In this last episode of a four-part series, pastors Derek and Cliff discuss a few remaining pastoral implications of Scripture’s teaching on the problem of evil.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to With All Wisdom, where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown. I’m here today with Cliff McManis. We are both pastors and elders at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California. And we have the privilege of being professors of theology at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. And today we are on part four of our series on the problem of evil. And the last episode that we did, we were working with all the various pastoral implications that flow out of this discussion on the problem of evil. And we’re going to wrap that up today. We’re going to talk about a few more pastoral implications, and I trust bring this series to a close. We hope it’s been helpful to you and a very important issue, challenging issue, but we hope that it has been beneficial to you so that you can think clearly about who God is and who God is in your suffering and what it means for God to be good, for him to be sovereign over all things, for him to be loving, and what’s going on with evil in the world and how is God going
to manage all of that and bring all of that to a final, glorious end. And so we want to put some pastoral feet on all of this, and that’s what we’re doing in these last two episodes. So we’re going to wrap up today, and we’ll just jump right into it.
Cliff, where we left off was this idea of having a biblical balance where you’re trying to help someone who is suffering, help them to persevere through their suffering, to understand their suffering, to think rightly about it, to bring some compassion and some comfort. And I really like what you said, that it can’t be a mere download of biblical data or theological statements. You can’t hedge on the sovereignty of God and on the truth, but you also have to bring
that truth in love and compassion with a heart that’s broken and sad and is able to weep with those who weep and feel compassion for those who are suffering. And that really will temper the statements and the way that you give them. It won’t take any notches off the truth, but it will help you deliver that truth, I think, in a way that’s helpful to the person who’s suffering. So that was really helpful, how you articulated that.
The next point I want to say is, again, this is directed at pastors, because they’re going to be the ones who are doing a lot of the counseling of suffering people. But really, as Christians, we all will be doing this and should be doing this. Someone comes over to your house, and they just start weeping. They sit down with you on the couch, and they just start weeping over some suffering in their life. And you’re not a pastor, but you now need to bring comfort and truth and clarity to this person, to this fellow Christian. And so this is for all Christians. So this one is, too. But I want to say the next point is to preach and teach God’s goodness and His hatred for evil and His unswerving plan to judge all sin at the end of the age, because we want to be clear that the evil or the suffering that people have endured, if that is the result of someone’s sin, and you know, you can turn on the news at any time and hear about people’s sin causing devastating things in other people’s lives, you know, just a string of shootings where the homeowners were acting very foolishly or someone wielding a gun foolishly and shooting people and just terribly devastating, foolish, sinful behavior, people beating up on others, and just turn on the news at any one moment and you’re going to get some of that. And so when you’re suffering as a result of someone else’s sin, then you don’t want a God who is morally indifferent. You want to see clearly that God is just, He’s holy, and He will judge sin because He is good. He’s not morally indifferent. He will display His goodness precisely by actually punishing evil at the end of the age and punishing it in His Son 2,000 years ago for His people and then punishing it at the end of the age. That is a way He will display His goodness, actually. He will show that He is completely against evil and His people for all eternity don’t have to worry about evil encroaching on their eternity or their existence anymore because God in His goodness has judged it for all time. So we want to be careful that we clearly teach that God is good and that goodness means that He has a hatred for evil and that He will judge it. And so there’s nothing that we experience in this life that will not be justly dealt with either in the cross of Christ or by that person paying for their sin against us in eternity. Any thoughts on that point, Cliff? This idea of God’s goodness and His judging of sin and the sin we experience at other people’s hands?
Cliff: Yeah, it just keeps, it goes back to answering the ultimate question up front. Why is there evil in the world if there is a God and if that God is good and if He’s all-powerful? And just to summarize what you just said, why is there evil in the world? Because God allows it and God’s going to use it. It sounds simplistic, but that’s not a simplistic answer. It’s simple, but it’s not simplistic. It’s true to the revelation of the Bible. And I think we need to keep it simple in terms of how scripture presents the answer to this problem, the problem of evil, as you’re articulating. And you keep going back to biblical answers, Derek, I don’t know if you noticed that in episode number four. We’re on the fourth episode, have we ever done a topic on four episodes?
Derek: I think one other time, yeah.
