"Why Does God Allow Bad Things to Happen?"

            The technical, theological term for my sermon this Sunday, February 24th, is “theodicy,” which is the problem of evil.  For Christians the problem of evil is an especially difficult challenge because of our understanding of who God is.  Traditionally, Christians have seen God as all knowing (omniscient), all powerful (omnipotent), and all loving.  We believe that God seeks to be in a loving, caring relationship with each of us.  Given this understanding of who God is, the challenge becomes this:  If God is all powerful; if God is all knowing; and if God is all loving, then why does God allow bad things to happen?

            In my sermon this Sunday, February 24th, I will be struggling with this doubt.  The scriptural basis for my sermon will be Job 38: 1-12.  As we discovered in my previous sermon on February 10th, concerning whether we can be angry with God, the Book of Job is an excellent resource for reflection on the problem of evil. 

            In reflecting on theodicy, I think it is important to distinguish between natural evil versus human evil.  By natural evil, I mean the occurrence of bad things, which are beyond human control and responsibility.  Natural evil occurs on a large scale, when humans and other living creatures suffer because of floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc.  Natural evil also occurs on an individual scale when, for example, an individual suffers from a disease such as cancer, or a baby is born with a life impacting birth defect.  We tend to hold God completely responsible for natural evil.

            By contrast, human evil refers to evil, which is clearly caused by human decisions and actions.  Genocidal acts, such as the Holocaust, as well as more recently in Rwanda, Darfur, and Iraq, are examples of human evil on a large, social scale.  On an individual, personal scale, crimes such as rape and murder, are examples of human evil.  For many Christians, human evil seems to be more easy to understand—and explain.  We believe that God gifted each individual with free will, to choose either good or bad.  Thus, human evil can be explained as a freely chosen act that perpetrates evil over good. 

            For most of my pilgrimage as a Christian, I have felt comfortable explaining away human evil as not the responsibility of God, but rather the result of human free will.  More recently, however, I have become dis-satisfied with this answer concerning the root of human evil.  Part of my re-thinking on the question of human evil centers on scale.  When many persons suffer because of the decisions by a single individual or a small group of persons, is it reasonable to attribute all of that suffering to free will?  Consider the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings on December 14th:  In this tragedy, 26 people died because of the actions of a lone shooter, Adam Lanza.  Twenty-six lives seem like a very high price to pay for the misused free will of a single individual.  Why would a loving God allow so many people to suffer, just to warrant the free will of a single individual?

            Another reason that I am re-thinking my response to human evil concerns the nature of human freedom.  There is increasing doubt that individual persons are as completely free as we have traditionally assumed.  For instance, sociologists and anthropologists have long pointed out that individual persons are profoundly influenced by their social context.  Our “social location” shapes our outlook and limits our options to mentally consider various possibilities.  More recently, social geneticists have made interesting discoveries that suggest we may be genetically predisposed to adopt some social perspectives over others.  While none of these discoveries suggest that we lack some degree of free will, they do indicate that the scope of our free will may be significantly restricted.  For me, this restricted understanding of free will has begun to raise doubts about whether all of human evil can be simply written off as flawed human decisions.

            Job asks God, “Why have you allowed so many evil things to happen to me, your faithful and just servant?”  This is just a more personalized version of our question:  “Why Does God Allow Bad Things to Happen?”  In our scriptural passage this Sunday, God responds to Job, but God does not directly explain why bad things happen.  Although Christians have been struggling with theodicy for centuries, there does not appear to be a satisfactory answer to this doubt.  As Christians, we must accept and trust God in faith.

            At the same time, I believe that it is important to read the Book of Job side-by-side with the Gospels’ account of the crucifixion of Christ.  In John 15:13, Jesus says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  Then, Jesus did precisely this:  Jesus suffered and died on the Cross out of his love for us and in order to redeem all of Creation.  There may be no satisfactory explanation for the problem of evil, but we do not suffer alone.  God is present in our suffering.  God has also suffered with us through God’s suffering and death on the Cross.  Even though the rationale may be beyond human wisdom, we do see redemption in God’s suffering with and for us.  This should serve as strength and consolation when we suffer from evil—either human or natural.

This sermon is the seventh in a series, called:  “Confronting Our Doubts.”  For a complete listing of the series, see my first post below.  Through confronting issues that raise doubts, I believe that we can gain deeper understanding and a stronger faith.  I hope that this sermon will stimulate deeper reflection and understanding.

