Questions from an atheist part 8

July 20, 3:27 PMSt. Louis Presbyterian ExaminerAlicia Donathan

Previous Next

4 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the St. Louis Presbyterian Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Bridges' Christ Healing Peter's Mother-in-Law

Q: How can a loving, omnipotent God permit—much less create—encephalitis, cerebral palsy, brain cancer, leprosy, Alzheimer’s, and other incurable illnesses to afflict millions of men, women, and children, most of whom are decent people?  (From Charles Templeton's Farewell to God).

A: The first answer to this question can be found under the previous two articles (addressing natural disasters), found here and here.  God has the prerogative to take life.  He does not owe us an explanation of why He does it.  But His reasons are completely consistent with His goodness, love, and justice.

But there is another layer to this question. In some cases, we are told, partially, why God allows some things.  Recall the background story to all this--the history of mankind's fall into rebellion and incurring of the just wrath of God for such perversity.  When men and women reject God as King, and refuse to love and serve Him as such, a curse is the only appropriate response.  God's curse is death: "In the day that you eat of it, you will surely die." (Gen. 2:17)

Death is not merely the final termination of life.  Death is all the preludes to that final caesura.  Death manifests itself in disease, in crippling, in all ill-health.  It is manifest in all the ways our bodies are un-whole.  In this way, encephalitis, cerebral palsy, brain cancer, leprosy, Alzheimer's, are all manifestations of death; they are the plague that afflicts mankind because mankind is in rebellion against God, who is Life.  

"All who hate me love Death," saith Wisdom (Prov. 8:36).  

This is why Jesus came healing the sick, driving away disease, and exorcising demons: because these are all death, and He came to destroy death.  The universe's Lord came to us in human flesh to destroy that great enemy of humanity: death itself.  In His actions, Jesus powerfully declared that death, and all its lesser manifestations, is detestable, unnatural, and not something He delights in. 

Christopher Wright writes in his book, The God I Don't Understand, on the place of evil (and death is a great evil) in God's creation:

"For the final truth is that evil does not make sense.  'Sense' is part of our rationality that in itself is part of God's good creation and God's image in us.  So evil can have no sense, since sense itself is a good thing.

Evil has no proper place in creation.  It has no validity, no truth, no integrity.  It does no intrinsically belong to the creation as God originally made it nor will it belong to creation as God will ultimately redeem it.  It cannot and must not be integrated into the universe as a rational, legitimated, justified part of reality.  Evil is not there to be understood, but to be resisted and ultimately expelled.  Evil was and remains an intruder, an alien presence...beyond our understanding because it is not part of the ultimate reality that God in his perfect wisdom and utter truthfulness intends us to understand...

...[W]henever we are confronted with something utterly and dreadfully evil, appallingly wicked, or just plain tragic, we should resist the temptation that is wrapped up in the cry, 'Where's the sense in that?'  It's not that we get no answer.  We get silence.  And that silence is the answer to our question.  There is no sense.  And that is a good thing, too." (p. 42)

God knows this.  So Jesus came to do away with death; He succeeded; and, we are told, one day He will finish the job.  

"He must rule until He puts all His enemies under His feet; and the last enemy to be destroyed is Death." (1 Corinthians 15:25-26)

"Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.  The lake of fire is the Second Death." (Revelation 20:14)

"There will be no more death, or crying, or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." (Revelation 21:4)

God hates death, and crying, and pain, we are assured.  Nevertheless, He has allowed these things to go on, both as judgment for sin, and for reasons perhaps beyond this that we do not have access to.  This is the great mystery: that God allows what He hates--for a time.  How can God allow what He hates?  One reason is readily graspable, the other is forever beyond grasp.  He can allow it because He hates something else--sin--more, and death (and disease) are the right and fitting response to humanity's sin.  But why He allows both sin and death to continue for a time is for Him to know, in His wisdom.   There is no obvious contradiction here (see previous article).  Rather, there is mystery. 

But the time is coming when He will take action against the thing He hates--death, and the sin that gives rise to it--forever.  And so there will one day be no more encephalitis, cancer, or Alzheimer's to steal away the life and happiness of His saints.  There will be no more preeclampsia to cripple mothers' bodies and take their children from them prematurely.  This is the great agony we must still live with: Jesus came to conquer Death, and He succeeded; yet He has not utterly removed it yet.  As the book of Hebrews tells us,

"In putting everything under [Jesus], God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him." (Heb. 2:8)

This is the pain that we still bear: Not everything do we see subject to Him...yet.  We have the downpayment of that final subjection--we have Jesus, risen from the dead and ascended to God's right hand, reigning supreme.  But there is a delay in His final triumph, when Death will be swallowed up forever.  That day is still future, and we wait for it eagerly.

"But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone." (Heb. 2:9)

And so Death and illness and sorrow remain for a time, even though Jesus has won the victory over them.  We pray for Him to complete His victory soon.  We weep when we experience the pains of Death, and we cry out in confusion because Jesus won, yet He has delayed the final triumph and allows His saints (and indeed the whole world) to suffer still for a time.  But we trust Him whose victory is real, and whose final triumph and casting away of Death will surely come.  And we pray, "Come, Lord Jesus."