Cliff: Which is fitting because this is the most complicated, mind-boggling challenge that faces Christianity. So we are told. How appropriately we have four episodes to deal with it. I think the simplicity of what the Bible says, we can’t forget about that, especially as we’re talking to pastors, but we’re also talking to Christians who, hopefully in the audience, they’re first and foremost, I want to be able to read my Bible, understand my Bible and apply my Bible even to difficult matters like the problem of evil. Is there an answer in my Bible?
Derek: Yes.
Cliff: Because if you run to the average Christian bookstore to look for a solution on the problem of evil, it’s probably written by a Christian philosopher with the emphasis on philosophy. So the most respected, extensive answers, other than the book that you had recommended, all the other standard ones that supposedly deal with the problem of evil that are most highly recommended and respected, they’re primarily by philosophers and they’re giving a philosophical defense. A lot of them are really difficult to understand and they’re long and not practical and that shouldn’t be the case for Christians because there needs to be clarity. We believe in the perspicuity of scripture, which means there should be a clear answer on this. Why does it have to be so convoluted and complicated and philosophical and esoteric and I can’t
even understand all this stuff? Why is it that only the trained professional philosophers can answer this question? But that’s how it is. So just a good reminder to our people as a pastor, no, there’s an answer. You can go to your Bible, you can, as just a normal old Christian, I think you can find scripture and find the answer and there is not a simplistic answer but simple answers to this problem and it’s clear, the perspicuity of scripture, the clarity of scripture. We believe in the sufficiency of scripture. I also believe in the sufficiency of Jesus as a teacher. Who was the greatest Bible teacher ever, Derek?
Derek: Jesus.
Cliff: It was Jesus. The greatest Bible teacher, the greatest religious teacher, He’s the God man. So I can’t think of a book on the problem of evil written by a Christian that actually has either any reference whatsoever or a main section dealing with the problem saying, well, what did Jesus say about the problem of evil? That’s usually just categorically neglected.
Derek: So that’s interesting.
Cliff: For example, many would say that Alvin Plantinga, and he’s a smart guy, he’s a Christian, has written the most exhaustive, definitive response, Christian response to the problem of evil. And I’ve read it and it’s very philosophical, it’s hard to follow, it’s long, it’s hard to understand and there’s no reference to what did Jesus say about the problem of evil.
Derek: I almost find that hard to believe.
Cliff: Yeah. I think Christians should say, well, what did Jesus say about this?
Derek: Well, that makes sense.
Cliff: Yeah, because he was the best Bible teacher ever. Did Jesus know anything about evil?
Derek: A little bit.
Cliff: Yes, he was the authority. Did he know anything about the solution for the problem of evil? I think he was the solution for the problem of evil. So that’s just something you don’t hear when Christian philosophers and theologians are
trying to expound the solution to this problem, is just something as so simple as, well, what did Jesus say about this?
Derek: And I just wonder why that is. Is it because it lacks sophistication?
Cliff: Probably.
Derek: Right? It lacks some sort of academic sophistication?
Cliff: It comes across as simplistic, if you just read the four gospels, because they’re written so clearly, they’re a narrative story, a fourth grader can understand it, and like you said, they’re not profoundly sophisticated answers, it’s just, if you’re taking the Bible at face value.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: I mean, regarding the problem of evil, Jesus, he did refer to evil a few times. For example, he made that profound statement in Matthew 15, where he was talking to his disciples who were Christians, or Matthew 7-11, sorry, Matthew 7-11, and he’s sitting with his apostles who are Christians, and he’s just trying to encourage them, and actually it was the Sermon on the Mount, so a lot of his disciples were following him, and he said, you are evil. He looked them in the face and said, you are evil. So if Jesus was here today and we were interviewing him, or if Richard Dawkins was in a debate
with Jesus, Richard Dawkins, the world-renowned atheist, and if Richard were to ask Jesus, Jesus, tell me about the problem of evil, Jesus would say, you are evil, Matthew 7-11. You’re the problem.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: And the terminology, and in the Greek text, it’s you being evil, present tense of the participle, meaning this is your ongoing condition, inherently, ontologically, as a person, you constitute evil. That’s who you are. That’s in your nature, unlike Jesus, who had no sin whatsoever, and these were, you know, he’s even talking to his apostles who are believers.
