9 Questions About the Nature & Existence of God

Opening Remarks, Conferences, and the Importance of Questions

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala. And today, there is no guest, it's just me. I'm going to be covering nine questions about the nature and existence of God, all right?

So I'm just gonna be going through a list of questions that I think are very important for folks to be familiar with. And I also wanna talk a little bit about the importance of answering questions, just the task of answering questions and creating an environment in which questions can be asked and explored.

I think all those things are very important. If we want to perhaps maybe raise our children or have a household in which questions can be asked and discussed and go deeper, I think that's very valuable when doing apologetics in the home in terms of preparing your family, preparing your kids, all those sorts of things.

So we're gonna be talking about that in just a moment. But real quick, just a reminder again, if you guys have listened to some of my last live streams, I made reference to a conference that I will be hosting.

And this is my attempt to hopefully get some financial support from people who have been enjoying and revealed apologetics and have been benefiting from the content. I'm going to be hosting an Epic Presup Conference.

It's an online conference. We get the thing up here. And I have some great speakers lined up. And this is just one of hopefully many other conferences. So this one is going to be on November 12th. I'm gonna be presenting, giving an overview of the presuppositional method.

Dr. Jason Lyle is going to be teaching us how to use evidence within a presuppositional framework. Dr. Chris Bolt is going to talk about the history of transcendental arguments and the uniqueness of Cornelius Mantel's transcendental arguments.

Matt Slick is gonna teach us how to apply the presuppositional method to the cults. And Joshua Pillows is gonna help us answer common and not so common objections to the presuppositional method. So I'm totally looking forward to having this.

It's gonna be like an all day thing. It's from 10 a .m. to 4 .30 p .m. in which the speakers will have specific times that they will come on. Folks can sign up for that right now on the Revealed Apologetics website.

So you go to revealedapologetics .com and you click the Presupp You option on the menu and you can RSVP your spot to view this epic online presupp conference. And that's not the only thing I'm planning.

There is no date set yet. I'm gonna be solidifying this, but I'll also be hosting an epic online Calvinism conference which I'm very excited once I get the specific date nailed down and kind of schedules worked out.

We'll be having myself, of course, but we'll be having Dr. James White, Dr. Guillaume Bignon, Scott Christensen, and Saiten Bruggenkate all covering different elements of Calvinism. And it's not going to be kind of a generic tulip sort of thing.

There's five of us. We're not doing like total depravity, unconditional election, limited autonomy, all that. We're gonna be covering specific areas that I think kind of take it up a notch and kind of apply to issues that Calvinists are really confronting today.

So we'll be talking about all sorts of interesting things and I'll make sure I'll update you guys on the details once those details are kind of set in stone, okay? So two conferences, this one, the epic Calvinism conference is gonna be coming up in January.

It is not, you cannot sign up for that just yet, but if you are wanting to support Revealed Apologetics, you can sign up right now for the epic online presupp conference, all right? And so without further ado, let's kind of jump into our topic.

I'll remove that from the screen. And just as promised, I wanna walk through a couple of things. So the main topic for today is that I'm gonna be trying to cover nine questions about the nature and existence of God.

The Value of a Question-and-Answer Home Environment

But before I do that, I wanna talk about the importance of answering questions. So we can do, you know, answering five questions about this and nine questions about that and 10 questions about this and five questions about that.

I wanna talk about the importance of answering questions. I think it's vitally important to understand that answering questions can really be a ministry, okay? We can answer questions. We can be answer givers, right?

People come to us and ask questions. We can give them answers. We can be answer finders and we can be pointers to answer givers and finders, okay? So there are many different ways in which answering questions or being a resource to people can be a very powerful ministry, especially in today's world where so many people are asking so many different questions about God, the Bible, religion, worldviews, these sorts of things, truth, morality, these sorts of things.

And so I think it's very important to create an environment as Christians in which questions can be safely asked and meaningfully addressed, okay? I think fostering a question and answer environment really can be a kind of way of life.

