The problem of evil is SMALL | Atheism is dishonest (Dr. Clay Jones)

Did we come from? Where did the Christian come from? I mean, okay, I see what God's doing for us. What was I before I was a Christian? And so I just started studying the depravity of humankind. And when I did that, those two things, it was like the lights went on and the problem of evil grew very, very small to me.

The Depths of Sin and the Problem of Evil

And in fact, there's a preacher at Westminster Chapel, was a preacher, he died in 81, named D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, famous expositor. I've got a lot of his commentaries behind us here. He said, most of the Christian's problems are due to a double failure.

He says, we fail on the one hand to understand the depths of sin, and we fail on the other hand to understand, to comprehend the glory, the wonder of what God has in store for our eternity. That's a rough paraphrase.

That's exactly correct. But as I began to understand the depths of human depravity, and then the glory that awaits us in heaven forever, the problem of evil grew very small. I'm not saying it went completely away there, but I still had things that I needed to answer.

But the overall problem of evil just became very small to me, because that's the framework that we need to know. And D. Martin Lloyd-Jones is absolutely correct. That's what we need to get our heads around.

And in my book, Why Does God Allow Evil, those are two of the biggest things in my book, is dealing with genocide, and all the horrible things that people do to each other. What does it mean to be a good person?

And then, you know, my book, Immortal, which is about the fear of death, explains a lot of why people do outwardly good things. Because they're looking to do, for immortality projects, for some way of transcending the fact that they've died.

But so anyway, that's what really got me into this. And then somebody said, you ought to write a book on it. That was 1993. And I thought, and he said, oh yeah. He said to me, he says, this guy, I won't mention his name, but he, by this time, had several books out.

No problem. He says, I'll help you. We'll get you, you'll get this book out in a year or two. Well, it was 23 years later. It took 23 years to get my book out. And I think that was great, though. Although I found that very frustrating.

My book was rejected by publishers probably 15 times. Steele. Oh yeah. Harvest House rejected it two or three times before they finally published it. Zonervan rejected it a couple of times. They'd get excited about it, and then they'd reject it.

Iskra. Why does God allow evil? They rejected it.

Steele. Why does God allow evil? Yeah, they rejected it. Bakershire, you know, all of them did. Iskra. This is a speculation question, but why do you think they did that? Steele. Oh, I know exactly why they did it.

Iskra. Oh. Steele. They did it because whenever you do a proposal to a publisher, there's this one question that they always want to see, always have answered. And that is, what else has been written on the subject?

And to answer that question, honestly, I'm going to exaggerate here a little bit, but 9 ,372 ,406 books have been written on the problem of evil. Steele. Okay. Well, in other words, that field is crowded.

Everybody and their uncle Bob, or I should say their doctor Bob, writes a book on the problem of evil. And here I am, I don't, you know, I mean, just nobody knows who I am. I'm new to the field. And so they're like, we don't know who you are.

And you're going to add another book to a crowded field. And I'm like, yeah, but I think I'm doing something really different. Well, anyway, finally, somebody came out from Harvest House and heard us do a Biola on the road in Oregon, which isn't far from where Harvest House has their office in Eugene.

The guy came in, an acquisition editor executive, one of their upper people. And he hears me talking, he goes, okay. And anyway, that's how my, you know, because once he heard basically my spiel, my one hour presentation, he went, okay, this is different.

Yeah. And here we are.

Why the Problem of Evil Keeps Coming Up

The problem of evil in your estimation, is that the number one thing that keeps getting brought up both outside the church and in the church?

Absolutely. It's the number one question that people have is why does God allow evil? Why is he allowing this? It's usually stated very specifically. Why did you don't usually hear so much? Well, you do hear why God allows evil, but often it's why did God let eight-year-old die of bone cancer or leukemia?

Why did God do that? Very specific questions. And for, I mean, I'm always amazed. I listen to contemporary Christian music and I'm always amazed at how many songs are dedicated to the problem of evil.

