Why Does God Allow Suffering?

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I would just say, um, I think there's a reason why unbelievers attack the doctrine of predestination so vociferously, and that's because it carries with it such an emotional pull to the unbelievers.

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So they bring it up and they throw it out there and they say, how could you ever believe in a God who would not only allow, but orchestrate all of these things together that would lead to this thing happening?

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Like what an evil, evil version of God that you believe in. And so I think that's why people gravitate towards attacking it so much is because it really pulls on people's heartstrings.

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But if you notice, and we talked about this when we started the segment, the assumption within that paragraph is that there's one branch of Christianity that doesn't see what happened to this girl as wrong because of the association of God ordaining all the events of history.

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Therefore, man cannot be held accountable for his action. It's, um, not something that we should have any, um, you know, be worked up about, right?

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That man and his creaturely will, we don't believe that, right?

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That's the assumption. But we do believe in agency. We do believe that man acts of his own volition, his own fallen volition, nonetheless, because Jesus says whoever commits sin is a slave to sin.

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And so man chooses in accordance with his fallen volition until that volition is set free by the grace of God to actually do that which pleases

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God. So the assumption is that Calvinists think that someone's not going to be held accountable or that, um, that God is making them do things.

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Yeah. He's forcing it, right? Yeah. He's forcing that upon them. And then I would just point to, you take an example from scripture, like Isaiah chapter 10,

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God uses the rod of his anger, Assyria. Go through this because this needs to be put on record here.

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I want you to explain this in detail. God uses the rod of Assyria to judge his people, his people that have sinned against him, that have rebelled against him, that he is actively placing under his judgment.

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He calls Assyria, this pagan nation, the rod of his anger, right?

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The rod of his anger. And Isaiah chapter 10, verse five, woe to Assyria. So woe, judgment, divine judgment pronounced on Assyria, on the pagan nation, the rod of my anger.

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The staff in their hands is my fury, my fury, my fury. It's the mechanism in which

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I am using you pagan nation. Yes. And you are under my judgment as a result of me doing this against a godless nation.

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I sent him, AKA his own people that he's judging. And against the people of my wrath,

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I command him to take spoil, seize, plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. And this is key.

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Hang on. I don't want to, can you just say that last part again, because I'm going to get that down on record.

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Rod of my anger. What's he sending them to do against Israel? To judge them? To judge them, the people of my wrath,

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I command him to take spoil, seize, plunder, to tread them down like the mire of the streets.

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Can I ask a question? And please don't forget your thought. Can I ask a question? Are those things painful and awful to think about?

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Because you gave an example, Kwaku, about a horrific example of a wicked, wicked evil man who deserves to die and what he did to this young girl and all the evil and the slavery and all the stuff where he just trod her down.

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You gave a phenomenal example of the evil that's within the hearts of men. But in scripture here,

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God is actually using Assyria as a rod of his anger to do what? To trod these people down in his judgment.

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Yes. His own people, by the way. His own people. Now, please continue because this gets interesting. So this is critical, but talking about Assyria, the king, but he does not so intend and he gives a description of his heart and what's in it.

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And his heart does not so think, but it is in his heart to destroy and to cut off nations, not a few.

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So we have this description in scripture of the king of Assyria's heart. His heart is set on doing evil.

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But his heart is set on doing evil. It's not his intention necessarily to go after Israel, but his heart is this wicked, stirred up evil thing.

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And what I like to describe when I talk about Isaiah chapter 10, it's like God has

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Assyria, this rabid dog on a chain and it is leaping and biting and all it wants to do is destroy and to bite and to devour.

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And he doesn't realize that he's actually carrying out the purposes of God, the king of Assyria. Yes. But in his heart, he does not so intend.

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Yes. He doesn't realize that all of his actions are under the sovereign will of a God that wields history, including his very choices.

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God is restraining Assyria's evil until the moment where he is going to judge his own people.

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He releases the chain only for his sovereign purpose.

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Now does he make Assyria want to be bad? Does he put a gun to Assyria's head and say,

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Assyria, you need to be evil here for me. Assyria is wicked. It is evil.

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It wants to devour and destroy. All God must do is lift his hand to let him be as evil as he wants to be.

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But keep going because this is where it gets even more interesting. Just to jump down a few verses. So when all this is said and done, right?

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Verse 12. But when the Lord has finished all the work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will punish the speech of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the boastful look in his eyes.

