Responding to Evil and Suffering

I was driving back from an errand when I began hearing reports on Thursday morning, wasn't it? Friday morning? Friday morning. Of what had taken place in Connecticut. Obviously, despite the season of the year, this is going to be a primary area of discussion amongst people for the foreseeable future, though probably not as long as you might think at a time like this.

The Speed of News and Our Short Attention Span

It's amazing how quickly we move on from such things. There was the shooting at the opening of Batman, and what was it, I don't know, about ten days of fairly intense discussion, and then it fades. And there was, well, you see a story, and there's a report here, a report there, but then, you know, we move on.

Something else happens someplace else. Something happens in Benghazi. We're easily distracted, and we move on. In fact, I've often wondered if the current news-rich context in which many of us exist, not all of us exist, but many of us exist, is really something that we handle very well.

I mean, the fact that we could watch, for example, the events in the tsunami in Japan almost real-time. In fact, in many instances, it was real-time. You know, it's hard for us in our day-to-day to realize that only 50, 60, 70 years ago, there would be quite a delay between the events and our coming to know of them.

Very rarely would you get to see them until, if by video, you know, they had to have video cameras going, and then they had to transport the tape across the ocean, and it might be weeks or months later before you actually see certain events.

And of course, it was only a few decades before that. You'd never see them. You might see the aftermath. You might see some pictures of the results, but actually seeing the events. And so, we are hit with so many things so fast today that I suppose on one level, that might explain the fact that we have so little meaningful, deep thought that is even allowed when something like this happens.

We are expected to respond to it almost immediately, and I just don't know that it's a good thing that that's the case. In other words, it strikes me that consideration, meditation, deep thought takes time.

And anymore, we're not afforded that. We're not given that luxury. There has to be this instant response, and the immediate reaction of especially those who are driven primarily by emotion rather than by cognitive thought is, we've got to do something.

We've got to do something now. And very rarely anymore in our society is the question, what are the underlying issues? And my biggest concern, as I have considered this situation, is, well, first of all, obviously, we have a challenge that has been presented to us in the sense that the prime response to such an action as was undertaken by a, from what we know at the moment, and I confess that this story keeps changing and who knows what the final facts are going to be, but it seems that a 20-year-old individual committed matricide and then went to a school and began killing mainly little children as well as adults as well.

And as Christians, especially as individuals who hopefully are known to be Christians within the context of school, work, family, the neighborhood, whatever, the immediate challenge is, of course, the question, how?

How can your loving God, well, normally the question would be, allow such a thing to happen. But if your friends and family know you a little better than that, how can your loving God decree that such a thing should take place?

So, you always have that. I mean, you have that when there is a car accident. You have that when there is the experience of cancer. Just so many of the things that take place in our experience in this world raise the question in the hearts and minds of many, what about the goodness of God?

And so, that is an almost everyday thing, but situations like this go so far beyond what we are accustomed to. We're accustomed to people getting cancer and we're accustomed to people having heart attacks and we're accustomed to traffic accidents and airplane crashes, and these are things that have happened so often that they are within the realm of the almost normal.

You have major issues like a tsunami, an earthquake, where hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands of lives are snuffed out in an instant or in a very short period of time, and that will raise the questions again.

Or if you have something like this, though, it's one thing in our minds, maybe if not directly and as a result of serious contemplation, but just in the back of our minds, we have had to process, as we have grown older, the reality of physical contingency in our universe, and we know that airplanes drop out of the sky, and we know that there's a possibility, and we're not that far from Sky Harbor.

A big old jumbo jet could land on top of this building. It's happened. Fighter jets land in neighborhoods, and we know that this happens, and it still raises the questions, but it's within the realm of, yeah, I knew that could happen.

But something like this causes us to recoil, because we cannot imagine a human being being so, and here's where the worldviews right now, for the majority of people in our society, so sick, so twisted, so demented as to shoot little children.

Obviously, I would hope that the first thought across our mind would be so evil, so unrestrained in the expression of evil. But you see, this is where I think we really have to give consideration this morning to the fact that our answers to these questions, we need to recognize, require some major worldview consideration and worldview education.

In other words, it's one thing to speak to others about the fact that we can no longer call things evil. And when you can't call things evil, then what's the flip side to that equation? You can't really call anything good anymore, either.

