God & Evil: How can a good God allow evil? - GotQuestions.org Podcast Episode 11 (Part 2)

Welcome to the God Questions podcast. I'm here again with Dr. Timothy Yoder from Dallas Theological Seminary. We're discussing the problem of evil, discussing why does God allow evil. Episode one, please listen to that one first if you haven't already.

We discuss it from a more philosophical standpoint. Why did God ultimately allow evil and why does he continue to? What is his purpose in it? Today I wanna discuss it a little bit more from a practical and personal perspective.

We've all had bad things happen to us. We've all experienced evil and suffering in this world. How do we respond to that? And also, how do we respond to others who are experiencing evil? Because often in that situation, you can explain philosophy to them all you want.

That's really not what they're looking for at that time. So Dr. Yoder, welcome back to the show.

Thanks, Shay. It's great to be with you. This is a lot of fun and I'm grateful for the opportunity to share some thoughts.

Philosophical Versus Personal Answers to Evil

So what, in your experience, is the difference between answering the question from a philosophical perspective versus a personal or practical perspective?

It's a really important question and a significant distinction that we need to make as people trying to love the people around us and be good, responsible ministers. I mean that in the broadest sense of that term.

So let me explain with a little story. Imagine that maybe in your church or in your family or in your neighborhood, something terrible happens. There's been a car accident. Maybe there was a drunk driver and there's a family that was the innocent party that was hit and some people are injured and others have died.

And it's an awful situation and your heart just breaks. And so, and this family, they're friends or they're relatives, they're neighbors. And so you go to be with them and you cry together and you offer to help in practical ways.

Can I make you a meal? Can I call the insurance company? What can I do to help in practical ways to show love? Sometimes it's just to be there, to sit, to cry, to mourn together, a thoughtful note or a hug, a shoulder to cry on, those sorts of things.

I think that it's in our capacity as Christians to do these kinds of things. The Holy Spirit helps us to grieve with those who grieve and to mourn with those who mourn and to just be there in meaningful ways.

It's not the time to have a conversation about the free will defense, right? They just, they need someone to love them and to help them. But now let's fast forward a year, two, three down the road, right?

And so this family, they lost some people and some people were injured and it was a terrible moment but life as it does, it goes on. And I won't say that they are completely over that situation. I don't know that you could ever completely get over something like that, but the emotions are clearly not as raw as they once were.

And they've had time to process and move on. And now let's say that there's a person that's a friend of yours and the wife in this family is a friend and she says, you know what? I just, I have these deep questions.

I think that God doesn't love me or God doesn't, or God is angry with me or God is punishing me for something and I can't get these out of my mind. At that point, she doesn't need another casserole or another tasteful greeting card or another hug or something no, she needs some answers.

And now's the time to talk more deeply about some of these sorts of things. And so I think that we need to separate the shoulder to cry on from the intellectual. And even in that second category though, there's, we can make a distinction, right?

There's the day-to-day life of how do we deal with suffering in our lives? And then more ultimate answers of theodicy, how can we defend God's righteousness? We talked about those ultimate questions in the first part.

And so I wanna talk about more of these practical sorts of things in this part. How do we, what do we do when we go through suffering in our lives? What does it mean? How do we handle that? And I think that there's one thing that we should not do.

One thing that we should not do, and that is we should not assume that when we go through difficulties in our lives, that that is a punishment. And so we could talk, if you'd like, we could talk about this notion, what I call the punishment theodicy and why I think it's an incomplete or an erroneous notion for the explanation of evil in the world.

The Punishment Theodicy and the Book of Job

No, that's great. I think part of the clearest example of that that I can remember is several years ago when there was the huge earthquake down in Haiti. And Haiti is famous for voodoo and all sorts of evil pagan religious practices.

I mean, horrible things that takes place religiously in that culture. And several prominent Christian teachers said, well, the earthquake that caused all this death and destruction in Haiti was God's judgment on Haiti for their evil religious practices.

And there are examples in the Old Testament of God punishing people for evil religious practice. But at the same time, what about Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans? What about the tsunami that destroyed islands in Asia?

Trying to point to every specific example of a natural disaster and say, this is a result of this particular evil, that's a step too far. Ultimately, only God knows. Is that just a result of sin and its effect on the earth?

All creation groans to be redeemed from even its suffering. Is that as a result of that or is it a specific judgment from God? That's not our place. So talk to us a little bit about the punishment, the odyssey and how that's not a tool we should take out of our toolbox very often.

Good, good. I think, yes, I think we need to talk about this. It really surfaces in the book of Job. In the story of Job, of course, it's a classic place to turn to in the problem of evil. Job is a God follower.

It says in the beginning of Job that Job is a righteous man who shuns evil, who loves God. And it says it a number of times in the first couple of chapters that Job is a mature follower of Yahweh. It doesn't mean that he is sinless, that he never committed any sin.

There's only one person that was completely sinless and that was Jesus. But Job is a mature follower of Yahweh, a righteous man. And then all these bad things happen. And we know from reading the text that that is the result of an agreement, of a kind of a, you could almost say a kind of a dare, right?

