Tag: Christianity

The High Cost of Free Grace

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The title of this post may seem puzzling.  How can grace be both free and costly?  That is simply contradictory.  Yet I think that this is a paradox that we see in Scripture and which I have been trying to work out in my head.  We receive salvation through the free gift of God’s grace and yet the fact that it is free does not mean that it will cost us nothing to receive it.  How can this be?

That we receive salvation as a free gift is undoubtedly true.  Scripture tells us, “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).  This is a pivotal point of the Gospel.  Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, and the faith which saves us?  It is a gift.  A gift, by definition, is something you cannot earn or attempt to pay for.  For then it would be cease to be a gift.  This point Paul emphasizes so that we can all understand that none of us can boast.  If we want salvation, we must receive it humbly, giving all the glory to God.

In this sense then, grace is free.  With all my works, I could never have been good enough to earn it.  With all my money, I could never have afforded it.  And the real truth is that with all my sin and wickedness, I did not even want it.  Yet here I stand in the grace of God. It is free and it has freed me.

However, salvation is not “free” in the same way that the samples at Sam’s Club are free.  That is free in the sense of instant gratification with no cost and no lifestyle implications.  The offer of the Gospel is very different.  Mercy is weightier stuff.  It lays claim to our lives.  Christ did not die merely to dole out forgiveness to passersby, but to purchase souls.  If we want His grace, we must be ready to give our devotion.  If we want His life, we must be prepared to surrender ours.

In a strange sense, the grace of God would be less costly if it was less free.  If God merely wanted our money, our good deeds, our lip service, I think many would be more willing to take His offer because we would still be able to retain the one thing we all cringe at relinquishing: the thrones of our hearts.  For if the Gospel is really free, if God has really in His sovereignty, reached down and saved me, changing the trajectory of my life from eternal wrath to eternal life, then there is a very great cost. I cannot be the person I was because God has changed my very identity from child of wrath to child of God.  I cannot live as Lord of my own life because because Christ has bought and paid for the right to be not just my Savior, but my Lord.  Yes, grace is free, but its implications are weighty.  I am not my own.  For grace has made me His.

This should cause us to consider the offer of the Gospel with due sobriety.  We should marvel at the glory of free grace and yet consider the cost of receiving it.  We must hear the warning of Christ Himself: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters–yes, even his own life–he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:25-27). These are sobering words indeed.  They tell us that being a disciple of Christ may cost us everything, our dearest relationships or even our very lives.

Indeed, many who have chosen to follow Christ, have been led by Christ down paths of suffering that they would never have chosen for themselves. This is the cost of free grace: complete submission and avowal that we will follow Christ wherever He may lead.  Yet, the cost does not come without promise and the promise is very, very good.  The promise is that no matter where Christ may take us or what He may ask us to do, it will be worth it.

Paul understood the promise.  He tells us that “our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).  And in Philippians, he vows to embrace the cost and sufferings of belonging to Christ, even calling it rubbish, all that He might gain Christ and be found in Him (Philippians 3:8-9).  Paul understood that there was a cost, but that whatever the cost might be, it was simply incomparable to the prize.

Thus we see that grace is free and yet costly, that the cost is both great and yet so transient in the grand scheme of things as to ultimately be counted as nothing.  Let us then consider with sobriety the weighty offer of the Gospel and the far-reaching implications it has for our lives, but let us also consider that if a cost must be paid, something must be given in return.  Those who do count the cost and consider the worth of the prize will see that it is so much more than worth it.  For ultimately, following Christ must necessarily lead us to Christ and Christ Himself is the source of life and salvation and the treasure who is worth more than any price.

American Individualism and the Myth That We Are “Special”

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In my Bioethics class last semester, we discussed an interesting statistic. America is by far the most individualistic society in the world.  Most countries have a general sense of a community identity while America was at the far, far other end of the spectrum, having almost no sense of communal identity and an overly heightened individualistic independence.

I think this is because in America, we are taught that we are “special.” From childhood, each of has been fed a steady diet of feel-good phrases about how wonderful we are and how we can do whatever we set our minds to.  I was suspicious of these even as a child.  They seemed to be founded on blind and willful belief rather than any actual truth.  We can all work hard to achieve things, but we also have natural limitations.  I may have wished to be the next great artist, but my complete lack of artistic ability told me that was not a viable option, no matter how hard I might try.