He said the same thing to Peter, you know, you’re evil. If Jesus were here today, we could say the same thing about me and you, Derek. You’re evil. I’m evil, in my nature. That’s what the Bible, so that was how Jesus dealt with evil, very matter-of-factly, up-front, yes, there is a problem of evil, you’re the problem, Richard Dawkins. The other interesting thing about this, when Jesus says that you are evil, if you read all these apologetics books on the problem of evil by all these Christian philosophers, they all have the same definition, which I shared in an earlier episode, the privation
of good, and some of them even say that evil does not apply to, literally, persons are not evil, is a statement that is made by Christian philosophers. Persons are not evil, and I’m thinking, no, Jesus said you are evil. So that’s clear. You know, their categories are, well, there’s natural evil and moral evil, and when they illustrate moral evil, they usually illustrate it by an act that someone does, an act of murder or whatever. They don’t account for or allow for a person to be evil, whereas that’s the distinctive of the Bible. When you want to talk about evil, it says people are evil, and Jesus, in Matthew 15, where he said, out of the mouth the heart speaks, which defiles the man, and then in the next verse, he says, evil comes out of the mouth, which comes from the heart, and so evil comes out of the heart of man. The heart there, Jesus is referring to, is the inner man, everything about him, his volition, his rationale, the way he thinks, his emotions, everything about the inner man is utterly evil apart from God’s grace, and that is the problem. That’s the origin of evil, is the human heart.
So that is distinctive, but that’s what Jesus said, where does evil come from? Well, it comes from the human heart, which is wicked apart from God. You’re evil in your essence apart from God in his forgiveness and regenerative power. He told the Pharisees who were so religious in John 8, you’re of your father the devil. So Jesus says that when you’re thinking about the problem of evil, you’ve got to talk about the reality of Satan. Christian philosophers don’t do that. They don’t talk about, when they’re describing the evil of the world, they don’t go into telling us about the reality of Satan, which we see in Job chapter one and chapter two, where Satan was responsible for a lot of that evil, wicked stuff that happened, and that’s just completely neglected in a lot of those apologists who were trying to explain this. So that’s why it’s a beautiful thing to be simple. What did Jesus say? He was so simple, so clear. Evil is in the human heart. People are evil.
Satan is evil. God is the solution. And then, well, how did all this happen? Well, it happened because of sin, and that’s why I came into the world to die. So Genesis 3 was a real historical account. Daddy, why is this world so messed up?
Well, because Genesis 1 through 3. God made it good. Then Adam and Eve, actually, who were real people, they actually sinned, and God cursed the world. One last comment on that, Derek, since I’m going on.
Derek: It’s good stuff.
Cliff: All these apologists, Christian apologists, for the most part, I’d say the super majority of them who write on the problem of evil, they do not take a literal Genesis 1 through 3.
Derek: That is so discouraging.
Cliff: So you have utterly just dismissed the origin of the problem of evil when you reject Genesis 1 through 3. They’re embarrassed by it.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: They try to apologize for it.
Derek: That’s too bad, because it really does the explanatory power of the Genesis account and how it accounts for why the world is the way it is. And then the gymnastics that you have to jump through in order to first reject that account as historically accurate, and then come up with a way of somehow grounding the source and the origin of evil into this world.
Cliff: Do you know off the top of your head that book that you recommended? What’s his name again?
Derek: Scott Christensen.
Cliff: Does he mention Genesis in the fall?
Derek: Oh, yeah.
Cliff: Oh, good.
Derek: I mean, that book is a thoroughly biblical treatise. It’s not philosophical in that sense. I mean, it’s rigorous, but it’s not some sort of heavily philosophical treatment. It’s thoroughly biblical, thoroughly theological.
Cliff: Yeah. Well, that’s fine. If he believes in literal Genesis 3 in the fall, and a real devil, well, there’s your answer of why it’s currently going on in the world. And guys who have, theologians and pastors who have given such great responses to the problem of evil like J. Adams, Van Til, even E.J. Carnell (Edward John Carnell), they, Gordon Clark, they believe in the Genesis account was historic. Greg Bahnsen. Genesis 1 through 11 was real history. This really happened. This accounts for the evil, why it’s in the world.
Derek: Yeah. I’m going to reiterate again, and we do, we had a historicity of Genesis podcast that you can look up on withallwisdom.org where we talk about the necessity of taking the Genesis account literally and understanding it as true history. And in the case of talking about the problem of evil, you can’t understand evil or its source or anything really substantially without understanding and taking Genesis 1 through 3 as actual history, an actual fall, Adam and Eve created perfect and then falling into sin and then God cursing the environment and cursing Adam and Eve. Without any of that, you’re just, you’re New Testament and all that it has to say is kind of unhinged in a significant sense, and it grieves, it does grieve me to hear of Christian theologians and philosophers and apologists who are unwilling to take the Bible and take the Genesis account literally and seeming to be ashamed or seeming to want to provide a more sophisticated answer or kind of demonstrate that they can reason to these things autonomously, which really is folly.