They go together. And if good and evil is just, if these are just words that are based upon what we would call societal norms, and we see that the societal norms can change over the course of a single election cycle, then speaking of such things as good and evil has become somewhat passe and really doesn't communicate anything anymore.

And yet, when you look at something like this, the human heart, if we are right and man is created in the image of God, cannot help but not only recognize evil in this, but likewise, in seeing the evil in this, recognize that there was, that evil arises particularly from those who lost their lives.

In other words, there's something about a child, a kindergartner, a first grader, that automatically causes people to go, it is particularly wrong and particularly evil to snuff out the life of such an individual.

Now, there are so many things that we could spend our time, and we have so little time looking at here, but A, listen to your society. And while people will use the term evil, they will not use it consistently, and many will purposely avoid the use of the term, because they know that to use that term requires certain standards that many of them no longer even want to acknowledge, having to think about or to establish.

It's too messy. It's too hard in a secular world to really come up with any meaningful answer to this question of what is evil and what isn't. But even more so, we as believers are constantly under pressure to compromise the Christian worldview, the foundation of ethics and morals that is ours in Scripture, in light of the emotionalism of the secular world around us.

Evil, Tragedy, and the Universal Sinfulness of Man

In Luke chapter 13, we have Jesus speaking about some horrific circumstances, some horrific experiences. Interestingly enough, one is due to man's evil, and the other is due to what we would call a random event.

We know there is no such thing. But note these words at the beginning of Luke chapter 13. Now, on the same occasion, there was some president who reported to him about the Galileans, whose blood, Pilate, had mixed with their sacrifices.

And Jesus said to them, do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Or do you suppose that those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Now, in these words, a Jesus who would not be overly popular in our society, because this is not how you respond to these events. The first was probably a politically motivated situation. There was a lot of rebellion going on in Rome.

Pilate is entrusted with keeping the peace in the area, and so he was rather rough about that. And if you did things that seemed to indicate the possibility of some kind of rebellion against the Roman system, well, you're in trouble.

And the Romans knew how to kill and maim and scare people. And here you have some Galileans whose blood was mixed with their sacrifices. Exactly what that means, I'm not 100 certain, outside of I doubt that he took a nice little vial of blood from them to do that.

This was an act of violence. It was an act of profanation. It was a horrible situation. And Jesus' response is not to foment rebellion against Rome. It is not to preach a sermon on the evil of Pilate.

Not that I think Jesus would have had any particularly high view of Pilate, but some things are rather clear and obvious in and of themselves. It seems the issue was these people looked at these Galileans and they felt superior to them.

And Jesus' response is not to engage in maudlin sentimentality. Jesus' response is not quite consistent with the pictures of the long-haired Jesus cuddling with the little lamb. He speaks of this situation.

He picks up on what someone is saying around him. There's a discussion about these Galileans. And what must they have done to have deserved such a fate as this? And what's Jesus' response? Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate?

Do you think you can discern? That you can judge? You can look into the hearts of men? And do you not recognize the universal sinfulness of man and the fact that at any point in time, God can bring his judgment to bear upon sinners and he is just for so doing?

There's the issue. Most of us really don't believe that. And I can guarantee you, secularists can't. They can't believe that. They have no place to place that in their world view. I tell you, Jesus says, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

What an amazing response. People are discussing this terrible, what's the term that we use today? It's a term I have not used this morning. But I have had to purposefully avoid using it because unfortunately, I have been deeply influenced by my society as well.

What's the term I have not used? Tragedy. Tragedy. Well, I haven't used that term either because I can't. But I have not used the term tragedy. I don't think that's a proper use of this term in the sense that, oh, it's a tragic thing that we see evil exploding.

Okay, but tragedy? This was an outbreak of evil. A tragedy is when something happens that's, you know, let's say that Captain Sullenberger hadn't gotten that plane down on the Hudson real well. Let's say he wasn't quite as talented as he turned out to be and that thing had hit the water and flipped and broken apart and pretty much everybody on board would die instantly.

That would be a tragedy because why? Where did those birds come from? I mean, there just wasn't, there's nothing you can do. When a flock of, I mean, birds do bird things. There's nothing you can do about, I mean, that, you could call that a tragedy, okay?