Why do we work so hard to pump this stuff into our children’s brains when it is clearly not true?  What is this need we have to be “special?”  I think it is fairly obvious that from a worldly perspective, this nonsense comes from an over-exalted sense of self.  We are all going to glorify something in our lives and for most, it is ourselves.  Our great fear is to be average because deep down, we believe that an average life is not a worthwhile life.  We need to feel that we are special in an attempt to fill our desire for meaning and purpose and value for our lives.  The ironic truth though is that we cannot all possibly be special. To be special is by definition, a rare privilege given to a select few.  If we are all special, then we are actually all just average.

What I have been learning over the past few years is that this thinking can leak its way into the minds of Christians as well.  It is just a little more subtle and cloaked in the holiest of language.  “God has a special plan for my life….”  “God wants to use my gifts for His glory.”  So what am I saying?  That these things aren’t true?  No, not exactly, but I think that our take on them can be self-centered instead of Christ-centered.

The Biblical Perspective on Being Special

So what does the Bible have to say about this?  Does it reinforce our desperate desire to believe that we are special?  Well, I think the answer is yes and no.

The Bible affirms that each of us is special in the sense that we are unique, created and designed in the image of God with inherent value and purpose (Psalm 139).  However, in another sense, it tells us that we are not special at all.  In fact, it has some very sobering words about mankind.  It tells us that there is “nothing new under the sun.”  Each of our lives is in some way, the same song, second verse.  “As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more” (Psalm 103:15-16).  That is not very flattering.  If there is one thing that is not special, it is grass.  It is abundant, replaceable, and easily forgotten.

This tells me two things.  First, we are not at all special in the way the world would have us believe.  No matter how gifted and talented we are, no matter how much we achieve, it has all been done before and it will all be done again and we, for all our striving, will soon be forgotten.

Secondly, we are special, but not in the way we desire.  We want to be special in a way that glorifies ourselves and God refuses to give His glory to another (Isaiah 48:11).  No, in and of ourselves, we are quite average and it is time we, myself included, come to peace with that.  The only special things about me, I can take no credit for, even my gifts and abilities.  I am special because God has made me in His image.  I have gifts because He gave them to me (1 Corinthians 4:7).  And by far the most special thing about me is that I have been saved by the grace of God and that, I can certainly take no credit for.  In fact, what it really shows is how special and how infinitely precious and worthy of praise Christ is.

The Bad News and the Good News

This is definitely not the fluffy, feel-good message printed on posters in classrooms all over America.  The bad news is that it makes us feel much smaller than we would like.  It refuses to flatter our egos and pamper our pride.

However, I think it is good news as well, but we must first accept the bad news before we can receive the good news.  The good news is that it frees us from our fear of being “average.”   If our need to be “special” is met in Christ instead of ourselves, we find that being average is not such a terrible thing after all.

Moreover, I think it actually frees us from a small vision for our lives and gives us a greater one.  Once we get past the disillusionment that we are not as wonderful as we thought we were, we can glimpse a greater purpose.  God insists on humbling us before He will exalt us, but if we accept that humility, we can find that our lives can have greater value and purpose than we ever dreamed for ourselves.   No matter how average a life may seem, if it is spent showcasing how special and infinitely valuable Christ is, instead of ourselves, that will be the most special life of all.  And that, my friends, is very good news.

The Example of Christ

No one has demonstrated this better than Christ Himself.  Being God, He was certainly more special than any of us could hope to be. There is none like Him.  And yet, for our sake and for the sake of obeying and glorifying the Father, He put that aside to become completely and incredibly average.  He became one of us.  If we really want our lives to be special and meaningful, we are instructed to follow His example, He “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death–even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-8).  

How average He must have seemed.  How terribly ordinary.  And yet because He insisted on obeying and glorifying only the Father in the midst of His horribly mundane and humble human existence, “God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11).  

This tells me that what we need to fear is not being average, but in missing the point of it all:  that God is less concerned with how special we think we are than how special our lives shows Him to be.  And that it is not so much about finding His special plan for our lives as it is about finding how our average lives conform to the special plan for His glory.