Many, many of them are, you know, where are you God? And here I am and help me. And I don't know how much longer I can take this. And, you know, I mean, but I took a doctoral class from Dallas Willard and this is kind of funny before my books published and it wasn't that encouraging at the time, but he made it actually a very good point.

I said, I'm writing a theodicy. It's just he and I are walking along. And I said, I'm writing a theodicy. I'm writing a book on the problem of evil. And he looked at me in typical droll Dallas Willard fashion.

He says, don't you think everybody should? And, and at the time I'm like, Oh brother, you know, I mean, I'm not, you know, I mean, everybody in the world should be writing a book on the problem of evil.

But, but that point is true. I think what's going on in the world is, is honestly, we're all having to learn that God is good. That's what we're learning. In fact, when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they plunged us, their descendants into a lifelong education of good and evil.

And we're learning that sin is horrifying and destructive and, and murderous. And we're learning that God is good. We're learning that sin is bad and God is good. And, and we're learning to overcome evil with good.

And so, yeah, I think this is, I think this is exactly what God is trying to teach us because this is eternally valuable knowledge.

Satan, the Accuser, and the Heavenly Problem of Evil

Yeah. Just looking ahead, is this going to remain an issue?

It will always be an issue. It's an issue because, and I'm glad to have a chance to, I'm glad I thought of this because it's an issue because I think that's what this life is primarily about. And what I mean is we know that Satan, there's someplace, someplace could have been hundreds of millions of years ago.

We don't know. Satan rebelled and took a lot of angels with him. Yeah. And apparently the question is, why do people, why does any being rebel? Human being or angelic being or other, why do they rebel?

They rebel. This is pretty obvious. Why does anyone ever rebel ever is they think they're, they deserve better than they're getting. And so Satan apparently thought, you know, we should have more that we're getting.

And when you look at what happened with Eve in the garden of Eden, that's certainly what he was saying to Eve. Oh no, you surely will not die, said the serpent. He says, but God knows that on the day you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you'll become like God's knowing good from evil.

In other words, God is holding you back from something that would otherwise benefit you. Or put another way, God is not acting in your best interest. And I think that was what went on in heaven. How did he get angels to follow him?

He probably said, you know what? We can do better if we're doing things our way. And when it comes to now, why was Satan the accuser of the brethren? What was there to accuse? I think G .K. Beal in his commentary on Revelation makes a tremendous point.

Until Jesus died on the cross, Satan had a point. He had an argument, a legitimate argument, and that is all these people are sinners. All these people have rebelled against you. Every single one of them.

There's no good people. And so how are you letting them into your kingdom at all? On what possible basis can you be letting them into your kingdom? Thus he's the accuser of the brethren, saying these people aren't good.

That ended when Jesus died on the cross, because now all of a sudden you had somebody, fully man, fully God, but fully man, willing to suffer and die for the truth, sinless. That, in Revelation chapter 12, Satan then is kicked out of heaven.

That's the Satan lost. When Jesus died on the cross, Satan lost. My point is, God solved the heavenly problem of evil on earth. And so, yeah, I think an awful lot of all that's going on on earth is about the problem of evil.

We're learning that God is good and that sin is terrible and it's evil. That's what we're learning. And this is eternally valuable knowledge.

Genocide, Human Nature, and Anthropodicy

Yeah. And people haven't changed in thousands of years.

I mean, we may drive cars now and fly in airplanes, but the basic nature of humankind remains the same. And as you know, in studying genocide, one of the biggest takeaways from genocide with me, having studied it now for over 25 years, is every genocide researcher and every genocide victim to a person, there's not one exception, not one, not one exception.

Every genocide researcher and victim agrees that it's the average ordinary member of a population that commits genocide. Every one of them. And I've got some behind me here, as a matter of fact, I've got the destruction of the European Jews behind me here, three volumes.

I mean, I've read Night by Elie Wiesel. There's no point going on. I've read a lot of books on this and they all agree. All of them agree. This is what average normal people do. That's eternally valuable knowledge.

