September 29, 1999
EDITORIAL:
Does God deserve blame for evil?
___Shouldn't we give God a break?
___People--on the street, in the media and just about everywhere else--have dumped loads of blame on God lately. Pick up a newspaper or turn on the nightly news, and you're bound to confront the question: "How could a good God ..."
___"... allow a gunman to storm a church, killing teenagers and caring adults?"
___"... cause an earthquake that kills thousands of people in Turkey?"
___" ... let an infant die of heat stroke in a parked car?"
___" ... not stop a drunk driver from slamming broadside into a nice family in a minivan?"
___You can complete the question with other examples, all taken from real life.
___How can a good God allow bad things to happen? God has become the cosmic fall guy for a host of cataclysmic evils. That's primarily because we live in a blame-producing, finger-pointing culture. This is a litigious society; people settle disagreements with lawsuits. Somebody has to be wrong. We carry that over into our larger worldview. If something bad happens, somebody has to be wrong. Since human beings are the ones doing the asking, they're averse to taking the blame. So, God gets at least a share of the blame.
___That's not fair. Step away from emotions and look at facts, and you'll see.
___Some Christians have asked why God didn't stop Larry Gene Ashbrook from entering Wedgwood Baptist Church and opening fire. But Ashbrook acted on his own, exerting the same freedom to enter that building to cause mayhem as hundreds of others did to enter for worship.
___The recent earthquake in Turkey was devastating. Nothing feels more act-of-Godlike than an earthquake. Yet the death toll soared because building contractors violated codes and government regulators looked the other way. Although the earthquake was a surprise, the carnage shouldn't have been.
___Residents in our state reeled at the death of a child in a car during this summer's heat wave. We all know God loves children, but we rightly question the love of a parent who leaves a baby in a hot car.
___Drunk drivers and racing youngsters killed innocent travelers in recent months. The rigid laws of physics cannot overcome the corrosive forces of speed and alcohol.
___The common denominator of these tragedies is free will. God gave humanity a fearful gift when God gave us the ability to choose. Choice is a splendid asset and a fearful liability.
___On the positive side, only freedom validates our relationship with God. If we had been made by force to love God, then we would be robots and our feelings for God would not be love. God gave us free will so that our embrace, our longing and our love are legitimate.
___On the negative side, humans consistently abuse this freedom. Just ask Adam and Eve; just ask family and friends of the people killed in the Wedgwood massacre. This is the dark side of freedom, the antithesis of love, the open door to evil.
___When people choose badly, young people get shot, buildings fall, children suffer, families die. Yet this is not God's fault. This is the cosmic cost of love. We can choose; therefore, we can have a relationship with God.
___Of course, the problem of God's goodness in an evil world is not so simple it can be explained in a single column of a newspaper. Some tragedies skirt human intervention, such as many illnesses incurred without apparent lifestyle lapses and natural disasters that cannot be foreseen, much less avoided. Why? We cannot say.
___Even still, "How can a good God ...?" is the wrong question. The Apostle Paul advises us God is working--even suffering-- with us in all of life's circumstances, seeking to bring good out of evil.
___Sometimes, we may be compelled to doubt. The burden of tragedy weighs heavily. Yet we need look only to the Cross. In Christ, God bore the full weight of all our evil decisions, so we might be saved. Rather than blame God for evil, we should praise God for good.
___ --Marv Knox
E-mail the editor at marvknox@baptiststandard.com
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!