And so this kind of really came home to me when I was reading, what book was it? I think it was a William Lane Craig book. I think I might have it here. Let me see. It might be, let me see. Jeez Louise.

Oh, here we go. There we go. All right, so in this book right here, William Lane Craig, A Reasonable Response, okay? Now, again, I don't agree with everything Dr. Craig says. I have very sharp disagreements with him on a lot of issues, but there was this really, really good section in the book where it spoke about fostering a question and answering environment as kind of a way of life.

And I very much resonated with that. And I think that's a really good thing. I haven't done it in my own life necessarily, but it's definitely something I wanna try to more intentionally implement. So fostering a Q &A environment as a way of life.

The book pointed out some very important points here. Number one, we need to recognize the role of the home as a worldview forming center, okay? Again, if you don't do this, I mean, I'm guilty of this as well, right?

This is something that we need to be intentional about, but recognizing the home as a worldview forming center. We want to be able to recognize and be sensitive to teachable moments in the home in which questions can be asked and answered, or we can pose questions to our family and have meaningful discussions.

We wanna recognize opportunities to reason with or alongside our children, family, and friends, right? Being intentional about that. Again, super hard. One of the things I struggle with, I'm a full-time teacher.

When I get home, I am exhausted. And so I usually go straight for the nap or I'm really groggy and I'm kind of like slothing around. So this is something definitely I can work on, but I think it's really important, okay?

So we wanna recognize the role as a worldview forming center. We wanna recognize and be sensitive to teachable moments. We wanna recognize opportunities to reason with or alongside our children, our family, our friends.

And we want to foster an environment that empowers study in the home. And this can take the form of reading, having intentional good conversations, meaningful conversations, teach our children how to pray with intention, with meaning and purpose.

And of course, not just teach our children this, but also practice this. This is one of the big detriments of myself. If I were to kind of expose, if I can be vulnerable with you here, one of my weaknesses is prayer.

I tend to be kind of overly intellectual, not that prayer isn't intellectual, but I tend to be overly up here. And if I can use kind of this dichotomy, right? Don't throw rocks at the screens. I know there's the heart and the mind.

I know how that all works. But if I can just speak colloquially about this, I tend to be very intellectual and not very heart oriented. And so I love God with my mind, right? I love to read theology and I consider reading theology and reading the Bible as a form of worship itself.

But to take time aside in prayer, and then of course to teach my children, that's something that I definitely need to work on, but it's important. And so I think that fostering an environment of prayer, asking questions, all of these sorts of things are vitally important.

Now, we also want to integrate intellectual formation with character formation, okay? So again, in finding these teachable moments, we wanna make the connection between intellectual growth and how that relates to our character, right?

It's not just what we think, it's also allowing what we think to impact the way that we act, okay? And if we foster a question and answering environment in the home, if we are sensitive to those teachable moments, if we understand the home as a worldview forming center and that we're intentional about reading and studying and having good conversations and teaching our children, our family, how to pray, as well as maintaining a healthy prayer life ourself, integrating the intellectual and character formation, that is going to all work towards really the fulfillment of 1 Peter 3, verse 15, which is to always be ready.

We're always ready because being ready, the preparation is not something we just do, it's a way of life, right? Again, very difficult to implement in all of its detail, but definitely an important aspect to really developing an environment where questions and answers can be really a part of what we do, and we can be resources to people in our family and people that God has placed within the context of our own lives.

So hopefully that makes sense and that is useful to you. Definitely was useful to me when I was reading it there. So if you're interested, again, you may love or hate Dr. William Lane Craig. Again, I have very strong disagreements with him, but there is a really good section here where it talks about the importance of answering questions, and I thought it was very useful.

So this is the book here if you are interested, all right? Let me put that down before someone... How can a pre-supper be holding up a William Lane Craig book? Come on, I mean, I've learned a lot from the guy, because he's brilliant in many regards, and then in other ways, I'm just kind of like, ah.