Feel free to post your comments on this blog.  If you live in the Meriden-area and do not have a regular church home, please consider attending Meriden United Methodist Church this Sunday.  Meriden UMC is located at the corner of Dawson and Main.  Our worship service starts on Sundays at 10 am.  Everyone is welcome and accepted because God loves us all.

Is It OK to Be Angry With God

            In their article, “Anger Toward God…,”  Julie Exline and her colleagues reported that 62% of the participants in a survey indicated that they were sometimes angry with God.[i]  The scientists discovered that persons become angry at God for a variety of reasons.  These causes for anger include:

Ø  Bereavement

Ø  Illness or injury of a loved one

Ø  Illness or injury of the respondent

Ø  Interpersonal problems such as abuse, breakups, or parental diveorce

Ø  Accidents

Ø  Personal failure or disappointments[ii]

While only a small fraction (2.5%) of respondents reported frequent anger towards God, Exline and her colleagues concluded that “anger toward God is an important dimension of religious and spiritual experience…”.

            This Sunday, February 10th, my sermon will explore doubts raised when we become angry with God.  For some Christians, it is wrong to be angry with God.  As an illustration, Pastor John Piper writes:

“it is never right to be angry with God. He is always and only good, no matter how strange and painful his ways with us. Anger toward God signifies that he is bad or weak or cruel or foolish. None of those is true, and all of them dishonor him. Therefore it is never right to be angry at God. When Jonah and Job were angry with God, Jonah was rebuked by God (Jonah 4:9) and Job repented in dust and ashes (Job 42:6).”[iii]

For Christians, such as Pastor John, anger with God is wrong because it indicates a lack of genuine faith, or they see it as simply morally wrong. 

Other Christians do not agree that anger with God is always wrong.  Tanya Marlow represents this alternative viewpoint, when she writes:

“Pastorally, I don’t think we should be telling people that their anger with God is a sin. We should be… [praying] that God meets them in midst of their questions and speaks to them out of the storm.”[iv]

         In my sermon Sunday, we will explore the question of whether it is ok to be angry with God, using the book of Job as our scriptural lens.  I understand why John Piper and other Christians believe that anger towards God is just plain wrong.  Yet, while I appreciate this position, ultimately I am not persuaded by it.  For me, the interpretive key here is the nature of my relationship with God.  I believe that God’s love for me, personally, is awesome.  God loves me, personally, more than I can even comprehend.  My relationship with God is personal.  

       Anger is an important emotion that is natural in any type of personal relationship, including our relationship with God.  In her perceptive article, “The Power of Anger in the Work of Love,” Christian ethicist Beverly Harrison wrote:  “Anger is not the opposite of love.  It is better understood as a feeling-signal that all is not well in our relation to other persons or groups or to the world around us.  Anger is a mode of connectedness to others and it is always a vivid form of caring.”[v]  So, feelings of anger toward God may indicate that something is not right in our relationship with God and that we need to repair some broken dimensions of our relationship with God.

       I will conclude by suggesting that rather than denying our feelings of anger towards God or feeling guilty about them, we need to examine and repair what is broken in our relationship with God.  In the long run, this approach could lead towards spiritual growth and a stronger, deeper faith in the God whose love for us is infinite.

Whether you agree or disagree with me, I hope that this sermon will stimulate deeper reflection and understanding of God and Christian discipleship.  Feel free to post your comments on this blog.  If you live in the Meriden-area and do not have a regular church home, please consider attending Meriden United Methodist Church this Sunday.  Meriden UMC is located at the corner of Dawson and Main.  Our worship service starts on Sundays at 10 am.  Everyone is welcome and accepted because God loves us all.

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[i] Julie J. Exline, “Anger Toward God:  Social-Cognitive Predictors, Prevalence, and Links with Adjustment to Bereavement and Cancer,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2011), vol 100, no. 1: 132.  (There were 1,481 respondents to this study, which was a large-scale survey in the United States.  The Exline et al. article discusses a total of five studies of anger towards God in the U.S.)

[ii] These results were from a second study which surveyed 189 college undergraduates from Ohio.

[iii] John Piper, “It Is Never Right to Be Angry with God,” available on the internet at http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/taste-see-articles/it-is-never-right-to-be-angry-with-god, accessed 5 February 2013.

