God has the best sense of humor.

Instead of a weekly update I am going to give you a novel to read. Syke! But this post is going to be really long, but really worth it. Here it goes, One of my YoungLife girls sent me an email asking for advice on how to answer a question that her friend was asking her about Christianity. I worked on the response for about 2-3 hours and felt really confident about it and knew it was something I wanted to share with friends, not for my glory at all, strictly for God's glory. Here it goes.

This a copy of the email sent to one of my girls (which she forward to me):
The author of The Reason For God says that "The problem of tragedy, suffering, and injustice is a problem for everyone. It is at least as big a problem for non belief in God as for belief. It is therefore a mistake, though an understandable one, to think that if you abandon belief in God it somehow makes the problem of evil easier to handle." Fine, I agree. But, he also quotes CS Lewis in saying " My argument against God was that the universe seemed cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of "just" and "unjust"?... What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?... Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if i did that, then my argument against God collapsed too- for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fantasies... Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple."
The author then goes on to say that "the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection depends on death, destruction, and violence of the strong against the weak- these things are all perfectly natural."
So then, how is it that though this natural selection only certain types of people or certain concentrated areas happen to be weak? Is the up to God to decide? But natural selection is scientific, and isn't is opposing to being science and religion together?. We learned today in my Global Perspectives in Intl Social Policy class that there is enough food to feed every man woman and child in the world. Yet 1 in 7 die of hunger. We also learned that a child dies every 8 seconds from hunger or hunger related illnesses. So these are the weak? Are these the people God has chosen for now to be the "Weak"? Will he change his mind and change his decision on who the "weak" are in a decade or so?.. Will he decide later on those who are currently white and rich will then be the weak? That those who are currently suffering get to change roles and become the strong?. That would be cool. But pointless if it doesn't happen within each others lives. The quote about not understanding someone else'spain and suffering until you are in their shoes would be a very good experiment if we were able to take it literal, don't you think?..

What do you think about this? I know you've gone through all the Bible stuff and you go to church.. What do they say about situations like these?..