So there's kind of a love-hate relationship, okay? So hopefully this will be useful for anyone if they read that section of the book. All right, so let's tackle some of these questions, okay? A lot of these questions are common questions, okay?

And I think they'll be useful to you, and hopefully we won't kind of... We'll keep things kind of in the mid shelf. I don't wanna speak over anyone's head. I think these questions are very practical, and hopefully you'll find them useful.

Arguments For and Against God

So question number one, okay? What key arguments are there for or against God, okay? Now, this is really important. We want to be aware of kind of the arguments that float around, right? I'm not gonna go through this comprehensively, but in terms of atheism, you have the hiddenness of God arguments, right?

Why is God so hidden? You have the problem of evil, and you have the problem of evil in different variations that tend to be a very powerful tool in the hands of unbelievers when they are attacking Christian theism or they're arguing against the Christian position or anything along those lines.

And of course, from the Christian position, yes, I am a presuppositionalist, but I have no problem in various contexts using some of the traditional arguments. I think they are good data points for launching into certain conversations depending on how the conversation goes.

So even from a presuppositional perspective, I think the cosmological argument, the Kalam arguments from design, various teleological arguments, moral arguments, historical arguments for the resurrection, I think even as presuppositionalists, all those are fair game if you're able to incorporate them in a consistent fashion within a presuppositional framework, okay?

We wanna always remember, no matter what arguments we use, we do not want to allow autonomy and neutrality to seep into our methodology, right? We wanna always remember our foundations and be faithful to that.

And this is very important too as a presuppositionalist. When we think of like apologetic methodology, we tend to think of like presuppositionalism over here, which uses like more of like a transcendental approach.

And then we take a look at say like the classical approach and we see some of these traditional proofs from like natural theology and things like that. And we kind of see it as like an either or. The rejection of traditional arguments is not essential to a presuppositional approach.

Okay, I'm gonna say that again. The rejection of many of the traditional arguments is not an essential feature of the presuppositional approach. I'll give you an example. Dr. Greg Bonson rejected various cosmological arguments, but he didn't reject it simply because he was a presuppositionalist.

He rejects some of the versions of those arguments because he just thought that they were bad arguments, okay? You can be a presuppositionalist and think, and disagree with Dr. Bonson and think, well, actually I think the cosmological arguments got something going for it, but I wanna be able to use it in a way that's consistent with my undergirding presuppositional and biblical principles, okay?

So some key arguments are the cosmological argument. I think that's fair game. Teleological arguments, moral arguments, historical arguments. Yes, presuppositionalist can appeal to historical arguments.

Cornelius Van Til even said, I don't remember the reference, but hopefully you'll trust that I'm speaking truthfully here when people ask about the resurrection, Dr. Van Til made mention in one of his books where he said that at some point, I would find it necessary to engage in historical apologetics, okay?

So it is completely appropriate to talk about historical data points. You see, as a presuppositionalist who really has a transcendental method at the center of most of what I do, if someone were to ask me kind of like a historical question about the evidence for the resurrection, I don't necessarily need to jump into a transcendental analysis of that, or how do you know any fact of history whatsoever?

Yeah, that might be appropriate, right? In some contexts, but there's nothing wrong with just laying out the facts. And of course, we always lay out the facts being sensitive to the importance of presuppositions and how that impacts the interpretation of facts and things like that.

So there are ways to do this consistently, okay? So those are some of the key arguments, but of course, as a presuppositionalist, I would say that the centerpiece of all that would be a transcendental method of reasoning and transcendental method of argumentation, okay?

I would say that the transcendental method which informs and gives meaning and cogency to all the other arguments is really that transcendental principle, okay? So yeah, so I think those are some of the key arguments that one might wanna be familiar with when doing apologetics and knowing what's going on out there in terms of the sorts of things that people talk about, okay?

