Historians tell us, Ideas have consequences. One idea that has invaded the human heart is responsible for more human destruction than any other idea—the falsehood that God’s goodness can’t be trusted. When this wrong idea captured Eve’s heart, she rebelled, Adam rebelled with her, and humans have been rebelling against God and his law ever since. Satan’s chief strategy to inspire rebellion in Eve’s heart was to make her doubt God’s goodness. Our calling as men is to surround our loved ones with the belt of truth, which is the title of this podcast series. This episode helps our kids build confidence in the GOODNESS of God and in their ability to answer those who assert that suffering proves there can’t be a good God.
The significance of trusting God’s goodness is underscored in Hebrews 11:6 which tells us that it is a prerequisite to drawing near to God. We read, Whoever draws near to God MUST believe that he REWARDS those who seek him. All of us want our loved ones to draw near to God. All of us want the non-believers we share our faith with to draw near to God. This verse reveals to us the first step in doing so—trusting God’s desire to reward us, i.e. give good things to us when we seek him. In other words, believing that God’s nature is to seek our good, (which is the definition of goodness) is the starting point for drawing near to God! This verse from Hebrews 11 might explain why God’s enemy, Satan, RELENTLESSLY TRIES TO CAUSE US TO DOUBT GOD’S GOODNESS. Let’s examine this strategy.
The Serpent said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:2-5).
1. Notice that Satan actually begins the temptation by planting a complete fabrication into Eve’s mind, i.e. the possibility that this unfair God might have made all the wonderful fruit trees in the garden to tease Adam and Eve but not permit them to eat ANY of them. His words, again, Did God really say you can’t eat from any tree? Even though God never said that, as Eve pointed out, Satan still planted the IDEA THAT GOD WAS THE KIND OF BEING WHO COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING SO COMPLETELY UNFAIR. Satan also undermined Eve’s confidence in God’s goodness by taking her focus off all the wonderful fruit God had given them to enjoy throughout the entire garden and placed her focus on one apparently unfair restriction. EVERY SINGLE other tree in the garden, with its lush fruit for Adam and Eve to enjoy proved God’s GOODNESS—his desire to bless them with GOOD gifts. Later, Jesus would remind us of this wonderful benevolent nature of God: Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him (Matt 7:9-11).
2. Satan’s attack on God’s goodness continues, For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Satan insinuates that: 1) God’s motive is selfishness—he is keeping something good from her and Adam, i.e. the knowledge of good and evil, and 2) God’s moral law is fundamentally a restriction on our happiness. Both undermine her confidence in the goodness of God. The truth of course is that his law is given to us out of his goodness—to guide us into blessing. When the moral law was given to Moses, Moses pled with the people to see that it was the path to life, not a sentence to misery. In Deuteronomy 28, he urges:
If you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. The Lord will command the blessing on you in your barns and in all that you undertake (vs 1-7).
3. Satan also seeks to undermine Eve's confidence in God’s goodness by convincing her that fulfillment comes by throwing off restraint, You will be like God. M Scott Peck tells of counseling a woman named Charlene who said about Christianity, There’s no room for me in that. That would be my death!...I don’t want to live for God. I will not. I want to live for…my own sake. (The People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil). Charlene believed Christ would stifle her creativity and growth. But Jesus said, I have come that they (my followers) may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10b) and, If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:31-32) True freedom comes from understanding and cooperating with God’s purpose for us, just as an eagle is most free as it soars through the sky.
Eve and Adam doubt the goodness of the God who restricted them from eating the fruit, ate the fruit, and by their sin brought all of the human pain ever experienced upon the human race. (Lest we be tempted to blame them, Paul points out in Romans 5 that they acted as perfect representatives for us—we would have made the same decision.) But Satan is not done with accusing God. He now blames God for the human suffering brought into the world by our race’s sin. To be honest, it is hard to reconcile all of the suffering around us with faith in a good, all-powerful God. Christian apologist Lee Strobel writes:
We read of horrible evils like the Holocaust, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the genocide of Rwanda, and the torture chambers of South America—and we can’t help but wonder: Where is God? We watch news coverage of earthquakes and hurricanes in which thousands perish and we wonder: Why didn’t God stop it? We read the statistic that one thousand million people in the world lack the basic necessities of life, and we wonder: Why doesn’t God care? We may suffer ourselves with persistent pain or aching loss or seemingly hopeless circumstances and wonder: Why doesn’t God help? If he is loving and if he is all powerful, and if he is good, then surely all of this suffering should not exist. (The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity)
What is worse is that it is often the innocent who are the victims. Agnostic turned Christian, Sheldon Vanauken writes,
If only villains got broken backs or cancers, if only cheaters and crooks got Parkinson’s disease, we should see a sort of celestial justice in the universe. But as it is, a sweet-tempered child lies dying of a brain tumor, a happy wife sees her husband and child killed before her eyes by a drunken driver and…we soundlessly scream at the stars, “Why? Why? A mention of God—of God’s will—doesn’t help a bit. How could a good God, a loving God, do that? How could he ever let that happen? (Ibid)
It is vital for us to realize and to teach our kids that cries of agonizing pain like these just mentioned need to be answered NOT just with a logical attempt to defend God’s goodness, but with deep compassion, and empathy over the loss. We’ll look at this important function in the last part of this episode. But for the sake of our children’s faith, we must help them know that suffering in this world is not a valid, logical reason for disbelieving in God.
