In the previous few posts, I've tried to show why the only way to explain the facts is by resurrection, making the reality and fact of this amazing event almost beyond a historical doubt.  If this is true then you is now a ‘self-involving' belief.  You cannot simply say, yes Jesus rose from the dead but that means nothing to me personally.  No, if Jesus rose, the world is different; He is Lord and Ruler of all things.  If Jesus rose, He was vindicated and approved in all His actions and teachings.  If Jesus rose, the ‘myth' of Christianity is a true myth.  If Jesus, rose, He did so in victory over sin, death, and hell, and provided a payment for the sins of His people.  If Jesus rose, He now stands before us wrapped with all authority, power, and majesty, and demands our repentance, our worship, our lives, and our all.  Anything less would be sheer treason. 

Tim Keller:  "Each year at Easter I get to preach on the Resurrection. In my sermon I always say to my skeptical, secular friends that, even if they can't believe in the resurrection, they should want it to be true.  Most of them care deeply about justice for the poor, alleviating hunger and disease, and caring for the environment.  Yet many of them believe that the material world was caused by accident and that the world and everything in it will eventually simply burn up in the death of the sun.  They find it discouraging that so few people care about justice without realizing that their own worldview undermines any motivation to make the world a better place.  Why sacrifice for the needs of others if in the end nothing we do will make any difference?  If the resurrection of Jesus happened, however, that means there's infinite hope and reason to pour ourselves out for the needs of the world." 

1. The tomb must have been empty. If there had been an empty tomb and no appearances of the risen Christ, everybody in the ancient world would have drawn the obvious conclusion that body snatchers stole the body. In fact, that is what Mary thought at first. But this was not the eventual conclusion. Simply having an empty tomb is insufficient evidence to explain the rise and nature of Christianity in the first century.

2. Jesus must have bodily appeared to the disciples. It will not do to say that the disciples simply had some kind of experience that they took to be a meeting with Jesus. They knew Jesus had been killed and they understood all about hallucinations, ghosts, and visions since ancient Jewish and Pagan literature is full of such things (see Homer and Virgil). Recently, some have explained it all away with the idea that when those you love die, you often experience them in the room with you, even talking to you, and then they disappear again, which probably happened to the disciples. But they knew about that type of phenomena, meaning that if the tomb had not been empty (which was verifiable b/c of their burial practices), they would have given up that belief no matter how powerful because the body in the tomb would have destroyed it. In addition, hallucinations and inventions are not accurately shared across multiple people in that way. Several people may have a hallucination but it is nearly impossible for them to all be in agreement over what hallucination was had. Likewise, if the story were merely invented (which had never been done in the other Messiah movements of the time), it is inconceivable to imagine every disciple (except John) giving his life for this truth, and it is inconceivable that Resurrection becomes the centerpiece of Christian preaching and practice.

THE FINAL MOVE-If the tomb was empty and if Jesus appeared to His disciples (conclusions which are nearly irrefutable), then by far the best way to explain them, along with the rise of Christianity, is by Resurrection.  The best and really only good explanation is that Jesus really was raised from the dead, and the disciples really did meet Him.  To quote Wright again: 

"The early Christians did not invent the empty tomb and the ‘meetings or ‘sightings' of the risen Jesus in order to explain a faith they already had.  Nobody was expecting this kind of thing; no kind of conversion-experience would have generated such ideas; nobody would have invented it, no matter how guilty or how forgiven they felt, no matter how many hours they pored over the Scriptures.  To suggest otherwise is to stop doing history and to enter into a fantasy world of our own."

I believe that from what I have argued so far, the historicity of the resurrection is beyond dispute.  This leaves us one final question which I will take up next week-"So what?"  What if it is true?  Why should that matter at all to me or anyone else?  I believe this is very personal so look for the next entry coming next Tuesday.

We've discussed why alternate theories of resurrection don't work, now I want to offer positive proof that the resurrection literally and physically occurred.  I'll let you consider this evidence and then next time try to draw some conclusions.  I'd love to hear any thoughts you have by email.

