Category Archives: Good and Evil

Looking for answers

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Despite the fact that the Bible doesn’t spend a lot of time talking about the whys behind evil events, it’s natural that we seek explanations. Our society doesn’t tend to believe in fate; we feel that we are the masters of our environment, able to shape the course of our lives. Because of this, we seek explanations in order to seek solutions.

After the Newtown tragedy, some have pointed fingers at easy access to guns. Others (not including Morgan Freeman) have blamed the media, saying that the focus on killers and mass murderers makes violence attractive to those seeking fame. Some have emphasized the killer’s mental illness, arguing that this event highlights the need for more and better treatment for those suffering from such conditions. Others have argued that the lack of religious teaching in school is to blame. Some have noted the effects of a broken home.

It bears saying once again: big problems rarely have simple solutions. If we point to any one of these things and say, “Here’s the problem. Fix it and these incidents will go away,” we’re just kidding ourselves.

Tragedies like that at Sandy Hook Elementary have a multitude of causes. I think all of the things mentioned above come into play (though I remain strongly opposed to prayer in school, beyond that which already exists). We need to look at gun control and mental health. We need to examine how these tragedies are reported (as well as our fascination with death and violence in TV shows and movies). We need to teach morality in our schools (and teach spirituality in our homes). We need to strengthen families and teach that marriage is “until death do us part.”

There is one problem/solution that has been mentioned that I heartily agree with. It’s not a matter of what we need, it’s who we need. Jesus. The problems of society can have bandaids applied to them, but the only real solution is the transformation brought about by the Son of God.

Pray. Tell people about God and his goodness. And do your best to live like Jesus. That’s not all we can/should do, but it is the most effective best. (Edited at 9:51 a.m. — I originally said “most effective,” which is poor word choice. Much of what is right isn’t effective, especially in the eyes of the world.)

photo by Ladyheart on morguefile.com

Bad people used by God

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drawing by Annie Vallotton, Good News Bible

Habakkuk was troubled. To put it mildly. His nation was full of corruption. Injustice. Abuse of power. The good people, like Habakkuk, prayed. God didn’t answer.

Chapter 1 of the book of Habakkuk records his lament:

How long, O Lord, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.

(Habakkuk 1:2-4)

Then God did answer. Literally. He answered Habakkuk and shared with him the plan: God was going to raise up Babylonia, a “ruthless and impetuous people” (1:6), to punish Judah.

Habakkuk didn’t like that answer at all. He tried to be respectful, but he knew that God must be overlooking the fact that Babylonia was evil. They were the bad guys. Could God possibly use evil people to punish “the good guys”?

O Lord, are you not from everlasting?
My God, my Holy One, we will not die.
O Lord, you have appointed them to execute judgment;
O Rock, you have ordained them to punish.
Your eyes are too pure to look on evil;
you cannot tolerate wrong.
Why then do you tolerate the treacherous?
Why are you silent while the wicked
swallow up those more righteous than themselves?

(Habakkuk 1:2-4)

God later reassures Habakkuk that the Babylonians themselves will be punished for their misdeeds. But the short answer is yes, God uses the wicked to punish people, even people more righteous than they.

In fact, if we look at the biblical record, God rather consistently uses bad people as instruments of judgment. It’s the rare exception when he uses the righteous.

Yesterday we talked about telling God what to do. About how simple solutions usually aren’t simple and rarely solve anything. Here’s today’s question:

How will you react if God chooses to use evil people today to do his will?

Living out spiritual realities

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Following up on yesterday’s discussion (thanks for the great comments!), I want to think about how we can view the world with more spiritual eyes. As someone who takes a high view of Scripture, I have to believe that the world it portrays is a reality. Because of this, I believe there is more to Creation than what meets the eye. There are spiritual realities that need to be recognized.

I think we need to see that our physical actions can have spiritual consequences. There are “deeds of darkness” and “works of light.” When we choose to do evil, we are partnering with evil. We are doing its bidding, allowing it to be our master. We are weakening ourselves spiritually.

We choose between carnal and spiritual, flesh and spirit. Each choice we make shapes us and affects us. Giving in to sin makes it easier to give in the next time. Resisting temptation makes it easier to follow the Spirit in the future.