I read a quote recently that really impacted me.  It said that “it’s better to play a small role in God’s story than to cast yourself as the lead in your own fiction.”  The fact is that God’s story is the only one that matters, but He only takes those who are willing to deny themselves, to deny their own need to be exalted in order that they may exalt Him.  This may entail leading an incredibly average life of which no one will take any particular notice, but if we can be content with that and any small and humble role which God would have us play, we will not have missed out on His good and perfect plan for our lives. Moreover and most important, in be willing to lose our lives for His sake, we will gain Christ Himself, He who is life and who is the treasure and prize for which God has called us heavenward.

September 11th Reflections on God, Evil, and Psalm 10

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Today is September 11th, a day on which acts of unspeakable horror were committed and thousands of innocent people lost their lives.  As I imagine many people did today, I went back in my mind to that day of evil.  Where I was, what I was doing, and what I was thinking as I watched planes crash and buildings fall to the ground…Why?  It is a question we all ask at one time or another and I began thinking on it again today.  Why would God allow something like that to happen?  It is a serious and important question, one which has kept many from faith in God.

“Why O LORD, do you stand far off?  Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” Psalm 10:1

Not Just Why, but Who?

However, I think an equally important question is not just why, but who?  In the face of evil and suffering, it is easy to become angry at God or even decide that it must mean God is not really real.  I think though that we must be careful to first consider the direct cause of evil in the world: ourselves.  We cry against the wrongs committed against men, but it is to be noted that these wrongs are done at the hands of other men.  This tells us two very significant things about mankind: one, we hold ourselves to a higher standard than all other species and two, we continuously fall short of this standard.

In our outrage at evil, we deny God’s existence and yet, if God is not real and we are but products of the blind and indifferent process of evolution in a universe with no ultimate justice, then our outcry against evil is completely unfounded.  We are nothing but animals and so we should look to the animals for example.  We can no more object to the murder of innocents than we can to the predator who takes his prey.  Yet, we know this cannot really do.  We cannot really live like that because we know whether we are willing to admit it or not that we are different from the animal.  We are held to a higher standard.

It is this fact that we do not want to face because if there is a standard, there is a judge and that is a frightening thing.  For just as we know that we are held to this higher standard, we know that we have not met it. Looking at the history of mankind, it is evident that there is something terribly, terribly wrong with us, something rotten at our very core.  So we most certainly should ask why God would allow evil, but we should not forget that it is we who have committed it.  It originates with us.

The Wicked Man

If we are the direct perpetrators of evil, then the question of “Why?” must not only be levied at God, but at ourselves.  What is it that is so wrong with us?  Why would a man or men commit such heinous acts as murder or terrorism?  The Bible gives us an answer.  It tells us about the wicked man.

“In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak, who are caught in the schemes he devises.  He boasts of the cravings of his heart; he blesses the greedy and reviles the LORD.  In his pride the wicked does not seek him; in all this thoughts there is no room for God….He says to himself, ‘God has forgotten; he covers his face and never sees'” (Psalm 10:2-4,11).  

The wicked man is wicked because he does not fear God.  In his pride, he believes that God does not see his evil acts nor that He will call him to account.  It is slightly ironic that in reaction to evil so many deny God and assume He does not see when it is the denial of God which has led men into evil in the first place. Evil has come into our hearts and our world because our hearts have turned from Him.

The Intellectual and Practical Answer of the Gospel

There still remains the question of, “Why, God?”  Intellectually, it is a question of logic.  How may a good and omnipotent God allow evil?  This is no easy question and I do not pretend to have it completely figured out, but I would say that I have come to peace with this question intellectually because the world would make less sense if there was no God.  If God is not real, then there is no higher standard and our objection to evil is unfounded.  We would not cry out as we do. And yet, we do. I find then that our objection to evil is stronger evidence for God rather than against.  I argue more extensively for this here: https://emilysuzanne11.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/how-can-a-good-god-be-compatible-with-evil-and-suffering/

Practically as well, the theist is in a better position than the atheist.  If there is no God, then not only do we have no grounds for calling evil acts evil, but we also have no hope of evil being punished and the wrongs committed against us being brought to right.  We may, in our anger against injustice, eliminate God from the picture, but in so doing, we throw away our only hope for justice.  Thus we are left without the ability to call evil evil and without any hope of triumph over it.