Satan comes and dares God, you know, I dare you to do this. And so, you know, Yahweh agrees and it's a test. But when Job's counselors come, they say overwhelmingly in long series of speeches throughout the most of the book of Job that they say one thing.

They say, Job, you must have sinned. Tell it, you must have done something awful. Did you kill somebody? Did you rape somebody? Did you steal from somebody? They don't say it directly like that, but they infer that Job must have sinned.

That the only reason that he is suffering is that he sinned. And Job says, look, I don't have a terrible, you know, skeleton in the closet. I don't have some awful sin. And he says, I'm innocent of these sorts of things.

And he's right, right? That's what it tells us at the beginning of the book, that he was a righteous man. And so those middle chapters of Job are some of the most difficult parts of scripture to read because they're so futile.

And the counselors, his friends, keep repeating this mistaken notion over and over and over again. This, that's what I call the punishment theodicy. And it's this idea that all suffering in the world is a direct punishment for a specific sin.

And that, I think, is a wrong idea. But it's very easy for us to say, as you said, right? People looked at the earthquake in Haiti or other sorts of things, and they just assume that if something bad happens, oh, God is punishing me.

Again, I remember when I was younger, you know, getting a flat tire, and oh, I must not be reading my Bible enough or otherwise I wouldn't have got this flat tire or, you know, or this happened. And it's a natural sort of thing that we assume that if something bad happens, God is punishing us.

But if we read the scriptures carefully, we see that that is not how God necessarily works. God does punish, right? We, you know, we've all, you know, Sodom and Gomorrah and, you know, and even the flood and others.

I mean, there's a story in which the ground opens up and some rebellious people are swallowed up in a, you know, earth. So God does punish. But if we assume that every time that God acts in the world, it's a punishment, we're mistaking what God does.

I think that God acts in three ways that can look similar from our perspective because they all result in suffering. Sometimes God tests, right? Like Job, it was a test. Like Abraham, when he was asked to sacrifice Isaac, it's a test.

Sometimes God disciplines. Discipline is not punishment. Discipline is when some bad consequences accrue to somebody because of their sin, but God uses those as a way for them to grow. Think about the people that sinned in the Bible, David and Peter.

And, you know, Psalm 51, right, is a Psalm of David's contrition and repentance because of his sin with Bathsheba. Now, David suffered consequences and, you know, and his children rebelled. And in this case, one of his, the baby that resulted from the affair died.

But God didn't cut David off, but God lovingly restored him. And it was an opportunity for David to grow. The same with Peter. Peter's even a better example because in the New Testament, right, Peter denied Jesus, and they had that very uncomfortable conversation at the end of the Gospel of John, you know, in which Jesus says, do you love me?

Yes, feed my lambs. Do you love me? Yes, feed my sheep. Do you love me?

Yes, yes, yes.

You know, and that was hard, but that was part of the process of helping Peter to restore and to grow. And when we see Peter in the beginning of the Book of Acts, he is a changed man. He is, he has grown incredibly.

And it was because of the discipline. So God tests, God disciplines, and then God punishes. And in this situation, I wanna use the word punish for the kind of final sort of retributive punishment in which, you know, God says to somebody, well, okay, you continue in your sin.

You can continue in your rebellion. You are cut off from me, and I've consigned you to eternal hell, damnation, right? That's what I mean by punish. And so does God do that? Yes, I believe he does, right?

But every time something bad happens in our life, it's not a punishment. Sometimes it's a discipline, and sometimes it's a test. And sometimes it isn't even about us. There's a great story in John chapter nine, in which, you know, the disciples are with Jesus, and they're walking along, and they see a man that has been born blind, and they ask Jesus, and they say, Master, tell us, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

And we can see that they have the punishment theodicy in mind. They believe that the sin, or that this difficulty, this handicap, this blindness, is either because he sinned or his parents. It's a judgment.

Whose sin is it? And Jesus gives a fascinating answer. He says, neither. This was done so that God would be glorified, and Jesus heals the man, teaches a lesson. It wasn't a punishment at all. It wasn't even a discipline.

At the most, it was a kind of a test, or maybe it was just an example of the fallenness of the world, and that affects people, right? We are affected by the fallenness of the world. In the story that I told earlier, you know, the family that was hit by a drunk driver, they weren't doing anything wrong, driving their car.

Maybe they were going to church. Maybe they were going to school. Maybe they were going shopping, right? And they were impacted by the sin of the drunk driver, and so the evil that they experienced wasn't really because of anything that they did.

It's just the fact that we live in a fallen world. But God, as we talked about in the first podcast, God works through the evil, and God can bring good out of it even though the evil experiences are truly difficult, and suffering is real, but God is still sovereign over all of them and can bring good things about.

Faith, Healing, and the Misuse of Romans 8:28

Absolutely. Something that I've noticed a lot, I think it's related fairly closely to this punishment theodicy is, in the word faith movement, often if someone gets sick or they come for healing and don't experience it, well, the answer is, well, you just don't have enough faith.

