“The wonders of the universe are untold. To this day science is mystified by the underlying forces and natural phenomenon that are so basic to our existence: gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear forces, and even light. Although certain observed laws of classical Newtonian physics are able to accurately predict various characteristics of each, physicists still do not fully understand any of them.” ~Desmond P. Allen
Category: Truth
There are certain arguments that some might think are “silver bullets” in the debate against the true God, the God revealed to mankind in the Bible. One of these arguments goes something like this- “If the God of the Bible is real, then why does He allow things like deadly tsunamis that have the potential to destroy hundreds of thousands of people? If He can’t stop them, then He is weak and if He can stop them, but chooses not to, then He’s a monster.” At first listen this seems like one of those questions that might be irrefutable. However, instead of being a strong argument, it is actually weak and serves as a disgraceful attempt to malign the true and living God; the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Let me explain further.
This kind of “silver bullet” argument is designed to move the listener quickly to the defensive position. After hearing the question, the one listening will most likely be inclined to defend God’s character. But instead of moving to the defensive, stand your ground. There are a few weak points/assumptions worth lovingly pointing out to the person you are talking with.
First and foremost, this “silver bullet” can be used in any direction, not just at the God of the Bible. For example, if a person believes in some spiritual energy or force, he is left with the same dilemma. Either the force is too weak to stop a natural disaster, or it just doesn’t care. Of course energy can’t care anyway since it’s completely impersonal, but that is for another post. For the person who claims to not believe in God, he is really saying his ultimate trust and hope is in the natural and its processes. This person is faced with the same problem. If nature can’t stop natural disasters, or at least intervene for humanity, then it remains hopeless as well. In short, ANYONE asking this “silver bullet” question is faced with the same supposed dilemma. When talking with people, there may be times to make this point. Showing that someone is seeing things incorrectly is sometimes beneficial in the long run.
Secondly, it is crucial to note that this question is clearly cut from a moral cloth. The moral fabric actually makes it quite easy to respond to the questioner with your own difficult, yet exposing question. But before asking the difficult question, there is an important preliminary question. Sometimes it seems the question of whether God is weak or just doesn’t care comes from those who are very angry and unwilling to hear anything in the way of an honest answer. The person asking this question is sometimes hoping to silence the person he’s talking with. So to somewhat disarm and open a door of discussion, the first question worth asking is this- “Are you willing to hear an honest answer?” If he says yes, then go on to the primary question which goes something like this- “Listen, your question is really this- Why do bad things happen to good people? In other words, you’re asking why there is injustice in the world. But herein lies the bigger question, injustice according to who? My question to you is this, “Who actually determines what is just or unjust?”
You see, everyone recognizes concepts such as fair, right, just, and unjust, yet we don’t always stop to think about where the reality of these terms originated from. The immaterial concept of justice did not originate from thin air, nor did it come from matter, nor was it birthed from us. A rock, which is clearly a solid piece of matter, cannot even think, let alone conceptualize whether being thrown through a house window is just or not. When someone asks what kind of God allows atrocities, he is actually revealing the fact that there must be a true and ultimate source of justice. Logic itself dictates that we could only acknowledge the reality of justice and injustice if the One who created mankind is Himself totally just. The moral fabric of this question actually proves that there must be a moral God, a just God that originated all justice in the beginning. Instead of the question proving God must be non-existent or a ‘monster’, it in fact proves the opposite. “As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways…” Ezekiel 33:11 But if God created all things just and fair in the beginning, then what changed? Have things remained the same since the creation of all things or have things changed? Good question. This leads to our final points.
