Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Free will. So we've talked basically about the free will theodicy and the soul making theodicy, if you want to Google those things. We've hinted at a metaphysical theodicy, but one of the questions that's always going to come up then is what about things that have nothing to do with human free will? Yeah, what about, you know, what about cancer? Maybe some of it comes from smoking or, you know, bad food, but it doesn't all come from that. You know, what about hurricanes? What about the. What about the hurricane that hit the Carolinas? You know, like once in a century storm that came out of nowhere and there was no way people could prepare for it. How do you explain that without. Explain that within free will or within any sort of framework?
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we have to remind ourselves of the Garden of Eden and say that there is a spiritual reality at work here in which when we get upset at God for a hurricane happening, what we are actually doing is we are mad at God that he did not perform the miracle of removing the hurricane. Because the hurricane is just a part of nature. We know natural law and we understand the science that goes behind creating a hurricane. So in order for that hurricane not to happen, what we are expecting is that God steps in and stops the hurricane from happening. Because hurricane is the natural order or order of things. And which is. I'm not saying that's a wrong thing to expect, but again, that removes free will because it is. What that is doing is. It's God stepping in and interrupting the natural order of the world. And God's God kind of took a step back and he created the world. And then he said, okay, now watch it work. He's not pulling all the strings, he's not pushing all the pieces.
He. He created the world and he stepped back and he's letting it do its thing. And out of that he's expect it will. He will step in sometimes to make good things happen. Recognizing that, number one, suffering can help us grow. Number two, I also think that we have to recognize that because we cannot see the whole story, we can't see the big picture. We are in the midst of the hurricane, asking God why. But we have to remember that we are limited our time, we are finite in our ability to see what God is doing. And we can expect that if God makes all things work for good, that takes faith, a lot of faith. But we can step back and say, God, I have faith. I trust you. I don't see the whole picture. And so living in a broken world, we Put our faith in the person who stands outside of the broken world and trust him. Because we do believe he interrupts some hurricanes. He keeps some hurricanes from happening. I believe in miracles that he does step in and do those things. But I trust him as the one who's outside of time to decide when he will and when it won't.
[00:03:03] Speaker C: That makes sense to me. I still don't. I still question it and wonder why those things happen. Like the big earthquake that just happened.
So many deaths.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Like.
[00:03:15] Speaker C: Yeah, I still wonder about those things. But I do ultimately put my faith in the creator of all things. Who knows. Knows what's going to happen.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: What.
[00:03:23] Speaker C: Knows the plan, Knows all things. So that is. That is just what I rest in.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: I think God does not want us to get too connected to this world.
He. He. He does not want this to be paradise at this point.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: If there were no hurricanes, if no babies died, if there were no natural disasters of any kind, we'd get pretty comfortable here. Mm. And we would start thinking that this was heaven.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: And if God stepped in and performed a miracle every time something. Every time. Time somebody is going to stub their toe, this would be paradise. And we'd have no reason to set our eyes on things above, because our eyes would be fixed on the things of this world. And God says, no, this is not your home. This is. I don't want you to get too attached to this place because an attachment to this place, an attachment to this world will keep us from pointing people to Jesus. It's the same reason why God doesn't want us to save our.
If I could be good enough to save myself, then I'm God. Then I should be pointing everybody to me. Look how good I am. Everybody, follow me. I'll take you to heaven. But God, that's not what God wants. He wants everybody to set our eyes on things above, not on me. And if this world is perfect, if natural disasters don't happen, then my attention is fixated in this world and on my goodness and not on God. Yeah, he's not okay with that.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. That makes me think of. I was just writing life group questions for the sermon you're going to preach this Sunday, which will probably be last Sunday or maybe two Sundays ago by the time this comes out. But in Mark, chapter two, and Jesus, they dropped the paralyzed man through the ceiling. And then Jesus says, son, your sins are forgiven. Which is obviously not the reason he was there. You know, he had to be dropped in on a mat. He couldn't walk. But Jesus always has that. He has a eternal goal in mind. And you have to have a framework that says there is eternal healing and there's temporary healing. And any healing that happens in this life is temporary healing. You know, any tragedy interrupted in this life is a temporary interruption. Lazarus died twice, right? You preached about that a few weeks ago.
This man that Jesus healed in Mark 2, his body broke down again later and he passed away. So Jesus first goal was eternal healing.