A. Jesus' resurrection differed from anything then believed-Even if we granted that ancient people were much more likely to believe in miracles than we are, belief in Jesus' resurrection the way it is described is next to impossible. The invention of such a belief by nostalgic disciples is similarly impossible. Here's why:

B. The Place of Women in the Narrative-The place of women in the narrative make it impossible that the story was envisioned, hallucinated, created, or imagined. If you wanted good witnesses to key events in the ancient world, women were not the way to go, and yet Mary Magdalene who was not only a woman but a woman of low reputation, is there as the prime witness in all 4 Gospels! Women could not serve as trial witnesses or in any other official capacities because it was assumed that they were unreliable. Thus, it is inconceivable that all 4 Gospels would have simply made up that part of the story.

[1]  I will follow the argument of N.T. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, and his appendix in Tony Flew's book, There is a God.

First, the disciples' claim would have been easily disproved at the time, had it been false. All that would have needed to be done to silence them would have been to produce Jesus' body. This, though, was not done.  Paul called out over 500 hundred witnesses (I Cor. 15.6) with whom the sightings could have been verified or denied.  There is no reason to call such a vast number of witnesses unless they really could testify affirmatively.

Second, it is again difficult to account for the testimony of those who had not followed Jesus prior to the resurrection on this theory. Why would those who rejected Jesus when he was alive buy into Christianity when he was dead?  Many, like James (Jesus' brother), rejected Jesus as the Messiah until after His death, which cannot be explained without something extraordinary occurring.  There were many, crucified or defeated "Messiahs" in Jesus' day; His death would have simply been another reason not to believe that He was the true Messiah.  Therefore, something substantive must have happened after his death to make so many people change their view of Jesus.  Simply telling a lie about the situation would not have reversed the basic beliefs of the hearers. 

Third, the disciples' commitment to the cause counts strongly against the idea that their claims were made up. Jesus' followers faced great persecution for their claims about Jesus, yet, after his death, not one of them retracted those claims. People do sometimes invent lies, and people do sometimes die for lies, I cannot think of a single instance where multiple people, independent of one another, would die for a lie they invented.  Before Jesus' death this was not the case; Peter famously denied Jesus three times. Something transformed the early Christians into fervent witnesses to the resurrection. What could have done that other than a genuine resurrection?

Fourth, as we will soon see, there was no basis for the disciples to make up the kind of story that now exists.  They did not construct if from the Old Testament text, the O.T. idea of resurrection, or the current cultural milieu in which they lived.  Thus, if they made it up, they did so in the most imaginary and least believable way.  There are several other theories, but I'll deal with each of them in future entries, as I present what I consider to be positive historical (not blind faith!) proof that Jesus actually rose from the dead. 

One attempt to explain this data, sometimes called the "swoon theory," denies Jesus' death. On this theory, Jesus didn't really die at all. Yes, he was crucified-that much is undeniable-but he survived the crucifixion. When he was laid in the tomb he was unconscious, but alive. He then resuscitated, escaped from the tomb, and appeared to the disciples, who mistakenly thought he had been resurrected. This theory thus neatly explains the resurrection appearances without having, implausibly, to deny the crucifixion.  Christians dismiss the swoon theory for a number of reasons.

First, people didn't survive crucifixion. Crucifixion was a brutal form of execution, one well-practiced by the Romans. The Romans knew what they were doing; Jesus could not have made it through the crucifixion alive.  Second, even if he had made it through the crucifixion alive, Jesus would not have been in a fit state to escape from the tomb. The tomb in which he was laid, according to the Bible, was enclosed by a large boulder, and guarded by Roman soldiers. Even if he had survived crucifixion, Jesus, having been beaten, stabbed, scourged, crucified, and starved, would have been too weak to move the boulder, and wouldn't have got past the guards.  Third, we have to believe that Jesus, after having done so much good for others, now begins to lie to his closest friends.  Fourth, even if Jesus had survived the crucifixion and escaped from the tomb, there's no way that he would have been mistaken as someone resurrected.  The rigors of crucifixion would have left him in an appalling state, yet Jesus' appearance before his disciples was such that they thought he was in a glorified, resurrection body.  He moved around, cooked fish, traveled, taught, walked many miles, etc.  Therefore the swoon theory cannot seriously be maintained.[1]

We'll take on a few more theories before I try to show positively and historically that resurrection is the best and only way to explain the historical facts as we have them.

[1] Adapted from www.existence-of-god.com

Modern people often look at the miracles in the Bible, especially the Resurrection, and laugh at how superstitious people were to believe such things.  While people of yesterday supposedly attributed anything out of the ordinary to ‘God's work,' modern people today believe that science (which has shown that nature operates by ‘fixed' laws) has proven that miracles cannot and do not occur, and so laughter and scorn is poured on the Biblical narratives on this basis.  However, C.S. Lewis, in his essay on miracles (can be found as essay #2 in God in the Dock, and in my opinion is the best 12 pages you could read on the nature of miracles) has an important quote that will instantly cure us of our ‘chronological snobbery:'[1] 

"There is one thing often said about our ancestors which we must not say.  We must not say ‘They believed in miracles because they did not know the Laws of Nature.'  This is nonsense.  When St. Joseph discovered that his bride was pregnant, he was ‘minded to put her away.'  He knew enough biology for that.  Otherwise, of course he would not have regarded pregnancy as a proof of infidelity.  When he accepted the Christian explanation, he regarded it as a miracle precisely because he knew enough of the Laws of Nature to know that this was a suspension of them.  When the disciples saw Christ walking on water, they were frightened:  they would not have been frightened unless they had known the laws of Nature and known that this was an exception.  Complete ignorance of the laws of Nature would preclude the perception of the miraculous just as rigidly as complete disbelief in the supernatural precludes it, perhaps even more so.  For, while the materialist would have at least to explain miracles away, the man wholly ignorant of Nature would simply not notice them."

Lewis' point is well-taken.  The Biblical stories are just as in awe over what happened to Jesus as we would be if we saw the same events today.  When the disciples hear about the resurrection, they do not sigh a relief as if what they expected to happen actually came to pass; rather, they doubt and must be convinced by sound proof that anything like this could have actually happened.  Mark 16.11 says that when the disciples were told Jesus was alive, "they would not believe it."  In Luke 24.11 the words about resurrection seem to the apostles as "an idle tale and they did not believe."  In John 20.25, Thomas says he will not believe unless he can touch Jesus' hands, feet, and side.  Yet despite their initial disbelief, they all witness the risen Jesus, come to believe in Him, make the resurrection the centerpiece of their theology/preaching, and give their lives to that truth, all radical reversals. 

Therefore, any rival theory of the Resurrection must be able to explain 1) How the unique doctrine of the Resurrection arose among Christians, 2) Why the stories are the way they are, 3) Why the Resurrection took center stage 4) Why the disciples literally died for this belief; 5) How the muddled, frightened disciples with their Messiah defeated became the bold proclaimers of faith in Christ and literally conquered the Roman Empire.  Next time, we'll ask if any other explanation can explain these agreed upon facts.

[1]  Chronological snobbery refers to the modern man's assumption that his current historical and cultural era are determinative across history as the ‘right way' to look at things.

It seems evident to me that Darwinism oversteps its boundaries here by claiming to know too much.  Dawkins himself admits that since we are the product of natural selection, we can't completely trust our own senses because evolution is interested only in preserving adaptive behavior, not true belief.  Thus evolution can only be trusted to give us cognitive faculties that help us live on, not to provide ones that give us an accurate and true picture of the world around us.  Patricia Churchland says this, "The principle chore of brains is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive.  Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing the world is advantageous so long as it...enhances the organism's chances for survival.  Truth, whatever that is, takes the hindmost."  Even Darwin was plagued by this issue.  To a friend he confided, "the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy."  