I just, I’m not edified by writing where the author is trying to answer these big questions using only philosophical categories and without going to Scripture. I’m just not edified. I’m just not built up. I’m not strengthened. I’m not encouraged. So as pastors, that’s just not an option for us.
Cliff: Nope.
Derek: Scripture has to be the textbook as it were. Well, that could be another whole episode in itself, Cliff, just talking about why it is that some theologians and philosophers drift away from using Scripture as the primary source book for answering the problem of evil. Maybe we’ll talk about that someday, but I’ll bring up my last point and then see what else
you have to say, Cliff. We have to, pastors and Christians at large, but this is again kind of directed towards pastors, remind your people that the certainty of God’s future judgment of evil grounds our ability to love our enemy, overlook offenses, and refuse to take justice into our own hands. So Paul in Romans 12 tells the people to not avenge the people that have sinned against them. Vengeance is God’s. And justice is a good thing and there are certain institutions in our society that God is ordained to deal with justice here in this life. We’re not to take it into our own hands and get revenge and things like that. But because we know that God has either. So if you’re dealing with someone’s sin against you, that person’s sin has either been paid for at the cross of Christ or if they’re an unbeliever, it will be some someday judged
by God himself. Knowing that, then Paul says that we are to use that as a grounds to love our enemy. That sin will be taken care of. I can now love my enemy and I can do good to them and overlook offenses. Not overlook the evil, but overlook the offense in that I’m not going to hold it against the person and grow in bitterness and so on. And really only the Christian worldview allows people to do that, to love their enemies and to forgive their enemies and things like that.
So that’s an important aspect of the Christian life as it relates to the problem of evil. Being able to love those who actually commit evil against us, to forgive them, to overlook the offense and so on. And I’m not suggesting that Christians somehow don’t strive for justice in this life. I think it’s important to use the means that God has given us for that, where if you’ve been sinned against in a particular way, it’s good and right for you to look for justice and seek it and seek it for others. But in terms of storing up vindictiveness and hatred and anger and bitterness, the Scripture does not allow for that and it actually allows us by what it teaches about God’s future judgment to be those who forgive. So that’s basically the last point that I have, Cliff. Any thoughts about that or any last comments that you want to make?
Cliff: Well, if you close on a Roman’s passage, I want to close on a Roman’s passage too. Because this was the one that settled it for me. I remember the first time I ever went through Romans, I was in college and it was a pastor that was just preaching through verse by verse. And then when they got to chapter nine of Romans, I learned about the sovereignty of God. I didn’t grow up in a Bible-believing home. And so Romans nine is one of the strongest, clearest passages on the sovereignty of God, the complete sovereignty of God. And it even addresses the problem of evil, the biblical solution. I’ll just read the two verses, actually verses 15 through 25. A lot of Christians have a hard time with what Paul says here. Because of what God says, you know, somebody’s asking a question about God and free choices and then God says on the contrary, who are you, O man? Who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me like this, will it? So be careful, questions you ask of God are how you talk to God. It’s a rebuke from Paul. And then verse 22, here’s the problem of evil, one of the solutions, and you’ve mentioned this many different times about God’s attributes being on display through how he deals with the problem of evil. Paul says, what if God, although willing to demonstrate or show or prove his wrath?
Derek: Wow.
Cliff: So God is a God of wrath. Wrath is one of his attributes just as much as his love and goodnesses and his power. And God wants to put all of his attributes on display so they can be seen, experienced and appreciated for his glory.
So God needs to put his wrath on display, that’s why he allowed evil. So what if God, although willing, actually meaning wanting, desiring to demonstrate his wrath, that’s the God of the Bible. People have a hard time with that, but that’s who he is. That’s the God we love, that’s the God who saved us. So God wanted to put his wrath on display and as a result, he also wanted to make his power unknown, his power to judge, his power to punish. And as a result, he endured, and he endures in this life, in this fallen world, he endured with much patience vessels of wrath who were prepared for destruction. And he’s talking about people, like Pharaoh, that he mentioned a little earlier, that God tolerated Pharaoh’s disobedience and hard-heartedness during that whole interchange with Moses for a purpose so that God might put his wrath and power on display when he eventually judged Pharaoh with ten plagues, including killing Pharaoh’s own son.
