The Problem of Evil

 

Many years ago, I was slogging through a mosquito-infested meadow with a gaggle of kids when one of them asked me, “Why does God put up with mosquitoes?”

 

I was stumped.

 

The question these days would be, “Why does God put up with Covid-19?

 

I’m still stumped.

 

Both questions go to the problem of evil: If God is both good and all-powerful why does he permit evil to exist? 

The final answer to that question awaits Heaven, but I have it on good authority that “all things work together for good,” a good Paul spells out in the rest of the chapter as the salvation, sanctification and glorification of human souls (Romans 8:28-30).  

 

As theologians put it, everything God does or allows is salvific, i.e., it leads to salvation. He, in jujitsu-fashion, takes the worst that evil can do and turns it into eternal good, though that good is not always revealed, or realized at the time. 

 

The Cross is the best example.

 

David Roper,

4.5.20

 Sometimes Mountains Move

“The mountains may move,

and the hills may be shaken,

but my love will never be removed from you,

and my covenant of peace will never be shaken,”

This is what the Lord says—the one who has compassion on you.

(Isaiah 54:10).

Sometimes mountains move, but God’s love will never be shaken or taken from us. Jesus, the Servant of the Lord bore our punishment and made peace (Isaiah 53:5), a covenanted reality more steadfast than the earth’s crust, rooted in our Lord’s compassion. Nothing can separate us from his love.

To rejigger the words of an old Gershwin tune...

In time the Rocky’s may crumble,

Gibraltar may tumble,

They're only made of clay.

But…

God's love is here to stay!

An old friend, Len Sunukjian, wrote this: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword, or Corvid-19. No, despite all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (Romans  8:35). 

This is our heritage from the Lord (54:17).

David Roper

4.6.20

Calling It

“Who, like me, can call it?” (Isaiah 44:7).

Colorful National League umpire, Bill Klem, on one occasion, delayed calling a pitch. “Well,” complained the player, “is it a ball or a strike?” Most umpires would simply acknowledge the facts, but Klem was made of sterner stuff. “Sonny,” he replied, “it ain’t nothing ’til I call it.”

So it is: Nothing ain’t nothing (or better yet, nothing is nothing) until God “calls it.” But when he does, the word becomes fact and flesh and history, an idea so firmly imbedded in biblical thought that the Hebrew word dabar, in certain contexts, can mean at the same time both word and event. 

History and current events are not "one damn thing after another,” as Henry Ford insisted, but the end product of God’s infinite wisdom. There are no maverick molecules (or viruses) in the universe. 

Therefore, “Don’t be afraid…” (Isaiah 44:8). 

David Roper

4.4.20

"When You Think You Have To Worry…”

“Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his life span?” (Matthew 6:26-27).

What Jesus precludes is not work but worry. Birds spend a lot of time and energy scratching up food, but they don’t worry about the product. Food is there to be found, provided by our Father. So, our Father provides for us. 

To be honest, our chief anxiety these days is not groceries—we can order them online and have them delivered. Our greatest concern is our “life span.” Will we pass through the corona crisis unscathed? 

Even so, our Lord tells us not to worry. Anxiety can’t add even 18” to our lifespan. (The ancients applied linear measurements—handbreadths and arm lengths—to time lines.) Worry, in fact can shorten our lives.

It’s best then to cast those anxieties on the Lord, knowing that he really, truly cares …all of which reminds me of an oft-quoted poem:

Said the robin to the sparrow,

“I should really like to know,

Why these anxious human beings

Rush about and worry so.”

Said the sparrow to the robin,

“Friend I think that it must be,

That they have no Heavenly Father,

Such as cares for you and me.” 

—Elizabeth Chaney

If you have trouble believing that your Father in Heaven cares for you don’t worry. Rather ask him to help you believe. Everything, even faith, comes, in due time, from above. (Ephesians 2:8,9). 

David Roper

4.2.20

Passengers to the Grave

And he will swallow up on this mountain

the pall that is cast over all people,

the shroud that is spread over all nations.

He will swallow up death forever;

and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, —Isaiah 26:7

“We are all passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys." —Charles Dickens

We normally don’t think about death, which, as I think about it, is a very odd thing not to think about. Don’t we know that we’re all going to die someday? Six hundred thousand Americans die each year from cancer; six hundred thousand from heart attacks. If the Corona virus doesn’t get us, something else will. It’s just a matter of time. According to an unexpectedly philosophical one-liner I heard on Sports Center the other day: “He (a noted sports figure) is listed as day-to-day, but then again, aren’t we all?”

