Justifiably, the question arises as to why God has permitted man to suffer for thousands
of years, and then, only when Christ returns and establishes his Kingdom is all changed?
The question of suffering and evil has always been an enigma to man. Philosophers of all
times and ages have pondered the question to no avail. But the Scriptures provide a
logical answer to this question which leaves one in awe.
Webster defines evil as “that which
produces unhappiness; anything which either directly or remotely causes suffering of any
kind.”
God desires mankind to live in peace,
harmony and happiness. He knows this will only happen as each practices the principles of
righteousness and love. Otherwise evil will result with its consequences of suffering and
unhappiness.
Here we are faced with what can be
referred to as the “dilemma of God”—the planetary systems move in
mechanical obedience; the animal creation is driven mainly by instinct; but God desired
the human race to have a free will and to “worship him in spirit and in truth”
(John 4:24). God could have programmed the ideal man and utopia would have been
inevitable, but man would be no better than a robot, nor would he be happy. Further, it is
impossible to worship only “in truth,” to obey truth and righteousness for what
you can get out of it without having the “spirit” or appreciation of
righteousness.
Out of sheer appreciation of the
principles of righteousness—worshiping in spirit—God desired man to live in
harmony with both his Creator and fellow man. God knows it is only as man is fully
motivated by the principles of righteousness, that he can really attain happiness for
himself and be in that attitude of cheerful concern for the happiness of his fellows.
The problems of free has a built-in
dilemma. Man can rebel against his Creator. The Lord was willing to bestow free will,
fully cognizant that it would cost Him dearly before man became fully responsible to this
freedom. What an awesome power! Man can stand in stiff-necked rebellion against his
Creator. He can refuse to submit to God’s authority. He can refuse to accept
God’s favor. He can choose to avert the mercy of God and adamantly stand upon his
decision against God. For by free will, man is man, created in the image of God, and
neither an animal nor a machine.
Put yourself in God’s place to
appreciate this dilemma. A parent will tell his baby not to touch the stove because it is
hot. But, what does a baby know about being burned? The anxious parent knows the
inevitability of the baby touching the stove before learning the consequence of heat. A
wise parent will create a controlled experience with heat-lightly and quickly touching the
child’s hand where the heat is not too severe. And all through life parents will
admonish their children, knowing that they will only learn certain lessons the “hard
way”—by experience.
As our Father, God knew man would not
comprehend His warning about sin, disobedience and their dire consequences. So God
formulated a plan whereby man, through his own choice, might first experience evil and
then righteousness (in God’s kingdom). This contrasting experience will demonstrate
the beauty and righteousness of God’s law and the dire consequence of its violation
as no other process could.
The recovery from sin is called redemption
in the Bible. Redemption simply means the release from sin and death through the payment
of a price. The thought is similar to the releasing a person from prison when a benefactor
pays the fine the prisoner couldn’t afford. This release through the death of Jesus
is often considered as an afterthought of God to salvage some of the human race. But the
depth of God’s wisdom is shown by His foresight in devising a plan that provides for
man’s free choice and experience with evil, redemption through Christ and ultimate
eternal happiness. Thus Isaiah 46:9?10 speaks of God knowing and declaring the end from
the beginning.
Eden: Actual History
The third chapter of Genesis is the
divinely provided history of man’s free will choice. God instructed man that if he
practiced righteousness, he would live forever. If he disobeyed, then “dying he would
die.” Death would be a process of sorrow and suffering culminating with the grave.
Note well that death, not eternal torment, is the penalty for sin (Genesis 2:17; Psalms
146:4). Like the child and heat, man did not know what suffering and death were. He
disobeyed. God is now giving man a controlled experience with evil. We read in
Ecclesiastes 1:13 and 3:10, “This sore travail hath God given to man to be exercised
therewith.” Man’s travail with evil is for a purpose, that he might be exercised
or taught certain lessons by it.
Some will say, “Don’t tell me
you still believe in original sin! Just because Adam and Eve were disobedient, the whole
human race are sinners?” In I Timothy 2:13,14; I Corinthians 15:21,22; Romans 5:14;
and John 8:44, both Jesus and the apostles refer to the event in Eden as a real time-space
situation. What better proof can we have that the Genesis account of Eden was actual
history? Unfortunately, the logic of this concept has been obscured by Dark Age
superstitions that have been attached to it, such as “hell fire,” with a
vindictive God who must be placated. Modern man is rightly repelled by the superstitions
contained in some church theology, but these superstitions are not taught in the Bible.
Shorn of Dark Age theology, there is no better explanation of man’s miserable plight
than the Scriptural teaching of original sin.
Another Look at Sin
Not too long ago, sin was treated lightly. It was called
“ignorance,” only a growing pain of the human race. Give man a bit more
education, let him become a little more civilized and he will evolve out of his sin,
leaving evil behind him. But now we are not so sure. The heinous events of World War II
(12 million murders, leveled cities, gas chambers), followed by the continuing senseless
acceleration of war, crime and violence (old people killed for kicks, 70-year-old women
molested) and other immoralities, have forced man to take a second look at the problem of
evil.
A fresh look at sin is pointedly reflected
in the words of Dr. Cyril E. M. Joad, a noted Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at
the University of London, and listed by the editor of The American Weekly as one of the
world's great scientists. Joad said:
"For years my name regularly appeared
with H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, and Aldous Huxley as a derider of religion…. Then
came the war, and the existence of evil made its impact upon me as a positive and
obtrusive fact. The war opened my eyes to the impossibility of writing off what I had
better call man’s ‘sinfulness’ as a mere by-product of circumstance. The
evil in man was due, I was taught, either to economic circumstance (because people were
poor, their habits were squalid, their tastes undeveloped, their passions untamed) or to
psychological circumstances. For were not psycho-analysts telling me that all the
regressive, aggressive, or inhibited tendencies of human nature were due to the
unfortunate psychological environment of one’s early childhood?
“The implications are obvious; remove
the circumstances, entrust children to psycho? analyzed nurses and teachers, and virtue
would reign.
“I have come flatly to disbelieve all
this. I see now that evil is endemic in man, and that the Christian doctrine of original
sin expresses a deep and essential insight into human nature."
As Dr. Joad, society is taking another
look at evil. It can no longer be considered a growing pain. It is too deadly a disease to
be explained away by environment.
Speaking collectively of the human race,
the Psalmist said, “In sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalms 51:5) The Apostle
Paul in Romans 5:12 says, “By one man sin entered the world and death by sin; and so
death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”
Since father Adam sinned, justice required
that he die. Before he died, Adam had children who were born in sin. They inherited
Adam’s imperfections. Thus, the whole human race is born dying. This is how it is
learning the consequences of evil. But the permission of evil is a brief controlled
experience when compared with eternity. And what are some of the grim lessons? God permits
evil to demonstrate that man without God results in:
Science and possible extinction
through the H-bomb or pollution;
Affluence that spends $900 million
a year in the U.S. for pet food while 5 million humans starve to death;
Religious Institutions whose
assets total billions of dollars while millions live in poverty;
Technology and its deadly
tentacles of pollution encircling the globe;
Towering Cities that are concrete
jungles of crime and violence, filled with faceless people experiencing life without
meaning and terrible loneliness.
God permits evil to prove that man without
God can only result in man’s inhumanity to man. What is this world coming to? An
understanding of what results when man is separated from God.
The Problem of Communication
In our era of permissiveness, the justice
of God seems to be an offense to the rationalist. But perhaps the problem is one of
communication, which can be shown in the simple illustration of an argument. All of us at
sometime have been engaged in an argument in which we really never objectively listened to
the other party. We were too busy thinking of our answers to hear their logic. The
rationalist is carrying on a debate with God. If he would only stop and listen to what God
has explained in the historic account of Eden (Genesis 3), he would catch a glimpse of the
wisdom and justice of God which becomes man’s guarantee of an eternity of happiness.
Is God’s Justice Severe?
Some question the severity of God’s
justice in the death penalty. Could not some other penalty than death have been a just
recompense for Adam’s disobedience? No doubt some other penalty would have been just;
however, God chose this penalty because it best suited His overall plan for mankind. Once
Adam was informed that death was the penalty for disobedience, then the penalty was fair.
A basic fact to always remember is that
God in His foreknowledge knew that Adam would disobey, therefore, long before the creation
of Adam, God’s wisdom devised a plan of recovery and ultimate happiness for the human
race that would require the death of His only begotten Son. Thus I Peter 1:19-20 and
Ephesians 1:4-7 speak of the blood of Christ as foreordained before the world began for
the redemption of mankind. The Creator used the time-space situation in Eden to
demonstrate the dependability of His justice. It is vital that man knows that
“justice and judgment [just decisions] are the habitation of your [God’s]
throne”—Psalms 89:14. Justice is the foundation of the government of the
universe, the basis of all God’s dealings. Judgment is also spoken of as part of this
foundation. The Hebrew word here means “a just decision.” We can take comfort in
the realization that throughout eternity all of God’s decisions will be just.
Man was placed in the Edenic paradise to
thoroughly enjoy the love of God. Suppose that after Adam and Eve had lived obediently for
a while, God changed His mind and chased them out of the garden condition into the thorns
and thistles of the unfinished earth. His love would be worthless, whimsical, because it
was not based on justice. It would be changeable.
Another hypothetical situation: If when
Adam disobeyed, God said, “Oh, I will overlook your disobedience this time, I will
not punish you as I promised to do.” Adam might say, “Wonderful! I am surely
glad God is more loving than just.”
Wonderful? No! This would be whimsical,
capricious, arbitrary. The Creator and Ruler of the universe could never be trusted
throughout eternity. At any time, in any place, with any order of intelligent creatures,
God might at the slightest whim change His mind and turn on His creatures. Eden proved the
unchangeableness of God’s justice. God declares in Malachi 3:6, “I am Jehovah, I
change not.” James 1:17 states, “The Father of lights in whom there is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
How unchangeable is God’s justice? So
unyielding that God’s court of justice required the payment of the costliest fine
ever stipulated in a court of law. What judge has been willing to give up his own innocent
son to death in order to cancel the debt of crime of the defendant?
Another Problem of Communication
Our Creator wants us to know the depths of
His love, that He is the most loving Being in the universe. How can God communicate this
to our finite minds? In human relationships words of love can be quite meaningless.
Actions speak louder than words. How did God show His love? With tender Fatherly emotions
of sorrow, God took the dearest treasure of His heart, His only Begotten Son, and sent Him
to earth to suffer and die at the hands of man. At great cost to Himself, the wisdom of
God formulated a plan which reveals that He is both just (unyielding justice) and the
justifier (benefactor) of mankind (Romans 3:25-26).
The simple events of Eden and Calvary tell
so much about our God. Calvary is the greatest manifestation of love and mercy in the
history of the universe. The combination of Eden and Calvary stand as a pledge throughout
eternity that there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning in God’s justice.
The world is, therefore, by experience
coming to an understanding of God’s ways.
