Is God responsible for evil?

Is God responsible for evil?

Well, yes, in so far as God is responsible for everything, in so far as He has the knowledge and power to stop evil.

But is evil God's will?

That is a much more interesting question. Evil, human evil at least*, is mainly God's responsibility in so far as he gave us free will. God lets evil exist. We cannot deny that. Blaming Satan or demons (not that I believe in those literally) just pushes the problem back another level because if they exist, it is also by God's leave.

So evil exists by God's leave, but is it his will?

As with all questions of this nature, we cannot know. For all that we know, God could have created us because he likes to see suffering. But I believe is that evil is not God's will. Evil is God's concession to the reality that growth cannot happen in a static universe, growth cannot happen without suffering. Ultimately, God wants us to grow. Thus, God lets us be and suffer from evil.

Is there more suffering than is necessary for growth? Probably. But if God were to hold us back so that we experienced just enough evil then we would not be growing.

* Natural evils, or rather, the natural events we call evil, fall under a different discussion.

The journey

What is more important, the beliefs you hold, or the journey of coming to a deeper understanding?


We should focus on the journey and God's ability to lead us along the path we need to be led along. Many of the things I believe about God, Jesus, eternity, salvation, and the universe are certainly wrong. I plan to change my mind many times before I die. It would be a pity if my salvation depended on whether I died at just the right time.


Some Christians say that I must hold the right beliefs to be saved. But specific beliefs do not matter. Getting into heaven is not a matter of passing an exam. There are no essay questions or scantron sheets. What matters is that we go on the challenging journey that grows our soul towards God. 


The challenge of the journey is, perhaps, what drives people into the error of believing in the answers instead of the journey. It is easy to say "I have the right beliefs, now I am done." It is hard to say, "Never in this earthly life will I be the person God wants me to be, but the only way for me to become that person is to continue my struggle."


I will continue to struggle and to grasp the journey, wherever God may lead me.

With God every day

I want to live a life where I am truly with God every day. I try to reach out to God everyday, but it's rare that I feel that I can see God's revelation in the world around me. So often I let me stress and anger block my vision. More often, I am overwhelmed by life's little distractions.

Lord, I pray that I may see the many ways you answer me and reach out to me everywhere, everyday.

Feeding our spirit

Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. (1 Peter 2:2-3)

Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. (1 Corinthians 3:1-2)

Why spiritual milk? The milk Paul and Peter refer to is obviously now cow's milk, sold by the gallon in the grocery store or milked from the nearest animal. No, the milk they refer to is the milk given to infants, the milk which comes from the breast of a mother.

A nursing child can receive full sustenance from their mother's milk. It is the essence of all that which they need to thrive. A mother's milk helps an infant grow into a healthy child. In our spiritual infancy, we need spiritual milk. This can provide all we need to experience soul growth.

But, like a mother's milk, spiritual milk cannot sustain us forever. Eventually, we have to move onto heartier meals. Solid foods, complex combinations which both provide for our increasing physical needs and provide variety and delight for our increasing mental sophistication. Moving from spiritual milk to spiritual solids requires letting go of the easy answers and the assumption that we understand what's going on.

Graduating from milk to solids is not easy; Paul makes that clear. Some foods taste bad and some foods are bad for you. Learning to separate the good from the bad is difficult, and we will often make mistakes. It is much easier to stick with the comfort of milk. Yet, without pushing ourselves to desire spiritual food, we will never experience the true richness God has to offer us.

But we must also avoid trying to push ourselves too quickly. Like an infant at his mother's breast, in our spiritual infancy, we are not ready for solid foods. We need to grow slowly and carefully, but we do have to grow.

Institutionalized stumbling blocks

It is not only individuals that provide stumbling blocks. It is also churches. Many churches have a list of things that the church believes. They present this in a way that strongly implies that if you do not share these beliefs, you do not belong in the church. John Shore presents an example of this,

The pastor of our first (large, mainstream) church declared it “heretical” that my wife and I declined to sign a statement declaring that no gay person should work or volunteer at that church

These churches are stumbling blocks. Romans 14 and 15 should teach us that things like this don't matter. Checking for right belief like this is nothing more than a stumbling block. It's nothing more than a way to avoid the challenging of being one church body even in the midst of disagreement.

Stumbling blocks

I am struck today by Romans 14 and 15. These chapters teach us how to treat others. Our goal is to avoid being stumbling blocks to others. We should avoid judging others for fear of weakening them, and we should avoid doing things that will distress and weaken others.

This does not result in wishy washy subjectivism. Paul gives us guidelines for determining our own behavior: we should be fully convinced in our own mind that what we are doing is for the Lord, and we should avoid behaviors that will push others away from their faith. 

I use the word "behaviors" intentionally. Paul makes it clear that God does not care about right belief. God cares that we have faith and live righteous lives. Those are the factors that make us God's children. Paul frees us with the knowledge that the specifics of our beliefs are completely irrelevant.

Today, many members of the church put stumbling blocks in front of those whose faith is weak. Not just on issues which have traditionally divided churches (such as predestination, baptism, communion, just to name almost none of the issues which have caused division). In the US, a Christian is expected to hold political beliefs that, more or less, align with Republicans. For those of us who care more about justice for the weak and poor and reject a literal, science denying view of the Bible, for those of us who see stewardship of the earth to be a more important biblical issue than reducing taxes, this marriage of religion and politics is a stumbling block.

If we take the lesson of Romans 14 and 15 seriously, we should stop worrying so much what people believe and start giving our lives over to God. Beliefs matter, they control our behavior, but they only matter in so far as they control our behavior. So stop caring what other people believe, stop trying to tell people what the righteous life is, and start caring about how you can remove the stumbling blocks that keep them from being fully convinced that what they are doing is for the Lord.

Wisdom and comfort

We just finished James in the Bible reading plan that I follow. I like to think of myself as a person of action, so James is one of my favorite books. But this time I noticed something different. James tells us,

5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

I do sometimes feel doubt, and those are the times when I most feel the need to ask God to grant me wisdom. When James says that those who doubt should not expect to receive anything from the Lord, it makes me feel that I am a failure as a believer.

But I realized that, perhaps, when James says that such a person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord, he really means that they should not expect to receive wisdom. James is talking about asking for wisdom, so it makes sense that he would still be talking about wisdom.

It may not seem like that should make a difference, but it does! When I doubt and my faith is unstable, I cannot profit from the Lord's wisdom. What I need is the Lord's comfort. James does not say so here, but other verses make it clear that the Lord strengthens us and comforts us when we are weak.

Lord, I pray to you to give me wisdom when I am strong in faith and comfort and strength when I am unstable.

Prayer

Prayer is not a way to ask for gifts and special favors; God isn't Santa Claus. It's not some check box; God's not some bureaucratic manager who requires the forms to be filled out before he responds. God knows what we need and responds to us according to our need whether or not we ask. Prayer is not for God's sake so that he knows what we need. He already knows.

Prayer is for our own sake. Prayer is not so much our chance to talk to God (although we can; it's sometimes what we need). Prayer is our chance to let God talk to us. In the busy lives that we lead, we do not hear God's voice speaking to us. Prayer is our chance to quiet ourselves and just be with God.

If it seems like God gives us blessings in return our prayers, it is really because our prayers open our eyes to the blessings God gives us all the time.

Cutting Between Soul and Spirit

In my daily Bible reading I read Hebrews 4:12. It says, 

For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.

I almost glossed over these verses. The idea is so familiar. The word is the living word of the living God.  But then I noticed something.

This verse says that God's word cuts between soul and spirit. Soul and spirit usually mean the same thing. It seems odd to say that God's word cuts between them. But the words are not always the same. The Holy Spirit, God's voice inside of us, is never called a soul. That still doesn't tell me what this verse means, but here's what this verse means for me: God's word helps us distinguish between God's voice (the spirit) and our own voice (the soul). Just as joint and marrow are both good and necessary, and so are God's voice and our own individual voices, but it's important to see the difference.

The verse also says that it's God's word which exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. Not God, but God's word. This verse tells me that God's word exposes my innermost thoughts and desires to myself. God already knows them and, through His word, reveals them to me.