Lastly, there are two more assumptions built into this “silver bullet” question worth examining. First is that we, that is to say people, are actually undeserving of anything but good. This belief reveals the heart of the issue. “I’m really not that bad” is definitely a default mode for many. Truly, it is sad to see natural disasters that affect the helpless, however we need to remember that things didn’t stay the same from the beginning. Things did change from the way God originally created them. We need to factor in the history of sin entering God’s perfect creation through the rebellion of Adam and Eve. Death has passed unto all men because all have sinned. (Romans 5:12) We have ALL sinned against God, making us all rebels, deserving of God’s judgment. (Romans 3:23) Creation is broken and groans for a time when it will be perfect again. (Romans 8:22) Jesus explained that He came to save the world, not to condemn the world. He clearly declared that the world is condemned already. (John 3:17-18) In other words, we are all born under the condemnation of this present, broken world. Even though the current world is filled with much pain and suffering, sorrow that reaches every human born on this planet, this is the world the first man and woman wanted. They wanted life apart from God. They desired to live apart from God as their King. They wanted to be their own gods. After rebelling against Him, God graciously only gave them a taste of what life without God would be like. We are now some 6,ooo years on a planet that is groaning and broken, a planet that daily reminds us of just how much we need the Lord. The assumption that there are truly innocent people who don’t deserve anything but good is perhaps well-intentioned, but not correct. Understanding mankind’s true history definitely helps add light to this issue.
The second assumption is the belief that God does not intervene in the affairs of men. This is nothing more than an assumption. Usually the person wanting to know why God does not intervene is really asking why God doesn’t intervene the way he thinks God should. The most crucial and historic intervention occurred almost 2,000 years ago when God the Son stepped into history, born as a man, never stopped being God, died on the cross for the sins of mankind, and rose from the grave on the third day. This unique and pivotal event fully proves that God does interact and intervene in the affairs of men, even men that do not care about God. (1 Corinthians 15:1-8)
In conclusion, the question about a weak God is really at best a weak question. By lovingly standing our ground, not getting defensive, we can carefully and thoughtfully challenge questions by exposing the person’s own assumptions. Remember people are not the enemy. We do not fight against flesh and blood. We are called to pull down strongholds, “casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:4-6. In our effort to win the lost, may we seek to point everyone to Jesus Christ, the One True God; the God who lovingly intervenes in our lives every day. “As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways…” Ezekiel 33:11 “And the LORD, He is the One who goes before you. He will be with you, He will not leave you nor forsake you; do not fear nor be dismayed.” Deuteronomy 31:8 “And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom you will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served…as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” Joshua 24:15
“Indeed, evolution answered nothing. Neither did its mother, the big bang. They seemed little more than a comic book fairytale. I saw them as absurd, baseless, and fantastical hypotheses mired down by one conjecture upon another, while conveniently overlooking the most important questions. Even as a tween I realized this feeble attempt to account for the universe had four glaring gaps: the beginning, the end, the origin of life, and especially the existence of intellectual and moral beings.” ~Desmond P. Allen, 2008, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v1/n1/unification-theory
Recently I heard a song on our Christian radio station, KLOV. After hearing the chorus I had to look up the lyrics online to be sure I understood the song correctly. Sadly I had. Referring to people, the Christian artist sings, “You are more than flesh and bone. Can’t you see you’re beautiful? Yeah, you gotta believe, you gotta believe. He [God] wants you to see, He wants you to see that you’re not just some wandering soul, that can’t be seen and can’t be known. Yeah, you gotta believe, you gotta believe that you are worth dying for, you’re worth dying for, someone worth dying for.” (Emphasis mine) “Someone Worth Dying For”, by: Mikeschair.
It’s a nice sentiment, but there’s more than a little error planted in the chorus – “You’re someone worth dying for.” At first glance this sounds good, but the idea actually nullifies the truth of God’s character, lowering the reality of His love. The whole point of the amazing grace of God is that He showered His love on His enemies, not beautiful people worth dying for. Consider Colossians 1:21, “And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled.” If people were worth Jesus dying for, then the value would be centered in us, not in God. If we actually got what we deserved, we’d all go to Hell. No one deserves Heaven, and we are not worth the salvation God offers us so full and free. This is what make the love of God so amazing, that He would stoop so low to save a wretch like me. Christ dying on the cross doesn’t prove my worth nor my value. In truth it reveals how awful my sin really is. He came to pay our rebellious penalty, not purchase a bunch of diamonds in the rough. When the redeemed enter Heaven, we will not be singing, “Thank You God, but I know I was worth dying for, someone worth dying for!” Instead we’ll be on our faces crying, “Worthy is the Lamb! All wisdom, glory, honor, and power are unto the Lamb Who was slain. The One Who was, and is, and is to come!” Rev. 4:8, 11 and 5:12.
