Justifiably,
the question arises as to why God has permitted man to suffer for
thousands of years, and then, only when Christ returns and
establishes his Kingdom is all changed? The question of suffering
and evil has always been an enigma to man. Philosophers of all
times and ages have pondered the question to no avail. But the
Scriptures provide a logical answer to this question which leaves
one in awe.
Webster
defines evil as "that which produces unhappiness; anything
which either directly or remotely causes suffering of any
kind."
God desires
mankind to live in peace, harmony and happiness. He knows this
will only happen as each practices the principles of righteousness
and love. Otherwise evil will result with its consequences of
suffering and unhappiness.
Here we are
faced with what can be referred to as the "dilemma of
God"—the planetary systems move in mechanical obedience;
the animal creation is driven mainly by instinct; but God desired
the human race to have a free will and to "worship him in
spirit and in truth" (John 4:24). God could have programmed
the ideal man and utopia would have been inevitable, but man would
be no better than a robot, nor would he be happy. Further, it is
impossible to worship only "in truth," to obey truth and
righteousness for what you can get out of it without having the
"spirit" or appreciation of righteousness.
Out of sheer
appreciation of the principles of righteousness — worshiping in
spirit—God desired man to live in harmony with both his Creator
and fellow man. God knows it is only as man is fully motivated by
the principles of righteousness, that he can really attain
happiness for himself and be in that attitude of cheerful concern
for the happiness of his fellows.
The problems
of free has a built-in dilemma. Man can rebel against his Creator.
The Lord was willing to bestow free will, fully cognizant that it
would cost Him dearly before man became fully responsible to this
freedom. What an awesome power! Man can stand in stiff-necked
rebellion against his Creator. He can refuse to submit to God’s
authority. He can refuse to accept God’s favor. He can choose to
avert the mercy of God and adamantly stand upon his decision
against God. For by free will, man is man, created in the image of
God, and neither an animal nor a machine.
Put yourself
in God’s place to appreciate this dilemma. A parent will tell
his baby not to touch the stove because it is hot. But, what does
a baby know about being burned? The anxious parent knows the
inevitability of the baby touching the stove before learning the
consequence of heat. A wise parent will create a controlled
experience with heat—lightly and quickly touching the child’s
hand where the heat is not too severe. And all through life
parents will admonish their children, knowing that they will only
learn certain lessons the "hard way"—by experience.
As our
Father, God knew man would not comprehend His warning about sin,
disobedience and their dire consequences. So God formulated a plan
whereby man, through his own choice, might first experience evil
and then righteousness (in God’s kingdom). This contrasting
experience will demonstrate the beauty and righteousness of God’s
law and the dire consequence of its violation as no other process
could.
The recovery
from sin is called redemption in the Bible. Redemption simply
means the release from sin and death through the payment of a
price. The thought is similar to the releasing a person from
prison when a benefactor pays the fine the prisoner couldn’t
afford. This release through the death of Jesus is often
considered as an afterthought of God to salvage some of the human
race. But the depth of God’s wisdom is shown by His foresight in
devising a plan that provides for man’s free choice and
experience with evil, redemption through Christ and ultimate
eternal happiness. Thus Isaiah 46:9-10 speaks of God knowing and
declaring the end from the beginning.
Eden: Actual
History
The third
chapter of Genesis is the divinely provided history of man’s
free will choice. God instructed man that if he practiced
righteousness, he would live forever. If he disobeyed, then
"dying he would die." Death would be a process of sorrow
and suffering culminating with the grave. Note well that death,
not eternal torment, is the penalty for sin (Genesis 2:17; Psalms
146:4). Like the child and heat, man did not know what suffering
and death were. He disobeyed. God is now giving man a controlled
experience with evil. We read in Ecclesiastes 1:13 and 3:10,
"This sore travail hath God given to man to be exercised
therewith." Man’s travail with evil is for a purpose, that
he might be exercised or taught certain lessons by it.
Some will
say, "Don’t tell me you still believe in original sin! Just
because Adam and Eve were disobedient, the whole human race are
sinners?" In I Timothy 2:13,14; I Corinthians 15:21,22;
Romans 5:14; and John 8:44, both Jesus and the apostles refer to
the event in Eden as a real time-space situation. What better
proof can we have that the Genesis account of Eden was actual
history? Unfortunately, the logic of this concept has been
obscured by Dark Age superstitions that have been attached to it,
such as "hell fire," with a vindictive God who must be
placated. Modern man is rightly repelled by the superstitions
contained in some church theology, but these superstitions are not
taught in the Bible. Shorn of Dark Age theology, there is no
better explanation of man’s miserable plight than the Scriptural
teaching of original sin.
Another Look
at Sin
Not too long
ago, sin was treated lightly. It was called "ignorance,"
only a growing pain of the human race. Give man a bit more
education, let him become a little more civilized and he will
evolve out of his sin, leaving evil behind him. But now we are not
so sure. The heinous events of World War II (12 million murders,
leveled cities, gas chambers), followed by the continuing
senseless acceleration of war, crime and violence (old people
killed for kicks, 70-year-old women molested) and other
immoralities, have forced man to take a second look at the problem
of evil.
A fresh look
at sin is pointedly reflected in the words of Dr. Cyril E. M. Joad,
a noted Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the University
of London, and listed by the editor of The American Weekly
as one of the world’s great scientists. Joad said:
"For
years my name regularly appeared with H. G. Wells, Bertrand
Russell, and Aldous Huxley as a derider of religion.... Then came
the war, and the existence of evil made its impact upon me as a
positive and obtrusive fact. The war opened my eyes to the
impossibility of writing off what I had better call man’s ‘sinfulness’
as a mere by-product of circumstance. The evil in man was due, I
was taught, either to economic circumstance (because people were
poor, their habits were squalid, their tastes undeveloped, their
passions untamed) or to psychological circumstances. For were not
psycho-analysts telling me that all the regressive, aggressive, or
inhibited tendencies of human nature were due to the unfortunate
psychological environment of one’s early childhood?
