Thursday Theology

Plenty of people object to the Christian concept of God. One of the most common objections is the question of how a loving/good/perfect God could cause/allow suffering in this world. Why Hurricane Katrina? Why are children abused? The whys are too numerous to count.

Humility is important in approaching these kinds of questions. Our God-given minds are able to make sense of extraordinary amounts of information. But we should pause before thinking we can fully comprehend the Infinite and the Divine. Logic will carry us far but as one person put it, "no stream can rise higher than its source." That doesn’t mean avoiding the question; just recognizing our limitations.

Tragedy comes in two forms: the ‘natural’ (disasters and human error), and the malicious. Both stem from the fall, when Man traded Paradise for the fool’s gold of trying to be his own god. A holy, perfect God cannot intermingle with imperfection; quarantine resulted, and creation was separated from the Creator. The creation became violent, hostile and dangerous to the former overseers (humanity). Worse, people became violent, hostile and dangerous to each other. This is now our reality.

The good news is the Creator provided a way to break quarantine. The bad news is that few accept it. (Those who would fault God for allowing this freedom to go wrong would do well to ask if they would prefer the alternative)

All this to say: God is not the source of evil, but evil can only be understood in relation to Him. The best illustration I’ve encountered: In physics, there is no such thing as “cold;” only an absence of heat. There is no such thing as “dark;” only an absence of light. Proof? To make a room colder or darker, you remove heat and light. You cannot “add” cold and dark. It’s the same with evil – evil is an absence of God. Removed from its Creator, the physical universe is in chaos. So it is with the souls of Man. But unlike nature, people can choose to seek God. To the extent they do, there is not yet perfection, but much less evil. “Bad things” will still happen to “Good people,” but there will be a different framework for understanding reality.