[iv] Tanya Marlow, “Get Angry at God:  Job Did,” available on the internet at:  http://tanyamarlow.com/get-angry-at-god-job-did-is-it-a-sin-to-be-angry-with-god-pt-ii/, accessed 6 February 2013.

[v] Beverly Harrison, “The Power of Anger in the Work of Love,” in Making the Connections, Fourth Editin, edited by Carol Robb (Boston:  Beacon Press, 1986).

Follow Up to Sermon on 'Other Religions"

            Tomorrow, February 8th, I will post a blog, previewing my sermon for this coming Sunday (February 10th), exploring the doubt:  “Is It OK to Be Angry with God?”  Before moving ahead to that doubt, however, I promised to post a few follow-up comments to last week’s sermon, which explored the question of other religions.

            Christians have developed different ways to respond to—and interact with—other religions.  I really appreciate a three-fold typology for classifying these different interactions, which Adam Hamilton uses in his book, When Christians Get It Wrong.[1]  (See my February 1st blog for a full description of this typology.)

As I explained in my sermon on “Other Religions,” I am persuaded by the “Christian Inclusivist” position.  This perspective recognizes that salvation is a gift from God, which God can give to whomever God chooses.  This perspective affirms that God endows humans with the freedom to embrace or reject a relationship with God.  But, more importantly, it emphasizes the core Christian belief that God loves all human persons.  Thus, it leaves open the possibility that non-Christians may be reconciled with God and welcomed into life eternal with God.

In my sermon, I conceded that there may well be ways other than Christianity to the Truth and to the Divine.  That’s really not for me to decide.  What’s absolutely crucial for me, personally, is the way, the truth, and the life that flows through Jesus Christ.  I believe that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God has shown me how to live faithfully and God has proven conclusively that nothing—not even death itself—will ever separate me from God and God’s love.  It is important for me to say that I am a Christian not just because I believe that ultimately I will be resurrected and live in the eternal bliss of God’s Presence, as important as that is.  Not only that, but I am a Christian because living and serving as a disciple of Jesus makes my life richer and better—right now; right here on Earth.  I can only fully flourish in this life, as God intended, through my Christian faith and life.

I would describe my response to other religions as one of mutual respect, curiosity, and “dialogue.”  I really appreciate the way the United Methodist Book of Resolutions describes inter-religious dialogue, “Rather than a one-sided address, dialogue combines witnessing with listening.  It is the intentional engagement with persons who hold other faith perspectives for purposes of mutual understanding, cooperation, and transformation.”

I concluded my sermon last Sunday by suggesting that what may be most important about inter-religious dialogue is that through such dialogue we may learn how to become better, more faithful Christians.  One of my favorite models of this type of “learning dialogue” was that of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Gandhi developed a form of peaceful non-violent social protest, drawing in part on the teachings of Jesus that we should “love our enemies” and “turn the other cheek,” when confronted by violent aggression.  Gandhi called this new form on peaceful, non-violence,   Satyagraha.  Later, Martin Luther King, Jr. studied Gandhi’s writings on Satyagraha, and then used some of Gandhi’s insights to develop his peaceful, non-violent civil rights movement. 

Thus, we have Mahatma Gandhi, a Hindu, who learned how to become a better Hindu, by studying the teachings of Jesus Christ.  Then, in turn, Martin Luther King, a Christian, learned how to become a better Christian, by studying the teachings of Gandhi (a Hindu).  This is all one big happy circle, and I think it is how God intended for us to respect and learn from other religious traditions.

In my sermon, I promised to post a follow-up blog and list some of the ways in which I, personally, have become a better, more deeply committed Christian by learning from other religions.  Here are three examples from my own life:

Ø  There are five pillars of Islam, and I believe that I have become a better Christian by learning from two of those pillars.  The first is called, “salat,” which is the practice of praying five times a day.  There is something about the discipline of praying five times a day, including a prayer before sunrise, which has inspired by prayer discipline as a Christian.  Another pillar that I really appreciate is Zakāt, which is the religious discipline of giving 2½% of one’s accumulated wealth—not just income, but accumulated wealth—to the poor and marginalized each year.  This practice strengthens my appreciation of Matthew 25: 31-46.

Ø  I have learned a great deal about practices of meditation from lectures given by Buddhist Lama Chuck Stanford of the Rime Buddhist Center and Monastery in Kansas City, MO.  (A “Lama” is a reverend in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.)  By learning more about meditation, my Christian devotional life has improved and I believe that I have become a deeper, more committed Christian.