"The
implications are obvious; remove the circumstances, entrust
children to psycho- analyzed nurses and teachers, and virtue would
reign.
"I have
come flatly to disbelieve all this. I see now that evil is endemic
in man, and that the Christian doctrine of original sin expresses
a deep and essential insight into human nature."
As Dr. Joad,
society is taking another look at evil. It can no longer be
considered a growing pain. It is too deadly a disease to be
explained away by environment.
Speaking
collectively of the human race, the Psalmist said, "In sin
did my mother conceive me." (Psalms 51:5) The Apostle Paul in
Romans 5:12 says, "By one man sin entered the world and death
by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have
sinned."
Since father
Adam sinned, justice required that he die. Before he died, Adam
had children who were born in sin. They inherited Adam’s
imperfections. Thus, the whole human race is born dying. This is
how it is learning the consequences of evil. But the permission of
evil is a brief controlled experience when compared with eternity.
And what are some of the grim lessons? God permits evil to
demonstrate that man without God results in:
Science and
possible extinction through the H-bomb or pollution;
Affluence
that spends $900 million a year in the U.S. for pet food while 5
million humans starve to death;
Religious
Institutions
whose assets total billions of dollars while millions live in
poverty;
Technology
and its deadly tentacles of pollution encircling the globe;
Towering
Cities that are
concrete jungles of crime and violence, filled with faceless
people experiencing life without meaning and terrible loneliness.
God permits
evil to prove that man without God can only result in man’s
inhumanity to man. What is this world coming to? An understanding
of what results when man is separated from God.
The Problem of
Communication
In our era of
permissiveness, the justice of God seems to be an offense to the
rationalist. But perhaps the problem is one of communication,
which can be shown in the simple illustration of an argument. All
of us at sometime have been engaged in an argument in which we
really never objectively listened to the other party. We were too
busy thinking of our answers to hear their logic. The rationalist
is carrying on a debate with God. If he would only stop and listen
to what God has explained in the historic account of Eden (Genesis
3), he would catch a glimpse of the wisdom and justice of God
which becomes man’s guarantee of an eternity of happiness.
Is God’s
Justice Severe?
Some question
the severity of God’s justice in the death penalty. Could not
some other penalty than death have been a just recompense for Adam’s
disobedience? No doubt some other penalty would have been just;
however, God chose this penalty because it best suited His overall
plan for mankind. Once Adam was informed that death was the
penalty for disobedience, then the penalty was fair.
A basic fact
to always remember is that God in His foreknowledge knew that Adam
would disobey, therefore, long before the creation of Adam, God’s
wisdom devised a plan of recovery and ultimate happiness for the
human race that would require the death of His only begotten Son.
Thus I Peter 1:19-20 and Ephesians 1:4-7 speak of the blood of
Christ as foreordained before the world began for the redemption
of mankind. The Creator used the time-space situation in Eden to
demonstrate the dependability of His justice. It is vital that man
knows that "justice and judgment [just decisions] are the
habitation of your [God’s] throne"—Psalms 89:14. Justice
is the foundation of the government of the universe, the basis of
all God’s dealings. Judgment is also spoken of as part of this
foundation. The Hebrew word here means "a just
decision." We can take comfort in the realization that
throughout eternity all of God’s decisions will be just.
Man was
placed in the Edenic paradise to thoroughly enjoy the love of God.
Suppose that after Adam and Eve had lived obediently for a while,
God changed His mind and chased them out of the garden condition
into the thorns and thistles of the unfinished earth. His love
would be worthless, whimsical, because it was not based on
justice. It would be changeable.
Another
hypothetical situation: If when Adam disobeyed, God said,
"Oh, I will overlook your disobedience this time, I will not
punish you as I promised to do." Adam might say,
"Wonderful! I am surely glad God is more loving than
just."
Wonderful?
No! This would be whimsical, capricious, arbitrary. The Creator
and Ruler of the universe could never be trusted throughout
eternity. At any time, in any place, with any order of intelligent
creatures, God might at the slightest whim change His mind and
turn on His creatures. Eden proved the unchangeableness of God’s
justice. God declares in Malachi 3:6, "I am Jehovah, I change
not." James 1:17 states, "The Father of lights in whom
there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."
How
unchangeable is God’s justice? So unyielding that God’s court
of justice required the payment of the costliest fine ever
stipulated in a court of law. What judge has been willing to give
up his own innocent son to death in order to cancel the debt of
crime of the defendant?
Another
Problem of Communication
Our Creator
wants us to know the depths of His love, that He is the most
loving Being in the universe. How can God communicate this to our
finite minds? In human relationships words of love can be quite
meaningless. Actions speak louder than words. How did God show His
love? With tender Fatherly emotions of sorrow, God took the
dearest treasure of His heart, His only Begotten Son, and sent Him
to earth to suffer and die at the hands of man. At great cost to
Himself, the wisdom of God formulated a plan which reveals that He
is both just (unyielding justice) and the justifier (benefactor)
of mankind (Romans 3:25-26).
The simple
events of Eden and Calvary tell so much about our God. Calvary is
the greatest manifestation of love and mercy in the history of the
universe. The combination of Eden and Calvary stand as a pledge
throughout eternity that there is no variableness, neither shadow
of turning in God’s justice.
The world is, therefore, by
experience coming to an understanding of God’s ways.
