Have You Not Read S3:E20 - The Problem of Evil and Prison

The Reformed View of Evil and God’s Sovereignty

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of Scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the Saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the.

Podcast. Thank you. My name is Chris Giesler and with me is Michael Dereham and we have a couple of questions that we'd like to try to tackle. This was sent in by our listeners. How does the Reformed view explain evil?

How should we understand this in light of God's sovereign will over all things? Let's.

Start with that one. Very good. Well, I think when we hear the word Reformed, the definition that is often given are the three C's. That is confessional, covenantal, and Calvinistic. But I think that given the clarification in the question, it's more than talking about Reformed theology classically expressed in the Westminster Confession or the Heidelberg Catechism or the Synod of Dort or something like that.

They're more interested in talking about if God is truly sovereign over all things, in control of all things, then how can we give an account of evil if God is sovereign over all things? And so when it comes to that, I would say that the Bible in more than one way, at more than one time, affirms that God is in control of everything.

And that all that he does, he does for his own sake. For his own sake he does these things. He will not give his glory to another. That he ordains things from long ago, things that have not yet come to pass.

That God has all power. He's the one who says to the oceans thus far and no further. That nobody can stay his hand or say to him, what is it that you have done? And our Lord, our God is in the heavens and he does whatever he pleases, Psalm 115 says.

There are many, many passages of Scripture that affirm the freedom of God to do all that he pleases. The sovereignty of God to accomplish all that he has determined. And when people read those expressions in Scripture, some may immediately latch on to those and find comfort and peace.

Others may be a bit wary and wonder, but bad things happen. And the folks that have grabbed hold of the passages say, yes, but we can still trust God because he's sovereign over all. And the other folks are saying, but these evil things are happening.

So are you saying God is doing evil? So there's a real wrestling with the problem of evil, as they say, given God being all powerful. In fact, there's a classic argument against the doctrine of God because the Bible says that he is all-powerful and that he's all good.

Given the reality of evil in the world, the argument goes he's either therefore not all good or he's not all-powerful. Right. And so that's a classic argument against the Christian God, the God revealed in the Scriptures.

Right. And.

That's working with very specific definitions of good, you know, that they might have in their mind or what constitutes as evil or power. Yes. Now the first time we hear.

About evil is in Genesis chapter 2. And when God was giving instructions to Adam and these instructions were to be passed on to Eve, once he made Eve, but when he was giving instructions to Adam, he said, of all the trees of the garden you may freely eat.

But then in Genesis 2 .17 he says, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. Now this is before the fall, this is before Adam and Eve sinned.

Here we are in Genesis chapter 2. This is the sixth day, as we understand Genesis 2 to be an expanded view of day six, when God created man and the animals. And so this is very early on that God is talking about evil and the knowledge of not only good, but the knowledge of evil.

That the knowledge of evil is there even at the beginning. And yet all this whole time when God has been creating, he is saying it was good, it is good, it is good, it is very good when he makes his creation.

So how do we understand that? When Satan tempts Eve, he tells her, among other things, that the reason why God forbade her and Adam from eating of this tree, quote Genesis 3 .5, Satan says, for God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

Again, this knowing evil, and how are we to understand that? I think in common use of our language we would say, you know, know evil experientially. Know what evil is, what it's like, what it feels like, how it works.

Kind of a subjective knowledge. Subjective not in the sense of whatever it means to me, but subjective in the sense of I the subject know evil experientially, you see. But that's not the meaning of the term knowledge in Genesis 2 .17 and 3 .5.

We know that because of Genesis 3 .22. After the fall and after God had confronted Adam and Eve that they had sinned, he expelled them from the Garden of Eden and he gave his reasons. His reasons are in Genesis 3 .22.

Then the Lord God said, behold the man has become like one of us, he's speaking of himself in the plural Godhead, to know good and evil. And now lest you put out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever, it casts mankind out.

So what did God just say there? Behold indeed the man has become like one of us to know good and evil. Now is God saying because man has experienced evil and has this subjective personal knowledge of evil, because he has done evil and experienced evil, he's become like one of us because God himself has subjective knowledge of evil, having experienced evil and done evil.