The Christian, however, knows evil for what it is, the outpouring of the hearts of wicked men who have hated God, and also knows how justice will be served, either through the wrath of God on us or through the wrath of God on Christ who took the evil of man upon Himself in his death and defeated it in His resurrection.

The Personal Answer of the Gospel 

Finally and most importantly, the Gospel provides a personal answer to evil because it is a personal problem.  We are both the perpetrators and victims of evil.  We are broken people.  It would not be enough if God only punished evil because we would still be left sick and bleeding.  We need not only justice, but salvation. Not only a judge and a victor, but someone to come to us in our suffering and bear our burdens with us. Jesus Christ is that person.

I remember while studying Philosophy in college, I went to hear the Christian philosopher Os Guiness speak on the problem of evil.  I was expecting an astoundingly insightful argument, something to blow me away.  When asked how a Christian comes to terms with evil and suffering, he smiled and said that you simply have enough faith in Jesus Christ.  I remember thinking, “That’s it?”  I felt slightly embarrassed in front of the atheists and agnostics in the room.  It seemed such a cliche and overly simplistic answer, but I realize now that it is anything but.

I have been married for a little over a year now.  I am not always with my husband so I do not always know what he is doing. Nor do I know what he is thinking all the time. He is very different from me so I do not always understand the things he does or why he does them, but I do know him.  I know his character.  I know his commitment to love and protect me.  I have experienced his love and faithfulness to me.  So I know that I can trust him even when I do not understand or agree with all that he does.  I believe that he will honor his commitment to love me and that he will be faithful to the vows he made to me. My faith in him is based on my experience of him.

It is the same with Jesus Christ.  I do not doubt God in the face of great evil in the world because I know Jesus Christ.  I know Him personally. Through the Gospel, He has made His heart and character known to us. He has shown His unfailing commitment to rescue us from the evil we have wrought with our own hands by taking it upon Himself.  As Os Guiness said, “Christianity is the only religion whose God bears the scars of evil.”  Jesus has shown Himself to be good and trustworthy and so we trust Him even when it does not always make sense.  More on this here:  https://emilysuzanne11.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/how-can-a-good-god-be-compatible-with-evil-and-suffering-part-2/

The answer to evil then is not just some argument, or something, but someone: the person of Jesus Christ who will both “judge the world in righteousness” (Psalm 9:8) and “be a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble” (Psalm 9:9).  He both avenges the afflicted and enters into their affliction with them.   In this, the Gospel of Jesus Christ provides all that we need in the face of evil: a judge, a victor, and a healer.

“But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand.  The victim commits himself to you; you are the helper of the fatherless.  Break the arm of the wicked and evil man; call him to account for his wickedness that would not be found out.  The LORD is King for ever and ever; the nations will perish from his land. You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more” (Psalm 10:14-18).

How Can a Good God Be Compatible with Evil and Suffering?

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*Old Post from College*

    Today, when I walked into my epistemology class, the words “The Bible is the word of God” were written on the board, presumably by some professor of a previous class. As some in the class meandered in and saw it, several remarks were made. One boy scoffed, “Yeah, except for the fact that it was written by man.” He then apologized if he had offended anyone, but presumed that “it wouldn’t offend anyone in here.”

     Well, I wasn’t offended, but I was troubled as well as deeply saddened. I am perfectly aware that many people look down on Christians and ridicule our beliefs. This is nothing new. However, what troubled me was the assumption that he made, that his statement wouldn’t offend anyone in a Philosophy class because Philosophers are, by definition, “lovers of reason.” Essentially, he was saying that those who really see reason know that God does not exist. What his statement implied is that faith and reason are mutually exclusive. You have to choose one or the other and those in the Philosophy camp have chosen the path of reason.

      Is this really the case? Have we who have chosen to live by faith, in so doing, forsaken reason? Well, being a Philosophy major and a Christian, for my own personal sake, I certainly hope not. At any rate, I do not think this is the case at all. Of course, I do not think that belief in Christ can be arrived at solely through reason. That would defy several aspects of Christianity. But nor do I think that having faith in something excludes reason. The simple truth is that we all put our faith in something, whether we acknowledge it or not. This motivated me to share some of my thoughts about the rationality of belief in God, specifically focusing on the central objection to God, the problem of evil, a subject of great interest to me. Some of this comes from my thesis paper, but it helps me to refine some of my points as well as address the most important considerations in issues such as these.