And that's something that, you know, that whenever we start talking about faith and faith's interaction with pain, we're going to get to a place where you have to say, in order for us to explain this, we have to believe in an eternity. You know, eventually you've got to put all your car, all your chips in the, in the center on eternity, or you've got to not put any of them in. You know, you gotta fold out of the game because that's where it all rests, is everything will be made right in eternity. One of my favorite Christian artists, Andy Squires, has a line in one of his songs where he just says, either nothing is wasted or everything is that's good. And that, yeah, it's, you know, God will make everything right or nothing is right. And eventually that's what we have to rest in, is everything will be made right.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Our flesh begs for our attention so our desires will naturally bend towards asking God to meet our physical needs, to heal our physical pain. And what God is constantly telling us is, let me change your focus a little bit. What you need more is actually a spiritual answer. What you actually need is spiritual healing. Because if this is the tension that I have with a lot of great social justice ministry that the church does to the world, we do a lot of meeting physical needs. And I cheerlead those things on if they are also pointing people to their deeper need. Your deeper need is not that you have one more meal. Your deeper need is not that you live on this life for two years or 20 years longer than you would have otherwise. Your deeper need is that when this life inevitably is over, that you will spend eternity with God. Because our lives in this world are a blink. They're so short. Like God rescues somebody, even if, even if he's rescuing a baby from dying, it's still, we're talking about a seven year, 70 year period that this person is different compared to eternity that is tiny. It's nothing. It is the blink of an eye. And God is saying, listen, eternity is so much greater. It's so much more important. So if that baby dying because he recognizes that that actually is better for that child's eternity, then okay, we accept God's plan. He's outside of time. And he said for some reason it is better for this baby to die at the age of two or whatever it is. And we just have to have FAI that and trust that that's the shelter that needs to be built. That faith shelter that says, listen, you have to get to the point where you trust God even when it absolutely makes no sense to you. That's really what faith, that's what Jesus is asking of us. This is why the prerequisite to salvation is not works, it's not behavior, it's not sin or not sin. The prerequisite is faith is believing God. Because you, at some point your faith is going to be challenged by pain in this world. At some point something bad is going to happen to you. And that is when people are going to start doubting God is when something physic in your physical world happens that is painful to you. And God is saying, let me build you a faith shelter. Let me help you see that I'm bigger, I'm outside of this. And I'll reflect on what you were saying. Like, what's the alternative? What solution does the world have to this problem?
There's, there's not an alternative. It's like you either believe in eternity, you either believe that there's a God, or what is the point? What is going to get you through a hard time, through a painful season? Other than God? Sure, other than. And I know I'm not going to believe in God just because it's the easiest or it's the most emotionally helpful.
But I also think. But it is the most emotionally helpful. Like there's nothing else that can give me comfort, Comfort in a, in a, in a storm, in a season of pain. At some point I just have to say, I'll take comfort. I'll, I'll, I'll receive that peace that having faith in God can give to me.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: Sure. The, the other alternative is nihilism.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: You know, there's, and yes, philosophers debate about, you know, I can't remember names off the top of my head. Peter Singer is one of them. Utilitarian philosopher who talks about, you know, we, as evolutionary beings and beings have the ability to create a morality, and it's good and right and we create value for ourselves. Dawkins has said things like that, which, just for the record, for anybody questioning Dawkins is a evolutionary biologist, not a philosopher. You should not listen to his philosophy. He's not taken seriously in the academic world, so there are a lot of Christians, too, that shouldn't be taken seriously in the academic world. But Dawkins, you know, it's like the Bill Nye Ken Ham debate. It's like, let's put two cartoon characters together to debate about fake things. You know, neither of those are serious scientists, but we put.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: Anyway, he's sold millions and millions of books to people who are uneducated on the top.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Both topics.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: Like, both sides disagree with him.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: His colleagues disagree with him.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly.
But, oh, man, I lost the thread. I lost the thread in that rabbit trail.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Yeah. What they. What do they have to offer?
[00:10:56] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, nihilism. Like, there's you. You can debate that we can create a moral framework for ourselves, but still the best you can say is that that's a moral framework we created. And the only way that moral framework can be implemented upon you is if someone else is stronger than you or you submit to it.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: You know what I mean? Like, the life is ultimately at a societal level. Survival of the fittest.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: If there's not an eternal perspective and you cannot look at someone and say they did anything that was evil in a. In an objective sense, you can look at and say that was harmful to our society, you can look at them and say that was harmful against what we all agreed would be harmful. But you can't look at that person and say that, you know, those desires were somehow innately evil.
[00:11:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: Because if that person was stronger and won, then they would enforce that morality on the world, and the opposite would be true. If morality is a social construct, then morality can only be enforced in a social setting. There's nothing objective about it. And nihilism is the only option. Besides that nihilism, nothing matters except what I decide matters. So I create my own life.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: And inevitably what ends up happening is evolution, or whatever you believe in becomes your God. Like, you start worshiping at the altar of survival of the fittest, believing that, okay, this is how we grow as a species. So I need to die because I'm the weakest, or I need to go through this pain so that I. So that I'm wiped out, so that the stronger people can survive. And that is a terrible God. If you worship the God of Darwinism or whatever it is, then that God is way more evil, way more.