Building Confidence That a Good God Exists
A. Logical fallacies. Rabi Harold Kushner is the author of the best-selling When Bad Things Happen to Good People, written following the death of his son, Aaron, from a horrible premature aging disease called progeria. In trying to overcome his grief, Kushner posed this argument:
- If God is all-powerful he could end suffering in the world.
- If God is all good, he would end suffering in the world.
- Suffering in the world exists.
- Therefore, either God is not all good, or God is not all powerful.
Kushner opted to throw away the omnipotence of God. God would like to help but he just isn’t capable of solving all the problems of the world. Even God has a hard time keeping things in check (When Bad Things Happen to Good People.) This argument has been adopted by many in order to disprove the existence of the Christian God. But, there are two logical fallacies in Kushner’s argument:
1. The assumption that an all good God would have ended suffering BY NOW. But, what if the good God of the Bible has come into the world HIMSELF to take upon himself all the suffering in the world caused by human sin, in order to set the universe free from all destruction and pain ONE DAY? That is completely logical.
2. Second, in the words of Tim Keller, If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn’t stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have (at the same moment) a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can’t know. Indeed, you can’t have it both ways. (The Reason for God) The very premis that is postulated—that God is so wise and powerful that he knows how to stop all human suffering (while preserving the freedom of uncoerced human choice)—means God MUST ALSO BE WISE ENOUGH to have purposes for pain that we don’t have the mental horsepower to comprehend. The coexistence of suffering with an all-powerful, all loving God is not a logical contradiction, especially since the Bible explains the reason for suffering and God’s plan to take that suffering on to vanquish it. So, Kushner’s logic doesn’t work.
B. The second reason that suffering and pain do not disprove the goodness of God is a reality of human life that is well known by dentists, athletic coaches, physical therapists, surgeons, and educators and many others. Often PAIN is a GOOD THING. The coach makes his athletes hurt NOW by running wind-sprints until they are ready to drop, knowing that in the fourth quarter, being in superb shape will bring them the joy of winning close games. We are all familiar with the truth that in many spheres of life NO PAIN means NO GAIN. Biblically understood, undeserved pain RIGHT NOW leads to joy in eternity. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen (2 Cor 4:16-18). Here is the point that we need to gently help our kids understand. Arguing that suffering proves God can't be good is arrogant 1) because we don’t have the mental capacity to understand his purpose for suffering, and 2) because even in our everyday human life we can see how pain is OFTEN GOOD
C. The third reason that suffering in this world does not disprove God’s goodness is that we can’t see the end of the story. Criticizing God for not eliminating suffering right now is like reading half a novel and criticizing the author for not resolving the plot. We can’t see it now but the biblical view of our eternal life in Christ is that the depth of our joy in eternity is linked to the depth of our earthly suffering. Tim Keller says this well: The biblical view of things is resurrection—not a future that is just a consolation for the life we never had but a restoration of the life you always wanted. This means that every horrible thing that every happened will not only be undone and repaired, but will, in some way make the eventual glory and joy even greater (Ibid).
This week, I’ve been reading the biography of Elizabeth Elliot, under whom I got to study. She and Jim Elliott fell in love but put off marriage for 5 years to complete some mission work for Christ. They were finally married and less than three years later, Jim was speared to death in an effort to reach out with the gospel to the Waodani tribe in Ecuador. Though she later remarried, I believe that the heart-wrenching grief of losing Jim will lead, when she is reunited to him for all eternity, to a deeper level of (non-sexual—yet passionate), heart-felt joy than she could have ever known had she not been separated from him in her earliest days of marriage. The restoration of her broken heart and their broken relationship will be more joyful than it would have been, had it never been broken. Keller again restates this truth:
Just after the climax of the trilogy The Lord of the Rings, Sam Gamgee discovers that his friend Gandolf was not dead (as he thought) but alive. He cries, “I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself! Is everything sad going to come untrue? The answer of Christianity to that questions is—yes. Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost…This is the ultimate defeat of evil and suffering. It will not only be ended but so radically vanquished that what has happened will only serve to make our future life and joy infinitely greater. (Ibid).
