4 Looking Incoherence in the Eye
Looking Incoherence in the Eye One significant point of tension causing a sense of incoherence in the life of many Christians is the issue of pain. It is from this vantage point that we may find ourselves constantly questioning God. This problem is not only real; it is vast. Let me begin by telling two very different stories from two very different cultures.
The man walked into my office courteously. Somewhat apprehensive of where this conversation might go, I invited him to sit down and waited a moment before we began our pleasantries. I had never met him before; I only knew of him through one of my colleagues. I had been told that he had been brought up in a Christian home, had attended a Christian school, and had concluded that the faith he once held no longer met the challenges of his mind. He had married a follower of Christ without telling her that he was struggling with his faith, and they now had a young family. He had kept his agnosticism to himself, trying not to influence his family in that direction. He went to church with the family every week so that his children were not made vulnerable to his struggle. He was a successful businessman.
As we talked, he explained that his skepticism had grown with each passing year of his highly legalistic education at his
Christian school. His story was not atypical for that kind of institution. Those who go through authoritarian, legalistic training often end up either unable to think for themselves or prone to rebellion, tossing away everything they had been taught was true.
"They brainwash you and control your thinking. They don't allow you to think for yourself," he said. "In many ways their graduates have lost their ability to reason or to raise the right questions."
I could tell there was something different about this gentleman. To all appearances, he had not given up his faith in order to justify a freewheeling lifestyle. He lived his life according to conservative family values, believing there were norms by which he ought to live and lead his family. But just as he was solidly convinced that society had its "dues to pay" if it were to survive, he did not believe that those truths by which he lived needed to be rooted in God. In fact, he stated that in his view, this world is totally incoherent if the Christian God is the creator of the universe.
His political leanings made him believe in the philosophy that teaches there is only one law by which humanity should abide: one must not initiate fraud or deceit. According to this political theory, we do not need laws, and we do not need government encroaching on our liberties. As long as we do not initiate fraud or deceit, we should have absolute liberty to do anything else.
He was a fine man, and I do not wish to impugn either his motives or his intelligence. Nor do I wish to challenge his sincerity. But as I sat and considered the reason he had given for walking away from God, I couldn't help but wonder how it was possible to be so resolutely irrational—in the name of reason.
Here was his problem: If he believed in God, he would have to believe in good and evil. But the presence of evil made the world incoherent to him, because he could not reconcile the reality of evil with an all-powerful, all-loving God. Therefore he
could not believe in God. So how did he make sense out of a world that he had determined was incoherent if both evil and God were real? By denying both and buying into a political theory that assured him that all it would take to create a society of trust and respect was that everyone follow the single dictum not to initiate fraud or deceit.
But, I pointed out to him, he had violated his own inviolable first principle and introduced the reality of evil into the paradigm of his life by deceiving his wife about his
Christian commitment while he denied the existence of evil. He was attempting to live rationally, logically, and morally in a world that he believed was irrational, illogical, and amoral. In doing so, he had violated his own first principle and ended up thinking he was superior to God—certainly, the God of the Bible. Such self-incriminations are hard to admit, and so silence is the response.
Thousands of miles from this scene, I sat across the table from a young woman who had been running from a memory for several years. Success had been within her sights when she had fallen in love with a young man and decided to marry him.
In her culture, marriages based on love are viewed with societal disapproval—or at the very least with suspicion, at a generational level. Not only was it a "love match," but he had come from a lower rung of society's ladder, which made marriage to him an unthinkable thing to even contemplate. Her parents had refused to grant their permission for the couple to marry, so she had chosen to elope with the love of her life, and together they moved to another city, where no one would know them and where they could build a life together.
At first, things had gone quite well, even though both were totally alienated from their families. But one day, while on
a business assignment for an extended period, miles away from her husband, she met another man and found that the lure of her growing feelings for him challenged the love she thought she had for her husband. After a few months, she told her husband she wanted a divorce from him. Across the miles, he begged her to change her mind, but she was determined to follow through with her decision. Her husband traveled to talk to her, but she spurned his pleas. Finally, one evening as they were arguing, he excused himself and went into another room for a few minutes. When he returned, he told her he had decided he would grant her wish if it was what she wanted. But he had one request—that she allow him to lay his head in her lap for a few minutes before he would go away, never to bother her again. Seeing his sadness and his love for her in his eyes, she agreed, and he lay down with his head in her lap. He closed his eyes, and within a few minutes she sensed something was wrong. She couldn't get him to wake up. He had lapsed into unconsciousness and within minutes was dead. He had ingested poison and taken his own life.
