Serving Bread

I recently completed an academic exercise, reflecting on the problem of evil. I found the assignment useful for my ministry, as I regularly confront questions about why God allows suffering and evil. The assignment is in response to Rabbi Harold Kushner‘s best-selling book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

Rabbi Kushner identified two contrasting views of God when he wrote, “I can worship a God who hates suffering but cannot eliminate it more than I can worship a God who chooses to make children suffer and die.” The first is a God who hates suffering but does not necessarily have power to eliminate it (known as process theology). The other view of God is one where God is in control and allows suffering to take place (some strands of classical theism). While there are many theologians who adhere to one of these views, I reject both positions as biblically sound teaching and would like to offer you a different route than the contrasts that Kushner sets forth.

The problem of Kushner and others who subscribe to process theology render God powerless and perhaps useless. William Hasker writes,

To say, as process theism does, that God has no direct control over anything that happens in the world, is to leave oneself with a picture of God’s power and God’s activity that is severely truncated, as compared to the way God is viewed in traditional theology and indeed in the Bible itself. (The Openness of God, 140)

The Bible is full of snippets of God’s power to create, to bring healing and to even raise people from the dead.
Kushner and other process theists are reacting to classical theism. When Christians speak of the sovereignty of God, many adhere to a form of sovereignty known as “specific sovereignty.” Proponents of this view maintain that God “can unilaterally ensure that all and only that which he desires to come about in our world will in fact occur.” What specific sovereignty will do is rob us from the power of prayer or even hope. If God has already determined the order of events, then petitionary prayer is merely an “academic exercise.”

Kushner rejects this notion and subscribes to a view of God that resembles process theology. Process theists believe that “all entities always possess some power of self-determination.” They deny that God can ever unilaterally intervene in any sense in earthly affairs.” (Pinnock, 158-159) They contend that prayer affects the petitioner more so than it affects God to change or respond to the particular situation. Since everyone or everything has some power of self-determination, within process theism we must hope that all these entities (including God) will cooperate to bring a favorable result. As Hasker writes, “The outcome depends entirely on the obedient, cooperative response of the creatures and judging from the results so far, it is difficult to be extremely optimistic.” (Pinnock, 140)

God is sovereign and is in control and has power over evil. Such a conclusion does not require God to exercise “total control of everything everybody does.” It just means that all events—including evil, pain and suffering—are within God’s Kingdom. God expresses his power by interacting and confronting the evil that happens around us.

First, we must recognize God is on the side of humanity. Kushner asserts that God cannot eliminate evil because he wants to believe that God is on the side of those who are suffering. The alternative, according to Kushner, seems to be that God is not on the side of those who are suffering, but rather he either causes or chooses to not intervene to halt evil that comes our way (which presumably would make God a silent partner in the practice of evil).

God sides with humanity. The Israelites of the Bible and Christians for that matter believe that God is in a covenant relationship with people. When suffering comes our way, we may feel lonely and unknown by others and by God. But that is far from the truth of who God is. God doesn’t side with random events or evil against humanity. Instead, God is our advocate and God is with us.

Second, we can take solace that God is affected by the evil that affects us. On this point, I agree with Kushner only when he says that God hates suffering. God does hate suffering. God personally knows suffering and evil. God endured the public shame and death on the cross. Michael Jinkins writes,

the Christian faith has confessed that God assumed into his own eternal Being (in Jesus Christ, in the entire event of his incarnation leading ultimately to the cross) the pain, sorrow and darkness of this suffering world, and has taken on the tormented shape of our human brokenness. (Invitation to Theology, 85)

God has experienced suffering and evil and continues to do so when humanity follows a path that is not consistent with God’s desires. As one writer put it, “God had not entered into our suffering and death, then there is no hope for redemption and pain.” [1] Because God has entered into suffering, he can respond and even overcome evil, which takes me to my third point.

Third, God responds to evil. God is stronger than evil. On the cross, Christ suffered great evil and yet he overcame that evil. Christ is victorious over the evil that he experienced. Likewise, God responds to the evil around us. He may have had power to prevent it, but the more significant question is not whether God has power to prevent evil from happening, but how God responds to the evil that comes our way.

Romans 8.28 gives us the confidence in God’s providence, “so that we know that God is always in control, even over the power of evil.” God being in control does not permit evil for a greater good. Instead, a more Christological approach would be to believe that despite the evil that confronts us, God works to bring redemption and good out of it.
T. F. Torrance put it well when he wrote that

The Cross of Christ tells us unmistakably that all physical evil, not only pain, suffering, disease, corruption, death, and of course cruelty and venom in animal as well as human behavior, but also ‘natural’ calamities, devastations, and monstrosities, are an outrage against the love of God and a contradiction of good order in his creation. (Divine and Contingent Order)

The truth is that evil and suffering are an outrage against the love of God. God’s love is offended and pained by suffering and death. To subscribe to Kushner’s view would conceivably deny God’s ability to create out of nothing or even raise Jesus from the dead. God may have hopes like the rest of us for events to work out for the better, but God is “limited in his ability to do anything about evil.” When evil assaults us, we must hold on to the hope in God to deliver us from the suffering. Kushner provides no hope when we confront our suffering but to cross our fingers that somehow everything falls into place and the evil is overcome.

We may not have answers as to the reasons for evil. Faith may not necessarily answer the question of “why does evil exist?” As Jinkins put it, “(Faith tells) us that the God we worship has assumed the shape of our suffering humanity in order to deliver us from the darkness and danger that threaten to consume us.” God is with us when evil exists around us. God will deliver us from the darkness and the pain that wants to take a hold of our lives.

During times of suffering, I have found peace in these word, liberally taken from Hebrews 13: “(verse 3) Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you were being tortured.” I think of Jesus who ultimately is able to be with me and remember me in my times of suffering. Jesus suffered (Heb. 13.12) and he offers us hope, and eventual redemption in the midst of our suffering (Heb. 13.13-14).

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Notes:[1] Ngien, Dennis. “The God who Suffers.”, Christianity Today, February 3, 1997 Vol. 41, No. 2, Page 38