Answers to Tough Questions

A Friend posted on Facebook recently about a lead singer of a Christian band who had a crisis of faith and ended up walking away from God altogether. While it doesn’t seem that he ever really had a relationship with the Lord in the first place, he still asked some really good questions that plague a lot of people. I thought I would sit down and write my answers to tough questions to help strengthen all of our faith.

If God is all loving, and all powerful, why is there evil in the world? Can you not do anything about it? Does he choose not to? Is the evil in the world a result of his desire to give us free will?

The simple answer to all of that is yes, it’s a result of his desire to give us free will.

When God created everything, he always said that it was good. All of it. He then took this good creation and handed it over to man and made him the ruler of all creation.

Man then chose to turn his back on God’s way of doing things and decided to do things his way. The world you see around you is the result of that choice and about as far from God’s plan as possible.

What about famine and disease and floods and all the suffering that isn’t caused by humans in our free will?

The simple answer to this is it is still a result of our free will. God himself says three times in Genesis chapter 6 “Because of sin, violence entered into the world.”

God made us rulers of all of creation. Creation follows our example. If we choose to do things our way instead of God’s way, there are consequences to that. It happens in our spiritual life, of course, but also into our natural life, making us sick and even extends to the world around us.

Everything that happens that is violent happens as a result of sin. Earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes never happened before the fall. We don’t really understand the power we possess to do both good and evil.

If God is loving, why does he send people to hell?

God doesn’t send people to hell. God created a good creation and created us good. When Adam chose to go his own way instead of following the path God laid out for him, he doomed the whole human race to destruction. Then God, who would have been just in wiping us from the planet at that point, ordained instead a plan of redemption to spare some of us from the consequences of that choice.

God doesn’t create people. People create people as an act of their own wills. God ordains marriage according to his plan and out of this children are created. Children not created according to God’s plan run the risk of never being saved.

What then is God to do? Give them, who fulfill their most evil desires, the gift of eternal life? No. Instead he created an incinerator for their destruction so they don’t contaminate eternity with our mistakes. That said, Hell isn’t what we’ve been taught, so take some comfort in that.

Why does God seem so pissed off in most of the old testament, and then all of a sudden he’s a loving father in the New Testament?

Another version of this is, “I like the God of the New Testament better than the God of the Old Testament.” This is a fallacy from the beginning and takes a little explaining.

The root of some of this problem is simply terminology. There is no “Old Testament” or “New Testament.” These were names men created for two sections of the Bible. Instead, there’s a plan and the story of that plan in two parts which should really be called “Part 1” and “Part 2.”

Part 1, like all good stories, introduces the main characters and sets up what’s going to be the conflict for the story. We meet God, and his opponent and man who is the crux of the conflict.

Everything starts out really good, and then man screws up and starts a pattern of destruction that colors the rest of the story. It shows how bad it can get because of man’s screw up.

The good news is that it also introduces the solution to the screw up that’s coming, immediately after the screw up so that there’s hope and a future still, even though things just got really dark.

Part 2

Part 2 tells the story of the promised redemption. It also begins to show us how good things can be now that we can go back to doing things God’s way. How that, with a restored creation, we can walk in healing and freedom and even overcome death.

One of the fallacies people fall into when reading part 1 is to lose track of the fact of the time that it covers. Sometimes centuries pass in just a few chapters. This is one reason why those pesky genealogies are there. The show us the passage of time.

But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.
Genesis 15:16

This is a scripture that’s not taught on a lot. God’s revealing to Abraham his plan about how Abraham’s children are going to come back to this place and take over about 500 years from now.

He’s saying this because the Amorites are a wicked people. They are practicing child sacrifice just for starters. And God shows how merciful he is because he’s giving them nearly 500 years to change their ways. He knows they wont’ but he’s giving them every chance.

Keep in mind that Americans have only had electricity in there homes around 100 years and look how much has changed. God is giving the Amorites 5 times that long to change their ways. Is this a God that’s pissed off or a merciful God?

Also, in the end, it’s not even really God that has them wiped out. Look what God says to the Israelites when they’re about to take possession of Canaan.

Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you (for the people of the land, who were before you, did all of these abominations, so that the land became unclean), lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.
Leviticus 18:24-28

So their destruction was a result of the natural consequences of their sin. God simply used the Israelites to carry it out.

God is deeply merciful. We see it throughout Part 1, but we specifically see it fulfilled in Part 2.

Why does he say not to kill, but then instruct Israel to turn around and kill men women and children to take the promised land?

God does not say “Do not kill.” This is one of the most misquoted of the ten commandments. God says,

You shall not murder.
Exodus 20:13

God sets up killing as punishment for sins, which is not murder. Murder is killing in anger or for selfish gain.

Some might say, “What’s more selfish than taking land.” As we saw above, the Canaanites were slaughtered for their many, many sins after a long period of not changing.

Why does God let Job suffer horrible things just to win a bet with Satan? What does he tell Abraham to kill his son and then basically say ‘just kidding! That was a test.’ If God can do anything, can’t you forgive without someone dying? I mean, my parents taught me to forgive people – nobody dies in that scenario.”

These all come down to one simple concept. We are made to serve at the pleasure of God. We are God’s to do with as he sees fit, not the other way around. It is only our arrogance that would cause us to say, “God shouldn’t do things that way.”

Maybe you think, “That’s not fair!” We as sinners, are doomed to destruction. Fair is for us to go straight to burning Hell forever. Anything that we get that is not that is by God’s grace.

God created this system and this plan to show us, worthless lumps of clay that we are, love. He created a system that Jesus would suffer and die to redeem us all. Why? Sorry, God’s doesn’t answer to us. We exist for his pleasure and he loves us. That’s kind of the end of the argument.