Creates way more pain in our world. Anything that the Christian God could ever create.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's the same when. When you look at the culture wars that are going on right now, right.
When you look at those from a non religious, non Christian perspective, you've got, you know, one of, one of the buzzwords right now is colonialism, right? So the colonialists that took over the world and enforced there, which I think that was evil, you know what I mean? I think enslaving people for the sake of, for the sake of anything, but especially for the sake of profit of a few, is absolutely evil. But at the same time, like, that's what almost every human civilization has done.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: Comanche empire was an empire that ruled with an iron fist the southwestern United States. Genghis Khan tried to colonize most of the known world at that time. You know what I mean? It's like, yes, that, that's evil, but when you negate one side, all you do is open up the door for a different ideology to come and take over and then enforce its morals onto the world. And then you wind up, you know, kicking the can down the road 500 years for the flow to switch, which.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Is what is so beautiful about Jesus. Because you hear about the evils of the past, you hear about slavery, and what do you think? Well, let's raise up an army to defeat that evil. Let's, let's overpower it. Let's be stronger than that evil. And so we use human means in order to defeat human evil. Whereas Jesus comes in and he does the exact opposite. Jesus comes to Earth and he says, I'm going to submit to the pain. I'm going to allow my enemies to kill me.
And he defeats evil with the exact opposite of everything that we are naturally drawn to evil with. And I think in our human nature, this is, I mean, you see this debate among evangelicals constantly right now is how are we going to defeat the evil of the world? And our natural tendency is to say, okay, evil is there, so let's, let's do the moral majority thing and out vote everybody and out protest everybody and, and all these other things. Let's use our strength as a. And Jesus says, nope, maybe you need to love some more. More people. Maybe you need to submit, to submit to the pain and just get down dirty with the hurting people and show people how what love looks like.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
But before we move on, I think one more thing we need to say just in the outside of human, direct human cause, natural evil.
I think we downplay the human influence on the world around us. Something if you just look at, from my understanding, from what I've read about natural Disasters and things like that. First off, you know, you can look at things like the dust bowl in American history and you can say like, that wasn't all nature. You know, like we went in and just took off the topsoil and that it might not have caused it completely, but it certainly made it a lot worse. So there's a degree of that where we just like, you know, I'm not trying to create like some sort of far green theology here, but just to say, like God said, we have dominion.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: From my understanding of the Hebrew word of dominion, it means to build up or trample down. We can destroy the world, we can make gardens or deserts. We have the ability to do that.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: We also have to recognize our limited understanding of the consequences for our actions. I mean, whether it's greenhouse gases that are causing natural disasters or we're doing something else that's causing natural disasters that we don't even know about, that we haven't enlisted. I think sometimes our pride, the scientific world is quite a prideful world.
[00:16:38] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: And they think that they always have the answers.
And so which is good. I'm, I'm not against science. I say, let's keep trying to figure things out. And we need some people who are, we need some people who are arrogant enough to say, no, I'm going to find the answers. Like, that's great. We love that. However, at some point we have to just say, but in the complexity of the world that we live in, we just have such a limited understanding of the consequences of the actions that we're doing. We are doing some things right now in our lives that are killing us and we have no idea about it. So to just say because we did X, Y and Z, this tornado happened, or because we did X, Y and Z, I'm going to put my overly simplistic explanation into it. No, I think we, it might be better to just say, okay, let's keep trying to figure out what the consequences are for our actions. Just accepting the fact that we're causing pain we don't even realize we're causing.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And there's a justice element to this as well, in terms of human justice, in the sense that it's not usually the wealthy.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: That suffer from natural disasters. I mean, it's just true. Like Katrina, it was not the wealthiest neighborhoods in New Orleans. I've been in New Orleans, helped do like reconstruction work there. It's not the wealthiest neighbor neighborhoods in New Orleans that suffered the most that, you know, the hurricanes in the Carolinas hit where I grew up. Yes, hurricanes hit wealthy houses, too, but it was the people that lived near the floodplains, you know, that got hit the worst. And it was the people without the ability to reconstruct on their own that are still living in tents months later.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: Yep. Right now are the wealthy in our world. There's this mass exodus from the north down to the beaches where the hurricanes happen. It's because they recognize I can build a house that'll protect me from that. Yeah, they recognize that I, I can. I'm not in danger because I've got the resources to make sure I'm not in danger. And if you look right now at the impact that natural disasters is having on the world, drastically decreasing, there are, there are more and more natural, not necessarily natural disasters, but what's the word I'm looking for? Hurricanes and tornadoes and all of these things that are happening, but there's less and less damage as a result of those things because we've gotten better at building because we have more resources, we're richer now than we've ever been in history. We just keep getting richer and richer while complaining about how poor we are.