All right, let's deal with our next question. Our next question is what are the practical implications of an atheistic worldview, okay? Now, this is important, okay? So when we ask the question, what are the practical implications of an atheistic worldview, identifying the practical implications of a worldview is not to say that that worldview is necessarily false, okay?

So if someone were to ask me the question, what are the practical implications of an atheistic worldview, okay? That's not saying that atheism is false. It's just saying, what are the practical implications of it?

So I think that is apologetically useful. You don't necessarily always have to go for the jugular in every context and try to refute a person's position, although that is fair game given the nature of apologetics and arguments and things like that.

But I think from an existential perspective, I think it's very useful to really talk about the practical implications of someone's worldview. And sorry, Brenda, atheism is a worldview. There are different flavors of atheism.

There is not the atheist worldview, but there are different flavors of atheism and all of them have a key components that make up their perspective. So sorry, yeah, I would strongly disagree with you, okay?

At any rate, and trust me, I know exactly what various atheists say, any version of atheism and all of its expressions is coming from a worldview perspective. And of course the atheistic commitments, whether it's more of a weak or strong form of atheism have worldview implications.

So that's just the way it is. So I wanna remind you guys, identifying practical implications is not necessarily saying that atheism is necessarily false. We wanna differentiate between the truth of a perspective and the implications of a perspective.

I'm gonna say that one more time. We want to differentiate between the truth of a perspective and the implications of a perspective. If atheism is true, okay, this is something to consider and this will incorporate various arguments as well.

If atheism is true, then if you think about it, there is no objective meaning and purpose in the world. If atheism is true, objectively speaking, in the ultimate sense, there is no meaning and purpose for our existence.

Okay, does that mean atheism is false? No, this is just a practical implication of it. If you are, and many atheists would admit this, that they would embrace the darkness and nothingness of existence, right?

And they embraced it with courage, right? If there is no God and there's no ultimate purpose and meaning for why we exist, then there is no objective meaning and purpose. We create meaning for ourself.

Again, doesn't mean atheism is false, but I think that's an important implication that follows from an atheistic perspective, all right? Oh, by the way, if you do have questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments.

By the way, I want to give you a reminder, preface your question with question that helps me kind of more easily differentiate your question from the comments. Let's see here. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

Okay, all right. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. All right, let's see here. So if atheism is true, again, evil, or what we define as evil is never dealt with. So on atheism, there is no ultimate justice in the world, right, ultimately speaking.

Again, this is not controversial. If there's no meaning and purpose, things just happen. They happen, that's just the way the world works. And so there's no justice. Again, doesn't mean atheism is false, but this might be something useful to bring up in conversation.

Because speaking with people myself, I do get a strong indication that people do have a very strong sense of justice and a desire to see the wrongs being righted at the end. So this might be an existentially useful thing to do, okay?

If atheism is true, the world really can't be understood in any consistent and unifying fashion as reality is not the outflow, I would argue, from the will and plan of God. All is sound and fury signifying nothing, right?

Where does atheism, or whatever version of atheism one might hold, where does unity come from? How does one unify knowledge? How does someone have a unified perspective on reality? And how does someone step outside, really, on atheism, it seems to me, how does one step outside the egocentric predicament?

Is unity actually unity, or is it something we create for ourselves because we're limited? There's no God, there's no transcendence communicating with us in any way, and so we have to make these connections, right?

So I think those are kind of important things to keep in mind, all right? Again, a lot more can be said. I can't get into all of the details. I'm kind of just going through these questions, and as data points, I think they're important to keep in mind when you're having conversations with people.

All right? All right, another common question is, why would a good God allow evil to exist, right? This is like the question, right? And I think some apologists try to wiggle out of this question in a way that I think is, sometimes can be useful, but other times I don't think it's very helpful, okay?

Why would a good God allow evil to exist, okay? Well, someone might say, and I've heard people say this before, well, on atheism, there is no evil, okay? Now that's true. On atheism, there is nothing that is objectively evil, right?