Right. Because what we learn is that once creatures rebel against God, murder comes very easily to them. Right. And that's eternally valuable knowledge.

Oh, and that's eye-opening. You know, one of the things that Elie Wiesel laments is that he started to act kind of like his captors.

Well, yeah, there's the old thing about Auschwitz and the other concentration camps that, you know, kind of the good didn't survive. You know, I don't think, I think that's an overstatement in reading, you know, some of these, like Viktor Frankl's work.

I think that he was probably a pretty good guy, but to a large extent, the reason, by the way, that Jews, you would think that victims of genocide would want to believe that they're, the perpetrators of genocide were somehow worse people than them.

The reason they don't, it's actually very simple. It's because they, so many Jews helped the Germans. The Holocaust, and this is outlined in the destruction of the European Jews, the Holocaust could not have occurred if hundreds of thousands of Jews hadn't helped in the ghettos and helped in the gas chambers.

They didn't have, the Germans could not be on the fronts fighting and then also doing all that they needed to do. And so that's how it happened. This one Jew, as a matter of fact, is really interesting.

He says, you know, that was actually in, I think the Warsaw ghetto. He says, you know, he says, what we should have done is at night, we should have hung some of the Jews that decided to help the Germans from the lampposts in the public square in the middle of the night.

He says, that would have sent a message that you can't help the Germans. But anyway, but this is, again, because, you know, when it comes to doing theodicy, the justification of God, for skeptics to attack us regarding the problem of evil, here's a word you almost never hear.

They have to do anthropodicy, the justification of man. They have to say, no, no, people don't deserve what they're getting. But once you realize that people are born Auschwitz enabled, that there's something terribly wrong with them, then that argument, you know, it's hard to sustain that argument.

And thus, you know, when they feel, we have the people, look at all the good things they do. Read my book, Immortal, you know, I mean, because that will explain, that explains a lot of the things that people do and why they do them and why they do a lot of outwardly good things when they really aren't inwardly good.

Yeah. And then also get away with saying, I'm not afraid of death. Yeah. I'm not afraid.

I'm not afraid to die. Yes, that's, yeah. So, yeah, baloney, you know, and especially when you see all the things that atheists have contrived to feel good about death, like Einstein saying, you're of individual existence is a delusion.

Well, that's dumb. Yeah. That's really dumb. So, anyway, yeah.

Eternity, Free Will, and the Education of Judgment

Well, related to the problem of evil then, is there one apologetic argument that you think is your absolute favorite? You use it a lot. What would that be?

Yeah. Wow. You know, the thing about theodicy is it's, it encompasses the whole of theology. And what I mean is it starts off with the fall of Satan, and it ends up with last things. We're going to live, the righteous are going to live with Jesus forever.

In other words, and that eternity will dwarf our suffering to insignificance. And then the wicked will be, of course, in eternal torment, that he's going to fix it, that he's coming to fix all of this.

Yeah. But I guess my favorite thing is to appeal to eternity. I argue, based on the free will defense, I argue that we've been created with libertarian freedom, that we have libertarian freedom. And I'm sure you know what that means, but it means that you could do other than you do, that whatever you do, you actually had a choice to do other than you did.

And I think, and here's the key for me, we're going to have libertarian free will in heaven, but not sin. Well, how's that possible? Well, in my book, Righteous God, Allow Evil, I give seven reasons, seven things.

I'll go through them and get to the real point in just one. But, you know, in heaven, there will be no world. You won't be one click from porn, no flesh, you won't have a body that's like you have now.

There will be no devil. He and his minions will be in hell. That's my fourth point. Hell then will be, and here's a key point, hell will be an eternal reminder to free creatures of the horror of rebellion.

What an education that'll be to free creatures forever. And then, I didn't bring a pen, I wish I had, but I'll often say to audiences, I'll say, would you like to see me jab this pen into my eye? And everybody's like, what?

And I said, well, I could, I could just jab it right in there. And audiences are like, what's he doing? I said, but you know, I'm not going to jab this pen into my eye. I said, you know why I'm not going to jab this pen into my eye?