And so the, the disaster side of natural is decreasing even as the natural part of it is increasing.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: Yep, yep. And I think that's just. That's a question that we have to be able to wrestle with, is just when we look at all of the things that we would call a natural disaster or even diseases, like, what we can say is that if you are. I'm painting with a really broad brush here, you're going to be able to find exceptions to what I'm saying. But in broad strokes, if you're looking at cancer, you're looking at things that affect the poor.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Right there.
[00:19:39] Speaker A: Something called a food desert. You ever heard of a food desert in a major city? There are places where there are no grocery stores that provide fresh food. There are only corner stores that sell mostly canned food. So people who live in those neighborhoods, many of them don't have cars. So it's cost prohibitive for them to get out of that neighborhood. So they wind up spending their money where they can walk to where they can get to easily, which means they're eating, like, really bad food. I've got friends who work for a missionary organization in New Orleans, and they talked extensively about this in the neighborhoods that they worked in. They just saw it. It's like, well, if you can't afford the bus ticket to go across town to get fresh food, then you're going to get you Know like food that's really bad for you, which multiplies health, health issues, you know. So even when we look at the world and we say, well how do you explain, like, how do you explain a mother dying in childbirth? It's like, well that's way more likely to happen where we don't provide good health care.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: You know, where people are impoverished, it's just more likely to happen. How do you explain, how do you explain all of these diseases? Well, it's way more likely to happen where we have built a system that keeps nutrients away from the impoverished.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: You know, it's just, it keeps coming back to our free will choices. It comes back to the way that we've set up society, the way that we've chosen to interact with each other, to divide and use wealth. It all comes back to free will.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: Yep, absolutely. Which is always, you know, we, we always choose what's best for us. Left to our own devices, we're going to choose what's best for us. And at even in many of the kind of the altruistic, generous, you know, things that we see in the world are in some cases selfishly motivated, you know, protecting our people, protecting people like us.
So I've got a friend who was like sharing things in the original.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: After the invasion into Ukraine, you know, about like tragedy, you know, lots of people being harmed there. But from what I understand, it was pretty well documented that it was easier to get out if you were white.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: You know what I mean? So it's just like, you know, even in times where you see humans like banding together, oftentimes we band together to help people that are like us.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: You know, it's just, just part of the system.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: Or part of our system, our sinful broken system, you know.
[00:22:10] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: So the last question, which we've been hinting at this the whole time, but if we can say this is why evil happens and even this is how evil happens in the world, how can we still then say God is justified at being a bystander? I've got a friend who is a philosopher and he likes to propose these ethical questions. You know, one of the ethical questions he proposes is, you know, imagine that you are wearing a. Yeah, let's say a ten thousand dollar suit. I don't even know where you'd go to buy a ten thousand dollar suit, but I'm sure people do. Imagine that you're wearing a ten thousand dollar shoot and you got suits and you got a thirty thousand dollar watch on. But there's A kid drowning in a muddy lake. Right. If you jump into that lake, it will cost you 40 grand. It's going to ruin your Rolex and it's going to ruin this suit. Are you morally justified in saying, nope, I can't sacrifice my material value to save that child's life?
[00:23:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: So he proposes that, and every person's like, ooh, gross.
No, you can't choose your Rolex over a kid. Right.
But it's not a stretch to look at God and say, okay, but God, you clearly have the ability to stop every kid from drowning. It's not costing you anything.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: So are you implicated as a bystander in every evil takes place in the world?
[00:23:42] Speaker B: Yeah. So the anal. The same analogy, different with the famous one of the. The train going down the tracks and the guys in charge of switching the tracks. But if he doesn't switch the tracks, it's going to run over his kid or it's going to kill all the people in the train. Like, which one do you choose?
[00:24:00] Speaker A: I saved my kid.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: Save your kid.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: That's my answer.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: Kill everybody on the train.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:03] Speaker B: Yeah. All right.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: No question.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: I think that's a more accurate picture of what Jesus is doing, what God is doing when he chooses to. To interact or not interact. I think he is able to see a bigger picture and all the consequences of every action. Because every time Jesus saves somebody, every time God saves somebody, there is a consequence, and we don't know what those consequences are. He is outside of time. He is infinite and able to see all the different dominoes that are going to fall if he takes a certain action. And we just eventually have to get to the point where we. So we have so much faith in God that we believe that he is making the right choice that's going to do have the most possible good as a result of it. And we do see in scripture this kind of controversial statement. We do see in Scripture that there is preferential treatment given to God's children that he sees. He sees a elevated.