Years had gone by, and the memory continued to haunt her. Torn by guilt and confusion, more alone than she ever thought she could be, she visited a priest. After going through some ceremonial rituals and meditation, she was comforted as he told her that by his divinations he had determined she had no responsibility in what had happened—that she was free from any guilt in the matter—because in her husband's previous life he had raped her, and what had happened to him was payback time. She could rest in the knowledge that he had received his just reward and that she had played no part whatsoever in what had happened. This was the justification she needed to be freed from the guilt she had been carrying for
her role in his death. The priest had accomplished his task. She found a new life, and her life could be lived happily ever after.
Or not. Was this true, or was it nothing more than a charade to bury the reality of what had happened under the weight of some mystical belief in order to ease her guilty conscience? The face across the table from me looked poised, successful, self-respecting—everything you would expect from a young professional. But it was evident that her past continued to tear at her heart, even as it did mine as I listened.
Only in an abstractly moral, systemically illogical, and personally cyclical world can one live free from guilt if consolation can be found by explaining away the pain as the payback from a previous life. In such a world, one must live with an impersonal morality and contradictory logic in order to escape reality.
I point to these two stories to show the extent to which we humans will go to rationalize evil or explain it away. In the first story, the naturalist's method of escaping evil was to dismiss it as incoherent to believe, in the face of evil, that someone was in control of this universe, because if nobody is in control, then evil is reduced to nothing more than a perversion of cultural norms. However, even if there is no personal, moral
First Cause of the universe, some ethic is still needed to ensure the survival of society, though the purpose of survival to the naturalist remains unknown. Intuitively, we all feel that survival is better than extinction.
In the second story, attributing evil to the payback for something done in a previous life balances the ledger of good and bad and makes life more livable for the pantheist, who lives with the benefits of moral categories without having a personal
God to whom he or she is accountable. Moral categories do
exist, but only as an abstraction; there is a cause, but not a first cause; there is a judgment, but not a judge; there is accountability to a system, but no one to whom you are accountable; it is possible to find exoneration for flouting the moral categories, but there is no one who can pronounce pardon; there is a law, but no lawgiver. The amazing irony about this paradigm is that even though life at its core is not personal, all questions about evil and suffering are raised either by a person or about a person. Personhood then becomes a knife wound to the heart of pantheism, its impact mitigated by a mystical imagination.
There are some similarities between these two worldviews.
In both, the realities of life are quite different from what the worldview holders want them to be, and in both, soothing words, spiritualized philosophies, and secular self-sufficiency weigh in, vying for allegiance.
STRANGE ESCAPES TO WHICH THE BIBLE IS NO
STRANGER There is a story in the Bible that raises this question of pain and suffering within the context of both worldviews above— the irrelevancy of sin in this life and generational sin from a past life. The question posed by the early disciples (John 9:2) was prompted by different reasons from those prompting the question for the typical Westerner today. The disciples believed it was impossible to escape from the consequences of sin against God, and therefore they questioned who was directly to blame. The Western skeptic today does away with God because of the inescapable presence of suffering. Jesus rejects both responses in this incident. So how does an all-
powerful, loving God justify pain?
In John 9, we are told that in their travels, Jesus and his disciples came upon a man who had been blind from birth.
Believing that blindness was a penalty for sin, the disciples were curious to know how a person could be blind from birth before he had had the opportunity to choose for good or evil.
So they asked Jesus if the man was blind because of his own sin or because of someone else's. Behind their question were other questions that led to what they were really asking Jesus:
How would a man be born blind? Is this a judgment caused directly by his sin? But how could that be? Can a child sin in the womb? But that didn't make sense, so they concluded it must be a judgment on the parents for their sin.
Jesus' answer surprised them, probably confused them, and eventually—when they looked back on the incident— enlightened them. This blindness was not the result of sin on the part of either the man or his parents, he said, but it happened so that the work of God in the man's life, and ultimately in human history, could be clearly seen.
In one sense, the text doesn't really answer the question, because it is given within the framework of a larger context.
What is "the work of God"? If the work of God was the reason for the man's blindness, it is advantageous to discover what that work of God is, especially since Jesus adds that this event was taking place in the daylight of man's history on earth, before the night came and no such work could be done.
WHO IS ASKING THE QUESTION?
There are several things here that lead us to see the tension within us of pain, its reasons and remedy, and why the answers
that Christianity puts forth are so great.
Four groups of people ask the question: What is the work of God being displayed? First is the man himself—the object of the disciples' question and the subject of the healing. Second are the disciples, who are asking for a resolution to the problem of pain. Third are those who recognize that the man's healing is supernatural but who have no way to explain it. And fourth are the religious and political leaders, who don't want to accept the explanation for the man's suffering and healing and its implication about who Jesus is.
The Man Born Blind Let's first look at the man himself. He gives a simple testimony to the fact that all he knows about what has happened is that he was born blind and now he can see (John
9:25). Jesus points out that the greater blindness is to believe that one is seeing reality when, in fact, one is blind to the truth.
When a person's false perspective on what is real is turned upside down, that is indeed a greater miracle than physical healing.
The man who was healed is ironically, perhaps, the weakest witness to Jesus' miracle of healing. Why? How often have you heard someone's testimony to the transforming touch of Jesus Christ in his or her life completely dismissed by someone who is skeptical? When one looks at the writings of skeptics such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, one can't help but wonder how much they really know about the Christian faith. How much have they really seen of Christianity at work? During the course of nearly forty years, I
have traveled to virtually every continent and seen or heard some of the most amazing testimonies of God's intervention in the most extreme circumstances. I have seen the most hardened criminals touched by the message of Jesus Christ and their hearts turned toward good in a way that no amount of rehabilitation could have accomplished. I have seen ardent followers of radical belief systems turned from being violent, brutal terrorists to becoming mild, tenderhearted followers of Jesus Christ. I have seen nations where the gospel, banned and silenced by governments, has nevertheless conquered the ethos and mind-set of an entire culture.
I think, for example, of the church in China. In the middle of the twentieth century, after destroying all of the Christian seminary libraries in the country, Chairman Mao declared that the last vestiges of Christianity had been permanently removed from China, never to make a return. On Easter Sunday in 2009, close to half a century later, the leading English language newspaper in Hong Kong published a picture of Tiananmen
Square on page 1, with Jesus replacing Chairman Mao's picture on the gigantic banner, and the words "Christ Is Risen" below it. It is estimated that the church in China is the fastest-growing church in the world. I have had conversations with young students in one of China's most prestigious universities who were eagerly asking their questions about Christ, some confessing that their faith in Christ is now the most remarkable thing about their lives.
I have also been in the Middle East and marveled at the commitment of young people who have risked their lives to attend a Bible study under cover of darkness, some having traveled from staunchly Muslim countries just to learn more about Jesus. I have talked to CEOs of large companies in
Islamic nations who testify to seeing Jesus in visions and dreams and wonder what it all means. Granted, there may be individual experiences that, subjected to rigorous questioning, could be shown to be false, but to hear variations of this story repeated in the lives of thousands, if not millions, of people across the globe is to at least make it reasonable for anyone with a rational mind to legitimately ask the question: Who is
Jesus, and what is happening?
To the person who argues that these things happen all the time in religious and superstitious countries because of the force of culture and therefore mean little, I could say much in response. But even as I write this, the newswires are abuzz with the dramatic turnaround of the British author A. N. Wilson, who only a few years ago was known for his scathing attacks on Christianity and his mockery of its sacred truths. This year,
Wilson celebrated Easter at church with a group of other church members, proclaiming that the Jesus of the gospels is the only story that makes sense out of life and its challenges.
Here is Wilson in his own words.
Why did I, along with so many others, become so dismissive of Christianity?
Like most educated people in Britain and Northern Europe (I was born in 1950), I have grown up in a culture that is overwhelmingly secular and anti-religious. The universities, broadcasters, and media generally are not merely nonreligious, they are positively anti.
To my shame, I believe it was this that made me lose faith and heart in my youth. It felt so uncool to be religious. With the mentality of a child in the playground, I felt at some visceral level that being religious was unsexy,
like having spots or wearing specs.
This playground attitude accounts for much of the attitude toward Christianity that you pick up, say, from the alternative comedians, and the casual light blasphemy of jokes on TV or radio.
It also lends weight to the fervor of the anti-God fanatics, such as the writer Christopher Hitchens and the geneticist Richard Dawkins, who think all the evil in the world is actually caused by religion… My own return to faith has surprised no one more than myself. Why did I return to it? Partially, perhaps it is no more than the confidence I have gained with age.
Rather than being cowed by them, I relish the notion that, by asserting a belief in the risen Christ, I am defying all the liberal clever-clogs on the block: cutting-edge novelists such as Martin Amis; foul-mouthed, selfsatisfied TV presenters such as Jonathan Ross and Jo
Brand; and the smug, tieless architects of so much television output.
But there is more to it than that. My belief has come about in large measure because of the lives and examples of people I have known—not the famous, not saints, but friends and relations who have lived, and faced death, in the light of the resurrection story, or in the quiet acceptance that they have a future after they die.1
What do we make of all of this? When your life has been touched by the supernatural work of Jesus Christ, can you just dismiss it as nothing more than psychological aberration?
Growing up in India with religions of every stripe around me, I struggled as a teenager to find meaning in my life and a way
out of the complexity of religion. It was on a hospital bed in New Delhi, after I had attempted suicide, that Jesus Christ tracked me down, the last person I expected to meet in that situation. Out of the sheer emptiness of my life and my sense of failure, I had tried to end my life. I had not the slightest intention of "getting religious." Yet in that desolate moment, unexpectedly a Bible was brought to me. There in that hospital room, as the Word of God was read to me, something within me cried out that this was not just what I needed; it was the truth.
I am fully aware that most skeptics would not only find this pathetic; they would also find it irrational. But I ask the skeptic in return, "Why do you not believe?" I am aware that the arguments against belief will run the gamut from the experiences of other people who have not had this encounter with Christ to points of reason and logic—to which I have counterarguments. But now I want to focus on the experiential side of the issue. If the experience of someone in suffering and pain is valid as a counterpoint to the gospel, why isn't the experience of someone else who has known God's presence in suffering and pain just as valid? From the point of view of argument, I will go so far as to say that while the skeptic may score points in that it is not possible to scientifically verify someone else's experience of God in their lives, nothing can change my mind about what I have experienced with Jesus
Christ. My transformation is as solid as the very act of writing this book. There is clearly implicit power in the gospel to change hearts. Jesus made this clear.
Likewise, the man who was healed of his blindness said, "Look, whatever you may make of Jesus, I just want you to know this. I was blind, and because of his touch, I now can see." That was the bottom line—and it was what he wanted the
critics to understand.
Surprised by Suffering The second group is the disciples who, having seen and heard what had happened, still needed an explanation. Let me specifically respond to two of the witnesses to Jesus' life and works who have recorded this story—John and Luke.
It is interesting to note the focus that the physician Luke brings to his narrative. From the beginning to the end of his gospel, his focus is on the women who were followers of Jesus and who believed the story with an exemplary depth of commitment. One need only remember how weak a woman's testimony was in court in those days. Yet Luke follows the women of the story in his narration from the virgin birth to the Garden Tomb on Easter Sunday as the women arrived to anoint
Jesus' body and found him gone. He does so with such boldness that he could easily have run the risk of being totally discredited as a doctor and disrespected as a man for believing their testimony. Then he writes the book of Acts for his friend
Theophilus, and there the testimony is rigorously masculine as he follows two main characters, the apostle Peter up to chapter
9, and then the conversion and ministry of Saul of Tarsus— who became Paul the apostle and carried the message to the Roman world and on into Europe. Luke accompanied Paul on many of these journeys and tells the story as a firsthand witness.
Luke states quite clearly in his gospel and in Acts that the disciples were eyewitnesses to Jesus' majesty. What does all this mean? They were able to tell of Jesus' birth, his life, the
miracles, the prophecies, his death and resurrection because they were there. Now how do the death and resurrection of Jesus fit into the "work of God" that we seek to define?
For most of us, death is the thing we fear most. We think about it. We may seek to explain it, and when it comes, we may sometimes try to confront it cavalierly. Yet it is the one event that most of humanity does everything it can to postpone or eliminate. Even if we are willing to face it ourselves, we do not wish to lose to death those we love. But it was the one event that Jesus prophesied about himself, including the specific manner in which he would die.
The cornerstone of each of the four gospels is clearly the last week of Jesus' life. Matthew and Luke begin with the birth narrative, both for particular reasons. Matthew, with his distinctively Jewish focus, wanted to highlight Jesus' royal lineage from David; Luke, as a physician, would undoubtedly have been especially interested in the virgin birth. Mark and John do not include any narration of the birth. John, writing to the philosophical Greek mind, goes directly to the idea of the Logos—the Word. But all give a great deal of space and attention to the death and resurrection of Jesus. John devotes half of his space to it; in the others, the death and resurrection of Jesus take up from one-fourth to one-third of their manuscripts. There is absolutely no doubt that the death and resurrection of Jesus is the point of reference for them. It is clearly and unequivocally essential to the gospel story as they saw it. This has been reflected in Christian music throughout the centuries, including the great cantatas and compositions of Handel, Bach, Mendelssohn, Stainer, and others.
None of the writers of the gospels were expecting Jesus' death and resurrection, even though he had repeatedly tried to
prepare them for it. Even the miracle of the virgin birth, as dramatic as it was, did not throw them and demand the attention of Mark and John; they were able to connect the dots of his birth to the prophecies in the Old Testament. But they simply could not fully comprehend the death narrative. John was captivated by two things, the very things that lend coherence to the story. I will return to this point later, but for now I want us to consider the incoherent side of the story— the issue of pain—and its impact on us and perhaps its incompatibility with our idea of God.
More than half of John's gospel is given over to what is referred to as the passion of Christ—his suffering and his purpose in coming to earth in the first place. When we have the joy of bringing children into the world, we wish them prosperity, health, and success. None of us would wish them pain and suffering. When God sent his Son into this world, there was every intention and assurance of success, but it came with full knowledge of the path of pain and suffering that Jesus would walk in order to fulfill his purpose. For us to truly fathom this is to move into a completely different paradigm of thinking.
We resist pain because pain debilitates and forces limitations on us; Jesus, however, willingly followed the path of pain because it would bring us healing and open new horizons for us. We resist pain because we think of the "now" rather than of life's ultimate purpose; Jesus endured pain in order to restore ultimate purpose to us and to our existence.
We resist pain because we are drawn toward that which brings us comfort and a sense of well-being; Jesus experienced pain so that we would find our ultimate comfort and well-being in God and in doing his will.
Earlier we focused on the suffering of the cross in its real reflection of separation from God. I want to focus here on the Son who experienced that suffering and how pertinent his suffering is in the context of the revelation of the gospel to that time in history. I believe this is a context that is often ignored.
If we had to choose between inflicting pain on someone else or bearing it ourselves, most of us would not hesitate to inflict pain on the other person because we deny them the same rank or privilege as ourselves, except in the case of a parent and child. This is even more so in the Middle East, where scores are settled and resettled generation after generation, ad infinitum. Jesus took our pain in order to give us the greatest of all privileges—becoming the children of God— and to finally settle the score with God for violating his law.
In a recent newspaper article, I read something that struck a chord. A federal judge in India had been accused of malpractice, and he had been caught on videotape, manipulating the legal system. But when he was questioned by the newspaper, he said, "I swear by God and my two children that I have not done anything wrong."
As I read that line over a few times, I thought how odd it was to take an oath on God and his two children. Then it dawned on me. In our most vulnerable moments we grasp that which is the most inviolable and sacred and measure ourselves against that reality. The judge was actually saying, "If I am lying, I put myself in the hands of God to be my judge, and may he inflict on my children the penalty for that which I have violated." Does this remind you of the cries of the crowd at Jesus' sentencing: "Let his blood be on us and on our children!" (Matthew 27:25)?
Now come with me to the story of Abraham, for there are
two defining moments in Abraham's life. The first is in Genesis 15, and it is important that we understand what is happening.
Abraham is asked by God to sacrifice certain animals specified by God. After the animals are killed, their bodies are cut into pieces and the pieces are laid on the ground. "When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram" (verses 17 – 18).
The presence of God, demonstrated by the firepot with the blazing torch, moved among the pieces of the animals, and God's implication is this: If I fail to do my part, may the same thing be done to me that was done to this animal. In other words, may I cease to be if I break my word to you. God's pledge with Abraham is the ultimate and unbreakable guarantee, because it was based on the surety of his own existence. In effect, God is saying, "May I cease to be if I do not do my part." It is impossible for God not to be, and therefore it is impossible for God not to keep his promise.
That's how certain it was.
The second pivotal incident in Abraham's life comes as God tells him to take his son up a mountain that God chose, and sacrifice him there to demonstrate that his first allegiance is to God (Genesis 22). Sorrowfully, Abraham obeys and everything is readied for the sacrifice. In the previous instance, the sacrifice is the demonstration of the consequences for the future if God were to fail to keep his pledge. In this instance, however, the sacrifice of Abraham's son demonstrates not only Abraham's allegiance to God but also his faith in the future, because even though this is his only son he still has faith to believe that God will fulfill his promise to multiply his descendants on the earth.
In every culture I know of, the lives of its children have more value than the adults' lives. Every parent I know of would gladly accept suffering herself if it would spare her child from having to suffer. To be willing, therefore, to risk one's children is the ultimate test of one's love, which is what gives children their value.
Let me put this in its most pragmatic setting. No part of the world has seen more pain and suffering and war than the Middle East. Just visiting the region, one feels the tension, consciously or unconsciously, and realizes that everything that takes place there is seen within the context of the conflict.
It is interesting that, years ago, when Golda Meier was asked when the killing would stop in that region, she is reported to have said, "When they love their children more than they hate us." Only a mother would have said that, and only an Easterner would have taken such an approach on a matter so politically charged.
But there is irony in her answer because the whole question in the area is whose sons have the right to own and live in the land in that region. Both sides would argue that they do love their sons and that it is for the love of their sons that they fight for the land.
The question then is this: Which passion wins the day— love of one's own children or hatred of the other's? When the issue is distilled down, these are the two tensions at work, aren't they: my love for my children and my hatred for the enemy I perceive to be standing in their way. This is precisely where, I propose, the cross brings coherence to the question.
The best illustration I know is a conversation I had with one of the leaders of Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement that tries to create enough unrest in the region to accomplish
its own goals. A few years ago, I along with other Western religious leaders engaged in a peace mission were invited to the home of the sheikh for lunch and conversation. We were profoundly aware of how deep the passions ran in that region as we listened to him and heard about all the suffering he and his family had endured and about how much death his people had witnessed.
We were each allowed to ask one question of the sheikh in response to what he told us. After I asked my question, to which I received an unsatisfactory answer, I said to him,
"Sheikh, you and I may never meet again, but I have something I want to share with you. Five thousand years ago, on a hill not far from where we are sitting, Abraham took his son to offer him as a sacrifice. Do you remember that story?"
"Yes," he said.
"Abraham readied everything for the sacrifice. As Abraham raised his hand with his knife poised to sacrifice his son, God stopped him and said something. Do you remember what God said?"
Unsure of where I was going, the sheikh waited for me to continue. " 'Stop!' God commanded. 'Stop, do not lay a hand on the boy. I will provide.'"
"Sheikh, even closer to where you and I are seated today is another hill. And nearly two thousand years ago, God kept that promise when he took his own Son up that hill, and this time, God let the blade do its work."
The sheikh and others in the room remained silent. Then I said the words I wanted him to always remember: "Sheikh, until you and I receive the Son whom God has provided, we will always be offering our own sons and daughters on the battlefields of this world for land and power and ownership."