As the spiritual leaders of our homes we need to help our loved ones see that the suffering in this world supplies zero evidence for logically disbelieving in an all-powerful all-loving God. We might be content to stop there. But there is a lesson in Jesus’ suffering that Christians must not ignore as we respond to suffering in our world. Let’s consider Jesus’ cry from the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? On the surface, this looks like Jesus is asking a question; he seems to want a cognitive explanation from God for why he had to go through the hell of being ripped from his eternal unity with the Father as he became sin for our sakes.
But was Jesus actually looking for a solution to his mental questions? Didn’t Jesus already know what God’s plan for redeeming Adam’s race was? Remember that these words are quoted by Jesus from Psalm 22. The Book of Psalms was given to help us process the emotions of our lives with God. Through this lens, Why have you forsaken me? appears to be more of a cry of anguish to be heard than a question to be answered. Severe grief causes the intense feelings of being forsaken and provokes the horrible heart-driven question that has no seeming answer, Why? The emotional trauma of much suffering requires more than a logical explanation of it; the broken heart needs its anguish TO BE HEARD. As Christ-followers we do need to know how to reconcile human suffering with God’s omnipotence and goodness. But we also need to hear the anguish of a broken heart. We do this by listening well to those who suffer. We men aren't good with emotions. But Henri Nouwen points out that listening is just befriending another: Listening is a spiritual hospitality by which we invite strangers to be friends. Since we tend to be a little emotional intelligence challenged, here is a sort of model dialogue to consider, between Jim who is a believer and Fred who is not:
Fred: No good God would allow all the suffering of this world!
Jim: It sounds like you are pretty familiar with some of the pain that life dishes out.
Fred: Yes, I am.
Jim: Care to tell me about it?
Fred: I grew up in a Bible-thumping church. When I was four, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. My pastor had preached a sermon about how God answers prayer so I prayed and prayed that God would not let my mom die. But he did. Why would I believe in that kind of God?
Jim: I’m so sorry. You must have been devastated.
Fred: My father was so absorbed with his own grief, he tried to drown it in a bottle, leaving me pretty much to take care of myself.
Jim: Wow. What a tough way to grow up. You must have felt so lonely.
Fred: I used to cry myself to sleep every night for years; I had such a great mom.
Jim: I can’t image that kind of pain to a young boy’s heart.
The anguish of suffering must usually be heard before a sufferer's mind is ready to see any good in the pain.
The ultimate answer to the world's suffering is Jesus. It is his compassion that we must exhibit to bring healing to the sufferer’s heart. It is Jesus’ restoration of earth to which we must point—to a day when He will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore (Rev. 21:4).
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- Can you think of some recent times when the thought has jumped into your mind, “I can’t trust God’s goodness”?
- Why does logic not support the contention that human suffering proves there can’t be an all-powerful, all-good God?
- How can you best explain to those under your care that non-believers probably need to experience our compassion for their pain more than our explanation of how to reconcile that pain with the goodness of God?
CHILDREN’S LESSON
Introduction
- How would you define the word, good?
- Why do you think a person who draws near to God must believe God’s nature is to be good, i.e. bestow blessings for seeking him?
Satan
Satan is a real spiritual being who is fallen angel who took over the body of a serpent to speak to Eve. Satan rebelled against God and will one day be. He hates God and God’s Son, Jesus. Read Genesis 3:1-7. Is it clear to you that Satan tried to make Eve think God was not good? If not, ask your Dad or Mom.
How should we respond to Satan's lie that God is NOT good? See the following verses for the answers:
- Jesus counters Satan’s lies by comparing God to an earthly father. What does Jesus say? (See Matt 7:9-11 above)
- God’s rules for Adam and Even were not to eat from the tree in the midst of the garden. What did he say would happen to him if they did? Do you think it was GOOD or BAD that God gave them this warning?
- Review Deuteronomy 28:1-7 (above). Does God give us his rules in the Bible to make us unhappy or happy?
- Why is obedience to Christ’s teaching the path of freedom? (See John 8:31-31 above).
Building Confidence That a Good God Exists
What is wrong with the following logic: If God is all-powerful he could end suffering in the world. If God is all good, he would end suffering in the world. Suffering in the word exists. Therefore, either God is not all good, or God is not all powerful.
In human experience, how is pain sometimes good? Look up Romans 8:28-29. What does God promise about our suffering?
The Answer to Human Suffering is Jesus
- All human suffering is caused by our race’s sin against God, our creator, to whom we owe obedience. Even natural disasters happen because of our race’s sin. (Rom 8:18-22). But Jesus, the Second Adam came to overthrow the reign of Satan, sin, and death and restored the world to wholeness.
- Hurting people need more than an explanation of how their suffering is consistent with God being good. The need their anguish to be heard. Go back and read the dialogue with the parent being Fred and the child being Jim. What do you think this verse means? Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen (2 Cor 4:16-18).
Resources Used
- The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, Timothy Keller.
- The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity, Lee Strobel.