That can't possibly be. That would be disagreement with all the rest of Scripture. So this is not to be understood as a subjective knowledge, but as an objective knowledge. Knowing good and evil objectively, meaning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, this knowledge is not subjective but objective.

To eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in other words, is to determine, to know objectively, to determine the knowledge of what good is and what evil is. That is not the business of man.

Mankind is a created being derived from the Creator. We exist because he has given us breath to breathe. It is his truth that we mediate. We don't have our own truth. And so he gets to determine what good and evil is.

When we determine evil and good for ourselves, that's eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There really was a tree and they really did eat of it, but it really was the temptation where Satan was saying to Eve, Eve, shouldn't you determine what's good for you?

Shouldn't you determine what good and evil is on your own and be like God? Rather than let God determine good and evil for you, shouldn't you determine that for yourself?

Right. So when he was saying, you'll be like God getting to say what is good and.

What is evil for yourself. Don't be content being made in the image of God, deriving your existence from God, deriving your knowledge from God and being dependent on him. Why don't you just be God yourself?

Yeah. You do you. You do you. Exactly. So this is where we first hear about evil and we hear that God is the one who determines objectively what good is and what evil is. God is the one who defines that and explains that and reveals that.

Now this is not saying that God he himself does evil. It doesn't say that he himself is evil, but we don't know what evil is unless God himself defines it for us. So that's an important starting point, I think, in trying to understand this particular question.

Now further, we hear about evil when it comes to human beings. Fallen in Adam, before and after the flood in Genesis 6 and 8, Genesis 6 5 and Genesis 8 21, God looks upon man and he says that man is evil.

His heart is only evil continually and that his heart is evil from his youth. So God is saying about man, man is evil. Man has this evil corruption in him. And at some point, we can just stop for a moment and reflect and say, well God, why do you let man live?

Why do you give life to men? Why do you bless the womb so that children may be born? Why is it that you allow men to continue to live in these evil ways? God, why? Right. And this is a good question. I think it's a question that comes up in the Psalms.

It comes up in Job. It comes up in Proverbs. It comes up in Habakkuk. It comes up in the other prophets. It comes up in the Scriptures all over the place. God, why? You know the hearts of men. You know how evil men are.

Why would you give them life, keep them alive, give them the sunshine on the evil and the good and your rain on the unjust and the just? Why would you sustain them? In some sense, God, does this not make you responsible?

God, if you really know all things and control all things, why do you give life and ability for men to do evil things? Why not just snuff them out, take their life away? Right. So in some sense, we're not saying that God does evil.

God himself is not evil. He does not sin. He is not evil. He does not tempt anyone to evil, James says. However, in another sense, even though God does not do evil and he himself is not evil, he ultimately is indeed responsible for evil.

Not in a guilt sense, but in a sovereign sense. So to put it another way, when Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery and he was taken down to Egypt and because his brothers hated him and they lied to Joseph's father and told him that Joseph had been slain by a wild animal and Joseph had to serve Potiphar until he was falsely accused and thrown into prison where he served and interpreted dreams for a baker and a butler and then later on it was raised to the right hand of the most powerful man on earth, Pharaoh.

The famines came and Joseph, by the wisdom of God, had been able to marshal the efforts, the agricultural efforts of Egypt so that there would be enough food to keep everybody alive despite the seven-year famine.

And when it was all said and done, when Jacob died and his brothers thought, well Joseph's only been nice to us all this time since we found him because dad's been alive but now he's gonna kill us and they tried to make up some story.

Oh by the way, before dad died he said, you know, Joseph better be nice to you or something like that. And Joseph said, hey look, you meant it for evil, God meant it for good. So it was the men who did the evil but God orchestrated, ordained, shepherded, brought all of that to pass, even ensuring the success of that evil act by Joseph's brothers so that Joseph would be in the right place at the right time to do the right thing so that God would bring about good.

In other words, evil is not something that God does but it is something that God uses and he controls.

And he is sovereign over. Yeah, and it's not just he's waiting till evil shows up and then he uses it for good. He pre-purposes that evil and you can look at the evil act and say, that was evil. You look at the brothers, what they did was wicked, it was evil, you're not conflating with anything.

