By Farther Steps

Reformed and Reforming, semper reformanda to Christ's glory.

Posts Tagged ‘Evil’

Evil, More or Less

But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, “Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man’s wife.” Now Abimelech had not approached her. So he said, “Lord, will you kill an innocent people? Did he not himself say to me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this.” Then God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her. Now then, return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you, and you shall live. But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.” – Gen. 20:3-7

choose_determinism_medGod prevented Abimelech from sinning. He acted to protect the promise he had made to Abraham and Sarah. God restrained Abimelech’s evil, why didn’t he do it for Sodom and Gomorrah in the previous chapter?

Why didn’t he do it for all of humanity before the flood?

Why didn’t he do it in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve before they fell?

Why doesn’t he do it today for Eric Garner and the two cops killed in Brooklyn?

If God is able to restrain evil, as he demonstrated here, and yet he doesn’t, does that mean he is wrong and at least complicit in the evil?

A few thoughts on this:

  1. We are not robots. God spoke with Abimelech and Abimelech responded. Abimelech was a free moral agent in this transaction. God didn’t make a race of robots, he made image bearers with whom he wants to have a relationship. “We are free to choose, but we are always a slave to our greatest desire.” – Jonathan Edwards
  2. When the men of Sodom saw the visiting angels, they attacked, unlike righteous Lot who sought to protect them. Noah preached righteousness as he built the ark and no one listened to him. God sent prophets to Israel and Judah and they ignored, imprisoned, and murdered them. God himself took on flesh and came to the world and Jews and Gentiles illegally nailed him to a cross. There is a measure of wickedness that can occur in the human heart which will cause a person to not listen to pleas for righteous behavior. We don’t know that level but God does.
  3. Evil came into this world through the voluntary act of Adam. God had already announced what the price of that would be: death. All of humanity is engaged in treason against him. God is not obligated to restrain evil caused by free moral agents. The situation he announced to Adam was that sin would be met with death. And yet, Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree and did not die in that day. God had mercy on them. It is mercy that God warned Abimelech or has ever warned anyone. But he did and he continues to.
  4. God is no stranger to personal injustice. Jesus Christ was the most innocent, the least deserving prisoner ever executed. God entered into our suffering and sorrow. He does not stand aloof from it and look on as an uncaring voyeur. God can restrain and sometimes does evil but Jesus came and bore it in order not to just restrain it, though he is for a while, but ultimately to destroy it. To judge it as evil. He is reconciling everything through the blood of his cross.
  5. At the same time, the Bible is clear that faith is a gift from God (Eph 2:8, Heb 12:2) and so is repentance (2 Tim 2:25). He appoints some to eternal life (Acts 13:48) and Judas was predestined to betray Jesus (Acts 1:16). God choses to grant faith and repentance to some but not all. In the end, God does deal with all sin, one way or another. Either in hell or at the cross of Christ.

So why didn’t he restrain the evil in Sodom? It appears that Lot was resented in Sodom (Gen 19:9) so God may have been restraining it to some degree through Lot’s presence. Also, God agreed to spare the entire city the punishment for their evil if there were ten righteous people found in it. But there weren’t. God is not a sadist waiting to chuck another soul into hell. But he will not nod at evil either. Bottom line: Abimelech feared God and Sodom feared nothing.

In both Sodom and Gerar, where Abimelech was king, God dealt with evil. In Sodom, he judged it, in Gerar he restrained it. He doesn’t sit idly by while evil ravages his creation and his creatures.

Five Evangelical Myths or Half Truths

It can happen even in careful systematic theology. How much more so in popular parlance? We take what the Bible actually teaches, rephrase it so we can understand it, and end up believing our own phrasing, rather than the actual biblical truth. It’s not malicious, but it is dangerous. What follows are five common thoughts, common expressions, within the evangelical church that just aren’t so.

1. “All sins are equal in the sight of God.”

Well, no. It is true enough that every sin is worthy of God’s eternal wrath. It is true enough that if we have broken part of the law we have broken the law (James actually says this.) It is true enough that unjust anger is a violation of the commandment against murder (Jesus actually says this.) None of this, however, means all sins are equal in the sight of God. To say that because all sins deserve eternal wrath means they are all equal is like saying that all numbers over 100 are equal. The truth is that Jesus said of the Pharisees that while they rightly tithed their mint and their cumin, they neglected the weightier matters of the law (Matthew 23:23). No sin is weightless, but some weigh more than others.

2. “Hell is the absence of God.”

Well, no. If God is omnipresent, and He is, is there anywhere He can not be? David understood this, and thus affirmed, “If I make my bed in Sheol, Thou art there” (Psalm 139:8). Hell isn’t the absence of God, but the presence of His wrath. God is there, but His grace, His kindness, His peace are not. God is the great horror of hell.

3. “Jesus saves us from our sins.”

