Hard Questions: God's Power

Welcome! Today we continue our series on hard questions. Last week we talked about how we know that Christianity is true (the Holy Spirit) and how we show that Christianity is true focusing on why it is plausible that there is a Creator, and if there is a Creator, why it is plausible that He would communicate to us through something like our Bible. We then talked about reasons to believe the Bible. I don’t think I said this last week, but I want to emphasize that when you talk with unbelieving friends, a huge goal and prayer should be that they actually get into reading the Bible – with you, without you, in a group, whatever, but that they read it. It is when they read that the Holy Spirit can powerfully speak into their hearts, convicting them of sin and convincing them of the reality of what they are reading.

This week’s message is entitled God’s Power, and next week’s is God’s Goodness. These topics are very much interrelated; many, many hard questions boil down to arguing that if God is all powerful, He isn’t all good, and if instead He is all good, He must not be all powerful. Because the topics are linked, these messages are very much linked as well; we will deal both with God’s power and God’s goodness this week and next. To begin, I want to start with the question of God’s power straight up.

Is God all powerful?

As we talked about last week, our one reliable source of information about God is the Bible, and so I want to start today by looking carefully at what the Bible says about God’s power. There are a number of people and groups who claim to use the Bible as their authority who have come up with a relatively weak picture of God.

You may have heard of Rabbi Harold Kushner, the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Now I confess I like a good number of quotes by Rabbi Kushner. For example:

“Prayer is simply coming into the presence of God. Because when you come into the presence of God, even the things you don’t have matter a lot less.”

I don’t know if Rabbi Kushner wrote that simply as a nice-sounding platitude, but in reality it is profoundly true. I would even say that the real answer to unsolved hard questions in your life is to come into the presence of God. Those questions matter a lot less, too. But I have a real problem with this one, from a Time magazine interview in 2006:

“Given the unfairness that strikes so many people in life, I would rather believe in a God of limited power and unlimited love and justice, rather than the other way around. Why do we worship power? Why do we assume that total power is the most wonderful thing we could ascribe to God, even if it means compromising his fairness and love? I believe God is totally moral, but nature, one of God’s creatures, is not moral. Nature is blind. Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, disease, germs, speeding bullets, they are all equal opportunity offenders. They have no way of knowing whether it’s a good person or a bad person in their path.”

Many people hear things like this, and think it is entirely reasonable. Even within evangelical Christianity there is a theological movement called open theism that, instead of questioning God’s power to do, questions God’s power to know what to do. There are a number of additional aspects of open theism I am not going to delve into today, but the following quote (from Wikipedia, based on the teachings of H. Roy Elseth) explains this particular aspect.

“Open theism answers the question of how God can be blameless […] even though evil exists in the world. [Consider] the example of a parent that knows with certainty that his child would go out and murder someone if he was given a gun. [An open theist] argues that if the parent did give the gun to the child then the parent would be responsible for that crime. However, if God was unsure about the outcome then God would not be culpable for that act; only the one who committed the act would be guilty.”

Now, traditionally God’s omnipotence (doing) and God’s omniscience (knowing) are often viewed as separate attributes of God. But in the context of what we are looking at today, I think it makes more sense to view omniscience as a subcategory under omnipotence. Regardless, when I speak of God’s power, I am speaking of both omnipotence and omniscience.

So what does the Bible actually say about God’s power?

“Then the Lord said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son.” – Gen. 18:13-14

“Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: “I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for Me?” – Jer. 32:26-27

Are these actual questions? Are we supposed to read these and then try to figure out what the right answer is, based on our own intellectual arguments, or a sense of wanting to help God get out of the charge that He might not be good? Is that our job? No. Nothing is too hard for the Lord. His power does not have limits.

“He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy.” – Col. 1:15-18

I love these verses. Does this describe a weak God, one whose power has limitations? No. In Him all things hold together. I read this verse and think of all the forces in nature; the forces between charges in an atom, the force of gravity, and so on. Physicists explain that there these forces in nature, things tug on things, things push away things. And they explain that they are somehow intrinsic to these objects. But does that really make any sense? It doesn’t correlate with the rest of the real world. If I push on the podium, I am creating a force. But it costs me energy to do this. I get tired. But electrons don’t seem to get tired. The sun doesn’t seem to get tired of pulling the earth towards it. Doesn’t it make sense to say that these forces need some kind of energy source? It makes sense to me. He made the universe from nothing. And in Him, that is, by His power, all things hold together. Rabbi Kushner may “prefer” a God with limited power, but that is not what we have.