Because that would be a stupid thing to do. And I'm too smart for that. But we don't give pens to babies. Why not? Because they jab it right in their eye. And same with, you know, J .P. Moreland, who tends to be more delicate than I, his thing is, how many of you would like to go outside right now and chow down on a steaming pile of dog poop?

Yeah. And, you know, there's not going to be any takers. Nobody's going to go, yeah, let me get my spoon. Let's go chow down on a steaming pile of dog poop. Nobody's going to do that. But you don't let babies, crawly babies out next to steaming piles of dog poop because they crawl right into it.

And so what I submit to you, what I submit to everybody is what God's doing in here is He's revealing to us the horror of rebellion against Him. The horror, how does He fix? How does He allow free beings, free creatures to go on throughout eternity and not sin?

Well, one of the ways He does it is by allowing, let's, okay, let's see how you do out there. It's the old, you know, sometimes with parents, you know, you'll tell your kid, no, no, no, no, no. And finally, because, you know, it's not really that bad for them, but, you know, they're not going to like it.

You go, okay, go knock yourself out. Just see how you like it, you know, because I'm tired of it, you know. And I think that what's going on here is God, the Lord has I'm going to allow everybody to be as free as there was a group called Two Live Crew back in the day.

And they had an album entitled, I think it was entitled As Nasty As We Want to Be. And that album, by the way, was really nasty. But what the Lord is allowing in planet Earth is He's allowing people to be as nasty as they want to be.

And what we're finding out is they're very, very bad people that without the grace of goodness of Christ, without the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, nobody ever does anything good. Calvin and Arminius both agreed with that.

By the way, people will say to me, well, yeah, but what about people that didn't get all the education they needed? I mean, let's suppose they died when they were very young, or maybe even they died as infants.

And part of the thing I like to say is, you know, there's 7 billion people alive today, and they estimate, depending on how you do them, about 7 billion people alive before this. If you add that together, 14 billion people, if every person was judged for 10 minutes, that's 266 ,000 years.

If people are judged sequentially for 10 minutes, it's 266 ,000 years. I had a student when I first said that in class years ago say, you don't know how long the judgment's going to be. I said, yeah, I know that.

This is a thought experiment for crying out loud. I don't know how long it's going to be. I don't know how it's going to work. I'm just saying that the judgment is going to be quite an education. And I don't think people realize that, that the judgment is going to be, see, in other words, the judgment will continue our education from what we are going through now.

And I think when that's done, and you know the verse that says, and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, I think that's after the judgment. That's not just when you arrive in heaven and, okay, we're going to start the judgment now.

I think that's after we, after the judgment is completed, that's when he's going to wipe away every tear from our eyes. My wife, Jeannie, told.

Me that and I thought, that's good. I like that. So in terms of arguments, it would be more of a.

Cumulative. Well, it's cumulative about free will with a real, the biggest thing is the focus on eternity. The Lord, I argue that the Lord really does want us to set us free in his kingdom where we will be able to do what, as Dallas Willard put it, I love this, he says, God wants to set you free in his kingdom to do what you want to do.

And I think that's real, I thought that was really profound, you know, and I think that's correct. God wants to set us free in his kingdom to do what we want to do. But before he can do that, we need to learn that rebellion is really bad.

And so, and I think that thus, eternal torment is one of the things too, God's, where we can, and I think, you know, the rich man of Lazarus, I think there's, I don't think there's probably not a parable.

In my book, I give several reasons for that. One of them is, if it is a parable, it's the only one that used a proper name of any parable. Two, Jesus doesn't identify it as a parable. Three, parables are comparing things, everyday things.

This is actually all about heaven. I mean, excuse me, about the afterlife. It's not about everyday things. I could go on, but I don't think it's a parable. But if that's the case, I wouldn't be surprised if in eternity to come, if we could look in on the lost and go, ooh, that's not good and see them making the excuses.

And I think Lewis too, I don't think that they'll have a chance to come to heaven as in C .S. Lewis' great divorce. But I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't, weren't able to look in on them and go, that's bad.