Even sins that “don’t hurt anybody” hurt me. They weaken me, because we’re not just talking about superficial actions; we’re talking about placing ourself in the camp of evil or the kingdom of good. Paul put it this way: “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” (Romans 6:16)

I think that we need to help people see that we are in a spiritual struggle, an all-out war between the forces of heaven and the forces of evil. Far too much of our thinking about sin has to do with “will I still get to heaven or not?” That kind of thinking misses the point, fails to see the realities of the world in which we live.

Or am I missing the point? As always, feel free to correct me or steer me in the right direction.

The limits of our logic

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God has come up on the short end of a lot of syllogisms lately.

“I can’t believe in a God that would…”
“I can’t accept that God would…”
“A loving God would never…”

From the disaster in Japan to the question of what happens to the unconverted after death, God has been pushed into the back seat and human logic has taken the reins. If we can’t figure it out, then it’s just not true. If we can’t fully understand and explain it, then it must not exist.

It’s an exaltation of the human mind, a return to the principles of the Greek philosophers. Alexander the Great would be proud, knowing that his quest to spread Hellenism across the world is still affecting the ways we interact with one another.

The irony, of course, is that I use logic all the time on this blog. And in my daily life. I reason with people. I work through patterns of thinking. I use the tools which my modernistic upbringing provided me, logic being one of the main ones.

I think it requires faith to accept that some things are unknowable and incomprehensible for us. I know that it takes courage, for such a view is ridiculed today as shallow and provincial. Could that be why Jesus said we have to be willing to be like a child to enter the Kingdom? It certainly fits with the teachings that the world will hate us and the intellectuals of this world will scoff at our gospel.

The other extreme, of course, is to reject all scholarship, to lock yourself into “the traditions handed down by our fathers.” I’m not advocating that. But I do think that we need to see the limits to our logic. Reason can take us only so far; we go the rest of the way by faith, or we never complete the journey.

When someone says, “I just can’t accept…”, they are being honest and accurate. When they say, “No thinking person can accept…”, they are peddling that which farmers offer us to spread around our gardens. One view accepts personal responsibility; the other places the blame on the concept itself.

Fact is, at some point we choose to believe. Or choose not to believe. And we do that for a wide variety of factors. Logic is one of them, but it is almost never the chief factor. Those that desire not to believe will often point to logic as the reason, but it’s rarely as objective as that. More often than not, we choose not to believe in God or some aspect of God’s nature because of our own wishes and desires, the way we wish things were.

Having thrown logic out the window, I guess I’m rambling a bit with this post. The main thing that I’m trying to say is that I think it takes a lot of courage to say, “I don’t know” or even “I can’t know.” Some see it as a cop out. I see it as accepting the limits of our logic.

Moving toward holiness

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Yesterday I talked about the concept of the pursuit of holiness. I think that “pursuit” is a good word to use in this case, for two reasons:

(1) 100% holiness will not be achieved through our efforts. As long as we are in the flesh, we won’t be purely holy. All we can do is pursue it.

(2 The idea of movement needs to be included. Let me illustrate why, using an illustration inspired by a recording I heard of a Jeff Walling presentation at the Tulsa Workshop.

First, let’s lay out a continuum, with immorality and holiness as the two endpoints:

Then let’s place two markers on the continuum, one representing the world and one representing the church:

Typically, what the church seeks to do is to use the world as a reference, then seek to be a little bit holier than the world. Our holiness comes to be defined by what we don’t do. (Like the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18) As we resist the influences of the world, we take our stand just to one side of it.

But what happens when the world moves?

The church tends to move with it. I could give myriad examples, but surely we know it’s true. It happens with bad things… and even with good things. In many ways, the world moved ahead of the church in the area of civil rights, for example. The current emphasis on social justice arose from humanists, then spread to the church.

The point is, we can’t just seek to maintain the status quo. That’s next to impossible. We need to be actively moving toward holiness, seeking the fruit of the Spirit, imitating Christ, pursuing godliness. If not, we’ll slowly drift along with the world, maybe not as far, but drifting all the same.