And God’s power includes the ability to see the future. How else do you explain all the prophecies in the Bible, some coming to pass thousands of years after they were first proclaimed? How else can we get a picture (albeit cloudy, because of our inability to understand even things proclaimed prior to them happening) of the future through Revelations?

“Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.” – Isaiah 46:9-10

Making known the end of all things from the beginning of all things – this is not what open theology would suggest. There is no adapting to more information as time goes on. And in this passage this ability to so completely know the future is ascribed to God as an essential part of His uniqueness; it is an essential part of what makes God, God. And notice how this verse ties together the idea of God’s omniscience (knowing the end from the beginning) and God’s omnipotence (I will do all that I please).

Rabbi Kushner may prefer a God with limited power, and open theology may think that having God have a limited view of the future absolves Him from the problem of evil (I don’t think so, because God still would know something at the last minute, or while it is happening), but Scripture to me seems pretty clear that God’s power and His knowledge are without limit.

Why is there suffering and evil in the world?

We assume in our answer that God is all powerful, and we will also assume that God is all-good. We will look at the evidence for God’s goodness next week; this week we take it as a given.

The problem of evil and suffering is actually a number of different questions all wrapped up into one. Dr. William Lane Craig (in the book Hard Questions, Real Answers) breaks the question into a number of following categories. This categorization is extremely powerful; it can be used with many questions. The reason it is powerful is that it breaks down hard questions into a number of different categories, and the approach in each category is based on the exact nature of that category. If you get used to thinking in these categories, your ability to discuss objections to Christianity with unbelievers will become much more powerful. Here are the categories:

Let’s start with the internal problem, logical version. Here is the claim an atheist might make: (1) If God is all-powerful, then He can create any world that He chooses. (2) If God is all-good, then He would prefer a world without evil over a world with evil. Understand that the atheist is not talking about a puppet world; he is talking about a world where people freely make decisions that are not evil. The skeptic David Hume presented the argument this way:

“Is He willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is impotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”

How do we respond? Well, again, understand that this is the logical version. The atheist is arguing that it is impossible for an all-good, all-powerful God and evil to both exist. The good news is that it is generally very easy to refute claims of impossibility.

Is it necessarily true that God, even an all-powerful God, can create any world? No. Just like you cannot make a square triangle, it is possible that an all-powerful, all-good God cannot make a world without sin but with free-willed people. It may be that in every possible world with free-willed people, some of those people will eventually sin. As for natural evils, things like earthquakes, accidents, etc., it is possible that maybe what we call natural evils are not “natural” but due to demons, who also have free will (it’s not probably impossible, anyway). What about the second premise? Is it necessarily true that God, even an all-good God, would prefer any world without evil to any world with evil? No. For those of us who are parents, we know this. We allow our children to grow up; as they come to the right age, we let them become exposed to more and more of the world (and yes, they sometimes get hurt in the process) so that they can learn to walk on their own two feet, so that they live by their faith, as opposed to the faith of their parents. There is a wonderful quote by CS Lewis on this topic:
“The terrible thing is that a perfectly good God is… hardly less formidable than a Cosmic Sadist. The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed – might grow tired of his vile sport – might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless. What do people mean when they say, “I am not afraid of God because I know He is good?” Have they never even been to a dentist?”– C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Because the atheist’s premises are not necessarily true, he has failed with his logical argument. Now, he may regroup and instead argue that an all-powerful, all-good God is logically inconsistent with the quantity and quality of evil in the world. This is still a logical argument. Reworded, the argument is this: God cannot have morally sufficient reasons for permitting the amount and kinds of evil that exist. But is that necessarily true? No. There is good in our world too. Maybe a world with less evil would also have less good. Again, the fact that this is possible refutes the logical argument. But we can go further than just prove that his arguments are possibly wrong.

As Christians, we have an explanation. (We don’t have to prove it, since we are refuting a logical argument. We only state that it is possible.) Our explanation is this: God could not have created a world that had so much good as the actual world but with less evil. Furthermore, God has morally sufficient reasons for the evil that does exist.

Now that you are getting warmed up, let’s tackle the harder problem, the probabilistic argument. The argument is this: Given the existence of evil in the world, it is improbable that God exists. How would you respond to this?