So, if there is no God, just the blind forces of natural selection, then it's not only our beliefs about God we can't trust, it's our beliefs about everything, including evolutionary science.  In this system we would simply have no reason to trust what any of our faculties tell us for fear that they may simply be hard-wired neurochemistry that evolved there to help us survive.  If what my brain tells me about God is just chemical reactions then the same applies to what their brain tells them about the world.  Alvin Plantinga provides a scathing critique:  "People like Dawkins hold that there is a conflict between science and religion...the truth of the matter, however, is that the conflict is between science and naturalism, not between science and belief in God...It's as likely, given unguided evolution, that we live in a sort of dream world as that we actually know something about ourselves and our world." 

The best way to explain the kind of universe we have (and the belief that we can know something true about it) is by belief in a personal creator God who imbues us with a mind where we can reasonably trust our faculties and also assume that there are realities corresponding to our desires.  If we did not believe in God, we would expect NONE of these things to be the case.  In addition, consider that every person on planet earth has a moral framework or orientation.  (As proof, consider:  Isn't there some person, somewhere in the world who is doing something that you disagree with?)  Evolution cannot explain this human phenomenon because it would be purely anti-survival to put great care and self-sacrifice into the welfare of others.  Dawkins himself admits the problem, "[To be nice] is a misfiring, even a perversion of the Darwinian take.  Human super niceness is a perversion of Darwinism because, in a wild population, it would be removed by natural selection.  Well, if that's a perversion, it's the kind of perversion we need to encourage and spread."  Notice at the end, that Dawkins leaps to an ethical claim of what we "need to encourage and spread."  This is a bald-faced faith claim, and there's no way around it.  Augustine said we must believe something in order to know anything.  Thus, no matter what we do, we simply cannot extricate ourselves from a world in which we MUST make and live by faith. It's almost as if the world were ‘designed' that way! 

If you buy any parts of my arguments so far, then you may get to this point and say, ok, maybe there is a God but so what?  What does that really mean to me?  If that's you, then you'll want to follow on to the next topic as I address Jesus, specifically as I attempt to historically PROVE that he rose from the dead.  If that is true, we move onto wholly new ground with very personal implications.[1]

[1]  Many of the thoughts of this entry have been taken or adapted from Tim Keller, The Reason for God.

Whenever we read of the power of evolution, it is described as a sleek, streamlining force that focuses all living beings on utility, efficiency, and most of all, reproduction.  Why then, we might ask, is there so much about our existence that seems non-utilitarian?  Why does it seem that there is much to our lives that leads inexorably to non-utility, inefficiency, and difficulties with reproduction?  Why are there things like beauty, art, romance, love, relationships, fine dining, music, poetry?  Why are we awe struck before some great painting or before some great person or before some great piece of music?  Why do we love love? 

None of these things serve the purpose of evolution and in fact work against it.  Tim Keller, quoting Bertrand Russell, writes, "If there is no God, and everything in this world is the product of ‘an accidental collocation of atoms,' then there is no actual purpose for which we were made-we are accidents.  If we are the product of accidental natural forces, then what we call ‘beauty' is nothing but a neurological hardwired response to particular data.  You only find certain scenery to be beautiful because you had ancestors who knew you would find food there and they survived because of that feature, and now we have it too.  In the same way, though music feels significant, that significance is an illusion.  Love too must be seen in this light.  If we are the result of blind natural forces, then what we call ‘love' is simply a biochemical response, inherited from ancestors who survived because this trait helped them survive."  Yet we cannot escape the fact that we are awe-struck before art, beauty, music, and love-we long for it and we gain meaning and fulfillment when we find it.  Furthermore, we not only feel the reality of those things, we feel pain when they are absent.  C.S. Lewis brings this point into stark reality:

"You can't, except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with a girl if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental pattern produced by the collision of atoms, and that your own response to them is only a sort of psychic phosphorescence arising from the behavior of your genes.  You can't go on getting very serious pleasure from music if you know and remember that its air of significance is a pure illusion, that you like it only because your nervous system is irrationally conditioned to like it."