It is more important to do good for who? For those who are called according to his purpose, for his children. And I'm not saying that he doesn't try to rescue somebody who's not a Christian or he doesn't do miracles on behalf of people who aren't. But I am saying that he can see the full picture and he can see that person's future and the decisions that they're going to make in the future and whether or not they're going to follow him or not. And that child, if it dies now or if it dies later in life, what are the consequences? We believe that all these different possible outcomes, he sees them all and he's doing the most possible good.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense.
It's hard to stomach, though.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it is.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: That's what it comes down to is, you know, it's. It's hard sitting where we are to look at God and say, you know, how could you not be involved anyway? You know, it's. My theology professor described it. It's just a different version of the same analogy. But that, you know, God is.
God is carving out the path of the river of human history. Right. If you imagine the way a river flows, his hand is the path of human history.
Every time we ask for a miracle, we're asking him to drop a. Drop a rock in the river, you know, or to create an eddy or something like that. We can't see where an eddy in Missouri creates a flood in Mississippi. You know, like, we just. We don't have the ability to see that.
So God is operating on the scale of human history in his justice. We are operating on the scale of our own understanding. And those are not. They're not the same.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: You know, like the analogy you use this past Sunday when your son's like, I want fair. My kid says that all the time or things like that. You know, I had to explain to him the other day that, you know, he was saying, you're not being nice about this, dad. And I was like, well, first off, that's not really my job.
But second off, my job as your dad is not to make you think everything I do is nice, but it's to teach you how to live a healthy godly life and make wise decisions. And that might mean you don't like the decision I make now, so, you know, I can look at my son and see the scale of the rest of his life.
God can look at us and see the scale of eternity.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: And we. We can't. So from where we're sitting, it seems unfair and not nice.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And we have to recognize that God's. When God chooses not to act or when God chooses not to perform that miracle, it is him interacting, it is him getting involved, but he's choosing not to act. And so when we ask God for something and we get upset that he doesn't give us what we ask him, we. We also recognize that no. God is answering your request. He's saying no because he recognizes that what the thing you're asking for will actually lead to More pain than you realize. And so God. God gives us a yes or a no. We want the yes, but we should also want the no, because we trust that God is outside of it and he sees the consequences of all of it.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: And the only answer to that question that's ever brought me any sort of emotional consolation because, once again, eternal justice doesn't help. You know, we just were in Job. I don't think Job would have traded his first family for his second one. You know, he wasn't trying to upgrade his families. I don't think that's how he would have operated. I don't think God was like, well, all your kids died, so here's some more kids. I don't think that's what God was doing in that story.
But the only. The consolation is that God never lets anything happen to us that doesn't happen to him. Colossians says Christ is before all things and all things hold together in him.
There is nothing that happens to a human that he is not there for and feeling the pain of. You know, Hebrews says that it's his desire that all would come to repentance. So he mourns the death of every person that dies outside of, you know, repentance because it's his desire for that person, you know, First John 3 says his love is lavished on us, that we would be called his children, and that is what we are. He loves us in the way that a father loves a child, which means every parent knows that the joy of your child is your joy, and the pain of your child is your pain in a way that you can't explain. But when your kid scrapes their knee, you'd rather cut your leg off than have your kid experience that pain. You can't. You can't do anything about it. But God experiences our pain in the way a parent experiences the. Yeah. I'm a big fan of historic Christian theology, and I put a high value on orthodoxy. The historic Christian theology I throw out the window with no hesitation is that God is.
I'm blanking on the term right now, but that he is unaffected by our pain. God cannot be existentially threatened by us. I can't kill him right now. I can't end his life. But I absolutely toss the idea that God does not want. He doesn't. His desires are not met in any way in relationship with us, that he doesn't find joy, that he isn't emotionally harmed when we reject him. I throw that out completely because I think Scripture tells a different story.
[00:30:24] Speaker B: Yeah, One of my greatest flaws is that I'm not an empathetic person, like not naturally empathetic towards people.
Yet when I spank my sons, I feel the pain. I hate spanking my sons. Like, I don't know what it is about that act. No, I do know what it is about that act. I love my sons. I don't want them to feel pain. I, I hate them feeling pain. But I spank my sons because I fully aware that the pain I experience when I spank them and the pain they experience when I spank them is good pain. It's going to lead to good things. It's harder for us to see that when God chooses not to intervene in our pain, when God chooses not to perform a miracle to keep us from experiencing pain, it's harder for us to see that God still loves us. But we, we recognize in the arrival of Jesus on the scene, when Jesus Christ comes to earth, we recognize just how much God not only empathizes from a distance, but also can relate to our pain, has experienced our pain, came to do what we are doing and worse.
So that not only can he empathize from afar, but also he can relate to us.
[00:31:41] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And, and the other thing I think that plays into this is we underplay how much authority God gave people. We do it in every category. We underplay the authority he gave us to make the world good or bad.