Unavoidable. Wow. This was completely avoidable on many levels in one sense because this was the act of an evil fallen child of Adam. But I've not called it a tragedy. And here people are talking about, certainly they would have, that's probably a term they would have been using.

At least the ancient equivalent of it. And Jesus' response is to look at them and say, I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. They didn't teach this when I was a hospital chaplain.

This is not the methodology that I was taught. Or do you, and he doesn't stop there. This was an act of evil. Or do you suppose that those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem?

That clearly had been a topic of conversation. We think of John, in the Gospel of John, chapter 5, the man born blind. What's even the disciples, I mean, who sinned first? This man or his parents? He should be born blind.

The idea that we can discern, we can look into people's hearts and find out exactly why God's judgment fell upon them in a certain way is foolish on two accounts. It's foolish because we don't have that ability.

We can't look into people's hearts. Even when it looks obvious, we may be missing it completely. We may be missing it completely. How many evil men have lived to ripe old ages and yet others are cut off in their youth?

We don't, we can't see into hearts. We don't have that capacity. That's the first foolish thing we do. But more foolish than that is that it assumes that when judgment comes, it's more deserving on them than somebody else.

And what that misses is the fact that judgment, what's, what's, John chapter 3, verse 16, probably one of the, the best known verse in the Bible. But you can't read verses 14 through 18 without hearing, the wrath of God abides upon every rebel sinner.

God's wrath abides upon. There is this restraint. There is this long suffering. There is this patience. There is this grace. And it is foolishness for us to look at a situation where that grace, that long suffering, finally stops being extended and go, wow, I wonder why that happened.

You see, the foolishness is that we don't recognize that if any one of us makes it through the first day of our life, that's grace. We don't really believe that because we don't really believe we're sinners.

We don't really believe we're connected with Adam. And we don't really believe it's right for God to judge sin. We don't really believe it. Or our minds would function differently. So, Rick had said, there's another term that was used.

Innocence. Oh, these are innocent. Yeah, before the eyes of the law, they probably were. But why do, why is there any death at that age and younger? We just got done with Romans chapter 5. I hope we know the answer to that question.

But we might know it up here, but it's an 18 inch trip down to here. Now, if we struggle with these things, if we recognize that when we listen to Jesus' response, and he's talking, I mean, those men, we don't even know if they're just men, women, children, we don't know.

The tower in Siloam fell. I can guarantee you, stuff like that happened more often in the ancient world than it does today. I mean, it still happens today. We know a lot more about architecture and we've got a little more technology.

And stuff like this happened back then. And Jesus' response is, do you think you're any better than them? I tell you, but no, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. This is meek and mild Jesus, as the world likes to say.

And what does he do with both of these instances? You need to repent. Just as they needed to repent. And he presents the universal sinfulness of man. When we look at these situations, we have to look, we have to, as believers, we have to ask God to give us the mind of Christ so that we might look at these things in a way that honors and glorifies him.

But even more so, the only way that we can have meaningful interaction with these events in our lives is if we do so from the perspective which is given to us in the scriptures, the world can't understand it.

And we, apart from the Spirit of God opening our eyes of understanding, we're not going to make proper application either. It's not that the scriptures ever whitewash the terrible, horrible existence of sin.

In fact, it's interesting, my Muslim friends, one of the reasons they don't like the Bible and they think it's been corrupted and changed is because it is so brutally honest about the experience of sin in man's existence.

And they don't think that God's word would ever be quite that clear. Because the Quran, you know, just covers all that stuff obviously. And that's the, there are many people that really detest what the Bible says.

Because it is so plain and so clear and so honest, we recognize that's a gift from God. And so we ask, Lord, as we view situations like this, how then should we think? How should we consider these things?

What conclusions should we come to? And of course, we want to be light. We want to be salt. And so we've got to think these things through ourselves first. The time to be thinking it through is not the first time you talk to an unbeliever about it.

That actually means turning off the world, turning off the TV, the music, whatever it might be. And actually meditating and considering and reading and pondering and putting oneself in a mindset where you're not constantly distracted by everything around us.

And when we do that, we are always drawn back to the fact that God says he created. He created it good, but he created with a purpose. And that sin of Adam didn't catch God by surprise. God isn't up there in heaven going, oh no, what am I going to do now?

He has a purpose. We know the lamb slain from the foundation of the earth, before eternity itself, his love is set upon his people, there's a purpose. But combined with that is the confidence that we're talking about the creator of all things.

The sustainer of all things. The one that has all power and wisdom. And that means we are in no position to judge his actions and motives. There's a book called Job. You might want to read it again. There's a book called Job.

And the number of interpretations and things that people do with the book of Job. But one thing cannot be argued. A number of years ago, I would have a lot of correspondence, especially with Mormons. That was my first area of focus.

And this is back before the internet, believe it or not. We had something called bulletin board systems, BBS systems. Please do not acknowledge knowing what a BBS system is. It'll prove you're a geek.

And especially when you're in the front row. But anyway, it's collateral damage next to you there. Sorry, sorry, Josh. Sorry. Guilty by proximity.

Yeah, that's true.

You're sat in the wrong spot, bud. Anyways, it was a way of communicating with people. It's sort of slow, but it was something that I did. And you'd have these reader programs. It would actually make it a little bit easier to read the programs.

And you could set up taglines at the end of your stuff. I came up with a tagline for talking to Mormons. Who, of course, we've got an exalted man and so on and so forth. My tagline was, may God grant you an interview.

And my recollection, it was like Job 40 verse 1 or 39 verse 1 or whatever it was. It was the text in Job where God has come. And God has, in one sense, vindicated Job as a righteous servant. But you've missed the story if you think that God just came along and said, your friends are a bunch of idiots.

Job's right. Because that's not the whole story. Because Job starts saying a few things and starts asking a few questions. And when God comes, and think of the tragedies, quote unquote, from the world's perspective, that Job has experienced in his life.

He's been a righteous servant of God, and yet look at what has happened to him. His children wiped out. Everything he's owned taken away. Even his wife says, curse God and die. His health is taken away.

He's got boils all over his body. I mean, wow, this is what you get for serving God? And when God comes to Job, what we'd like is for God to set up a big screen and show Job, you know, Satan coming into his presence and pointing to him and, you know, giving him the big picture just as it has to do with him.

So that, oh, okay. Well, so I'll have a book written about me. Great. You know, heal me now. That's not what happened. That's not what happens. You end up with a couple of chapters of where were you? I laid the foundations here.

Where were you when I created the stars? Where were you when I created all the teeming life of the seas and the land? Job, who do you think you are? And that's why I'd say to Mormons, may God grant you an interview.

May you have an interview like Job had because what's Job's response? What's Job's response? I place my hand over my mouth. I've spoken foolishly. Said a couple of times because God keeps going, making sure that the message gets through.

Graciously causes his servant to go a little deeper than even the suffering has brought him. To recognize that while suffering may have an ability to change us that nothing else does, it needs to be combined with a true knowledge of who God is because pagans suffer.

But if you don't know who God is, that's not going to change you fundamentally in your knowledge of God and your relationship to him, as long as you're still in rebellion against him. And so, God comes along and reminds Job, you are but like the vapor in the morning.

We had some of that this morning. You know, had a little bit of fog around the valley. Evidently over the past few days, Brother Callahan was praying. And so, there's this mist, this vapor that appears.

But again, once the sun is up, especially the Arizona sun, it's gone. The reminder is, you see so little of what I'm doing. You don't have any basis to judge me. You can't bring me into the dark and make accusation against me.

You are a tiny little speck of a creature. And the amazing thing is that I'm concerned about you. But you need to recognize what you really are. You're dust in the hands of God. And the amazing thing is trying to balance that recognition of our littleness and how transitory we are over against the tremendous grace and interest that God has shown in us.

That's the things we have to hold together. There aren't a whole lot of people these days. They're asking God, give me an interview like Job. Help me to understand that I'm in no place to judge you. Instead, there are many who will stand and will demand that God provide answers that I will find acceptable on the basis of my rebellion against you.

And no one in that situation will ever find meaningful answers. They won't. They can't. They've put themselves in a position of never being able to truly have a meaningful response to the question. Now, if by God's grace we are individuals who have had that interview with God, if you can look back in your own life and recognize that time when you truly came to understand that God's God and you're not, and that you are not in any position to judge him, and that he can do with his creation as he sees fit, and that when he says he is just and righteous, he is, then you'll have a foundation upon which to stand.