Well, no. It is absolutely true that Jesus saves us. When we face trouble, He is the one we should be crying out to for deliverance. But the great problem with our sins isn’t our sins, but the wrath of God. The trouble I need to be delivered from is the wrath of God. Hell is not my sins, but the wrath of God. We don’t need to be saved from our sins. We need to be saved from the wrath due for our sins.

4. “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.”

Well, not if your name is Esau. Okay, there certainly is a kind of universal love that God has for all mankind. And certainly all those who repent and believe will be blessed. And certainly God calls all men everywhere to repent. But it is also true that God has prepared vessels for destruction (Romans 9:22). Being prepared for destruction likely wouldn’t be considered “wonderful” by anyone. We don’t know God’s hidden plans, and thus should preach the gospel to all the world. But we shouldn’t, in so preaching, promise what He hasn’t promised.

5. “Money is the root of all evil.”

Well, no. Actually this one is wrong on two counts. First, the text (I Timothy 6:10) tells us that it is the love of money, not money, and that it is all sorts of evil, not all evil. If money were the root of all evil, all we would need to do to bring paradise on earth would be to have no more money. If money were the root of all evil, the problem would be out there, rather than in our hearts. Sin is not an it problem, but an us problem.

The devil isn’t lazy. He will take the breaks we give him. Myths and half-truths are perfect opportunities for us to miss who we are, who God is, and how He reconciles His own to Himself. Perhaps were we more faithful to His Word, we might just be more faithful.

(From Ligonier Ministries)

When Cultural Christianity Kills

[Norwegian killer Anders] Breivik calls himself a “cultural Christian.” Religious Christians, he observes, have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, which he himself does not have. For Breivik, “Christendom” is a vehicle for preserving European self-identity and is not necessarily opposed to elements of “paganism” such as Breivik’s own “Odnistic/Norse” heritage, even though the cross, he argues, has a greater symbolic power than Thor’s hammer, Mjölnir. In spite of this, the initiation ceremony Breivik envisages for “Knights Templar” has no cross, only a candle, sword, skull. – Matthew A. Schmalz, Washington Post On Faith blog.

If only Breivik did have a personal relationship with Jesus… I heard a BBC program this weekend where they were talking to a psychoanalyst about whether Breivik had some form of mental illness or something. The sad truth is that his 1,500 page manifesto was coherent and presented a consistent worldview. No, Breivik isn’t mentally ill, he is evil. His political views took him in the direction of violence and he acted on them. The reason is not because there is something wrong with Breivik, but there is something wrong with all of us.

For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
“Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
in their paths are ruin and misery,
and the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.” – Romans 3:9-18

Breivik did what he did because mankind is sick. We need a new heart, a heart inclined to good and not evil. Sure, we’re not all Breivik’s who act on our evil plans and desires but we’re all sick with sin. If Breivik was more than a cultural Christian his heart would have been inclined in a different direction. It doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have killed, but it might. A Christian national or cultural identity isn’t enough. We can’t enact enough laws (Breivik broke many) and we can’t keep enough violence off TV to prevent this kind of thing. Also, notice from Paul’s statement in Romans above that this isn’t an ethnic issue either. It isn’t like one nationality is prone to violence more than another.

I have a friend who is Norwegian and she once told me that she was really grateful for Christianity coming to Norway. She said that before Norway was evangelized, the Norwegian people were violent. Violent to outsiders and violent against their own. Over the weekend I’ve heard many people from Norway interviewed and all of them are shocked because Norway is such a peaceful and open society. “How could this happen here?” If it weren’t for the influence of Christianity in Norway, it might well be a much more frequent thing. But once Christianity is stripped of its power and becomes merely cultural, the evil in people’s hearts is made apparent.

Faith & Doubt & 9/11

Last night I watched the Frontline program Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero. It examined the impact 9/11 had on the faith in God of some people when the World Trade Center was destroyed. There are a lot of things I’d like to talk about in relation to that program (there was more doubt than faith even though their on line poll was exactly the opposite) there is one thing that is bothering me. One of the voiceovers said something like “religion drove those airplanes into those towers and for that reason religion should be abandoned.” The voice was angry and passionate.

This is a common cry from atheists. But what of the Holocaust? Millions of Jews and others were exterminated by Hitler in order to “improve” the race. Hitler had taken the theory of evolution to its grisly and horrific extreme end and decided that the right thing to do was to purify the gene pool. He strove for Nietzsche’s Superman ideal.  So if the cry to ban religion should be applied fairly, evolution must likewise be banned. What options does that leave us with?

In the end, the Frontline program was all about religion and not about faith. It was about man’s attempt to grasp at God and not about God’s self-revelation. No one asked what God has said about humanity’s evil. No one asked if God is going to do something about the evil in the long run. No one asked if America had even been faithful to what God has said. Only that religion is a bad thing because it leads people to extremes such as flying commercial airliners full of people into buildings filled with people. No one asked what God said about that.