But then you look at the end and you see the good. The nation of Israel continued to exist because of Joseph's acts. They would have died in the famine but God had a plan and it included Joseph being put in prison so that he'd be at the right place at the right time and it was all in God's hand.

So God is.

Sovereign over evil, he's in charge of it, he uses it, he doesn't do evil, he only does good. And this is how far better his goodness is, how more powerful he is than evil. So two more things I think need to be said about this.

One is this is not just a Reformed view, this is not unique to the Reformed view, this is actually unique to Christianity at the very heart of Christianity. I've never found a brother or sister in Christ who thought that Jesus Christ's death upon the cross, his suffering and death upon the cross.

I've never found a brother or sister in Christ who looked at me and told me that the death of Jesus on the cross was a total random accident, who saw that coming, or that it was not only unplanned but something that it was a good thing, like a righteous thing done by people who were doing the right thing.

So these people were doing an.

Evil thing. Well and that's what that's what Peter says in Acts and that's where you can point as far as like the apex of this conflict is Peter's talking about the crucifixion and he specifically mentions gathered together were Pontius Pilate, the Jews, several groups of people all with different motivations and they were all doing evil and he calls it evil.

But then he turns around and says and he did exactly what your hand predestined them to do.

Yes, that's in Acts chapter 4. So this is a very evil thing that they did. All Christians agree with that. All Christians just read the gospel, read the Bible and say what they did to Jesus was was evil.

We also open our Bibles and we read all the prophecies that Jesus was going to die that way, that they would look upon him whom they pierced, they cast lots for his garments, all these prophecies that said Jesus Christ would die this way.

And everybody agrees that this was God's plan, that this would happen. In other words, God is sovereign, he brings this to pass, and it was an evil thing that happened. So at the very heart of the gospel we see that God is sovereign over evil.

That's not something that is unique to people who study Reformed theology. That's the heart of what every single Christian believes. That's at the basics.

Right, yeah. I think one other thing as far as this question goes is there's kind of the intellectual answer to the problem of evil, but then there's also the emotional. Because you'll hear talks between non-Christians and Christians and they'll have some heart-wrenching act of evil that was done.

And how can you say that God says that was good or that there's meaning in it? And ultimately, us as creatures, we don't have that answer. The answer should be how could I know? I do not have all knowledge, I'm not sovereign, I could not know how to work this out in a way that good could come from it.

But I'm not God. God knows what he's doing and the Bible says that he is good. So I either trust that or I don't. I understand that that there's an emotional element there. But if you don't believe that God is good in the first place, it's gonna be very hard for you to emotionally get over that that hurdle.

And you are not going to accept the intellectual argument for it. Yeah, I think a good mix.

Of the intellectual and the emotional is in the 42 chapters known as the book of Job. And when you walk through the book of Job and you hear what Job has to say and what his three friends and the and the fourth guy that shows up what he has to say against the backdrop of what God and Satan had to say at the very beginning of the book, what God has to say at the end of the book, you find a lot of emotional arguments, you'll find a lot of intellectual arguments.

They try to sort through what in the world has happened to Job. And in the end, Job feels like God has wronged him. And he feels like, you know, I don't deserve this. You know, I know God is God, but I also feel like this is totally wrong.

And his his friends try to say, well, you know, you obviously messed up somehow. You know, God would never allow bad things to happen to good people. And they're trying to work through all of that. And the fourth guy shows up and says, you know, Job, I'm not sure what happened, but, you know, you need to stop complaining about God because obviously he's always right.

That's not quite an answer. But when it comes down to it, God confronts Job and says, who do you think you are, man? Who do you think you are? And he just shows him his glory and his power. And Job faces the whirlwind of God's sovereignty.

And he comes out of that with his hand over his mouth. And in the end, God blesses and everything is better than it ever was before. And it's a reminder that if we were to consider the whole scope of history, that that is ultimately how it works.

That even though we can't understand in the middle, we do know enough to say that God knows better than we do. And that what God is doing is bigger and more important and bringing about things that we can't even possibly imagine that are good.

And we can't give up on the story in chapter 3 and shut the book and forget about chapters 4 through 50. Right. I mean, you think we're smart enough to figure out where the story is gonna go this early on?

God is the one we have to trust in this. So I think that we have plenty of stories in the scripture and examples in scripture to remind us of that and to help us along with that. So somewhat.

The Biblical Case Against Prison as a System of Justice

Related to this, you had brought up Joseph in prison. Joseph being put in prison. One of our questions said in the last episode you hinted at not believing prison was biblical. Could you speak more to that?

Yes. So if we were going to go.

Through the scriptures and try to find out any passages on prison, you know, where do we think we would find prison? Obviously there's Joseph, you know, in prison in Egypt. And the time that he had there, the only example of anybody else in prison were people that Pharaoh were upset with.

And within three days, you know, things get settled and one dies and one is restored to his place. Joseph has to stay there in the prison, but basically he's just working there. He actually has a job there.

Whereas the accusation of Potiphar's wife made against him should have been an execution. But Potiphar obviously had not heard of, you know, hashtag me too, because he didn't believe his wife. He was upset and angry, but if he had believed his wife he would have killed Joseph.

He was the captain of the guard of Pharaoh. I mean, he had a sword nearby and he had a role of execution, so he could have just killed Joseph. But instead of killing him, he put him in the prison and Joseph lived there for a while.

That's abnormal. Abnormal in history and abnormal in terms of biblical wisdom. If we were to look for prison elsewhere, we would find kind of impromptu prison situations. One example is that of Jeremiah, who just wouldn't stop preaching the Word of the Lord.

And the Kings just didn't like that until finally they threw him down into a dry cistern and, you know, a little bit of food was dropped down to him. But that's not a prison, it just happened to be an empty cistern because they drank all the water.

Yeah. Yeah, so we're gonna throw you down there so we can keep you quiet. They didn't have a structure dedicated for keeping prisoners. No, and it was something wherein it's like you're probably gonna die down there, and if you do, fine.

You know, but out of sight, out of mind, okay. You know, that was the idea. Where else do we hear.

About prisons in the Bible? I think of maybe some of the perils, maybe like debtor's prison or Philippian jailer. Paul is in prison in the New Testament under Roman, you know, occupation. Those come to mind.

We have a Samson.

Incarcerated and then like made to entertain or employed to grind at the mill, having been blinded and so forth. But we have these incidentals, but when we have positive instruction concerning criminal activity, positive instruction concerning justice, where we would look for some sort of general equity wisdom from the Old Testament to try to get an idea of what would be a just way of approaching these things.

We're not under the law to keep the law. We're not to evaluate the law and say this is the standard of righteousness. Christ is our standard of righteousness. So if we're to look back at the law and look at what, you know, how they handled things, if somebody steals, there's a way to make reparation based on what was stolen, how long it was gone, how much the victim suffered, anywhere from restoring it plus 20 to restoring it fourfold.

Oh, you can't afford that? Well, you're going to work. Mm-hmm. And you're gonna work for the person you stole from. Yeah. And if you don't do that, then there's further punishments coming. But it's not we're going to put you in a concrete.

Cell. Yeah. In a community of other criminals. Yeah. And fine you, but that money doesn't go to the victim. It goes to the state. Yeah. To pay the.

Corporation who's running the prison. Right. So we don't have an example of prison in the judicial system in the life of Israel. If there is a holding cell, it's, you know, so that the speedy trial can occur where two or three witnesses may be brought, and if they're in agreement, then the punishment is brought to pass.

So there are fines, there are beatings, there's executions, there's, you know, enslavement. You have to go work for somebody for a long time till you get it fixed. But we do not have prisons mentioned as a way of.

Handling criminal activity. Maybe someone would make the argument we're more civilized now. Maybe that those methods of punitive beatings and the capital punishment things are, maybe that was Old Testament and now that's not the case in the New Testament.

How would we answer that? I think our modern prison system.

Has the reputation of this is the more humane way of doing things because it's about rehabilitation. But there's a lot of assumptions that go into that. Let me back up a little bit and talk about why we have a modern prison system versus the not so modern prison system in which there is many abuses in judicial systems where you did have debtor prisons and you had really a lot of problems with mass incarcerations and even, you know, shipping.

Like the England had a very unjust society and put many people into debtors prison through a variety of unjust laws and they couldn't work their way out. They had to be sent to Australia and Georgia penal colonies to do labor and so on and so forth.