Well, one problem is that it is very difficult to assign probabilities, because we know so little of what God is doing. We are not all-knowing; in fact, we know next to nothing, compared to God. What is the Biblical view? It is that God is actively directing human history according to a plan He has been following from the very beginning. It is certainly possible that each evil action has been permitted so as to achieve a greater ultimate good. Who are we to possibly assign meaningful probabilities?

This leaves us at a stalemate. But we can go further. How? By arguing that if an all-good, all-powerful God exists, then it is not surprising that evil also exists. If we can do this, then the existence of evil doesn’t increase God’s improbability of existing.

Can we make such an argument? Here is how Craig argues it, using a Christian worldview. (Here the bullets are his, but the thoughts are mine; I don’t want him to receive the blame for anything questionable that I write here.)

1. The chief purpose of life is not happiness, but the knowledge of God. To put it another way, God made us to know Him and fellowship with Him and enjoy Him forever. Happiness, true happiness, flows out of this fellowship. Natural and moral evils may be part of how God draws people to Him.

Is this reasonable? Yes. There is objective evidence for it. Look at the history of the world over the last 2000 years. Again and again you see that the numbers of Believers grows most in areas where there is hardship, where there is poverty, where there are natural disasters, and where there is persecution. Even the atheist, if he looks at the data, cannot ignore this. In a world where everyone had what they needed, kind of like in the first part of the movie Wall-E, why would anyone turn to God?

Atheists may argue that all this suffering means that God is either not good or not powerful, but they don’t understand what humans are. We were made to fellowship with God. In fact, I would say that it is the only thing we are good for. If we attempt any other use for ourselves, it is a disaster, because it is not what we are. We are the clay; He is the potter. It is like if a steak decided it wanted to be a center of admiration and attention on a mantelpiece. Well, it can desire to do that all it wants, and when it is told that is not what it is for, it can complain all it wants, but the hard truth is that if it tries to do that it will soon stink and rot and become filled with maggots. It belongs in the refrigerator until it is time to cook it, and then its job is to be eaten. That is why we bought it. It has no other purpose. We were made to fellowship with and know God forever. This is not a dubious future, like my steak example; it is a glorious future, so wonderful and incredible that we cannot even begin to imagine it. We were made for a good purpose, a wonderful purpose. But that is the only purpose for which we were made.

2. Mankind is in a state of rebellion against God and His purpose. We know this. Romans 1 makes it so clear. It states that people reject God, and God gives them over to their sinful desires; He lets them produce the fruit that their rebellion naturally produces. They become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. Why does He allow this? Because He has chosen to create a world where people have free will, because without it, they would be puppets. But even in allowing the evil to run its course, it causes some to turn in desperation to God. Note that this means that Christians are not surprised by the moral evil in this world; it is expected.

Now an atheist may deny and resent the claim that he is in a state of rebellion against God. But people are not only in a state of rebellion against God; they are also in a state of rebellion against themselves. People do what they don’t want to do, both Christians and non-Christians. They fall into sin that they don’t want to do, they get trapped by addiction, they lose relationships due to their anger, and so on. Why don’t people just do what they want to do? Because this is what depravity is. The fact that at least a part of them still wants to do good is a sign that God’s Spirit is still calling to them; this being torn inside is exactly what Scripture teaches that fallen man is like.

3. God’s purpose is not restricted to this life, but spills over beyond the grave into eternal life. What is 80 years divided by infinity years? Zero. That is the percentage of our lives that we live in this world with its suffering and evil. Think of all we have seen of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians all that he went through. We truly cannot imagine it. But what did he say?

“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory, that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal.” – 2 Cor. 4:17-18

People who are stuck in the problem of pain and evil do not have an eternal perspective. They do not think about verses like these:

“On this mountain He will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; He will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth.” – Isaiah 30:7-8

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” – Rev. 21:3-4

4. The knowledge of God is an incommensurable good. When Paul called his sufferings, and by implication, any sufferings we undergo, light and momentary troubles, it wasn’t so as to belittle the magnitude of his or our suffering; it was to highlight the infinite greatness, the infinite goodness, of the eternal unseen.

If you think through these four points, you can see that it provides a solid answer even to the probabilistic problem of evil.