We can call certain things evil. We can agree as a society that we think certain actions are morally unacceptable. I get that, okay? But if atheism's true, there's nothing objectively evil. However, when an atheist or anyone asks, why would a good God allow evil to exist?

I don't think it, I think it's a dodge to simply say, well, in atheism, there is no evil, so what's your problem? Okay? Notice though, that this is not the question. The question is, why would a God, a good God, allow evil?

So if you think about this, this question, if it's coming from an atheist, is an attempt at, and I think appropriately, it's an attempt at an internal critique of the theist position, in my case, the Christian position, right?

So if someone says, why would a good God allow evil to exist? So let's hypothetically assume that there is a good God, okay, hypothetically, why would this God allow evil to exist, right? That's important, all right?

And so I think we wanna be able to differentiate between what's being asked and not dodge the question by answering a question or making a statement that's not really addressing the specific point, okay?

Now, I wanna keep a couple of things in mind. Number one, the concept of evil, and this is why it's important, like on a presuppositional perspective, where we place a great emphasis on worldviews, okay?

The concept of evil is not independent of a worldview context in which it makes sense and is defined. So the concept of evil is not a neutral perspective, okay? Yep, sorry, Brenda, on Christianity, evil cannot exist.

That is literally an external critique. So the hypothetical question being asked, why would a good God allow evil is doing a better job than you are in asking internally critical questions. When you say Christianity and evil cannot exist, you're just rejecting the Christian system.

On the Christian system, there is a good God and literally there is evil, okay? And it plays a plan and purpose in God's overall plans. Now, you don't have to accept that, but that is the Christian story.

So to say that on Christianity, evil can't exist, that's just to reject the Christian worldview at the outset because inherent within the Christian worldview is that there is a good God and there is evil.

So I think that'd be problematic there. All right, at any rate, so the concept of evil is not independent of a worldview context in which it makes sense and is defined. So when we're talking about evil, we need to define what we mean by that.

And for the Christian, if you're gonna engage in an internal critique, then that category needs to be defined within a consistently Christian worldview context, okay? Now, within the Christian context, evil, as everything else, serves the purposes of God's will and intentions.

While we would affirm that God is not evil, evil definitely plays a role in God accomplishing his purposes. For him permitting evil, right? He has a reason for that. Why would God do this? Why would God allow Adam and Eve to eat the fruit?

He puts them in the garden and he knows that they're gonna eat from the fruit. Why would God do that? Well, for morally sufficient reasons. God has his reasons for doing it. We might not know what those reasons are.

We might know some of the reasons. Regardless, it's not random. God knew it and he had a purpose for it. And because God is good, his purposes are good. I mean, it's period. People might not like that, but there's nothing logically inconsistent with that within the Christian system, okay?

So within the Christian context, evil, as everything else, serves the purposes of God's will and intentions, okay? That's one aspect of it. Another aspect of it is why would a good God allow evil? There's an aspect of mystery there.

And even mystery is consistent with the Christian worldview. Deuteronomy 29, 29, the secret things belong to the Lord, but the things revealed belong to us and our children's children, okay? Another aspect of why does a good God allow evil?

For his glory and our good. God is glorified in his permitting of evil and his conquering of it and a revelation of his character through that whole process. How it creates a context for redemption and mercy and an exhibition of God's justice and righteousness, right?

That's an element of it, okay? To reveal aspects of his character, he desires apparently his creatures to know what he's like. And these things are demonstrated when he permits rebellion, okay? Now you might not like that God did it.

You might not like that at all, but I mean, that's okay. Not liking it is not the same as showing that there's a logical inconsistency and it's not showing that it's false, okay? All right. And no, Brenda, I'm sorry if I'm responding to Brenda.

She's got a lot of quotes there, comments, and there's not many comments yet, so it's easy to see it. No, my position doesn't collapse into skeptical theism. I mean, maybe you can define that for me. I'm not sure what you mean by skeptical theism.