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For he says, by the strength of my hand, I have done it and by my wisdom for I have understanding.

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I remove the boundaries of peoples and plunder their treasures. Like a bull, I bring down those who sit on thrones.

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So what happens after all of this? He uses Assyria in his sovereign will and sicks him on his own people for judgment.

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And then he turns right around and holds the Assyrian king responsible and he says, I'm going to bring the judgment on you.

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But wait a minute. God, how could anyone resist your will and your purposes of launching this pagan king, right?

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How could he know? How could he even resist your will? But then God turns right around and holds that same pagan nation responsible for their actions.

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For their sin. Yeah. For their sin. Yes. They, he wants sin. He wants destruction. He wants evil.

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And for God's own purposes in a fallen world, he has two sinful nations and God is the one withholding and he's granting grace and all these different things.

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And in a moment of God's justice and judgment and discipline, he releases the evil person to do what they want to do.

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And then God punishes the evil person for the evil that was within them. Let's not forget.

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This is where Kwaku has no room for this in his theology. Kwaku, this is a fallen world of rebels who hate

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God. When you paint pictures, emotionally driven pictures of people in the world and this evil and that evil, never forget that the

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Bible says that we outside of Jesus have the wrath of God abiding on us.

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It says that we from the womb go astray. That we are fallen in Adam, hostile towards God, sinners, ungodly, wicked, helpless.

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That's what it says. Slaves of sin. We can't paint emotionally driven pictures to portray all of humanity as this is neutral people with evil things happening to us in the world.

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We are all rebels against the king, each and every single one of us. And guess what? I, as a reformed person,

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I would say as a biblical Christian, I have the ability to mourn and demand justice for this young girl who was, who was destroyed by this wicked man because he was doing what his evil heart wanted.

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However, I refuse to worship a false God that has no control over that.

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Exactly. Yeah. On one hand, the God that, that we believe the scripture teaches is a

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God is perfectly sovereign. Everything happens according to his plan, his will throughout time and eternity. And it's all for a purpose, right?

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Like you just said. Yep. Um, the God that he's promoting is one of an infinite number of gods has no control over what happens.

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Stuff like this happens, but it doesn't happen for a purpose. It doesn't happen for a reason. And it, and it promotes hopelessness.

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It's a purposeless evil. And yet, as we've also demonstrated, we've just gathered the meaning from scripture.

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What it teaches is that God still holds people accountable for their evil actions, although he wields all of history.

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Those people that God uses to accomplish his will, even though they have no idea that they're actually doing so, he still holds them accountable.

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He didn't give them those evil desires, right? It was within their hearts to do it. And they acted freely with their agency based upon their nature.

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So this is where it's really important. I did not create this myself. It was from a pastor a long time ago, but it's one of the best ways that I've ever thought of describing this.

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And that is, and I've used it a lot. So for those of you guys that are new listeners, in terms of our nature, being the foundation of our will, like our will is free, well, our will is enslaved to our natural state, which is fallen or regenerated.

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So we're either fallen, and our will is operating based upon a fallen nature, or we're regenerated alive from the dead, and our will now is operating on the basis of an alive spiritual nature.

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So one of my old pastor friends used to say, if you were to take a pile of meat, a pile of meat, and you put a vulture into a room with a pile of meat and a pile of carrots.

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Now if you leave the room, shut the door behind you, leave the vulture in there with the meat and the carrots, which pile will the vulture freely choose?

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The carnivorous pile. You already know, because by nature, it's going to choose the meat. It's not going to go for the carrots.

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But now change the scenario, and you put a rabbit into a room with a pile of meat and a pile of carrots. What will the rabbit freely choose?

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Well, based upon what its nature is, it's going to go for what its nature is. Now take a sinner against a holy

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God, fallen, right? Put them in a room and have God on one side and their sin on another.

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What will they freely choose? Not God. Freely. They don't want him.

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Their nature determines the activity of the will. Now take a regenerated person who's filled with the spirit of God, who now is redeemed and saved, put them in the room with God and their sin, what are they going to go for?

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Well, they're going to now have new affections. They're going to freely want God, right? So that's in terms of the will and our choices.

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But let's go to some scripture real fast here. Psalm 135, 6, whatever the Lord pleases, he does in heaven and in earth, in the seas and on all the deeps.

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I think that covers just about everything, don't you? In the heavens and on earth, in the seas and in all deeps, the

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Lord does all that he pleases. Not the Mormon God. I wonder if Kolob's included in that.