We may respond, "Just because you feel like you need something doesn't make it true.  Just because I feel the desire for a steak dinner, doesn't mean I will get it."  You may not get that particular meal but your hunger betrays the fact that there is something called food which corresponds to that hunger.  St. Augustine found these to be clues to the reality of God.  He argued that for every innate desire we have, there is a corresponding reality (sexual desire to sex, physical appetite to food, tiredness to sleep, relational desires to friendship).  We have a longing for joy, love, and beauty that no amount or quality of food, sex, or friendship, can fulfill.  Keller writes,

"We have a longing for joy, love, and beauty that no amount or quality of food, sex, friendship, or success can satisfy.  We want something nothing in this world can fulfill.  Isn't that at least a clue that this ‘something' that we want exists?  This unfulfillable longing, then, qualifies as a deep, innate human desire, and that makes it a major clue that God is there." 

[1] For the relevant sections, see Tim Keller, The Reason for God, 133-135

Converted atheist Antony Flew writes, "We are conscious and conscious that we are conscious.  No one can deny this without self-contradiction."  Although ‘consciousness' is associated with certain regions of the brain, when the same systems of neurons are present in the brain stem there is no ‘production' of consciousness.  As physicist Gerald Schroeder points out, there is no essential difference in the ultimate physical constituents of a heap of sand and the brain of an Einstein.  Flew concludes, "Only blind and baseless faith in matter lies behind the claim that certain bits of matter can suddenly ‘create' a new reality that bears no resemblance to matter."  Self-awareness is a nearly impossible threshold to cross under the auspices of natural selection, for how could the impersonal forces of trait selection lead to an evolution of consciousness and self-awareness?  How could the impersonal lead to personality and the recognition of personal awareness?  Even the most vociferous atheists, Steve Pinker and Richard Dawkins, after laying out the problem thoughtfully (even if reluctantly) admit they just don't know.  To quote Dawkins, it "Beats the heck out of me."  Steve Pinker writes, "The existence of subjective first-person experience is not explainable by science." 

Maybe it's not intended to be explained by science?  It seems to me that personal beings (such as us) are much more likely to be the result (or creation!) of a personal God who creates people in His image than the result of impersonal forces that blindly direct toward reproduction alone.  Actually, it's hard to see how self-consciousness could be produced by evolution since evolution's only goal is reproduction.  Self-consciousness would be a hindrance to reproduction rather than a help because it creates a need in humans for relationship.  This means that we rarely have reproduction without relationship.  Thus, for reproduction to take place, it requires a tangled web of emotional involvement as a precursor to a sexual relationship.  Of course there is casual sex but almost none of it is intended for procreation (though some inevitably leads there).  The point is that other animals are free to have sex without entangling emotional attachments, making it hard to see how evolution created something outside itself that would actually inhibit it's only goal-reproduction!

The title of Darwin's famous book, The Origin of the Species, can be confusing because it gives the impression that he is going to tell us his theory of how life began.  However, in the book, Darwin does not discuss the actual origin of life but his theory of how the life that was here developed into the complexity we see today.  In other words, Darwin did not even attempt to tell us how life began, nor did he describe himself as an outright atheist.  