Maybe you can define that and I can let you know what I think about that. But at any rate, yeah. All right, so let's see here. So yeah, ultimately God has, not only can God have, but I think that it's the biblical position that God does have morally sufficient reasons and good reasons for permitting the evil that he allows, okay?

From a logical perspective, if that's even logically possible, then it follows that there's no conflict between the existence of a good God and the existence of evil. God could have morally sufficient reasons for the evil that he allows.

Well, what are those reasons, Eli? Well, I can give you some, and then that would show that there's no logical contradiction. Or I can say, I don't know what those reasons are, right? And I do know what some of them are.

I kind of just listed them there. But suppose I didn't. The fact that it's even logically possible that God could have morally sufficient reasons makes it the case that there is not a logical contradiction.

Remember, a logical contradiction, according to the second law of logic, states that a statement cannot be both true and false at the same time in the same sense, okay? The idea that there is a good God and that there's evil is not logically incompatible if it's possible that God could have morally sufficient reasons for the evil that he allows.

And that's precisely what we get in scripture, okay? All right, let's see here. Let's see, let's see, let's see. Okay, so why would a good God allow suffering to exist? I mean, if you take the problem of evil and the problem of suffering, for example, I would say, you know, wash, rinse, repeat, right?

Suffering and its purpose is not without a context, right? It's worldview, right? It fits within a worldview system. So suffering has a worldview context within Christianity. Within the Christian context, suffering, as everything else, serves the purposes of God's will and intention, okay?

He reveals some of those intentions, okay? And some of them are mysterious. Deuteronomy 29, 29. God has morally sufficient and good reasons to permit the suffering that he allows, okay? Might not be emotionally satisfying, although we could come up with more specificity, but just generally speaking here.

But there is no logical incompatibility. And of course, the God of the Bible not only permits suffering and brings glory to himself through suffering and redeems the suffering, he also engages in the suffering himself in the incarnation where Christ, the compassionate one, compassion, co-passion to suffer, passion to suffer alongside.

He suffers alongside us as well, okay? So, all right, so a couple of things here. So I would say that the problem of suffering, the problem of evil can be answered in similar ways if we're considering kind of that worldview context, all right?

All right, before I go to the next question, just want to let people know, again, if you have any questions, please feel free to put your question in the comments and preface your question with question, and I'll try my best to get to some of them, all right?

So again, I'm going through these rather quickly. There's obviously much more that can be said about each of these points, but just as a quick little run through, hopefully it's useful and helpful for folks.

All right, so then we have another common question. Why would God command the death of so many people in the Bible? An example, say the Canaanites, okay? Again, when we take a look at the actions of God, nothing is done without a context on Christianity.

Nothing is done. God does not do anything arbitrarily. He has a reason and a purpose, right? No matter what, right? Whether you know that purpose, and sometimes he tells us in his word, or you don't know that purpose, okay?

God does not do anything without purpose, and when he does what he does, those purposes are always good, and they are coming from an omniscient, omnipotent God who is working out his plans in the world, okay?

And this will involve a revealing of his character, which often is his righteousness, his justice, his attitude towards sin, and we see this all throughout the Old Testament. God will act consistently with his character.

As righteous judge, he will and has executed justice upon sinners to demonstrate the seriousness of sin, to demonstrate the consequences of sin, to demonstrate what all men deserve, but don't all get by God's grace.

He does this. He executes his wrath in the Old Testament to demonstrate his right and freedom to give and take life, to demonstrate that his judgments, his judgments, if you think about it, are also used to draw others to repentance, okay?

God demonstrates all sorts of things by executing justice in particular instances throughout the Old Testament. I don't apologize for that as well. I very much appreciate the work of Dr. Paul Copan in his book, "'Is God a Moral Monster?'.

And he talks a little bit about kind of the historical context for a lot of this, but, and as helpful as it is, and I think there's some warrants to some of the things he says, I'm not that apologetic for the things that God does.