And I, you know, and think about the rich man in Hades, he was making excuses. Sly, very subtle. He says, go, you need to have somebody be raised from the dead and go warn my brothers. Which is a very subtle way of saying, you didn't give me enough evidence.

See, that's what he's doing. You didn't give me, which interesting about apologetics, right? You didn't give me enough evidence. And I think also Abraham's response to him through via Jesus, but in, you know, saying these words, he says, they have Moses and the prophets, let them listen to them.

In other words, in Jesus' considered opinion, the fact that Moses and the prophets had gotten so much right, and that Israel was where it was today, that that's enough evidence. We now look back, you and I, and everybody else is looking back to a similar event.

Matter of fact, not that far distance. We're a little farther off, I think, than in Jesus' day from Moses and the prophets, depending on who you talk to, 12 or 1400 BC. You know, we're now 2000 AD, but we're looking back to evidence, basically of 2000 years ago.

And in Jesus' considered opinion, that's enough evidence. A wicked and adulterous generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except what? The sign of Jonah, which is, you know, that Jesus will be three days and three nights in the belly of the earth and come back out.

That's the sign. And one of the things I think we need to remember, and this helped me understanding the depths of human evil, is that atheists who go, to me, atheism is just false from the start. And by that, I mean, it's dishonest.

Romans 1, Romans 1 says, what can be made plain about, what can be made known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. And honestly, I don't, I've got an article that I wrote with Joe Gora in the Christian Research Journal, and you can get it online, entitled, The Folly of Answering Distracting Atheist Arguments.

That when an atheist says to us that the universe popped into existence out of nothing, uncaused, that we're supposed to go, oh, wow, that's deep. Let me see if I, should we really take that with a straight face?

That's dumb. And then they say, and first life popped into existence out of nothing, you know, well, out of the goo, primordial goo. Frederick Hoyle, who Richard Dawkins called a brilliant physicist, and Hoyle was an atheist himself.

He's the one, and Dawkins brings this up, if you read The God Delusion, Dawkins brings this up and says, Fred Hoyle's the one that said that first life arriving by chance is like having a tornado sweep through a scrapyard and assembling a 747.

An atheist said that that Dawkins respects. And I mentioned this in my, you know, in that article, and I sit there and I go, and we're supposed to take these arguments seriously. Oh, that's really deep.

Yeah, well, so now tell me how first life started out of nothing. Tell me how the universe popped into existence out of nothing, uncaused. And in studying the depths of human sinfulness, as I have, I feel like I look at these, you know, I look at atheists and naturalists and I go, you're naked.

And I don't mean physically naked. I mean, spiritually, you're naked. You don't want this to be true. And of course they bristle at that because I've said that to them. Oh, you can't say this. Well, you don't, you don't want it to be true.

Although a lot of atheists I've said to them, if I could answer all your questions, would you become a Christian? No. Well, see, there it is. But others I'll sit there and go, you know, you're just making this stuff up.

You know, I mean, really, I mean, seriously, the universe popped into existence out of nothing, uncaused. First life just somehow naturally assembled itself and then became you and me. I mean, really?

And we're supposed to take this with a straight face. That's not just lucky. That's supercalifragilisticexpialidocious lucky. That's a whole new, that's just its own level of luckiness that that could occur.

Right. And so anyway, I think it's, I do not think, I think we honestly sometimes are humoring atheists. And as we put in the article, this was actually Joe Gora's line, uh, we're dignifying folly by taking it too seriously.

It dignifies folly. Yeah. Because the real problem is, is they're sinful. They don't want God to be true. A lot of them, as I said, admit that, but they don't want God to be true. Yeah. Well, no, I'm doing Christian stuff because I'm studying the Kalam or the bibliographical test or fine study those things, but that does not replace walking with Jesus and doing what he says.

The Danger of Loving Ministry More Than Jesus

That's right. Because there's a danger in.

Falling in love, falling more in love with your ministry about Jesus and then Jesus of your ministry.