“One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, or let’s call it a non-evolutionary view, was last year I had a sudden realization for over twenty years I had 
thought I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it. That’s quite a shock to learn that one can be so misled so long. Either there was something wrong with me or there was something wrong with evolutionary theory. Naturally, I know there is nothing wrong with me, so for the last few weeks I’ve tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people.
Question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, “I do know one thing — it ought not to be taught in high school.”
Dr. Colin Patterson (Senior Palaeontologist, British Museum of Natural History, London). Keynote address at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, 5 November, 1981
Some 250 years ago William Law portrayed a “very prosperous and busy young tradesman” who was “about to die in his thirty-fifth year.” The young man had this to say to the friends who came to express their sympathy:
“You look upon me with pity, not that I am going unprepared to meet the Judge of quick and dead, but that I am to leave a prosperous trade in the flower of my life…. And yet what folly of the silliest children is so great as this?
Our poor friend Lepidus died…as he was dressing himself for a feast. Do you think it is now part of his trouble that he did not live till that entertainment was over? Feast and business and pleasures and enjoyments seem great things to us-but as soon as we add death to them they all sink into an equal littleness….
If I am now going into the joys of God, could there be any reason to grieve that this happened to me before I was forty years of age? Could it be a sad thing to go to heaven before I had made a few more bargains or stood a little longer behind a counter?
And if I am to go amongst lost spirits, could there be any reason to be content that this did not happen to me till I was old, and full of riches…? Now that judgment is the next thing that I look for, and everlasting happiness or misery is come so near to me, all the enjoyments and prosperities of life seem vain and insignificant….
But my friends, how I am surprised that I have not always had these thoughts…! What a strange thing it is that a little health or the poor business of a shop should keep us so senseless of these great things that are coming so fast upon us!”
“An Eternal Perspective“, The Berean Call, see: http://www.thebereancall.org/node/5718.
“The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Behold! the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” John 1:29
No matter what happens in this life, may we never take our gaze off the Lamb!
“May Christianity be more than some big event or social club to us. May it, rather Christ, be our life. May we see this world as a military zone, not a theme park. Let us desire to jump into the trenches for our neighbor’s sake, knowing we are called to rescue souls from Hell, not entertain ourselves to death.” ~F. Huseby
“I don’t want God ever to have to say to me, “I gave you your opportunity to tell the people and you didn’t tell them. You wanted to be…liked by the people, and you wouldn’t tell them.” …I’d lose every friend in [this city]…I’d have you all turn your backs and walk away in cold anger from me, rather than face up to that awful moment when the cry of men and women is heard, “the summer is past [and we’re not saved]…” and I know that I didn’t do my part, to try to win men, to try to bring them to God.
It isn’t important that you like me, but it’s tremendously important that you’re washed in the blood of the Lamb…that you meet God in a saving encounter before that terrible day when you’ll have to cry, “the opportunity’s over…” A.W. Tozer, “Four Seasons of Life”
Put off the old man, don't search it out!
“One does not have to analyze the heart through hunting out a myriad of idols in order to walk according to the Spirit. These so-called idols (motivating, ruling desires, etc.) are only inner expressions of the flesh or “the old man.” Jesus took care of the matter fully and the New Testament clearly tells believers all they need to know about walking according to the new life in Christ, without extensive analysis of possible idols lurking in the hidden depths, because they can only be lurking in the flesh, the old man, which is corrupt and must be put off (Ephesians 4:22).
Martin and Deidre Bobgan, “Paul Tripp and Syncretism,” PsychoHeresy Awareness Letter, Volume 19, Number 2, March-April 2011.
“That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” Ephesians 4:22-24.
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