The problem of good...

There was a lot of evil committed last night in Paris. My thoughts go out to the many families touched by these disastrous choices. God please break this evil.

Today's post has been a draft for quite a few months, but I am going to release it now.

A lot has been said of the problem of evil, and from what I have understood in philosophy the very nature of the problem has changed (from a philosophical standpoint). It all began more or less with the issue of the unspeakable evils in this world: how could an infinitely good and infinitely powerful God stand by and watch the horrors of torture, murder etc?

As horrendous as this is, I find my own attention drawn to different philosophical problem: the problem of Good. And this fascination for me goes back to 2007 when I finally realised that some people, non-believers, exhibited far greater evidence (fruit) of Holy Spirit character than some Christians, myself absolutely included. That had been a faith-shaker for me before I felt God showed me a way through this.

However, philosophically, there are other issues. When Philip Yancey delves into stacks of real-life examples that seem to poorly fit the superficial explanations, he focusses on damage caused by wrong (or over-narrow) teaching about evil, that can completely undermine faith in the good God. I remember vividly one example of a plane crash that someone wrote to Yancey about, in hope of an explanation.

In the plane crash, some people survived, some died. In a church service after this event, prayers of thanks for the "miraculous" escape of those that survived and prayers of peace and consolation for the families of the bereaved. It struck the person writing to Yancey as so unfair and inconsistent that God gets no blame when things go bad and all the credit when things turn out well, even in the same incident (accident).

Really both these problems concern how God is interacting with this world. It also concerns how we understand the freedom He has given us. Open theism says that God does not necessarily know in advance all the choices we will make. Yet he does know where history is headed and is Himself involved in guiding it toward that outcome. I think, but do not know for sure, that it also accepts that there are also chaotic and random factors at work. I will have to check with my open theist friend D. and ask him. The mainstream view, however, remains that God knows everything, and that includes the future.

Q: The wages of sin are death. We all deserve to die. Is anything other than death then a bonus?

Some very dubious and profoundly unsatisfying logic begins to flow at this point.

True Christians cannot die in accidental plane crashes, for thanks to our sinless saviour we no longer need to pay that price for our sin.

OR
There truly are random events out there. This creates another problem, but it is one I am much more ready to embrace.

R  a     n  do         m. 

That word warrants savouring in your mouth (or mind) a moment. You cannot predict for sure the outcome in advance, but you can measure probability.

Let me give a crazy scenario that turns my blood a little cold. Imagine that in the USA, 40 ℅ of air passengers are practising Christians. Let us also imagine that the probability of an incident involving some fatalities but not all fatalities is approximately 1 in a million. It would be mathematically possible to work out how long it would it be before it would be more likely than unlikely that the only survivors in an incident were believers in Jesus. It is precisely the same kind of calculation that as rolling a dice and predicting if you roll a six or not. At first you are not surprised at rolling other numbers, but if you roll the dice a million times and not once roll a six, then your dice is probably weighted, right? Or what about the disease that only 1 in a thousand recover from? How does the Christian thank God if they are "healed"? How can they know it was faith, God's hand etc that did it?

So the problem for me and the question I am asking is how to be thankful when I or others benefit from random good? Does it do my faith any good to publicly or privately express thanks to God as though he caused this good directly? That shows Him that I believe that had He not intervened, or even had we not prayed, the good would not have happened. But I do not believe that can be reasonable.

God is a God of Truth. He will not, I feel sure, be glorified by exaggerated accounts or false accounts of direct intervention. Truth is and must be sufficient.

We rejoice always. Philippians 4:4.

I will do a follow-up post on moving away from direct causal assumptions by believers regarding divine intervention, what that might be and alternative ways to define it that might bring more satisfaction to my problems with the miracle-obsession.

Jonah chapter 4, God toying with us?

      6The LORD God appointed a little plant and caused it to grow up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to rescue him from his misery. Now Jonah was very delighted about the little plant. 7So God sent a worm at dawn the next day, and it attacked the little plant so that it dried up. 8When the sun began to shine, God sent a hot east wind. So the sun beat down on Jonah’s head, and he grew faint. So he despaired of life, and said, “I would rather die than live!” 9God said to Jonah, “Are you really so very angry about the little plant?” And he said, “I am as angry as I could possibly be!” 10The LORD said, “You were upset about this little plant, something for which you have not worked nor did you do anything to make it grow. It grew up overnight and died the next day. 11Should I not be even more concerned about Nineveh, this enormous city? There are more than one hundred twenty thousand people in it who do not know right from wrong, as well as many animals!”

I believe that this book of Jonah, like that of parts of Daniel, has been under a lot of scrutiny among scholars in recent times. I shouldn't feel this way (I remember religiously scribbling "amen" next to one modern trinitarian writer cited by Holmes who stated the need for solid historical foundation in our theology), but something in me does not care too much. Jesus spoke of Jonah (although see a future post I am planning on interpretation), and perhaps most significantly, this little worm story is something that really connects to my own experience. I am the sulky Jonah. So often I have found myself in this story; I am surprised it has not captured inspirational and exhortation Christian writers' imagination more to be honest. Anyway, I feel confused. I have studied this and Job many times, and I get the many spiritual insights available here, and even try to come up with my own.

This sub-story in Jonah is actually a little peculiar. If you first read verse 5, you realise that Jonah already seems to have some sort of manmade shelter from the sun. But the point is that God enhances this physical experience for him, before sending the worm. Was the LORD toying with Jonah here? In any case, we see for the second time an anger problem flare up here for Jonah.

My connection with Jonah is through a physical issue (actually I have two physical issues, but for the sake of this post I am focusing on one of them). For me it is my left ankle, as it happens. I am passionate about running, but only since my late twenties (now in my mid-thirties). It seemed to me, a few years ago, that I had a choice about the running. This activity itself seemed to come from nowhere; it was healthy, it connected me with other people in a fantastic way, provided me with many God-encounters in his beautiful creation, and I am sure connected with a competitive side. Races, and training for races, were also deeply emotional experiences for me as it seemed like I had to apply every aspect of my being into a goal to achieve it, and this in such a way I felt the apostle Paul understood in his letters. So what was this choice? Clearly the running, left unchecked, could be dangerous for my heart and devotion to God. I therefore decided to do it for Him. My previous blog before this one was called "running with certainty". I began to pray before races and reach out with more deliberation to other runners. I resolved to "run for God", even while I realised that this was a slightly abstract idea, that was my choice. And then came the ankle injury, and it feels a lot like the worm in Jonah's story - except that I strangely have never experienced the anger (and I do experience anger and frustration in my character). I would say it is more like sadness, incomprehension, disappointment. Recently, and amazingly, for the first time in over 18 months, I had started to be able to run again without discomfort or pain. Then on Christmas Eve, it seemed like we returned to square 1 again. The pain is a lot more than physical though (e.g. this story and the main story).

There is also a connection (there always is, right?!) with my faith in God and doctrines. As I tentatively allowed my hopes to rise once again, I realised I cared more about resuming the running journey than the theological journey. As a father of a young family and other commitments, time is limited. Endurance running is time-hungry. I instinctively knew that I would be more than happy to refocus away from theology. I would of course continue to remain skeptical about any legalistic approach about Nicene wording, and would continue to enjoy meeting up with friends to reflect in safety. But I would be content to turn a page on this digging, and also perhaps enjoy some inner relief that I would not get myself into too much trouble.

"You are not getting off so easily". "Who, how and what I am is worth it".
I am not saying that God says this - but it is my interpretation.

Maybe that is why the injury came back. Who knows. Despite being in no position to question His wisdom, I question anyway this kind of strategy. I have a lot of questions as you know!