Apologetics

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Surely you have heard someone voice the question of: "how could a good God allow all the bad things that happen in the world?" At one point in life many of us have asked ourselves that question. We see the goodness of God manifested to us in so many different ways in life, and yet He allows the horrible things that happen in this world. For example, how could God allow women and children to be killed in Gaza City right now, as Israeli troops seek to stop the missiles that are being fired at Israel by Hamas militants from in and around Gaza City?

As non-combatants they are innocent victims. To the Israeli military they are collateral damage who have nothing to do with the Hamas party's aggression towards Israel. How could a good God allow this to happen? How could a good God stand by and allow all the horrible destruction that has taken place in this old world, from time out of mind? By the grace of God, I'm going to present some Biblical answers to this age old question.

People who choose not to acknowledge the existence of a good God have widely differing opinions as to why bad things happen to harmless people in the world. To some of them, maybe the non-combatants who are dying in Gaza were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Victims of fate, and political disagreement. The spiritually blind consider those who are the perpetrators of newsworthy crimes and destruction as being the only "bad" people in the world: those who fall short of the Glory of the God that they themselves refuse to acknowledge. To those who don't know the Lord, bloody wars and ethnic conflicts are merely the result of unfortunate political misunderstandings.

The wisdom and spiritual discernment God gives us as gifts of His Spirit can enable us to understand the real reasons for, and the powers behind many of the grim realities of life, as well as the good and beautiful. Daniel 12:10 Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand. Those who do not know Him, have not availed themselves of this benefit. Isaiah 8:20 "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

The sovereignty of God, and why He cannot intervene in situations having to do with the acts of men's wills, is a truth that can be understood if we understand the Scriptures. The word "sovereignty" is defined by the Free Online Dictionary as the following: "Supremacy of authority or rule as exercised by a sovereign or sovereign state."

God is sovereign over all of His creation, yet by divine decree He declines to control our wills within it. Everything God does and has done is a sovereign act, because He is a sovereign God. God created man with a will to choose between good and evil, and gave us dominion over the Earth. When our First Parents fell from His grace by disobeying Him, their spiritual natures changed from being lit up with God's love and life to the world's spiritual darkness: that emptiness became a reality that was passed on to all following generations.

God will not violate His divine ordinance of having granted man the power of free will: He can't force us to love Him. Neither will He disallow us our ability to break His Law of Love. If we break that Law of Love, we are guilty of the same disobedience that Adam and Eve were guilty of, before God. His Heart's Desire, His greatest Purpose for us, is for us to love, worship and serve Him because we choose to. God desires a People who are faithful and obedient to Him, out of love. We can be transformed into all the the Lord wants us to be, if we accept Him, and Christ by His Spirit lives in us. Genesis 1:26-28:

27 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

The Lord in His sovereignty created the earth, and created man upon it. As a sovereign act, He gave man dominion over all the earth, and everything in it. When man was given dominion over the earth, the earth became man's responsibility. That stewardship has been passed on to all following generations.

It is hard for us to comprehend how God can be so good, and we His creation can be so unlike Him in our Adamic spiritual natures. God by His Spirit must reveal to each one of us the reality of the spiritual helplessness that we have all inherited, and how that without His Spirit living in us we are all captive to the law of sin. Bad things happen in a world that a good God created because His will of universal love is not being done, in a world populated by fallen, love-less beings. Only those who have accepted Him, and been changed and given life by His Spirit have the God-kind of love living in us: self-sacrificing love, that no laws can be against. Love is the fulfillment of the law. Romans 10:4 "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth."

It must break the heart of God for Him to observe the grief and heartache that lives in His world, the suffering that the lack of His love in the hearts of men and women brings about. Yet His original creation of man was good, and man was created with the capacity to be wholly loving and obedient to Him. The evil in the world is not the result of a sadistic God Who made a world where evil was the rule. Man's rejection of God's Love and His Ways is, and always has been the cause of the pain and suffering in the world.

John Simmons © January 11, 2009

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