Whose Blame is it Anyway?
By Grant Gaines
“Jesus wept” (John 11:35, NIV). It is the shortest verse in the Bible and yet carries so much meaning. This two word, three syllable sentence has had more books written on it, more sermons preached on it, and more tears shed over it than can be counted. It reveals the love, compassion, and authenticity of the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, as He stood outside the tomb of his beloved friend Lazarus who had recently passed away.
However John 11:35 is not what I want to focus on today. Instead, I want to look at the reaction the first century crowd had to Jesus weeping in the verses that follow John 11:35.
After seeing Christ’s love for his dear friend Lazarus (John 11:36), a heavy question whispered among a few of the bystanders began to circulate among the crowd – “…This Man [Jesus] healed a blind man. Couldn’t He have kept Lazarus from dying?” (John 11:37, NLT). In other words, “If Jesus really loves Lazarus so much and had the power to save him, why didn’t He?”
Does that question sound familiar to you? It should because it’s the question that nearly every unbeliever will go to as a reason for their unbelief. “If God is really all-powerful and all-loving, then why does He allow a shooter to kill innocent children at Newtown? If God is really all-powerful and all-loving, then why does He allow a bomb to go off at the Boston Marathon? If God is really all-powerful and all-loving, then why does He allow…[insert your own example of suffering].”
Indeed, the issue of suffering and evil is more prevalent in today’s world than ever before. But this question should not cause us as believers in Christ to cower away or simply hide behind “blind faith” as our reason to believe in and defend God during tough times. In fact, the problem of evil opens a wide door for us to share the Gospel with our unbelieving friends.
So how do we answer the, “If God is all-loving and all-powerful why does He allow…” question? We take them all the way back to the beginning.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1, NIV), and “He saw all that He had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:31, NIV). In His absolute power (Genesis 17:1), God created everything good, because God is, by His very nature, good (Psalms 100:5). And though He is completely self-sufficient (Exodus 3:14), God desired to, “…make man in [His] image…” (Genesis 1:26, NIV) so He could love us and desired that we would love Him in return.
Now, in order to truly love, one must be given the choice to love or not to love. You can’t go up to some stranger on the street and demand that they love you – that’s not true love, they must have the choice to reciprocate that love or not. In fact, forced love is not love at all, it’s rape. And so God could not create humans to love Him without giving us freewill to choose to love Him or not to love Him. Thus God created man with freewill.
Unfortunately, starting all the way back with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:6) and continuing through every human being ever to be born, we have all abused the freewill God has given us to love Him and have chosen instead to sin against Him (Romans 3:23). And as a result of our sin, evil and suffering entered the world.
So did God create evil? No – God created man with freewill which he [man] used to sin, thus bringing evil into our world.
“Ok,” the unbeliever will reason, “so God didn’t create evil, but why doesn’t He use His power to stop evil?”
Well God could stop evil (and He will stop evil at the second coming of Christ – Revelation 19-20), but that would require Him to do one of two things: either take away everything and everyone that causes evil (i.e. everyone who sins, which is every person in the whole world) or He would have to take away our freewill, which we use to sin, which also takes away our ability to truly love Him – the reason He created us in the first place.
So the question should not be, “Did God create/allow evil?” but, “Does God use the presence of evil for a good purpose?”
For starters, we need to be careful to avoid acting like we have all the answers to why a tragic event happens. In Isaiah 55:8-9 (NLT) God says, “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts…And My ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts.” We can’t explain all of God’s actions because His thoughts and plans are far superior to ours (Isn’t it a blessing to know that we serve a God who is wiser than we are?).
So we don’t know why God allows certain events to happen, but we do know that He is in control of and has a purpose for every situation – good or bad. We are promised in Romans 8:28 (NLT) that, “…God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose for them.” And again in Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV), “’For I know the plans I have for you,’” declares the LORD, “’plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”
God is in control of every situation and is working even the darkest moments for the ultimate good. If you look back with me to John 11, we learn that after the crowd asked Jesus why He allowed this time of suffering to occur, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead causing, “…many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary…[to] put their faith in Him” (John 11:45, NIV). Through what originally seemed to be a terrible time of suffering, God used to bring many people to faith!
Now, it’s not always going to be as easy to see how God is working out a tough situation for the ultimate good as it was in John 11, but you can still bet your bottom dollar that in the long run everything, “…is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God” (2 Corinthians 4:15, NIV). May this truth of God’s absolute control and goodness dictate your outlook when times are tough.
Comments? Questions? Suggestions?
©Grant Gaines 2013