Romans 1, Deuteronomy, and a Biblical Foundation for Ethics

And through the lens of Scripture, through that vitally important lens of Romans 1, which really only focuses so much of what's already found in the Psalter and in the prophets and in the historical books, have shown to us the sinfulness of man, which really we could have gotten by just looking at God's law and what God's law has to tell us to do and not to do, and looking at Deuteronomy 28 and 29, the curses and the blessings.

It's all consistent. When we look through that lens at the world around us, then we have a foundation to be able to say something meaningful. The secularist, the only foundation he has to stand on is himself, his own experiences, his own feelings.

And you wonder why I'm concerned about how our society responds to such things? We have no foundation upon which to even begin to evaluate the evil of the heart of man. How would our nation, a hundred years ago, have responded to an event like this?

I believe it was 1927 was the largest school-based massacre. Almost 100 years ago. No guns were involved, by the way. Guys set off three bombs, 45 people. What would have been the difference? I mean, first of all, we don't have helicopters overhead.

You don't have pictures of Google Earth or the school immediately up on the screen, and 24 -7 coverage on 10 different channels and all the rest of that stuff. The news is to get out more slowly. Would there not have been calls for national prayer?

Would there not have been calls for national repentance? Would there not have been calls? Would there not have been many, even within the highest levels of government, who would have made reference to seeking God's protection from the evil of men?

There would have been. You know, I could get that now. In fact, I would suggest it would be political suicide for almost any member of the House of Congress, senator, someone in a situation like that, to refer to this man as evil, and that we should pray that God would protect us from evil men like this.

What's changed? The way that people think has changed. The way that people look at the world has changed. And surface-level churchianity that does not challenge the secular worldview, the secular mindset, but welcomes it in and just sprinkles it with some religious truth will never challenge.

The way of thinking of the world, because they think the way the world does. And they'll distance God from all of this, and God had nothing to do with this. You know, when I was a hospital chaplain, it struck me.

Very early on, I really struggled with this. Every book I read said, distance God. Don't, don't, never tell anybody that God had a purpose in this or anything else. And I just couldn't get the connection between saying, well, you know, God didn't have anything to do with this.

This was just a random situation. And then turning around and said, but He has a wonderful plan for your life now. He didn't two days ago. I could never make that connection. It didn't make any sense.

And yet that's the majority of what you hear today. Is, you know, God will step in, but He had no purpose. There's no purpose in any of this. No, no, no. We don't want to do that because then we have to say, I don't know what the purpose was.

Why that child and not another child? Why that adult and not another adult? But I know one thing. Every person in this room, I just know every person in this room. If you could have stopped that man, you would have tried.

You know it would have been the right thing to do. In fact, you know it would have been the right thing to do to end his life. We all know that. And we are especially emotionally involved in thinking, what a coward who shoots children.

But most of us in our minds have created a barrier because it's just too difficult each and every day to realize that the very thing that made those children such reprehensible victims of evil happens in each one of our neighborhoods.

We live in a land with blood dripping from our hands from the murder of unborn children. And the president who stood before the nation and teared up has been one of the most consistent supporters of partial birth abortion in the United States government.

And let me tell you something. On the level of moral evil, shooting a kid is horrible. But jamming scissors into one's head and sucking its brains out is a whole lot worse. And yet we reward the people who do that.

Do you want a schizophrenic society? Do you want to know the real source of these issues? Look at the culture of death that we have embraced and within a matter of weeks ago, reaffirmed. And you wonder why Jesus said, you think you're better?

Unless you repent, you shall all likewise. That wasn't much of a Bible study. I apologize. That was sort of a sermon, a little informal. But I felt like we have to be prepared because you're going back to work tomorrow.

And if even one of you have an opportunity to speak like Jesus did, it will have been worth the time we spent, been worth the time we spent. Let's close the work. Our Heavenly Father, we confess that you are the king of all the ages.

And we are your people. And we have gathered together this day. And we just desire to honor you by how we respond to the things we see around us. And we desire to do so on the basis of your word. Lord, we know that we must seek to speak with words seasoned with grace.

But let us always know that our Lord and Savior likewise spoke. And every word that came out of his mouth was gracious. And yet times he said things that sound to us today as harsh. But they weren't. They were truthful.

They were redemptive. And Lord, as we have opportunity, may we be instruments of redemption in this dark and dying world. We do ask that you be with us now as we go into worship. We pray in Christ's name.