To say that one could have heard a pin drop would be an understatement. The afternoon came to an end, and we descended the stairs to be ushered to our cars. The sheikh came over to my side, embraced me, kissed me on both sides of the face, and said, "You are a good man. I hope I shall see you again some day."
In that simple conversation, under the tensest of circumstances, a truth dawned on me. For most of us, everything we do or accrue in life—our jobs, our homes, the laws we support—are inevitably for one purpose: to give our sons and daughters a better chance at life and success than we had. I have heard this all over the world. If one is negligent in his or her family relationships or responsibilities and yet succeeds everywhere else, the sense of failure is hard to overcome. Any success is marred. But God offered up his own
Son to pain and death because of his love for the world. This is the amazing story of the gospel. Only in the gospel is there ultimate triumph over pain, death, and sin because our pain, our death, and our sin were borne by God's Son.
This is the answer for the blindness and the pain of the world. This is the hope that God alone can offer. This is the defining distinction. For evil to continue, hatred has to exist side by side with love. In the gospel, the God who loves his
Son also loves the world and as an act of love gave his Son over to pain, suffering, and death so that he would triumph over death and provide eternal love and life for us, ensuring the ultimate elimination of evil and pain. Both the means of the salvation that God offers to us and the object of his salvation is love. This is what the disciples discovered was the work of God to be displayed—and this was the reason the man in the story had been born blind.
So profound and spiritually laden is this truth that it points to the ultimate paradigm shift from the temporal things of the earth to the eternal things of heaven and eternity. This is the work that God displayed on the cross, and this is the defining lens that determines our blindness or sight. To the one who sees this and accepts the work that God has done, the Light of the world illuminates the darkness and dispels the shadows of fear. To the one who refuses to see this and rejects
God's work, darkness shrouds the light, and everything appears indistinct or distorted.
Family, Friends, and Neighbors The third group—the man's family, friends, and neighbors
—found it hard to deny that something life transforming had taken place, but they couldn't explain it. They all knew he had been born blind and could now see, but they couldn't explain what had happened. The visible results were hard to deny. The question was: What had caused this change?
The answer begins with the nature of good and evil. Let us for now grant the basic idea that good is that which seeks the rightful and essential worth of humanity, while evil is that which puts self over every other person's right and essential worth. Much can be said to enhance each part of the statement, but for now we'll consider the basic ideas of worth and essence through the lens of history and culture.
Two of humanity's greatest needs over time have been the need for knowledge and the need to keep healthy. We take our health for granted until it's jeopardized. Look across history and see the deeds of Christians on behalf of the well-
being of humanity: hospitals, doctors, medicines, food, schools. It is easy to demonstrate that anyone who has called himself a Christian and yet has victimized people and abused their rights has violated the precepts of the gospel while pretending to be living the gospel. But the record of Christians responding to their call to care for humanity is undeniable, and the message that Christ cares for and loves people is being acted out all over the world. Skeptics, such as the modern-day atheist Matthew Parris, have been candid enough to admit the impact of the gospel imperative in such matters. After returning from a visit to Malawi, where he had spent his childhood, Parris wrote an article titled "As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God." The subtitle was this: "Missionaries, not aid money, are the solutions to Africa's biggest problem—the crushing passivity of the people's mind-set."
[Seeing the work of a small British charity there] inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in developing charities. But traveling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my worldview, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa… I used to avoid this truth by applauding—as you can
—the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the
sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was that help, not faith.
But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock.
This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.2
Coming from Parris this is nothing short of astounding. I cannot help but think of Bertrand Russell's comment in Why I Am Not a Christian:
I regard [religion] as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused
Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.3
This comment defies reason and betrays a hostility that blinds one even from common sense. It would have been better for Russell to argue that many without belief in God have done good things too, not just Christians. I would not deny this. But the skeptic must admit that he has no necessary rational grounds on which to determine the nature of good and evil, and therefore he has no imperative for doing good. The
pantheist need not explain good and evil apart from cyclical repetition, and in the theism of Islam, love and grace are far from imperatives in their core teaching. Only in the JudeoChristian worldview do we see good and evil operating in tandem. To focus only on the reality of pain and suffering and ignore the parallel reality of goodness and the basis for doing good is to render the world incoherent.
