Suffering. Freedom. Desire.

At one point in core the other night, we answered the question, “If you were not a Christian, hadn’t grown up in church, hadn’t had spiritual influences or anything, would you believe God is a fair and good God just by looking at the world?” There were different answers, but one that was fairly common was no, I wouldn’t see God as being good. There is far too much suffering, and too many innocent people hurting, and natural disasters that wipe out thousands that were merely going about their days. If God was out there and real, he wouldn’t let these things happen.

I was one who voiced this opinion. The thing that makes me the absolute maddest is when I watch little three-year-olds and I see how poorly their parents treat them. Who are these little precious loving boys and girls that they deserve this? Parents were put on the earth to love, to nurture, to provide for their children’s wellbeing, and when I watch the opposite of that happening, it makes me want to explode. Of course little kids can be difficult, but they deserve nothing but love. How could I have a God who would let millions of children go through their young life abandoned, neglected, and unloved?

And then in our discussion, there were several of us who came around and stated something like, well now that I’ve read the scriptures, and learned about God, and been in a Christian community, I realize that God is good. That he is a fair and just God. And I said this too.

But why do our beliefs change like this? Obviously the state of the world hasn’t changed, necessarily, since our first opinion (i.e. children still suffer, innocent people still get diseases, etc). It’s still bad. There’s still suffering. So why do we switch? What happens in that interim? What do we read/realize/know/perceive/discover that leads us to think differently about God?

Where is the “cause” of the “effect” that we now believe God to be a fair, just, good God?

That was spinning through my head during core, and I couldn’t answer it. The only thing I could think of was that God doesn’t force himself. He has power, yes, and strength, and the ability to save. But they are never forced on anyone.

Philip Yancey speaks a little of this in The Jesus I Never Knew, in chapter 4. He says Satan’s power is external and coercive. God’s power is internal and noncoercive. In its commitment to transform gently from the inside out and in its relentless dependence on human choice, God’s power may resemble a kind of abdication. God made himself weak for one purpose: to let human beings choose freely for themselves what to do with him.

I think that makes sense. Our savior didn’t come as a rich, reigning, dictating emperor-king, he came as a peasant, a carpenter, a fisherman-figure. Our savior didn’t come to force us to believe in him, he came, and in some ways, he was not very imposing. I guess he wanted us to have to choose him 100%, with no worldly influences, with all our hearts.

I think some of it boils down to the issue of desire. God wants a response from us because we want to, we desire to answer his call.

Yancey brought up the issue of communism. Christianity and communism have many of the same ideals: equality, sharing, justice, and racial harmony. Yet the Marxist pursuit of that vision had produced the worst nightmares the world has ever seen, he said. Why? Because you can’t force morality. The part that made it not work is that the people didn’t want it. Christians, (for the most part) embrace and want this idea of community, so it has a better track record. Rape, for example, is not that much different, in action, from normal sex. The part that makes it so terrible is that it’s not wanted. And God is not a dictator or a rapist, so it’s not so much God “sitting on his hands” as much as it is God not forcing himself in our earthly realm.

In Yancey’s words, preserving the free will of a notoriously flawed species seemed worth the cost of letting the earth be inhabited by evildoers, of waiting to restore the earth to perfection, of watching as things like the Crusades and the Holocaust happen, of seeing hurricanes and tsunamis destroy nations, of allowing a gigantic apocalypse to loom ever in our futures. If we are to be free, this is how it’s going to be. Evil running rampant is part of the freedom package.

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I don’t really know. This was just something I thought of trying to answer my own question. Something like God can’t step in and make life perfect, because then we would be compelled to believe in him because of that. And he wants us to choose him no strings attached – to choose him independent of wealth and power and freedom from suffering.

That still doesn’t really satisfy my curiosity. Why again are so many children starving and neglected? Why do thousands of people who are out fishing to earn their day’s wages suddenly drown? How do we attempt to explain this and answer those who ask us this? What do I say?