Ø  I especially appreciate the Jewish concept of Tikkun olam, which is the spiritual concept of “repairing—or, healing—the world.”  Tikkun olam reminds us that God has gifted humans with the responsibility to heal, repair, and transform the world.  A rabbi friend once confided that he was always perplexed by Christians’ seeming preoccupation with life eternal and our tendency to ignore the important responsibility which God has given us to cherish and repair this world.  I think my friend offers a very important corrective for Christian life and faith.  While the promise of the resurrection and life eternal with God is at the core of our faith, equally important is our God-given responsibility and privilege to care for and repair the world. 

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[1] Adam Hamilton, When Christians Get It Wrong (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 2010, 2013), see chapter 3, pp. 32-43.

What About Other Religions?

            In a survey conducted last fall, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that the United States continues to be a predominantly Christian society, with 73% of Americans identifying with some form of Christianity.  However, the survey also found that 6% of respondents identified with some other religion, which was an increase of 50% for other religions over five years ago, when the same survey was conducted.[1] We live in a society that is increasingly pluralistic, with neighbors and work colleagues who may be Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and many other faiths. 

             For many Christians, other religions can raise doubts about their own faith.  For instance, we may wonder, if Christianity is the true religion, then why are there other religious perspectives at all?  Why would God, who loves human persons so much, allow us to be distracted or misled by other, false religions?  Or, we may ask, can followers of other religions be saved?  And, if so, what does that imply about Christianity?

             As with the other questions and doubts that we have explored in this series, there are no easy answers here.  In his book, When Christians Get It Wrong[2], Adam Hamilton helpfully points out that the responses to many doubts concerning other religions can be divided into three categories:

 

1.      Christian Exclusivism, which holds that only Christians who place their faith completely in Christ will be saved and welcomed into life eternal with God.  Persons of other faiths will be condemned because they failed to put their faith in Jesus, no matter how many good deeds they do in life.

2.      Christian Universalism, which takes the opposite perspective, holding that all persons—including Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and all persons of other faiths—will ultimately be reconciled with God and be welcomed into life eternal with God.

3.      Christian Inclusivism, which takes something of a middle position between Christian Exclusivism and Christian Universalism.  From this perspective, Jesus Christ offers salvation to the world.  However, it recognizes that salvation is a gift from God, which God as God can offer to whomever God chooses, based upon God’s criteria.  This perspective affirms the core Christian belief that God loves all human persons and it leaves open the possibility that non-Christians may be reconciled with God and welcomed into life eternal, based upon God’s choice.

 I will use this framework proposed by Adam Hamilton in my sermon this Sunday, February 3rd, to explore doubts concerning other religions.  I will try to analyze each of these positions, suggesting strengths and weaknesses that I see with each one.

             My sermon will be based upon John 14: 6-7 and other scripture.  John 14: 6-7 reads:  “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.  If you know me, you will know my Father also.  From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

 

This sermon is the fifth in a series, called:  “Confronting Our Doubts.”  For a complete listing of the series, see my first post below.  Through confronting issues that raise doubts, I believe that we can gain deeper understanding and a stronger faith. 

In exploring these topics, I am not trying to convince everyone that they must resolve their doubts by agreeing with my position.  I think it is important for each person to develop their own answer to these doubts.  At the same time, I believe that as the pastor I should share where I am on this issue  Whereas at first glance, John 14: 6-7 may appear to give strong scriptural warrant for the first position of “Christian Exclusivism,” I will suggest in my sermon that a careful interpretation gives equal warrant for the second and third positions.  In the end, my personal perspective resonates most strongly with the third position of “Christian Inclusivism.”  Whether you agree or disagree with me, I hope that this sermon will stimulate deeper reflection and understanding of God and Christian discipleship.

Feel free to post your comments on this blog.  If you live in the Meriden-area and do not have a regular church home, please consider attending Meriden United Methodist Church this Sunday.  Meriden UMC is located at the corner of Dawson and Main.  Our worship service starts on Sundays at 10 am.  Everyone is welcome and accepted because God loves us all.

 

 

 

 

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[1] The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, “‘Nones’ on the Rise,” accessed online at http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx. 

[2] Adam Hamilton, When Christians Get It Wrong (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 2010, 2013), see chapter 3, pp. 32-43.