But you had a lot of death and destruction going on in the prisons in England. When we think about prisons today, they try to stress that they want to be humane and they want to try to bring some sort of rehabilitation.

We want to educate them, we want to give them jobs to do, but we have to keep them out of society because they're a menace to society at some level. However, the prison system that we have is unjust for a number of reasons.

One is that it's a money-making scheme wherein prison corporations are running the things. They get more money based on how many prisoners are there. So incarcerating a whole lot of people makes a whole lot of monetary sense.

If you have your war on drugs wherein you have mandatory minimums and you start putting everybody away really fast, then you have a massive prisoner population and they all do work about 25 -20 cents an hour.

Because remember that the amendment that so-called ended slavery in the United States did not end slavery in the United States. It stopped private ownership of slaves in the United States, but ensured that federal enslavement of human beings was alive and well.

And we have that today. So an example is here's a corporation who is on a contract to have massive amounts of laundering done. We've got to get all of these sheets laundered, we have to get all of these uniforms laundered, and we need to do it cheap.

Well, we have a slave population over here in this federal penitentiary and they all work for 20 cents an hour. So we're gonna have them do all the laundry. See how that works? There's a lot of monetary incentive to keep this system going, but it is not biblically just to say to somebody who has, let's say, they've embezzled $10 ,000 from their local business, stole from their boss, okay, let's say that, or stole from their business partner.

That's wrong. That's evil. They should pay their partner back. They should pay them back, you know, maybe $12 ,000 back, or maybe they should pay him $20 ,000 back because of it. And the state should make sure that that happens and the man should work and pay back all of that.

But he's not doing that when he's in prison.

Right. Well, and one term thrown around is debt to society. But whose debt was that? It was a debt to his neighbor. Yes. And he sinned against God in stealing. Right. And then on top of that, what I've found, so say that man stole from his neighbor, he's arrested for it, he's put in prison, and he has to work that debt off so the state gets that debt, not his neighbor.

But then the neighbor is paying taxes to house the thief in prison. So he's victimized a second time. Yes. Because he has to pay for everything, all that goes into living in a prison, prison life. So he doesn't get that money back.

And then not to mention, if it's not just money, say if someone, and the Bible talks about these types of things, if someone has equipment, that equipment is damaged or stolen. Not only do you have the equipment itself, but then you have the lost wages from you don't have that equipment, days, weeks, months worth of work that's gone, that has to be paid back.

But no, it's all swept under the rug. Everything goes to the state. And what it does is it destroys all sense of restoration in a community. The state's going to take care of it. There's no forgiveness because they're just outside out of mind.

That's right. They're not made right with their neighbor because that debt is still outstanding. It's just distributed amongst the whole population. Yeah. So if you have the idea that the state is the.

Savior, the state's going to rehabilitate the criminals in the prison system. They're going to save the criminals and make them all better by the time they get out. And then the state is the one to whom the criminal must do penance.

I pay my debt to society. Well, that means the state. So, you know, it's not about how you wronged your neighbor. You need to make things right with your neighbor. You wronged the state. And so you need to do your penance to the state.

So it's not a focus on actual justice. It's an unjust system. And so, well, you know, there's this man who, you know, he lost $10 ,000 because his business partner embezzled from him. Well, he should have had insurance.

Oh, another. Let's introduce another layer.

Yes. And we know how well insurance works in doing the right thing. But they don't do the right thing. So then you have to appeal to the state and go legal routes and go to litigation trying to get these insurance companies to actually do what they said that they would do.

But all of it could be completely made right and just if the local magistrate, the sheriff would say, you stole $10 ,000 from your business partner. Well, guess what, bud? You're going to go work at one of these jobs.

We need somebody to work. Okay. And you're going to get yourself a subsistence wage out of it. You're going to have enough for your food, clothing and shelter. You're going to have barely enough to get by.

And then everything else is going to be garnished and it's going to go back and pay back your partner until you're all done. Right. And we're going to make sure that that happens. And if you don't want that happen, we've got a rope situation that we can solve that with.

Right. Okay. It's like you're not going to ruin our society by doing this. In fact, you're going to help make it back. And in a situation where if it's some other thing, someone gets drunk and gets into a fight and hits a guy, whatever, he has to pay the medical bills, does he get publicly beaten and shamed for being a drunkard?