And as a result, he put his wrath, his righteous wrath, holy wrath on display. So he allowed that evil from Pharaoh to do that very thing. And God did so to make known. So why did he reveal his wrath? Well, because it served another purpose, to make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory. So when God is wrathful towards someone, he’s also manifesting other attributes as well. If he’s punishing somebody who’s been evil, maybe it’s to recompense for what that evil person did to someone who was righteous. And so that’s the justice of God.
God must punish sin with death because that’s who he is, that’s his glory. He can’t tolerate sin. And when he forgives a sinner who deserves death, then the goodness and greatness of his forgiveness is highlighted as it’s accentuated and compared against his wrath. We deserve wrath. So we wouldn’t know God’s forgiveness to the extent that we do if he was not a God of wrath as well. So when we die and we go to heaven and we be with God and Christ forever in glory in
heaven, where it’s perfect, totally forgiven of our sin, where we will never sin, we’ll be in resurrected bodies eventually, and we’ll be with God forever. We will be reminded that we deserved death, we deserved his wrath, and how much that forgiveness is sweeter all the more as a result. And so we get to appreciate all the attributes of God in his fullness by virtue of the fact that he allowed sin in the first place. So it’s very clear what Paul is saying here, to reveal his character, to reveal his glory, to show that he was a patient, merciful, loving God, that’s why he allowed sin.
Derek: Yeah. Yeah, and it’s so important to keep that big picture in mind because without that big picture of God seeking to display his glory, all of his attributes, and to exalt his own son and that plan of redemption, then you really can’t understand the existence of evil and you’ll fumble around for answers and you’ll give wrong answers. It really is, comes down to God seeking to display his own glory, exalt the glory of his son, all of his attributes. And so in doing that, he never sins, sin never flows or evil never flows from his essence. He manages and uses and sovereignly orchestrates everything for his glory. And in all of that, and you bringing this up earlier was really helpful. In all of that, us recognizing that the problem of evil is with us, right? And that problem of evil is solved for God’s people, for us in the cross of Christ.
And so we get to experience forgiveness, a forgiveness that is set in contrast to the judgment that we deserve. So then that what Paul says in Ephesians 1 and 2, we will all for all eternity praise him to the glory of his grace, which can only be understood in the context of evil and judgment. So in the judgment that we deserve for our evil. So that was all very helpful, Cliff. And any last words on this huge topic before we wrap it up?
Cliff: Yeah, just encourage believers out there, don’t allow this tricky little syllogism to stifle you when you’re talking to an unbeliever when they’ve got this in their arsenal ready to pull it out and try to shut you down or really distract you or dissuade you from the simplicity of the gospel. Just go back to, you know, what you know, that Jesus Christ, who he is, what he said and even your own testimony, because you stay focused when you’re giving a testimony. I was a sinner.
I was separated from God and God in his grace. I heard the gospel, the good news about Jesus Christ, and I repented to him. And you give him the gospel. Don’t let this be a distraction.
Derek: Exactly. And I think you said it in the first or second episode in this series. You said, it’s probably the first, that you can’t allow the unbeliever any leeway with that syllogism. You can’t accept that syllogism because that’s not the God that we’re talking about. The God that is just love, just sovereign, that’s it. There’s far more to God. And so I can’t even accept that. To me, that was a very helpful thing for me. Like you can’t accept that syllogism because it’s just an inadequate way of even describing God or the problem of evil to begin with. So just to reinforce your point, don’t be intimidated. Remain tethered to the scripture. Press the scripture on people. Don’t be ashamed of it. And God will use that and he’ll give you clarity. This is the beauty of it. He’ll give you clarity and then he will also be able to, Lord willing, open the eyes of that person to see the folly of their view and the goodness of God in the gospel. So again, we just encourage you, I think that’s excellent, Cliff. Don’t be intimidated. Press the scriptures. Don’t accept faulty syllogisms and continue to preach and share the gospel to unbelievers and also learn more and more hopefully through this podcast and other reliable sources that do talk about the problem of evil. Learn how to counsel and minister to others who are suffering and to do that with that balance of compassion and a clear view of God’s sovereignty and you’ll be a great comfort and help to your fellow brothers and sisters. And we thank you for listening in on this podcast and for hanging with us for these four episodes on this important topic. We encourage you to check out withallwisdom.org if you haven’t already. And until next time, keep seeking the Lord in his word.