My response:
First of all, The Reason For God is a great book and is very informative. She should probably read the whole thing to understand Timothy Keller's point of view. Tragedy, suffering and injustice is indeed a problem for everyone, but that can always go back to a dialogue of people saying "God, why is there suffering? Why is there Holocausts and slavery?" but what people don't understand is God could be saying right back at us, "Yea, why is there suffering? What are you doing as a Christian to cease suffering and famine? Are you loving people and caring for them or are you just loving the lovable?" [Matthew 5:45 in The Message says "If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that."] God isn't blaming us in an angry threatening way, but giving us an opportunity to step up and show people the love of God and we are failing time after time after time. Yes tragedy happens to everyone, even for people that are nonbelievers but it never ever says in the bible that if you become a Christian or if you believe in God that life will be easy and tragedy wont happen. In fact it says the opposite. Matthew 8:20 says "Jesus was curt:" Are you ready to rough it? We're not staying in the best inns, you know." and then not even 3 verses later it says in Matthew 23 "Then he got in the boat, His disciples with Him. The next thing they knew, they were in a severe storm.". Personally when tragedy happened my life turning to God was the greatest thing I could have done and I assume that is what Keller is getting at.
Just a little background information, C.S. Lewis use to be an atheist, and so this quote is quoting his original belief in God. Lewis has an amazing point. Just and unjust? Who says what is just? Who says what is good and what is bad? I'll give you an example from my own life. My junior year of high school I went to Young Life and at the first club my friend Nicole wrote all over my car with car paint "Young Life 7:29", "YL" and stuff like that. A few months later I was with Nicole and got in a really bad car accident, a 5 car pile up. It was my first accident and I was devastated. Everyone was exchanging numbers and freaking out, but there was this one guy, the only one close to my age, walking around not asking for anyones information, just asking questions and making sure everyone was ok. He stayed close to Nicole and I and eventually I asked him if he got all the information he needed for his insurance. He then informed me that he was the 6th car, he stopped in time and wasn't even involved in the accident. He had planned on just going around us and moving on but saw it an opportunity to be Christ, then seeing "Young Life" on the back of my car decided to stay and talk to us for a while. I was in complete shock because my spiritual life was alright, but not awesome. He then asked to pray over us and thats when it hit me. God knew I couldn't handle this event on my own and wanted to send someone that would help me through it. We stayed friends with this boy, Max, and he ended up going to Senior prom with Nicole! Now was that just or unjust? Was it unjust that I was involved in a 5 car pile up? Was it unjust that I nearly totaled a car that I worked 3 years to buy? To me and my understanding God always has a plan. He IS a just God and just because we may think that something is "unjust" doesn't mean that the light at the end of the tunnel has already arrived. Maybe when we assume something is "unjust" we are only 1/2 way through the tunnel and greater things have yet to come. "What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?" What is making the universe "unjust"? Why does she think it is unjust? Because of famine or Holocaust? Again I go back to the "What are WE doing to fix this?" God gives us so many chances to step up and do something. Her argument against God is the world is unjust and that means there is no God? What about free will? Is God being "unjust" when he saves a atheists from getting in a car accident? Is he not granting her a right of free will by saving her?
Natural selection is a completely different story. Yes, natural selection still happens but in the human world. God would never say that since someone is weak they are going to hell and because they are strong they are going to heaven. In fact the last in line are the first according to Luke 14:10-11 [When you're invited to dinner; go and sit at the last place. Then when the host comes he may very well say, "Friend, come up to the front."...What I'm saying is, If you walk around with your nose in the air you're going to end up flat on your face. But if you're content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself."] Jesus himself was last in line. Jesus was a slave. I will not deny that natural selection doesn't happen because it does. In the corporate world. Luke 13:30 says "This is the Great Reversal: the last in line put at the head of the line, and then so called first end up last." I haven't heard of natural selection in years. How many times do you see someone that has brown eyes die sooner then someone with blue eyes. That is pretty much what natural selection is about, a trait that you get from your parents that gives you a longer survival rate. But if we look back in the day, natural selection was much more common. Let's look at it in terms of the bible, if God knows where everything is going to go, how things will happen and the outcome of certain things why didn't He just fast forward, skip all the sin in the old testament and get to Jesus? It all goes back to free will. You see God looks at time in a different way then how we see it. It just is there, with us there is past present and future. God sees it all. He isn't in the present watching the movie of our lives and then fast forward, it's just all there. Anyways, so through the old testament God gave us a million and one chances to make things right. To be holy and we failed several times but every time He picked us back up. Romans 11:32 says "God makes sure that we all experience what it means to be outside so that He can personally open the door and welcome us back in." If God did everything for us, if we didn't experience hardship and was just given Jesus, life would be so much harder then it is now. We would have no idea how big of a deal it was for Jesus to die. God had to show us how bad things could get before He could show us His glory and have His son die for us. If Genesis 1 started out "And Jesus died for everyone's sin" how could we compare that to anything? How would we know what sin was? How could we know what He was dying for.
When people say science and religion don't go together it breaks my heart. Through science we have been given the opportunity to see God's work. Just look at how the brain is wired. There is no way that we could have just been apes and just so happen to turn into humans who just so happened to have a huge brain increase who just so happened to form their own language and just so happened to have the right neurons and the right organs. No way. At the same time we must understand that some science classes are bias. If you've ever heard of "Lucy" its very easy to explain. "Lucy" is supposed proof that we were originally apes or whatnot, but the bones that were found to form Lucy where MILES apart. How can someone die and have all of their bones spread out everywhere? I understand it is possible because of other animals eating "her" and then poopin' her up or taking her bones somewhere else but keep in mind that there were many different species at the time and it is VERY likely that a little confusion went down and maybe one scientist "accidently" put 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 12948893 different animals together to make them look like a human ancestor. The fact of the matter is that scientific facts change all the time. All the time. Almost everyday you hear about another fraud that faked something to get his name in lights. The bible is so historically backed up and it never changes. In fact, there is more proof that all the events in the bible happened, then there is proof that Alexander the great lived. We all believe that he lived so why can't we believe the bible?
I go back again to the issues of this world. They are issues of this world and God has given all of us chances to change those outcomes. Being born into a homeless family is not natural selection, natural selection "is the process by which heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations." So in a way God is doing that person a favor. He is giving them a chance to get back up. He is giving them a chance to see how bad things can get -- not because He is an unjust God or because he is hateful, because when you see how bad things could be you appreciate things when they are good. God doesn't just sit there and poke fun at us. Who is to say that He doesn't constantly give those people that are homeless or hungry chances? Do we personally know that they are getting no help? He could be giving them chances, which I'm sure He is, and they could be oblivious. Just like an atheist avoiding a car accident. God brought 600,000 slaves out of Egypt. God is not unjust. God sent His son to earth to die for people that were terrible human beings, that did not deserve to have a relationship with God because of all their sin. God is not unjust. Jesus saved so many people physically while he was on earth. Let the blind see, made the sick well, raised a girl from the dead. God is not unjust. My favorite part about this is Hebrew 13:8 "Jesus doesn't change -- yesterday, today, tomorrow, He's always totally Himself."
So in conclusion, we HAVE to trust God. Romans 8:29 says "God knew what He was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love Him along the same lines as the life of his Son." and 2 Peter 3:9 "God isn't late with His promise as some measure lateness. He is restraining Himself on account of you, holding back the End because He doesn't want anyone lost. He's giving everyone space and time to change." I really recommend you both read Romans.

This past week I have been complaining so much about how my classes have nothing to do with what I want to do with my life but if I hadn't taken Biological Anthropology and Philosophy last year I would have had no insight to this situation. What a great sense of humor God has.