There's different ways of handling these things, but they have all been labeled as unjust or inhumane. So what we're going to do is we're going to expand federal slave ownership and we're going to put people into concrete boxes and we're going to treat them like animals.

And then they're going to treat each other like animals, both sexually and violently. And then we're going to create a professional criminal class. And then once they're fully marked as being a criminal like this, then when they get out of the prison system, we're going to make sure that they have no opportunities to do anything of meaningful value so that they're probably going to end up right back in prison.

Yeah. It's like that is not just that man came up with this idea and lo and behold, it's a bad idea. Yeah.

I mean, I've heard stories of people in prison. They're like, I would take a beating to get my life back, to get time with my family, like that their life is just taken away. And even like the types of laws.

So in the Bible, there's the difference between sin and crime. Crime, there's no such thing as a victimless crime. Well, in our society, there are laws where there's no victim. There was no one that had has been wrong, but the state can, Oh, you're not supposed to do that.

You have to give us money. Oh, you're not supposed to do that. We're going to throw you in jail. Well, there was no one for that person to give restitution to because there was no one harmed, licensings, fees, all tickets, all these different things, but they get you in the system.

And once you're there, it's.

Hard to get out. I got a call one time was, it was 2014. When I first came here to sunny side, I got a call from someone who's just going through the phone book, asking for help. His name is Michael Johnson.

And, um, he was on his way from Houston and he was trying to get out to Eastern Oklahoma and, uh, said he just needed help, get a ride. He wanted to get a ride out to the loves out at Choctaw road because he wasn't going to hook up with it.

Uh, some sort of trucker, maybe we'll get them out of the way out there to the East side of Oklahoma. And so I went over and met him guys, six, 11 and a half tallest man I've ever seen up that close. He was a huge black man had just been released from prison and he's trying to get home to his wife.

To her credit, she had not divorced him over the last 20 years while he was in federal prison in Texas. I was giving him his ride. We were talking about the things of the Lord. He'd become a Christian in prison.

They had some guys coming over from a seminary and taught through the scriptures and he had learned a lot from the Bible and so on. And, uh, he said, you know, you can tell the difference between Christians in on the inside and who are not Christians.

He said, because the Christians confess their sins and take responsibility and the ones who aren't Christians blame everybody else. That was an interesting observation from that guy. And, uh, I said, well, why did you have to be in prison for 20 years?

He said, I got mad and I pushed a cop. Wow. The cops had been saying stuff to him and he got really mad and he pushed a cop assault on a police officer in Texas, 20 years in prison. Wow. Shouldn't.

There be a more just way of handling that? I would think so. I would think so.

I would think so too. You know, obviously I think putting him behind bars for 20 and this is a guy who says I take full responsibility for it. He said, I did the wrong thing. I shouldn't have pushed him.

I really did assault that cop and I should not have done that. He took full responsibility for, he wasn't trying to lie and tell me that, you know, it was no big deal. He's saying, yeah, I did the wrong thing.

But 20 years in prison for that, that sounds like wickedness. So we got him out to Henrietta and then he got a truck ride all the way out to, and he went to go live with his brother and sleep on his brother's couch and work on mending his relationship with his wife.

He called me some months later and told me that he had gotten himself a job and things were progressing well, getting counseling with his wife in church and things were getting going well. But I think about that and I think, you know, somebody gets angry and pushes a cop.

That's wrong. You know, something should happen. But I don't think 20 years in prison is the answer. You know, I don't, I don't think that's the answer. So I think it's an unjust system and I don't think it's a proper response to evil.

Yeah. This relates to some questions we had on a previous podcast, but the Christians relating with civil magistrate, our government, there's a lack of wisdom and scriptural understanding within our government.

And it's the church's role, not just pastors, but people within the church to talk to their civil magistrates and say, this is what the Bible says. Why do we have all these laws that are not just not promoting good, but are doing evil?

Herman Bavinck, Prolegomena, and the Sufficiency of Scripture

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that about wraps it up for those questions. As far as recommendations go, we did have a question come in that asked, what is the dealio with this Herman Bavink guy that you keep mentioning?

So what's going on there? Herman Bavink was.