Rich started by sharing his testimony. He didn't grow up Christian, but did grow up as a science fiction fanboy. He loved the fact that they presented an ultimate reality that was somehow greater than his present condition. If he was a kid when The Matrix came out, he would have doubted whether he was experiencing the real world.
As a sophomore in college, he fell in love with a girl named Joyce who was a Christian. Through her he went to a bible study, where he thought he was too smart for the gospel and launched all of his objections. 5-6 months later, he started coming to church, too, although he thought the worship was silly. He told the ushers offering communion that he thought Jesus was cool and they let him participate, even though they probably shouldn't have. He joined a prayer circle after that service and he prayed, "God, I still don't know if you're real, but if you are, I want to be a real Christian." He became a Christian and wanted God to test the genuineness of his faith, and then Joyce told him she wouldn't date him because he wasn't a Christian, and that she wanted to be friends. He crawled back to the church the next Friday night for Bible study; God had tested him as he asked for.
By that point he had his NIV Study Bible and learned about the ultimate reality of the gospel that he had rejected. A year later, he was called to junior high ministry. At the spiritual age of 3, he applied to the Master's Seminary. For ten years, he was part of a Hispanic fundamentalist church, and now he pastors "the world's smallest church" and teaches at churches like Timothy's.
Our text for the day is Romans 8:18-39.
On this question of the problem of evil, to those who have suffered, Rich offers the pastoral love of Jesus Christ. He has not experienced great loss, but he has ministered to some who have, like a couple who lost their son 30 years ago.
The problem or riddle of evil is a serious challenge to the existence of God. Many atheists and agnostics use it to reject the gospel. Honest Christians should struggle with it, too; Rich still does.
The essence: If God is good and all-powerful, why is there evil? If he is unable to stop the evil, he's impotent, not all-powerful. If he can but doesn't act, then he isn't good. To make this tangible, we listed the evils we see in the world in four categories: inconveniences, problems, life-changing crises, and world-level tragedies.
- Inconveniences: homework left behind, car broke down,
19am fire alarms - Problems: illnesses, debt, addiction
- Life-changing crises: death of loved ones, death itself, permanent disability, and personal loss
- World-level tragedies: Holocaust, pandemics, genocide, famine, pestilence, natural disasters, war
Harold Kushner, a Jew who survived the Holocaust, wrote a book called When Bad Things Happen to Good People. His solution was that God tries to do his best but isn't all-powerful.
Rich believes that the gospel itself is a solution to the problem of evil. He framed it in terms of the biblical timeline, starting in Genesis 1. Genesis 1:4,10,12,18,21,25,31 all say that God created the world good. Thus there is no problem of evil in the creation itself. In Genesis 2, paradise is a garden with two trees, of Life and of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In Genesis 2:15-17, God tells Adam not to eat from the TKGE. The tree is a part of the good creation still.
And then the fall comes. In Genesis 3:1-4, the serpent deceives the woman. There was a lot of discussion at this point about where the serpent came from, if he was good or evil. In any case, God CURSES the world as a consequence of sin. But we can't stop there. The gospel is already planted at the beginning: We can't stay at the Fall. The picture is completed in Revelation, which God had already written when this happened. It's like JK Rowling's novels; God had the ending planned all along.
Rich has a particular spin on the TKGE: God affirms with them that they have become like God, knowing good and evil. God set up the TKGE as a trigger to teach Adam and Eve what is good by making them lose it. They wouldn't learn how good they actually had it until they lost it. We experience this same thing: You don't realize how good it is to have hair like Tom's until you start to lose it or find a white hair. So the TKGE was designed to teach them how good paradise was.
Getting kicked out of the garden was just the first step. We then have the first murder; imagine Eve's two levels of shock when she discovered that Abel was dead, and then how he died. The fruit of the TKGE is that we know that such things are not right. Non-Christians will use the problem to reject the gospel, but we know there's evil and that comes from this fruit.
Question: Why doesn't God optimize the defeat of evil? Answer: He wants glory.
Another perspective (Alvin Plantiga): Love doesn't exist without choice, and God allows us the choice to reject him. Evil is necessary, therefore, to all for love.
We have to remember that God will lift his curse and restore Paradise, as we see in Revelation 21:1-5 and chapter 22. Now, Genesis 3 to Revelation 20 isn't just filler. It's all addressing this problem of evil. What happens? God sends his Son from Heaven and he chooses death. Jesus' resurrection begins the reverse of the curse. We shouldn't ask why bad things happen to good people, since we're all bad people. Instead, we should ask ourselves, why did bad things happen to the only good person? If anyone has the right to complain about the problem of evil, it's him. The answer, of course, is so that good things can happen to bad people who don't deserve them.
We closed there, but I recorded one more question and answer from the ensuing discussion before it went over my head.
Q: Did God want Adam and Eve to eat the fruit?
A: We distinguish between the decretive will of God and the preceptive will of God. The first is what God commands, and the second is what happens. Reformed perspectives require both. Adam and Eve eating the fruit was within the preceptive will of God, but not his decretive will. But God can still use those things violating his decretive will for his glory. For instance, the acts of those killing Christ were evil, but even these were part of God's plan to redeem sinners. The classic case is Judas. His betrayal was prophesied, but he also chose to do it himself.
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