Over the past 50+ years I have read all kinds of books on the issue of evil and suffering in the world. I just found the shortest and most concise response to the issue yet, written by Paul Ross of Australia. 2 pages. I wanted to share it with you.
Be sure to get and read his book on Atheism too; MOTIVE; on Kindle In this world, upon this earth, there is much suffering and some people struggle to believe in the existence of God in the face of such pain. The question of WHY haunts many a soul. God can’t you see, can’t you hear? The prophets of the Bible acknowledge that something is wrong but for the atheistic position, nothing can go wrong because there is no right way it should go in the first place. First, it needs to be said that the existence of suffering and evil are not an argument against the existence of God, any more than rust in a car is an argument against the car having a designer or termites in a house are an argument against the house having an architect. Secondly, God tells us that the world that we live in now is merely a provisional stage — an elementary juncture and chapter in a much larger story, only that which is true, beautiful and pure will ultimately continue.
Outside of a Biblical answer, the question remains infinitely unanswered, and therefore the retreat into atheism is a retreat into a non-answer because a universe appearing from nothing and for no purpose via an accidental mindless, impersonal, unintended pitiless process, which did not have the existence of man in mind, could care less. Something within each one of us feels the wrongness of the whole thing, and this morally-framed intuition arising within us reveals something about the nature of reality itself, after all, it would make no sense for a ‘thing’ that is the by-product of accidental mindless amoral cosmic vomit to even raise such a moral question in the first place. Many will raise evil and suffering as an argument against the existence of God but will be suspiciously quiet in regard to all that which is good in the world, the true and beautiful, the love, compassion, empathy, kindness, altruism, giving and sacrifice? It seems to me that the skeptic has tilted the scales of good and evil all to one side.
The witness of the Scripture tells us that Creation was marred by the sin of man. We all know that people willingly choose the wrong over the right and suppress their guilt even when their own conscience indicts them. Jesus draws our attention to the fact that every time we break the commandment to love our neighbor we are bringing upon our own heads suffering and evil. Jesus tells us to love because love can do no evil nor bring enslavement, oppression, terror or fear. The sad thing is that God offers to help us to love — to empower us to choose sacrifice over selfishness but many don’t want Divine intervention because for them Divine intervention suppresses self-rule.
They want self-rule over submission and self-exaltation over surrender and this is the fundamental moral problem that Divine intervention seeks to correct and redeem if we repent. Self-rule is incompatible with submission to the rule of God and this is why a rise in self-rule will always lead into hostility towards God in the individual and in a society. Most evil is caused by people that live lives in total disregard towards God’s moral law. The Supreme Royal Law is the law of love that Jesus taught. If you are killing, hating, stealing or slandering your fellow man than you are doing so in total disregard for God’s law of love. In short, if we all lived according to this law of love then 90% of all evil would cease to exist in our world.
"And this is the condemnation, the light has come into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light because their actions were evil, and will not come to the light lest their actions are exposed."
Jesus, John 3:19-20
In short, in running from God you end up running further into the darkness — into ever increasingly deeper levels of absurdity — where nothing makes any ultimate sense whatsoever, but in running to God the hardest questions are answered and every tear will be wiped away. (Revelation 21:4)
Stephen Hawking said that we have 100 years to colonize a new planet — or die. Did nobody inform Stephen regarding the millions of lives that are already dying (slaughtered) in the safety of the womb? Let’s take all the killing, genocide, hate, filth, rebellion and destruction to another location. What a great idea! Let’s migrate and export our wickedness and filth to another planet, let’s set up our house of horrors elsewhere.
Let’s set up our drug cartels closer to another star, our pornographic bookshops, our materialistic intoxicated society, our greedy nihilistic corporations, our God-hating secular utopia institutions, our abortion clinics and our rebellion against the Creator on Kepler 438b or Gliese 18ob. I’m sorry Stephen, but any plan that does not include repentance towards God equates to another failed paradise.
—Paul |