We have looked at both sides of the internal problem. What about the external problem? Many atheists today do not argue the internal problem, the so-called incompatibility between an all-good, all-powerful God and the presence of evil. Instead, they argue that all the gratuitous evil, that is, evil that is pointless and unnecessary, argues against God’s existence. What is external about this problem? It is that the existence of gratuitous evil is not a tenet of Christianity. It comes from outside Christianity. The Christian agrees that evil exists, but what about gratuitous evil? Well, even the atheist will not be able to prove that a particular evil is gratuitous. Again, we just don’t know the whole story of the world, what God is doing.

And for Christians, this trying to figure out “Why is this suffering or evil happening to me – is it gratuitous?” is really not something we are called to do. We may put ourselves in the position of Job (and especially his friends). What is God’s answer to Job? Well, God didn’t answer this question. Instead He told Job, out of the whirlwind, to remember who God is and who Job is. (And who Job isn’t, namely, God.) In essence, God’s answer to Job is “The reason for your suffering is My business; your business is to trust Me.” As readers we have insight Job did not immediately have into the reason for Job’s suffering. In part, it was to teach Job and his friends, but also in part, God’s purpose seemed to be to use Job as a teachable moment to Satan and any watching heavenly host (and to us). Was this gratuitous? We may not like to admit it, but no. There was a purpose in it, even if it makes us uncomfortable. For some, the purpose may be to be on a mantel.

Even “natural” evil does not prove there is gratuitous evil. God can use natural disasters for His good purposes, as we have already discussed. And the magnitude of the effects of a lot of natural evil is due more to man and his sin than anything else. A warning system could have greatly reduced the impact of the 2004 tsunami, a warning system that still doesn’t adequately exist. A report this year said that the likelihood of a tsunami with more deaths than in 2004 in the Indonesia area, given the 2009 Padang quake, is over 50% in the next 10 years. And scientists had warned for years that Haiti was going to have a devastating earthquake soon, but no preparations were made.

I want to mention one more argument used in the problem of evil, one by Alvin Plantinga. I really like it, because it turns the evil argument into a kind of proof of the existence of God! Here are the parts of this argument:

1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist. Even some well-known atheists argue forcefully that this is true. The issue here is the word objective. How can anything be objective if we are just looking at one person’s definitions versus another’s? But if there is a creator of the universe, He has a right to define these values.

2. Evil exists. Again, many atheists use this as their launching point for the problem of evil. (Of course, after seeing this argument, they won’t do it at the same time they talk about objective moral values!)

3. Therefore, objective moral values exist. Atheists wouldn’t use the problem
of evil as a problem unless they felt that these evils were objectively morally wrong.

4. Therefore, God exists. This is the use of logic. #1 says “If not G, then not OMV.” An equivalent statement is “If OMV, then G.”

Now, for many people, the problem of evil is not intellectually-based, but emotional, and no amount of rational arguments will convince them. My mother was in this category after she was diagnosed with an early stage of uterine cancer, even though it was corrected via surgery. At the time I was at a loss, because she was not arguing rationally.

How do we respond to those who suffer?

We don’t want to be like Job’s friends! Sometimes it’s best just to be there and not try to have all the answers. And there is one of my favorite verses:

“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” – Rom. 12:15

And we try to bring them back to Jesus. I like what Plantinga has written:

“As the Christian sees things, God does not stand idly by, cooly observing the suffering of His creatures. He enters into and shares our suffering. He endures the anguish of seeing His Son, the second person of the Trinity, consigned to the bitterly cruel and shameful death of the cross. Some theologians claim that God cannot suffer. I believe they are wrong. God’s capacity for suffering, I believe, is proportional to His greatness; it exceeds our capacity for suffering in the same measure as His capacity for knowledge exceeds ours. Christ was prepared to endure the agonies of hell itself; and God, the Lord of the universe, was prepared to endure the suffering consequent upon His Son’s humiliation and death. He was prepared to accept this suffering in order to overcome sin, and death, and the evils that afflict our world, and to confer on us a life more glorious than we can imagine.”

No matter how much suffering and pain we have personally endured, we cannot imagine what it was like for Jesus to endure the wrath of God for sins of the whole world. And He did it willingly, for the joy set before Him, because of the depth of His love for us. Remembering that this is who our Savior is, helps us to bear whatever we must temporarily go through. We can trust Him, not just intellectually, but personally, day by day. He is worthy of our trust and love.