      The main objection against belief in the existence of God is what is known as “the problem of evil.” The claim that the Atheist poses is that a benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God would not allow such a horrible thing as evil in His creation. Evil and God are logically incompatible, that is they simply cannot coexist. We know that evil exists. Therefore, God does not exist. That’s the main atheist argument in a nutshell. I’d like to make some comments on the supposed “rationality” of this argument.

     First of all, as a sort of overarching introduction to my response to this argument, I must say that I wonder at the gall of people of making such claims at all. Before even addressing the issue of God’s existence, I think it is healthy and important for us to be reminded of the nature of our own existence. We are finite creatures with finite understanding. We are extremely limited in our capacities. Not only are we limited intellectually, but we are limited temporally. Each of our individual lives is a fleeting moment in the vast expanse of eternity. We are obsessed with what we can know scientifically, infallibly, but the irony is, from where we stand, we can really “know” very little. So, I am amazed at our supreme arrogance in imagining that we, from our incredibly restricted vantage point, have a real handle on any of this at all, especially enough to make claims about what God would or would not do. Let us keep this in mind as we continue.

     As for the argument from the problem of evil, I  have concluded that I am more rationally prepared to concede that the compatibility of God’s goodness and evil is true, but cannot be fully explained than that there is no God. On the face of it, the former seems less rational, but I would argue that, at the root, the latter is far more irrational. The atheist argues that there cannot be a good God and evil. I propose that there cannot be evil without a good God. Now, this seems seems puzzling. To clarify, I do not mean that God causes evil or that evil is in any way entailed by God. What I do mean is that the concept of evil itself is ultimately unintelligible apart from the concept of God. As I have thought about the problem of evil, my instinct has been that the very fact that we do recognize evil as evil and perceive it as being such a tremendous problem, instead of disproving God, is actually evidence in support of God.

     In order to support this claim, I will examine the means by which some attempt to disprove God in the hopes of digging up its roots in absurdity. The claim of the atheist is this: God does not exist because there is evil in the world and the existence of a wholly good, omniscient, and omnipotent God is logically contradictory or at least, probabilistically incompatible with the existence of evil. Notice that one of the key premises in this argument is that evil exists. This means that the atheist has witnessed evil, recognized it as evil, and claims to know that it is absolutely true that it is evil. Thus, they conclude God does not exist. However, it seems to me that if they deny God, they can no longer claim that it is absolutely true that evil is evil, the very grounds upon which they deny Him. As C.S. Lewis, a former atheist, put it in Mere Christianity, “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of justice? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line” (Lewis, 38). Yet, if there is no God and the universe and the lives it contains are just meaningless matters of chance, then there is no “straight line” to compare it to. Indeed, if this is the case, the atheist has no grounds for calling anything evil in the first place. For them to do so would be akin to attempting to build a building starting a foot off the ground, an utterly foolish and fruitless endeavor. Evil acts are condemned as evil because they are wrong. However, apart from a “straight line” or standard with which to support why they are wrong, the atheist cannot reasonably declare that something is wrong or evil, a necessity for their argument against the existence of God. 

    So, if it is  true that God does not exist, the more logical conclusion actually ends up being that nothing is really truly evil. Without a standard, all we can be really said to have are private, subjective conceptions of what is good and what is evil. Indeed, this is the hallmark of the post-modern era. In an age of “tolerance” and subjective truth, the only action that can be condemned as wrong is to condemn something as wrong. There is no absolute truth though that is a very absolute kind of statement which, in order to live by, must be believed to be absolutely true. Obviously, the argument is starting to unravel. Lewis sensed this conflict within the atheist’s argument, saying, “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” (38). The problem is that if evil and justice are subjective, there is no reason why man should experience such outrage at apparently evil acts such as the Holocaust or September 11. Perhaps from Hitler’s subjective perspective, it was perfectly good and not evil to exterminate millions of people. On what grounds do we object? For the atheist, it seems that there can be none.