Religious and Political Leaders We turn now to the last group—those who were politically and religiously driven, the people who denied the entire episode because they wanted to deny who Jesus was.
Religiously speaking, this would translate into alternative interpretations for the work of God; politically, the belief that leadership has absolute and total autonomy over those it leads stands in the way of their religious freedom. Politics, of course, never has had and never will have the answers to ensuring the perpetuity of a nation. Look at history, and the facts are clear.
From the feudal warlords of ancient Mesopotamia to the divine status of kings in Babylon and Persia, from the democratic ideas of Greece to the empire building of Rome, from the theocracies of Islam and the state church of Europe to flirtation with the idea of freedom without responsibility in postmodern
America and the materialism of Communism, what has remained?
Political theories come and go. Nations and empires rise and fall. Civilizations wax and wane. For this very reason, Jesus resisted all efforts to make him an earthly king. The ultimate allegiance he wants is that of the heart, for the ultimate
universal battle is that of the will against God. The truth of God's work that abides forever and results in coherence is first lodged in the heart of a person and then in society. To look at the world and to deny God is to open the door into that resulting vacuum for the myriad philosophies and pseudoreligious fancies that may help us run from the past— but only into the arms of an incoherent future.
The book of Job is known even by those who have no respect for God and his Word as that which best symbolizes the struggle of pain. Yet few have taken to heart what Job really says. I remember debating an atheist in which he quoted from Job and said that the answers given to Job were insufficient. I surprised him by telling him that Job would agree with him. Then I asked him if he knew what Job's answer was to that insufficiency he was offered? The man was silent.
Job finds his answer in stages. He refuses to let one diagnosis or a great one-liner provide the satisfactory explanation for his situation. He starts his journey toward finding his answer for suffering and pain from the assumption of God as the Creator and Designer to seeing God as the Revealer of Truth, to recognizing him as Redeemer and Savior, and finally to experiencing him as the Restorer and Comforter.
How fascinating, for here the three aspects of the Trinity emerge—God the Father as Creator, God the Son as Redeemer, and God the Holy Spirit as Comforter. This triune God is a Being within whom there is a relationship. For Job, the overwhelming answer to his questions was not found in an argument. It was not found in a theological, philosophical, or scientific proposition. It was not even found in his relationships with his friends or his family, or in the truth or falsehood of their analyses of Job's problems. Job ultimately
found the answer to his questions and his fear—to his pain and his grief—in the voice of God and his divine encounter with him. The answer to his questions was a Person.
In an amazing way, all arguments die in the face of a thousand other questions. This is principally God's answer to Job. In fact, when God first began to respond to Job, he raised over sixty questions for which Job had no answers. There is no limit to argument and counterargument. Arguments are like weapons. Each time a new weapon is designed, a defense or a counteroffensive against it is designed—which is why the arms race, like the argument race, is never ending.
When all the words had died down, Job began his response to God with these humble words found in Job 42:2 –
"I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted.
You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?'
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.
"You said, 'Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.'
My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you."
There lay Job's answer—in his experience of the voice and presence of God. It is not surprising that the book of Job
ends with Job praying for his friends that they, too, might find the answer to his and their questions regarding pain and suffering in the person and presence of God. A friend of mine in India, who lives in a meager little place, once told me he always prays for America because "it must be so hard to trust in God when you already have so much."
For the many I know who have drawn closer to God through pain, I know of countless others who have turned away from him for the same reason. Perhaps that's why a verse from Job is engraved in Latin on the tomb of Oscar Wilde, a man who lived for pleasure and lost—the quintessential hedonist—and who in his closing moments suffered much and asked to be prayed with before he breathed his last.
To be sure, the problem of evil is a problem. But to reject the only One who can change the natural proclivities of my heart so that I learn to live and think and work like him is to perpetuate evil, not eliminate it. For Job, and the others mentioned in this chapter, the incoherence they struggled with was not so much the incoherence of suffering in a world where
God was in control but the incoherence of trying to explain the world if there is no God. To walk away from one's faith because of unanswered questions about evil is to walk into a storm of unanswered questions about good.