If there is a God of love how could he allow all of the pain and suffering in the world? As we pointed out in our last posting, Bertrand Russell’s answer to this question was that God is either unable to do anything about it — in which case He is not omnipotent — or He is unwilling to do anything about it — in which case He is not good. This question and Russell’s response to it are generally acknowledged as powerful challenges to Christian theism. But there was a time when this would not have been the case.
I am convinced that the question of pain and suffering and Russell’s taunt would have posed no difficulty at all for earlier generations of Christians. In fact, I think Christians living in earlier times would have been stunned by the ignorance of the question. I say this because it is clear they saw the present condition of the world, not as a travesty in need of an explanation, but a blessing for which even the most wicked should be grateful.
For the better part of 2000 years our Christian fore bearers taught that we are all sinners by nature and choice, and well deserving of eternal damnation. If this is true then the proper question is not, “Why is there evil in the world?” but, “Do individuals worthy of eternal damnation deserve to live in a world as good as this?” Earlier generations would have answered that question, “NO, they don’t!”
In earlier times Christians viewed this world as the vestibule of hell, a death row where men and women, who have already been tried and condemned,[i] await their execution. The kindness of God to such sinners was seen as a remarkable testimony to His grace and mercy. It was also viewed as remarkable that God would grant such creatures so many good things in the interim. Rain fell on the just and the unjust and it was noted that the unjust often received more rain. In addition, great praise was given to God because of His loving provision of a way of salvation for even the worst of sinners. He did this, of course, by sending His Son to die for the sins of the world, so that “everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.”[ii] This was the good news, this was the gospel as it was formerly proclaimed.
So when earlier generations of believers considered the pain and suffering of the present age they did not accept the proposition that sinful man had any grounds for complaint, since they believed that whatever he suffered was much less than he deserved. After all, didn’t the scriptures teach that those who “believe not are condemned already?”[iii] So the suffering the wicked here in the vestibule of hell was seen as well deserved, and just the beginning of the suffering they would endure forever if they refused to repent and believe.
But what of the suffering of the righteous? By faith they believed God would inject their suffering with meaning just as the cross had been injected with a meaning far beyond what the disciples could see on the day Jesus was crucified. They read what Paul wrote, that “the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us,”[iv] and they said, “Amen!” They dared to believe that their suffering would make sense someday. And so they sang:
“It will be worth it all when we see Jesus
Our trials will seem so small when we see Christ.
One glimpse of His dear face all sorrows will erase,
So bravely run the race till we see God.”
So you can see that the question of pain and suffering would have been of little interest to previous generations of believers. In fact, it wasn’t even talked about that much until relatively modern times. It was only when the church began to abandon the faith passed down to it by previous generations, that the pain and suffering in the world — and Russell’s taunt — began to present a problem.
The problem developed when modernity, ignoring human history, abandoned the Biblical doctrine of the innate depravity of man. It was proposed instead that human nature is basically good, and most of Christendom either explicitly or implicitly bought into this new understanding of human nature.
The old theology put the human race in the dock and God on the judgment seat. Modern theology reversed this and put God in the dock and ourselves on the judgment seat. God was soon charged with not doing enough to fix the evils of this world – evils that we had created. “Why,” we demand, “Do You allow bad things to happen to us good people?
By the time of Bertrand Russell it had become axiomatic among most who called themselves Christians to view the human race as basically good. Yet the church continued to claim that God was omnipotent and omniscient. The human problem was now redefined as ignorance, rather than sin, and the remedy was education not salvation.
Russell seized upon this and noted a contradiction between what we claimed to be true of God and what we claimed to be true about ourselves, and he used the contradiction to create a dilemma that modern version of the gospel didn’t have an answer for. It has been has been struggling to find an answer ever since. But what needs to be recognized is that if the “I’m O.K. you’re O.K.” theology of modern man is correct, Russell’s argument is irrefutable, at least if we define God the way Christians have traditionally defined Him.
Some Modern theologians realized that Russell was right and modified their theology…or I should say their God. “God is not perfect after all,” they declared. “He is all loving, but He is not all knowing and all powerful. In fact, when bad things happen God is as surprised by them as we are. But he is powerful enough to bring good out of the bad. And as we are growing, so also is He…or She.” And so by emasculating God the liberals thought they had solved their dilemma. But years later Elie Wiesel recognized the inadequacy of their answer when he quipped, “If that’s who God is, I think he ought to resign and let someone more competent take his place.”
The evangelical church was a little slower in abandoning the traditional theology of the church, but in time it too moved it away from the old theology. Then, having moved to the left, having become uncomfortable with the Bible’s teaching on the human condition, Evangelicals began to find themselves on the horns of the same dilemma that had impaled Liberal Christianity. And feeling the force of Russell’s taunt many have turned to the same answer the liberals had turned to. It’s called the Openness of God.
But there is an alternative, and that is returning to our Biblical roots and offering the political incorrect answer. That answer is that the human race doesn’t deserve a better world. In fact, given our history, it would be hard to make the case we deserve the world we have.
[i] John 3:18a
[ii] John 3:16
[iii] ibid
[iv] Romans 8:18