     Yet, we do object. We do claim to know that this is evil and absolutely and inherently so. This existence and recognition of evil is an indication, not that God does not exist, but that He does. Again Lewis seems to capture the argument better than I am able, wondering “if the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did [he], who was supposed to be part of the show, find [himself] in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet” (38). If we are really part of a meaningless world where nothing is really good or evil, we would not have such a profound sense of meaning or adamant belief that evil is evil, but “we should never have found out that it has no meaning just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark  would be a word without meaning” (39) just as evil would be a word without meaning.  So, as shown, the the theist can quite happily and rationally  say, “I do not fully comprehend how a good God allows evil, but that is okay. For, apart from God, I do not comprehend evil at all.”

    Essentially, the atheistic argument fails because it relies on the claim that evil is really evil, a claim that cannot be reasonably supported from an atheistic world view. Indeed, this is the fatal flaw of the argument. It begins in the middle. All of our beliefs that we hold about the world are part of our world view. They are bricks that we lay upon a foundation, our foundation being our core beliefs from which all of our other beliefs stem and depend upon. The most foundational belief that we have is whether or not God exists. The atheist is trying to build his house but he is trying to do it starting from the second floor. He begins with the fact that evil exists and from there tries to “build down” to a foundational belief that God does not exist. I’m no architect, but this seems a pretty foolish way to build.

     Alternatively, I propose a method that from what I understand, is generally architecturally approved and that will build a better “house.” We must begin with the foundation and try to build up from there. If the house does not stand, we have built on a bad foundation and must reexamine those beliefs which we built upon. I have built my house upon the belief that God exists. I do not pretend to understand or know the answer to everything that this entails, but my house is still standing. Like Lewis said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” Given my foundational belief that God exists, the world is cast into light. I can make sense of an otherwise senseless world and I have of hope of its and my redemption from evil. Sadly, the atheist has no hope of doing this for from their foundation, they cannot even know they are in the darkness let alone have hope of emerging.  Nor can they build anything of substance, but merely try to conjure up meaning out of thin air.

     In closing, I would like to make another point that is really the most important of all. After I got back from my class, I wanted to write this note to show that reason really does support the Christian faith, a good aim indeed. However, I was reminded of something more important. Upon returning home, I found out that a girl who I knew briefly a few years back was killed by a drunk driver. She was my age, beautiful and sweet. What a tragedy. Of course, this was very sobering and I was reminded that no amount of reason or logic can really answer the problem of evil and suffering. What kind of person would I be if my answer to this girl’s mother’s question of why her daughter died was some kind of attempt at a fancy argument? It does not suffice. Logic means little in the face of the reality of evil and suffering.

     This served to remind me that logic and reason are tools, but they are not the answer. Jesus Christ is the answer. This may seem simplistic or like some kind of cookie-cutter Sunday school response, but it’s not. It or rather, He is the true, complete answer to the problem of evil. As Dr. Peter John Kreeft put it, “the answer, then, to suffering is not an answer at all. It’s Jesus himself. It’s not a bunch of words, it’s the Word. It’s not a tightly woven philosophical argument; it’s a person. The person. The answer to suffering cannot be just an abstract idea, because this isn’t an abstract issue; it’s a personal issue. It requires a personal response. The answer must be someone, not just something, because the issue involves someone-God, where are you?”

      We must aim at the issue that goes deeper than reason, the issue of the heart. And oh, in our heart of hearts, we are obstinate and willfully self-deceiving. We suppress the truth and trade it in for a lie. Coming to terms with the truth of God requires that we come to terms with the reality of our humble state before God and that is not something we do willingly. So, it’s not so much that we just can’t see the truth, it’s that we don’t want to see the truth. No encounter with the finest, most convincing argument will change that. Only an encounter with the person of Jesus Christ will change that, for only He can melt the heart of stone.

     So, while I love reasoning and argument and that is a good thing, it must never be the main thing. Our goal should never be to merely solve a puzzle or win a debate, but our goal should be the same as in every other area of our lives as Christians, that Christ may be revealed in us. He is the logos, the Word, the Reason, the answer at every level and in every instance.  So if Christ is not revealed, then we have accomplished nothing, for Jesus Christ is the only answer, the only hope for this fallen world and the only hope for the fallen heart.

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