X-Delivery-Notice:  SMTP MAIL FROM does not correspond to sender.
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL8]
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Date:         Wed, 11 Nov 1992 19:56:22 CST
Reply-To:     bradk@isdgsm.rtsg.mot.com
From:         "(Brad Kaiser)" <bradk%isdgsm@RTSG.MOT.COM>
Subject:      Re: FREE WILL?

Interesting post, Tom.  I find myself agreeing with much of it, but it
left me unsatisfied with respect to the issue where, I think, you and I
part company: the relationship of God to the many evil things that
happen in the world.

Let me start by saying, categorically, that I am quite happy with the
idea that the Lord will save me when, how, and if He wills to save me.
I wouldn't have it any other way.  I also do not believe that I chose
Him before He chose me.

I am also content -- indeed, honored and delighted (!) -- to give the
Lord credit for everything good I that has ever happened to me, and
everything good that I have ever done.  (Of course, that makes me think
about what a pitiful contribution I have actually made toward doing His
work, but that's another story.)

However, that leaves all the bad stuff that happens in the world.

Is God ultimately responsible for evil in the world, as well as for
good?  If not, is He really sovereign?  If so, is He really righteous?

The idea I seem to hear from the predestinarian camp is that God is
responsible for everything that happens, because to assert otherwise is
to suggest that He is not really sovereign.

But can that really be?

Can God will that a loving, upstanding Christian mother of two young
children die at the hands of a drunken driver?

Can God will that an innocent unborn baby die horribly in an abortion
clinic?

Can God will that a small child be sexually abused by her father?

Can God will that people are shooting at each other in any of a
half-dozen unhappy parts of the world, for reasons nobody seems to
understand?

Can God will that any of us sin?

Am I correct in saying that the Calvinist answer to these questions is
essentially, "Yes, but if these things seem evil to you, then it's only
because you don't understand the ways of God"?

I find that totally unsatisfying, because we are left with no viable
standard for judging what is evil and what isn't.  If everything,
including the suffering of the innocent, is the will of God, is anything
"wrong"?  What does "sin" mean?

I've seen some other answers to this general question of why evil
persists in the world if God is both sovereign and righteous, in
addition to the one my Calvinist friends seem to propose:

  * The answer given in Rabbi Harold Kushner's book "Why Bad
    Things Happen to Good People".  This seems to end up saying
    that God is somehow incapable of preventing evil from hap-
    pening.  (I'm probably not giving Rabbi Kushner a fair shake,
    but I found his book a "tough read", since I disagree with it
    rather throroughly.)

  * An answer given in an otherwise excellent book I have on Catholic
    apologetics, which argued that the evils in the world are often or
    always the result of a LACK of something, rather than of the
    presence of something.  In other words, evil is literally a negative
    force or concept, like cold or emptiness.

    But this seems to beg the question; if evil is caused by a lack
    of something, why didn't God create the something?

The only solution that satisfies me is twofold:

  * Sometimes, God truly does will things that, to us, seem objectively
    "evil".  We see this frequently in the Old Testament.  There is a
    passage in one of the Gospels where Jesus is asked about the
    Galileans "whose blood Herod mixed with their sacrifice."  Jesus
    responds by referring to some people who were killed by a falling
    tower, and He adds the warning, "this will be the fate of all who do
    not repent."  (I'm quoting from memory; can't find the passage right
    now; I apologize if I got it wrong.)

    This explains at least some of the things described as "acts of God"
    on insurance policies. ;-)

  * With respect to other things, however, particularly sins and their
    ill effects on innocent parties, God's will is effectively not
    always sovereign.  (Note the word "effectively", it's very
    important!)

    I think that, in these cases, God forbears from exercising His
    sovereignty.  He doesn't surrender it, He simply does not exercise
    it.  Why?  Why does God allow things which displease Him, and which
    are contrary to His will ("will" understood to be His preferred
    choice or outcome).

    I believe part of the reason is to give us a world which is rational
    and causal, a world with cause-and-effect relationships which we can
    understand.  Suppose that I swing at someone's chin with my fist.
    If God stopped my fist in midair, do we really have a rational
    world, or do we simply have a world in which God obviously and
    blatantly calls all the shots, and there's no thinking left for us
    to do.  And if that were the case, would there be any place left for
    faith?  And what of a world where sin never had any consequences
    except for the guilty?  Effectively, we wouldn't have needed a
    Redeemer; all we would have had to do was to look around to see the
    need to repent.

    Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is the realization of what is hoped
    for and the evidence of things not seen.  If a perfectly righteous
    God exercised His sovereignty constantly, there would be nothing for
    which to hope.  His Kingdom would be accomplished here and now.
    And, there would be no call for "evidence of things not seen",
    because God's righteousness would be on display for all to see.

In Jesus,

Brad Kaiser
(bradk%isdgsm@rtsg.mot.com)

	  Those who trust in Him shall understand truth,
	  and the faithful shall abide with Him in love;
	  Because grace and mercy are with His holy ones,
	  and His care is with His elect.
		    -- Wis 3:9 [NAB]
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU