows.
Then Plantinga leaves open the logical possibility that "god" has morally bad motives.
Rather, Plantinga works to find a logical ground for why God does not necessitate only morally upright actions from the people He created.
Good luck finding anything in the bible to support the view that "God does not necessitate only morally upright actions from the people He created." When you find a bible verse that says God asked anybody to do morally evil things, let me know how you felt about converting to Calvinism.
In addition to this, he shows that it is logically consistent that those evil actions chosen by significantly free creatures do not reflect the will of God who created them, for, “He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good.”
Then how does Plantinga explain God forestalling moral evil, such as Numbers 23, the case of pagan prophet Balaam, whom God restrained from cursing Israel? Maybe all Christian commentators are wrong, and Balaam's willingness to say whatever YHWH wanted is because he was a true follower of YHWH? Then what could possibly have made Balak think Balaam was a good candidate for cursing God? Did Balak go to the wrong tent?
Surely in some Christian circles, Plantinga’s emphasis on significantly free moral action would be considered problematic.
What is the Holy Spirit doing as he flutters above the head of the sincerely praying Calvinist? Is the Holy Spirit "trying" to make the Calvinist see the light, but the divine intent is held back by Calvinist stupidity?
Or maybe you'd say the divine is held back by the Calvinist's unwillingness to see truth?
Gee, what fool Christian couldn't hurl that accusation at another to account for heresy?
Luther, for example would say that in matters of faith, no moral action that merits salvation can be done outside of faith in Christ; however, he would affirm that moral action can be done spontaneously in terms of civil action. Plantinga makes no such distinction. The theological concerns here do not undermine the significance of the logical argument that Plantinga puts forth. In showing that God, being good, can exist and rule over a creation in which evil exists, he is not making a systematic theological argument but rather a logical one.
Sure, but if God has mysterious higher good reasons for allowing evil, then it becomes problematic to continue characterizing the evil in question as "evil". Do we ignore the good that an "evil" brought about, and insist it is still fully evil, merely because of philosophical necessity? Or only because modern democracy demands that we refrain from reclassifying certain "evils" as good? Is the murder of a child evil because it breaks a biblical commandment? Or good because it is God who caused it (Deut. 32:39)? What would Dr. Frank Turek think of the fool who said the murder of a child is both good and bad depending on whether the perspective is divine or human? Wouldn't he jump out of his moral absolutist skin and insist that god thinks the murder is evil too?
Indeed, even atheist philosophers concede that Plantinga solved the logical problem of evil, showing that there just is no logical inconsistency between orthodox theism and the facts of evil and suffering we experience in the world.
But the problem of moral subjectivity and relativism comes to stay permanently just as soon as you say "An act can be evil for us to do, but can be good for God to do". When we say child-rape is "evil", we usually don't mean "from our perspective", we mean it is absolutely evil period.
However, Plantinga acknowledges that his Free Will Defense is not the appropriate response to offer people in the midst of suffering. In the case of real-life evil, misery, and hardship, he calls one to seek pastoral care, not philosophical explanations.
And pastoral care cannot be more spiritual than to quote the bible in an effort to justify god at all costs.
GOD’S SON WAS MURDERED
Then because it was God's "hand" that caused people to kill Jesus (Acts 4:27), that makes God guilty of murder no less than the truthful statement that it was your "hand" that caused somebody else to murder. What fool would say "My hand caused that person to commit murder, but I am not responsible for that murder"?
The existential approach put forth by Christian philosopher Angus Menuge in his article “Gratuitous Evil and a God of Love” is centered on the coming of Jesus Christ in history to suffer for us.
Then it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion, and is worthy only for the flames.
Menuge argues that discussion of the problem of suffering begins and ends with the person and work of Jesus Christ on the Cross, for “Christ is God’s answer to the problem of evil” (emphasis added).
Except that smart people don't care about a person's attributes, until they become convinced that the person is actually real. Except in the case of parents who explain tooth-fairies to toddlers. And the case of Christians who jump at any chance to "show" that their concept of God is free from internal conflict. And the case of atheists who might be in the mood to toy with apologists.
He explains that the problem of evil affects all of our hearts and minds, and “since evil is an immersive, existential condition, God answers by actions of love” (emphasis in original). The answer is therefore not abstract but utterly real, historical, and is revealed in the bloody God-man, Jesus Christ, suffering and dying for us on the Cross.
Hot air. Dismissed.
God knows what it is like to have His Son die unjustly.
So? How could it matter that it is possible for God to sympathize with us, when he is the one inflicting all the misery (Deut. 28:15-63? How could it matter that a man sympathizes with a kidnapped child...if that man is the kidnapper?
Jesus suffered the pain of a brutal death on the Cross. This is the difference between the Christian God and other gods: God came down from heaven and endured the pain of this world in order to save His creatures from eternal death — the very creatures at whose hands He would die.