And we, we see ourselves. This is going to sound controversial. We see ourselves as being infinitely smaller than God in terms of authority and in terms of power. We are.
[00:32:09] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:32:10] Speaker A: But God gave us dominion over the earth. He gives us the ability to choose relationship with him or to deny it. You know, N.T. wright talks often about how God created us to be co creators of his world with us, that he would share the authority of ruling the world, Revelation and all of the, at least most of the scriptures that talk about, you know, the, the resurrection and new heavens and new earth talk about the people of God ruling alongside Christ in eternity. We are called co heirs and brothers with Christ.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: So all of that is to say, like, oftentimes analogies in scripture are very helpful.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: You got it.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: But you got to let an analogy be what it is.
[00:32:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: So one of the analogies is God loves us like his children. Another analogy is that we are brothers and co heirs with Jesus.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:33:05] Speaker A: Right. So we always imagine us only in the stance of I am a child and my father should have done something on my behalf.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: Right.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: But there's another concept in scripture that says no You're a ruler of this world.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Bride of Christ.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:20] Speaker B: You.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: You are co. Equal with the people around you.
And just like I cannot force my will on you as another adult.
[00:33:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: I can't do that.
I can't punish you for a crime you might commit later. I can't call the cops and be like, you know what? I think Grant's going to embezzle.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: Can't do that.
And God, in the same way he interacts with us as persons. God is a person. He interacts with us as we have the autonomy of persons. So he gives us that ability. And just like it would be unjust, you know, for you to try to hurt me now. For what. Which this is one of the big ethical questions people propose in a philosophical, you know, ideation, basically. But, you know, it would be unethical for you to imprison me or kill me now because I might become a serial killer later.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: You know, you can't do that. God doesn't. God doesn't force his will on us now.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: So we say as if, as if he is interacting with us, as if we are only in this subordinate position.
[00:34:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:32] Speaker A: You know, that he should force his will on the world. But he says, no, I created you to co. Create this world with me. I created you for relationship with me. A relationship that's not equal in the sense of power or, you know, glory or things like that, but is equal in the sense of shared authority. You can't take that too far or you wind up in a weird place. But you understand what I mean. And so in that sense, like, God is not implicated in letting us do what he created us to do.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: Yep. And God being more powerful does not make me less powerful. God being more powerful makes. Makes me more powerful. If I am ruling with Him. If I am reigning with God for eternity, then if he is more powerful, I become more powerful. If he has chosen to gift his authority to me as he has, then if he. If we see him as a more powerful. As more sovereign, then that does not make me less Thor, Give me less power or give me less authority. If he is more sovereign, I become more. It's like if a president is more powerful, then his vice president is also more powerful. Reigning, Reigning with him. And I think sometimes we see it as, well, either I'm powerful or God's powerful, and it's one or the other. No, if God has given us authority, then his power increases ours.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yep. Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:35:53] Speaker C: I, I've never really haven't like, hasn't really shaken my faith at all on these questions, but this might be a curveball kind of. But to me, what it doesn't shake, but it makes me wonder and, And. And try to figure out what these people have. But like, okay, we set up a case for why there's pain and suffering in the world.
But as Christians, and we've kind of, I think, alluded to a little bit, but how do we as Christians deal with that? Walk through that pain and suffering? Like, just like Paul getting stoned over and over again, but still just persevering and moving forward. Timothy getting or Stephen getting stoned. Just the martyrs and coliseums. Or like, what comes to my mind always is the story of Corey Tim Boom and how much she and her sister went through and like, just like thanking fleas in, like, this horrible shack.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: They.
[00:36:52] Speaker A: They're.
[00:36:53] Speaker C: This camp they're living in. And actually it turned out they should have been thinking the thieves, the fleas, because the fleas were actually not. They were a nuisance to them, but they're actually helping them have a Bible study in this room that the. The guards would not want to go into because of the. The fleas. And like, so how do I, as Christians, we have perspective of like, the right perspective, I guess, of like, how do we live through this suffering that we're going to inevitably live, like, live through? How do we do it? Like, those kind of people, you know, like.
[00:37:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. I see love. Love as a muscle that is built over time. And you see people like that and they've put in the work to build the muscle of love. And the way.
The way God designed the church was a community of people who are so loving of each other that one, when one is strong, they can rely on the. Or when one is weak, they can rely on the strength of somebody else. When one person is struggling, they can rely on somebody who's not struggling. And so how do we get through pain together? We get through pain by relying on each other. But then also we recognize that some people have been through things that helped them build that muscle. They built the strength that only pain could build. You go to the gym and you see the strongest guy and you recognize that he's been through more pain than I have. Like that that's what makes CJ such a. Or some kind of drug or something. But yeah, yeah, that's what makes some people stronger, is they've been through more pain. And inevitably there are going to be people in a community who have stronger muscles because they've been through pain, and we. We rely on each other in community. That helps us to get through. And I think so often people come to the church as a reaction to pain, and so they come in and they have the more difficult job of now I've got to build the relationships that at the same time I'm trying to rely on people, and that just causes somebody to be more needy. And it's harder to build relationships because they're trying to play catch up. And so I tell people like, you've got to come start building the relationships now that you're going to rely on later. You can't try to build the relationship while you're in the storm. Like, you're. You're just in chaos mode at that point, and you're asking people to.