So in a sense, they're viewing sickness as a punishment from God from not having enough faith, or the lack of healing as punishment from not having enough faith, and I think the examples that you'd mentioned with Job being the most righteous man on the earth at that time, Peter, people who definitely had faith that God, Apostle Paul asked multiple times, please take this thorn from me, and God said, no, my strength is made perfected in weakness.

So seeing that, no, I mean, not every bad thing that happens to us, not all suffering is a punishment from God, and it's not a lack of faith, although sometimes it's designed to increase our faith, that doesn't mean God was punishing us for a lack in the very beginning.

So every time I study the book of Job, and I hit the verse where Job calls his friends miserable comforters, I'm reminded of the saying, not in the Bible, but pretty well known, that with friends like these, who needs enemies?

And then looking at examples of how I've attempted to counsel or encourage someone who's suffering, and how do I avoid being a miserable comforter? And I've observed people jumping straight to Romans 8 .28 anytime someone has something bad happens, or it says, God works all things together for good to those who love God, to those who've been called according to his purpose.

And that verse is absolutely true. But then there's the Ephesians 4 .15, which encourages us to speak the truth in love. And that's a difficult balance on this, because someone who's wired kind of like me, and I suspect you, our first reaction is probably to go to the more, well, let me explain to you why God allows evil, and so forth.

But the loving thing to do at that time, as you talked about earlier, is to comfort them, to weep with them. So how do we, kind of in conclusion here, tying the two episodes together, how do we know when is the right time to give a more philosophical, theological answer versus giving the personal, practical, loving, compassionate response when evil happens to someone?

When to Offer Comfort and When to Offer Theological Explanation

Yeah.

It's a really good question. And I think this is the answer that I would give. When the emotions are raw, right? When people are in pain, when the tears are flowing, that's the chance when we need the more kind of pastoral, the counseling sort of approach.

And we don't have to be a capital P pastor, a capital C counselor to do those. We all can sit with those that are in difficulty and provide for their physical needs, or just to be there, to cry with them, to weep with them, to mourn with them.

When the emotions are raw, right? But when they have questions, and when they say, well, what does this all mean? Or what is God trying to tell me? Or how does this work? That's when they're looking for some answers.

And the Holy Spirit, I believe the Holy Spirit helps us and provides us discernment in helping to make these distinctions and to work in this way. C .S. Lewis has a great quote from his books. It's in the Problem of Pain.

He says, God frequently whispers in our pleasures, but he shouts in our pain. Suffering is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. And God uses the difficulties to get our attention. That doesn't mean that every time we suffer, we're being punished, but God uses the difficulties to get our attention.

And I think it's really helpful for a really good spiritual principle is not to say that all evil is a punishment, but instead to say that when we experience difficulties in life, it's a great opportunity to kind of take our spiritual temperature.

How are we doing? Is God trying to tell me something? Is there something that I'm missing? When you're going through a difficult time, pray, read your Bible, talk to close friends, think about what's going on and try to discern what God might be speaking because maybe God is testing you and there's a lesson he wants you to learn.

Maybe God is disciplining you. Maybe there is, maybe you're going through some difficulties that are the result of your sin and you need to grow and learn from that. I mean, the final punishment is not really, God is not going to punish us in the sense of damnation for those of us that are Christians, but we may have to make some changes.

Maybe there's things that we need to do. And maybe sometimes it's just not even about us at all. Maybe sometimes we are living in a fallen world and things are happening that cause us difficulty and it's due to the sins and the mistakes of others.

It's not hard to think of examples of, in a family situation where one family member is in great rebellion against God and it causes pain for everybody else who may not be in rebellion, but it's still a difficult circumstance.

So that's what I, I think that's how I would try to answer your question Shay.

That's very good, very helpful. And thank you for your insight, your wisdom on knowing the difference and it's going to be distinct in every situation. Depending on our relationship with the person, depending on what sort of question they ask us, but often our first reaction to someone who is suffering, who've experienced evil in their lives is to weep with those who weep, to mourn with those who mourn.

And then as you said, when it seems like they're ready and when they are asking the more philosophical or theological questions, that's when we can come to them with some of these answers, explanations, theodicies for why God allows evil.

And it's important to know the difference, know the right timing with those. But as you said, it's what we can trust the Holy Spirit that he will give us the words to say when the time is right. So thank you for that encouragement.

Thank you for being on the show. I found our conversation very helpful. Hopefully all our listeners are encouraged by our talk today and just being able to trust God, that God has a purpose in using evil, both philosophically and personally in our lives.

The existence of evil, the existence of suffering should not cause us to doubt God's love or doubt God's ability to stop evil. Rather, it should remind us that God's ways are higher than our ways, his thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

And we're not ever in this life going to perfectly understand why God allows all the things that he does, but all of them are intended to drive us to trust him even more, to grow even closer to him, to learn to depend and rely on him more and more.

So again, I hope you found our conversation helpful. I'm with Dr. Timothy Yoder, Associate Professor of Theological Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. And this has been the Got Questions podcast.

So got questions, Bible has answers, we'll help you find them.