When Darwin developed the theory of natural selection in the mid 1800's, the face of science was much different.  In the absence of powerful microscopes, Darwin believed the cell to be nothing more than protoplasm, a mere bubble of jelly.  Today scientists cannot even talk of the cell without using terms that refer to building and engineering.  Francis Crick, co-founder of DNA, writes, "The cell is thus a minute factory, bustling with rapid, organized chemical activity.  Nature invented the assembly line some billions of years before Henry Ford."  The problem this presents for the theory of evolution as an all consuming theory is that even these single cells are far too complex to be produced by gradual, single trait, natural selection.  No single part of the cell would give any survival power to a cell; rather, each part would all have to be present in order to function properly.  Thus, natural selection could not simply select each trait individually.  Michael Behe uses the example of a tiny string like flagellum which is attached like a tail to some bacteria.  It is a microscopic outboard rotary motor that comes equipped with a hook, joint, drive shaft, O-rings, a stator, and a bi-directional acid-powered motor that can do 100,000 RPMs.  In addition, even the simplest living cell is one of the most complicated structures on earth, containing within it more information than multiple sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica.  From this information Dinesh D'Souza comments, "It is crucially important to realize that this basic template of life, with all its intricate machinery of RNA and DNA, came fully formed with the first appearance of life.  D'Souza's concludes, "Is it even reasonable to speculate that random combinations of atoms could have produced so marvelously complex and functional a thing as a living cell?"  Yet Richard Dawkins writes, "However improbably the origin of life might be, it must have happened this way because we are here."  D'Souza's response is scathing:  "It takes a lot of faith to believe things like this."  

If believing that a fully functioning cell arrived on the scene independent of God or any creation event takes tremendous faith, it takes even more faith to believe that the first cell formed came imbedded with the instructions and the design to reproduce.  Even if we believe that a complex unicellular organism could have somehow "appeared" on the scene randomly, how could we believe that the newly formed cell came with the "goal" of reproduction?  It is much more likely that the cell would have appeared on the scene and then faded away with no way to pass on its genes.  Yet atheists like Dawkins and Dennet require us to believe that all living organisms have one innate goal-reproduction.  Where did organisms get such a ‘goal?'  How did they know that this was their chief responsibility in life?  Why did they need a purpose?  Somehow we are to believe that complex, encyclopedic organisms magically appeared on earth with innate goals for life and ‘desires' to asexually reproduce.  Lastly, if we follow the fundamentalists that far, then we also have to create a way that natural selection could have moved us from asexual reproduction, a very simple way to pass on genes to bisexual reproduction, a more complicated way to pass on genes because it requires much more time and the tiresome task of finding an agreeable partner!  

Now the atheists will respond that my arguments are killing scientific inquiry because I can't "imagine how such a thing could happen."  This could not be further from the truth and in fact misses the whole point.  The point is to again ask the question of what has the greatest consistency of evidence.  Natural selection, though a great theory that explains much about the life on our planet, simply fails as an overall explanation for the beginning of life and for the complexity which we see.  It takes much less faith to believe that we have a God who is creative, complex, and orderly who imbedded these things into His world?

To make this logic clearer, Nancy Pearcy proposes to imagine that you found a huge universe creating machine, with hundreds of dials, each having trillions of settings representing these forces.  Imagine that what you discover is that each of these dials just happens to be set to exactly the right value for life to exist when even the slightest tweak of one knob would produce a lifeless universe.  Since the ‘knobs' are not constrained by any natural law, they have all the earmarks of being a product of design or intention.  It is this exact basis which led Nobel Prize winner Arno Penzias to say, "The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I had nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, and the Bible as a whole."  Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson notes, "It almost seems as if the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming."  Not to be outdone, Stephen Hawking concludes, "It would be very difficult to explain why the universe would have begun in just this way except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us."  Robin Collins adds the illustration of hiking in the mountains and finding a group of rocks arranged in a formation that clearly formed the pattern, "Welcome to the mountains Robin Collins."  One way to explain the formation would be to conclude that the rocks simply fell into that particular pattern by chance.  Suppose the only other viable hypothesis was that my brother, who was in the mountains before me, arranged the rocks in this way.  99.9% of us would go with the brother hypothesis. 