But not to worry Isaiah said, pointing up to Mount Zion’s summit just outside the walls of Jerusalem—a hilltop later called “Golgotha,” and “Calvary. “ On that mountain, Isaiah said, “the pall that is cast over all people, the shroud that is spread over the nations” will be swallowed up forever.

Indeed it was: Jesus, beat death by dying on that mountain to bring us life and immortality. Death was “swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54). 

“Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never, ever die. Do you believe this? (John 11:25,26).

David Roper

4.1.20

On Eagle’s Wings

Have you not known? Have you not heard?

The LORD is the everlasting God,

the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary;

his understanding is unsearchable.

He gives power to the faint,

and to him who has no might he increases strength.

Even youths shall faint and be weary,

and young men shall fall exhausted;

but they who wait for the LORD shall renew (exchange) their strength;

they shall mount up with wings like eagles;

they shall run and not be weary;

they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:28-31)

I’ve often watched eagles soar o’er the Owyhee River, rising out of the canyon on thermal updrafts, scarcely flapping their wings, peerless examples of effortless strength and grace—reminding us that we too can rise above our busy days and duties; we can “run and not become weary.”

But, it’s worth noting, we can also “walk and not faint.” We can plod through monotonous, pedestrian days when we’re sheltering in place, distanced from family and friends, living in a house full of restless moppets, or living by ourselves—alone. In that place, as we rest in him we can “renew” (Heb: "exchange") our strength. 

Our weariness and exhaustion for God’s inexhaustible strength. Ours for the asking. Such a deal we got!

David Roper

3.28.20

Sheltering In Place II

"Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, 'Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it’" (Genesis 28:16).

Jacob was on the lam, fleeing from Esau’s wrath, and came to “no particular place,” as the Hebrew text suggests. As night was falling, he cleared a spot in the rubble-strewn ground, and found a flat rock on which to lay his head. He soon lapsed into a deep sleep in which he began to dream. In his dream Jacob saw a stairway, rising from the stone at his head, connecting heaven and earth. 

The traditional ladder is such a favorite image it’s a shame to give it up, yet the picture of angels in ungainly apparel scrambling up and down the rungs of a ladder leaves much to be desired. The term usually translated “ladder” actually suggests a stairway or stone ramp like those that led to the top of ziggurats, the terraced pyramids raised to worship the gods of that era. The ziggurat with its steep stairway was a symbol of man’s efforts to plod his way up to God. It was hard work, but there was no other way to get help when you needed it (see Genesis 11:1–4). 

It’s odd how that pagan notion has found its way into our theology. Some early Christian writers used the ladder as an analogy for spiritual progress, tracing the steps of Christian faith from one stage to another, rising higher by self effort. Walter Hilton’s literary classic The Ladder of Perfection is based on that notion. The  old camp-meeting song “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder” draws on that association. 
In each case the emphasis is on the ascent of man. 

What arrested Jacob’s attention, however, was the fact that God had descended. He had come down the stairway and was standing next to him, for that’s the meaning of the adverb in 28:13. (“And behold, the LORD stood beside him.” The same Hebrew word is translated “nearby” in Genesis 18:2 and  “in front of,” in Genesis 45:1.) 

God was standing beside him. The God of Jacob’s father, Isaac, and grandfather, Abraham, was in this lonely place with him, contrary to Jacob’s expectations and far from the traditional sites he normally associated with God’s presence. “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it,” Jacob declared with wide-eyed, childlike astonishment. “This [place] is none other than the house of God.”

Jacob got the message, but God was taking no chances. He highlighted the picture with a promise that would sustain Jacob through the long, weary days ahead: “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go . . . I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised” (Genesis 28:15).

His promise is your promise as well. “God has said, ‘I will never leave you; I will never forsake you’” (Hebrews 13:5). He is present with you today—in the house or room where you find yourself sequestered, sheltering in place, isolated and alone. You can say of every site and circumstance, “Surely the Lord is in this place.”

G. K. Chesterton was asked by a reporter what he would say if Jesus were standing beside him. “He is,” Chesterton replied with calm assurance.

David Roper

Adapted from the chapter “Jacob’s Ladder” in The God Who Walks Beside Us