Hot air. Dismissed.
This can offer profound comfort for those who have suffered the loss of a child to gun violence, or for those of us who suffer from the anguish of seeing another suffer. The kind of anguish we face in this life is not foreign to God, and suffering is precisely the means by which God accomplished salvation for us.
Mormonism has an excellent track record of providing comfort to those who are grieving. So apparently, the ability of the sophistry to provide "comfort" does precisely nothing to justify pretending the comforting words are "true".
THE NOW AND THE NOT YET
Scripture speaks to the problems of suffering, pain, and premature death, but it even more robustly offers eschatological hope.
So do the Jehovah's Witnesses.
When discussing the nature of our lives here on Earth, this side of heaven, the distinction between the now and the not yet is imperative. It is true that Jesus died on the Cross to reconcile us, to rescue us, to forgive us, and bring us into union with God; and it is true that those who believe enjoy some of these benefits now, but not to their full extent. The faithful must wait for Jesus’ return to receive them in full.
You just alienated all Christian preterists from the body of Christ.
Life in the now is characterized by suffering. We have been united to Christ in His suffering, not only in that He has suffered on our behalf but that we also, like Christ, cannot escape suffering in this world. Through suffering, furthermore, we are being molded and shaped to be more like Jesus.
Hot air, dismissed.
However, we must be careful not to assure people of some assumed moral improvement as a result of suffering. In speaking to a parent of a child who had been murdered, we cannot approach them with, “Take heart! God is making you better,” or some such platitude.
Then you disagree with most Christian apologists who rely on God's mysterious good higher purposes to explain evil.
Menuge condemns this, saying, “When God allows his creatures to suffer, it is not primarily because he has calculated some moral improvement that he can achieve for this life (although that may happen), but because he ‘desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth’ (1 Tim. 2:4).”
Then according to the reasoning of Menuge and apparently yourself, when God allows a little girl to be raped to death, it is because God ‘desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth’ (1 Tim. 2:4).” Nice going.
Jesus says, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16:24). The Christian cannot choose his or her cross. “He must leave that to God (1 Pet. 3:17; 1:6), for God alone knows which cross is beneficial and only God gives the strength needed to bear the cross (1 Cor. 10:13).”15 Our understanding is limited (Isa. 55:8–9).
Does God give the strength the little girl needs to endure a rape that ends with her hemorrhaging to death? If so, what would such a rape situation look like if God had not given her such strength? Would she have died the second the man threw her on the bed?
We cannot fathom why God has allowed us to endure the specific suffering that we must face.
Sure we can: God is equally as pleased to inflict rape, kidnapping and parental cannibalism on disobedient people, as he is pleased to inflict prosperity on obedient people. Deuteronomy 28:15-63, see esp. v. 63, the "delight" is the same in both cases.
We are not called to know the intricacies of what God is doing, but we are called to trust Him.
But if the guy in charge is killing people, his followers will either demand to know the intricacies, or they will quit following him. Is this the part where you tell me that God is always the special exception?
And, in that vein, we can trust that God is working all things together for the good of those who love Him (Rom. 8:28). However, Scripture shows us that the sufferings we endure are for us a promise of the eternal glory awaiting us, and assurance of our union with Christ (Rom. 8:17). Jesus, in His Revelation to John, explains that God Himself will dwell with His people in glory, and that “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:3–4). In glory, we too will be glorified. In glory, there will be no more fear of premature death, no more concern to protect our children from violence, and no more mourning.
If you are going to quote the bible to make a point, why waste space with an article? The bible says God is good, righteous and holy, so shouldn't that be the sufficient answer to anybody's problem with evil?
EVANGELISM IN A TIME OF DESPAIR
Various philosophical approaches to the problem of evil can and will be entertained by our minds as we consider the impact of school shootings and whether or not God, being infinite in love and knowledge and power, could allow them to happen.
You forgot about another option. Truth doesn't limit us to giving an answer that will help somebody reconcile reality with their religion. It doesn't matter if God exists, the only way the "good" god of the bible and real evil could exists is if you redefine "good" so as to allow for crimes that we normally don't allow to be possible with any "good" (i.e., you will redefine "good" solely for the sake of ensuring there's no contradiction between your god and the reality of evil).
But, there is a point where these approaches wax silent, and ministry begins. There is a moment you find yourself in a conversation about how gun violence in schools has affected a person’s own mind, soul, and spirit.
Sure, it was God, causing the gunman to kill the kids, so it was God who wanted to affect the minds, souls and spirits of the survivors. Deut. 32:39.
I skip the rest of the article because it is nothing but preaching to the choir. Lisa's article does nothing to render unreasonable the unbelievers who explain evil by God's non-existence, his apathy, or his evil desire to hurt people.
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