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I think it was, I mean, in the heavens, right? But our God is in the heavens, Psalm 115, 3, he does whatever he pleases.

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That's not the Mormon God. That's not the Mormon God. Would it please the Mormon God to stop all evil in the world?

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Would it please the Mormon God? Do you think? Kwaku would probably say, well, yeah, I think maybe he would want to do that. Well, according to scripture, the

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God in the heavens does whatever he pleases. He should be able to stop all these things if he, quote unquote, didn't want them to happen.

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In other words, in Kwaku's perspective, please hang on here. In Kwaku's perspective, you have a perspective of a

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God who doesn't know about these things, who can't control them, who can't stop them.

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Men are thwarting the God of Mormonism, and he has nothing whatever to do with these things.

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He's an impotent God who has no power and no control. He can be thwarted by his own creatures.

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He has no purpose in all these evils. What can the Mormon, what can Kwaku, I'll say better this way, what can

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Kwaku tell the victim of sex trafficking? What can he tell them? God has nothing to do with this, and God had no control, and God has ultimately no sovereign ability to protect you in the future.

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God has no plan in this. This was purposeless evil. You are living in a universe with all of this purposeless evil.

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God had no ability to do anything about this or control it or to do anything in the future. This was purposeless evil.

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And you present a view of God in which he has to just react to these things. Right. He's like, oh man,

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I was taken off guard. But even in the reaction, he has no ability to connect or correct anything in the future. He can react only once, but if men thwarted the

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Mormon God before, he can try to fix it in the future, but he can be thwarted by men again.

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There's really no end. There's no end. Yeah, so essentially this guy just created everything and then just sits back and just watches and has no say whatsoever in what happens.

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Thwarted by the almighty creature. More of a deist view. Isaiah 46 .10, declaring the end from the beginning and from the ancient times things which have not been done, saying, my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure.

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Daniel 4 .35, all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, but he does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.

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Did you catch that? That's both realms. He's sovereign there and he's sovereign here over the inhabitants of the earth and no one can ward off his hand or say to him, what have you done?

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Nothing will be impossible with God. Job 42 .2, I know that you can do all things and no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

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We can go on and on and on. Here we go. Isaiah 43 .13, even from eternity

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I am he and there is none who can deliver out of my hand. I act and who can reverse it?

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I act and who can reverse it? That's rhetorical, by the way. That's right. That's exactly right.

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Don't try to answer. If you try to answer questions that God means to be rhetorical, you're on the wrong side of this thing.

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That's right. And there's many, many more, but here's my one point. You brought up an issue of slavery. You decried slavery and you displayed the wickedness of slavery and the evil in this man's heart.

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And you talk about sex trafficking and slavery as this wicked and evil, awful thing, abuse and everything else.

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Well, I want to point you to the Bible. And one example is in the book of Genesis. You know the story about Joseph and his brothers?

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What did his brothers do? Where'd they send him? Into slavery. Into slavery. We already have an example in scripture of evil in people's hearts.

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People who could not even say a kind thing about their brother. They hated him. And they lied to their father.

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They said that an animal killed him and they sent Joseph off. They basically left him for dead. I don't care what happens to you.

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And they sold him into slavery into Egypt. Now, when he went to Egypt, guess what else happened in Egypt? To add insult to injury.

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More bad stuff. More bad stuff. He goes to Egypt and Potiphar's wife lies and says that he tried to rape her.

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So now he gets falsely accused. Now there's not just slavery, it's false accusations. And now Joseph is in a dungeon.

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He's in jail now because of a wicked woman who lied and said that he tried to rape her.

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So now you've got his brothers hating him. You've got slavery. You've got false accusations of rape. And you've got a dungeon.

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And then what happens is compelling. You know the story. God raises Joseph up, rescues all of Egypt and the surrounding nations.

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And here is Genesis 45. Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him and cried, make everyone go out from me.

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So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers and he wept. He wept aloud so that the

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Egyptians heard it and the household of Pharaoh heard it. And Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?

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But his brothers could not answer him for they were dismayed at his presence. So Joseph said to his brothers, come near to me, please.

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And they came near. And he said, I'm your brother, Joseph, whom, watch, get this, you sold into Egypt.

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Watch, you're guilty. You did this. You sold me into Egypt. Agency of man still intact.

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That's right. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here for God sent me before you to preserve life.

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God sent me before you to preserve life. And so what he says here is ultimately you did not send me here.