Moreover, the best atheistic response to the fine tuning argument, or ‘anthropic principle,' is posited by Richard Dawkins who argues that there may be trillions of universes, and given the enormous number of universes existing over enormous amounts of time and space, it is inevitable that one or a few of them are fine-tuned to sustain our kind of life.  Thus, the argument is rationally avoidable but not, in my opinion, reasonably avoidable.  Alvin Plantinga says that this line of reasoning is akin to dealing oneself 20 straight hands of four aces in the same game of poker.  As his companions reach for their guns, the poker player says, "I know it looks suspicious!  But what if there is an infinite succession of universes, so that for any possible distribution of poker hands, there is one universe in which this possibility is realized?"  We just happen to find ourselves in the one where I deal myself 20 straight hands of four aces w/o cheating."  To push this bit of science even further, consider the regularity of nature in the same light.  All scientific and inductive reasoning is based on the assumption that all the forces in the universe will remain constant.  Water will freeze under the same conditions, an object will fall at the same speed, the earth will continue to rotate, etc.  Bertrand Russell was troubled by the fact that we don't know why nature is so regular now and we have no justification for believing it will behave that way tomorrow. Thus, science cannot prove the continued regularity of nature; it must take it on faith.  But it is precisely this confidence in a God who created a continuing orderly universe that gave rise to modern science! 

Dawkins believes that Paley was "gloriously and utterly wrong," because Darwin has shown a way that all things could have come about naturally through the process of natural selection.  In other words, things have the ‘appearance' of design because they are being fitted by nature to survive.  The problem is that while Evolution can explain many facets of biological life, it has clear boundaries that are only transgressed by what Stephen Jay Gould called "Darwinian Fundamentalists," namely those that try use Darwinian evolution to explain everything-cosmology, culture, ethics, politics, religion, psychology, etc.  Gould faulted these ‘fundamentalists' for "using a powerful but quite circumscribed theory to account for phenomena that fall entirely outside its biological reach."[1] 

As one example of this and as an expansion the last entry, evolution cannot explain the beginning of life.  Darwin didn't attempt to explain the origin of life, only the complex progression of life from the first species.  We now know that the simplest bacterial cell contains more information than the entire Encyclopedia Britanica, and it contains complicated, multi-faceted, and highly-organized machinery that all works together as a single unit of life.  Within the cell is a complex digital code called DNA which programs the cells actions and tells it how to function and when to reproduce.  Such was the nature of DNA that Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome project, called it "The Language of God."  This means that the cell itself, which would have existed before the process of evolution began (there must be life to select traits for survival), contains the clear mark of design.  For over 100 years now, atheistic Scientists have endeavored to create experiments showing how the first life form might have ‘appeared' on the scene, but none have been successful, leading biologist Franklin Harold to confess that the origin of life is one of the "unsolved mysteries of science."  Physicist Stephen Barr brilliantly notes Dawkins' error in reasoning: 

When examined carefully, scientific accounts of natural processes are never really about order emerging from mere chaos, or form emerging from mere formlessness.  On the contrary, they are always about the unfolding or an order that was already implicit in the nature of things, although often in a secret or hidden way.  When we see situations that appear haphazard, or things that appear amorphous, automatically or spontaneously ‘arranging themselves' into orderly patterns, what we find in every case is that what appeared to be haphazard actually had a great deal of order built into it...What Dawkins does not seem to appreciate is that his blind watchmaker is something even more remarkable than Paley's watches.  Paley finds a watch and asks how such a thing could have come to be there by chance.  Dawkins finds an immense automated factory that blindly constructs watches, and feels that he has completely answered Paley's point.  But that is absurd.  How can a factory that makes watches be less in need of an explanation than the watches themselves?  (Italics mine)

"It should be clear from all this that the problem is not with evolution.  The problem is with Darwinism.  Evolution is a scientific theory; Darwinism is a metaphysical stance and a political ideology...the atheist spin on evolution"[2]  Thus, we again find more powerful evidence in science and reason to believe that God exists. 

[1]  Dinesh D'Souza, What's So Great About Christianity, 147.

[2]  Ibid, 152.