For their help who don't know you, who don't know how to help you even if they wanted to help you.
So it's so necessary for us to build the community now that we're going to rely on when we're going through the storm. Build the shelter now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: Absolutely. And eventually you gotta. You gotta put all your chips into the middle of the table on eternity, you know, eventually, Pascal's Wager, even as antiquated as it is, you're gonna have to say, I have to pick a side. Either I live believing that when I die, I'm gonna wake up in eternity with Christ, or that when I die, I won't wake up at all.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: Yeah, you got to make that decision. And when you make that decision, you live as if that's true.
You know, with that. Jesus said, blessed are those who mourn. So I don't think that we live as people who are fully disconnected from the world. You know, we live with a foot in each world, noticing the pain, but not so beaten down by the pain that we have no hope in it. You know, we should live as people who can fully feel the pain of the world, but fully feel the hope of Christ so that we can empathize and suffer and struggle alongside the world, pointing to the hope of Christ. You know, if you don't empathize with the pain of the world, then you can't speak to a world who's in pain. You know, the world won't listen.
I won't listen to you if you're trying to tell me about an experience you can't empathize with that I'm going through. You know what I mean? Like, that's just. Maybe that's my own selfishness. But I don't want someone to tell me everything's going to be fine if they haven't been in my. Or at least something correlated to my experience. You know, how would you know? Which is. Once again, we've been talking about it all throughout this conversation. That's why Jesus came and experienced everything, so that he can say, I've been through death. You know, I.
[00:41:13] Speaker B: The thing that I relate that to most is before we had a miscarriage, it seemed weird to me that people mourn miscarriages so much. Like, why is that such a big deal? You never even met the kid. Like, what? Why is it so hard? And then when we went through our first miscarriage, I was like, oh, now I get it. And so it is hard to hear somebody who's not been through your pain.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: To relate to it.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I think if, if pain. Did you have something.
[00:41:38] Speaker A: I was just gonna say. And then people tell you stuff. Well, like, well, it's OK, you know, @ least it happened early. Or at least it, you know, or at least there were no complications. Or at least you can still try again. It's like, well, at least you get the. Out of my face.
[00:41:52] Speaker B: You don't get it.
Yeah, I think if somebody, if pain leads somebody away from God, because I think that's what we have to wrestle to is the reality is a lot of people turn their back on God because of pain. And if they did that, they had to choose. Either they just didn't ask the questions that needed to be asked and they just became agnostic and didn't deal with it. They ran from the pain and by running from pain, ran from God. That happens. The other option is you're a little more intellectually honest and you ask the question, okay, turning my back on God because of pain means one of two things. It either means I have to choose to believe God doesn't exist at all and that this is all just Darwin, survival of the fittest, natural, all that crap, or I believe God does exist and he's evil.
And I got to pick one of those. If I'm intellectually honest, I have to say one of those two things are true. And if I choose to believe one of those two things, I think that a lot of people who would outwardly call themselves atheists, who would proudly call themselves atheists, are choosing to believe that God doesn't exist as a reaction to something that happened in their. Into their life. Because to me, now I know I'm biased in this. To me, it seems like it is so difficult to get to an argument where you say that there's no God like that is the hardest. It takes an incredible amount of faith to believe that this world happened accidentally, that everything appeared from nothing. Like, okay, so we're gonna do the apologetics thing. It makes no sense to me that there's no God like that one.
Nobody could ever convince me of that one. You could. I could see feasibly making the argument that there is a God and he's just a jerk. Like, he's just evil, he's just mean. That one makes way more sense to me. And so somebody goes down that road and they're going to spend a lot of time saying, here is all the evidence for God being evil. And they're going to point to a lot of evil in the world. And to me, that's a much harder thing to argue against.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: But with that, my friend I referenced earlier, who's a philosopher, he used to talk about a lot how deciding that you do not believe in God because of how you evaluate the morals of that God is not the right way to go about it. Right. Because if in fact, there is a God and eternity is on the line, then who cares for ultimately, whether you think he's moral or not, or she's moral or not, or whatever, you know, the first question is, is there a God? Is there a deity? Is there more to this life than what I can physically experience? And then, yeah, which God is that? And what is true about that God? Because if that God is, you know, asking for whatever immoral thing we would find immoral, then ultimately the question should be like, if eternity's on the line, you know, then eternity's on the line. Deciding how I feel about that God is not the right place to start in terms of getting a conclusion about reality.