God knows all things, okay? He knows when you are ripe for justice and judgment, and he is free to execute that judgment, right? He's good, so his judgment is good. He always does what's right, so his judgment is right, okay?

There's no problem. Someone says, well, how can God command the death? Because he's God, because he's righteous, because he's free to judge when he sees fit to judge, okay? So from an apologetic point of view, I don't see a problem with that.

None of us deserve to live, right? I remember it was, I don't know if it was an interview on Larry King, I don't know if it was Larry King, or some show, where John MacArthur, Pastor John MacArthur was asked the question, why do bad things happen to good people?

And I loved his answer. He said that to ask the question, why do bad things happen to good people is the wrong question. The right question we should be asking is why do good things happen to anyone? Why do good things happen to anyone?

The assumption is we're just good people, and these random things just happen to us. Listen, we all deserve the judgment of God, and it is only by his mercy and grace that we are allowed to wake up the next day and take a breath, okay?

If God so desires, he can stop our lives because he wants to. And of course, he doesn't do it arbitrarily, but he could, if he wanted to end our lives, he could do it, and he would be just in doing so, okay?

So why would God command the death of so many people in the Bible? Well, he exhibits his righteous judgment, he executes his justice upon sinners, he's demonstrating to us the seriousness of sin. It's no wonder, I wonder if it's the case, that is it the case that God is mean or that we don't take sin seriously enough?

I don't know about you, but I think it's the latter. I think we don't take sin seriously enough, and so that's why when we see God's actions in the Old Testament, we think he's going a little overboard, okay?

So if you think about it, though, regardless of the apologetic answer you give to this question, if you think about it, God is going to lose any way you slice it, right? We can bend over backwards and try to make God seem nicer, and we can create a God in our own image, right?

And create a God that we're comfortable with. But in the final analysis, let's be honest, God loses. If God punishes sin, then we ask the question, why is he so harsh? If God doesn't punish sin, we ask the question, why doesn't God care about evil?

You see, God does not cater to the fickle and sinful perspectives of men who wish to sit in judgment over his actions, right? The Bible says the Lord is in heaven. He does what he pleases, and what he does and what he pleases is always righteous.

It's always just, okay? You don't have to like it, but it's irrelevant, right? It's irrelevant. So from an apologetic perspective, I don't think there's a problem there at all. We should stand by the justice of God, make sure we're understanding those passages in its proper context.

We don't wanna act cavalierly when engaging those sensitive topics, but we don't have to apologize for God. He's righteous. He has the right to take life, to judge. He can judge you now. He can wait until later.

He can wait until in the final judgment day. That's his prerogative, okay? From within a Christian perspective, right? That's consistent, okay? You don't refute or show a logical inconsistency by having some neutral and subjective view of what you think justice is, and then impose that subjective view of justice upon God and say, look, there's a contradiction.

God contradicts my sense of justice, okay? That's not how it works, okay? You cannot refute God's objective, free, righteous justice by your subjective opinion of what you think righteousness and justice should look like, all right?

All right, another question here. How can a loving God send people to hell? And again, that's another common question that is thrown around. Again, and this is not just, you know, I wanna kind of create a proper context here.

In your interactions with unbelievers, it's not always gonna be, you know, these hardcore internet atheists. I mean, you're talking to real people. And so some of these topics can be very sensitive. We wanna be careful how we kind of like address it and navigate those conversations.

So we don't wanna, you know, when I say, you know, it doesn't matter, God does what he pleases. Yeah, I mean that. But the way we share that with people, we wanna know our context. I think that's very important, all right?

So how can a loving God send people to hell? The way I answer this question has always been to draw attention to the fully orbed character of God as revealed in scripture, okay? We tend to define God under the category of love.

How can a loving God do this? Well, part of the answer to that is that God is not just loving. As I mentioned just a few moments ago, God is also holy. He's also righteous. He's also just, right? He is long suffering, but it doesn't last forever.