Now, I believe that God is moral and God is just. And we don't have to worry about saying that God is evil.
[00:45:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: Because for me, it all comes down to God inhabits the world. You know, God kicked us out of the garden and then built a tabernacle, you know, and then built a temple and put his presence in a people that were backwards and broken and as selfish as we are, and gave them his name and took upon himself their shame and all of that. So to me, that's the. The answer to it all of how could God be justified in it happening? Is that He. He didn't make it happen to us, to them. He made it happen to us, or he allowed it to happen to us, to all of us, including himself.
[00:46:07] Speaker B: Yeah. We are all prodigals running away from him. And he's saying, listen, I'm creating this home for you. I'm, I'm creating this paradise for you. You keep running away from it. And he keeps coming after us. He keeps going at the 99 sheep that stuck around. He's going after the one that, that ran away. And, and that's the God that we serve. And to I, I want to go back to what you said about if God, if, if there is a God and we're not talking about like statues or idols that we worship or something or like some low small G God, if there is a creator God, which is really what we're talking about here, if there is a creator God, then whatever he is, he says is moral. Is moral. Sure. As he gets to pick. We don't. We have no authority as the created beings to determine what is moral and what is not moral. So us judging him.
[00:46:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:57] Speaker B: For being evil, that's just a futile. Sure. You have no chance as the created being of telling with a creator what he can and cannot do.
[00:47:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, this has been a long but fun conversation. Yeah. Anybody got a concluding thought?
[00:47:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: One. One thing you want to say to, to all of YouTube and Apple and Spotify and wherever else peace that passes.
[00:47:24] Speaker B: Understanding comes from relationship. It can only come from knowing Jesus. Like you were. You, you opened with it. But intellectual answers don't comfort unless you know the person who gives the answers. Unless you have a relationship with Christ. And so that's what it has to come back to. You need to know him because when you start doubting. I can't doubt God because I know him personally. Like, to me, it makes no sense to doubt that there is a creator God because I've met Him. Like, it all has to come back to a relationship. So that's where I would start. And God doesn't define a relationship with him as a one on one thing. You don't have a personal relationship with God apart from a corporate relationship with God. Like the way the place, the way that you build the foundation, the way that you build the shelter to come back to naked and afraid. The way you, the way you build a shelter in your life right now is by building a relationship with God and by building a relationship with his church. Do that work. Start right now because the foundation is going to crumble if you don't like, if you don't start building that foundation when the pain comes, your life is going to be in shambles.
[00:48:34] Speaker A: About you. Grant.
[00:48:35] Speaker C: Nice I, I, I agree with Mike. I think especially more so now than ever about community. Even me being more of a quiet person and not having a ton of community and don't seek it. The more and more around people who are my community, I see the power and being, being a part of the relationship with God. One on one, me and God, but also being with his body and being in that community is, it's just hard to explain. Even it's so powerful.
[00:49:08] Speaker B: Better.
[00:49:09] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely, Absolutely. Well, my closing thought would just be that you're not going to find an answer to this question that's going to fully satisfy all your questions. The intellectual pursuit is an unending one. So if you're watching this video and you're thinking, I've got a thousand more questions. Well, first off, keep looking for answers because there are good answers to a lot of them. But also understand that, that we as humans have biases. And this is like, this is going to sound strange, but like there is nothing that is academically compromised about choosing to believe and choosing loyalty because chasing some sort of objective, unshakable fact is, is an unending chase. You're never going to find the end of that.
We should find good reasons to believe what we believe. You know, we have a reasonable faith.
Daniel Miglior said that Christian faith is not naive hope, it's a thinking faith. And I believe that's true. But you know, if you look, you're watching this video on YouTube, maybe there are a thousand experts saying a thousand things. There's a guy named Dan McClellan who's all over YouTube right now, and his big thing is data over dogma.
But the thing is, like, he's really dogmatic in his data, you know, like his, he's a Mormon. I heard him interpreting parts of John earlier in a way that's very, very consistent with classic Mormon theology, you know, but, and I'm sure he's doing just like I am, his best to be objective. It's not a dig. We all do this. Everybody do this. That's just the name that's in my mind, not trying to call anybody out. But you can look around and you can find a thousand different people who are going to frame the data in such a way that it's clearly and obviously on their side.
But there is nothing weak or you're not a fraud rationally. If you eventually just say, you know what? This is what I believe. You know, I don't have every answer. This is what I believe. That's what faith is. And all of all of human existence is going to rely on faith at some point.
[00:51:30] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:51:32] Speaker A: Thanks for watching Ecosystem, and we will be back at you with our next sermon series.