In the 1950s, a Russian cosmonaut returned from space and declared that he had not found God.  C.S. Lewis responded that this was like Hamlet going into the castle attic looking for Shakespeare.  If there is a God, he wouldn't be another object in the universe that could be put in a lab and analyzed with empirical methods.  He would relate to us the way a playwright relates to the characters in his play.  We might be able to know quite a lot about the playwright, but only to the degree the author chooses to put information about himself in the play.  Therefore, in no case could we ‘prove' God's existence as if he were an object wholly within our universe like oxygen and hydrogen.  Rather, as C.S. Lewis also notes, "I believe in God as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."  Thus, we don't learn about the sun by staring into it but by looking at the world it reveals and sustains.[1] 

With this in view, let me just state this first reason as a question-Why is there something rather than nothing?  Carl Sagan famously said, "The Cosmos is all there ever is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be."  Besides being a revealing wordplay on the Gloria Patri, it is also a bad explanation of the facts.  Consider the words of scientist Francis Collins:  "Fifteen billion years ago, the universe began with an unimaginably bright flash of energy from an infinitesimally small point.  That implies that before that, there was nothing.  I can't imagine how nature, in this case the universe, could have created itself.  And the very fact that the universe had a beginning implies that someone was able to begin it."  This was all discovered in the late 1920s when Edwin Hubble noticed that galaxies were moving rapidly away from each other, shattering the impression that many held regarding the stillness and changelessness of the universe.  Incredibly, space itself was expanding along with the universe.  Right away, scientists realized that these galaxies were moving apart, not due to any cosmic force, but because they were once flung apart by a primeval explosion.  Scientists projected a moment in which all the mass in the universe was compressed into a point of infinite density, the entire universe contained in a single atom.  From that infinitesimal point came an explosion, filling the universe with light and creating a temperature of 100 Trillion degrees Centigrade.  The fact that the universe was expanding solved the problem that had enamored scientists for years:  why the galaxies continued to stay apart from each other rather than being pulled together by the force of gravity.  

While it has often been noted that Christians so desire God to be real that they ignore any evidence to the contrary, it can also be argued that atheists often so wish God to be a myth that they refuse any evidence to the contrary.  For a couple of examples, consider the reactions of several scientists to the discovery of the Big Bang and expanding universe.  Astronomer Arthur Eddington called the concept "preposterous, incredible, repugnant."  Physicist Philip Morrison of MIT confessed, "I find it hard to accept the big bang theory.  I would like to reject it."  Allan Sandage of Carnegie Laboratories said the idea was "such a strange conclusion" that "it cannot really be true."  Why would these scientists be so opposed to this brilliant scientific discovery?  If true, it would imply that there was a "moment of creation" when the universe and all its laws came into existence.  Before the Big Bang, there were no laws of physics so the "natural laws" cannot be used to explain the Big Bang itself; rather the Big Bang produced the physical laws we now know.  If the universe was produced outside the laws of physics, then its origin satisfies the basic definition of the word ‘miracle.'[2]

The Bible is unique in positing this miracle in such a way that science has now verified its veracity.  The Bible did not have to begin with a specific point-in-time creation event, but in fact it did, and it was unique to do so.  In Buddhism, "there are multiple world systems constantly coming into being and passing away."  In addition, Hinduism and Buddhism describe endless cycles of time stretching into the indefinite past while the Bible presents time as finite.  The Greeks and Romans believed in the eternity of history.  In contrast Jews and Christians have always believed not only that God made the universe, but also that He made it out of nothing (literally speaking the universe into existence).  We experience time and space in such a way that they seemingly have no end, and in such a way that it is almost unimaginable that there was a time when time and matter did not exist.  In fact, nobody else (whether philosopher or worldview system or religion) ever did imagine it except for Judaism and Christianity.  But modern science has confirmed that the universe was indeed ‘created' out of nothing.  In addition, the Big Bang theory resolves one seemingly glaring contradiction in Genesis, namely that light was created on the first day (Gen. 1.3) but the sun (which produces our light) was not created until the fourth day.  However, we now know that the Big Bang happened with a burst of light and energy, and that the sun came into existence later.  Arthur Eddington, who once chafed at the Big Bang eventually acknowledged it and reluctantly admitted, "the beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look at it as frankly supernatural."  Astronomer Robert Jastrow puts it even more vividly, "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream.  He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; his is about to conquer the highest peak.  As he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."[3] The old argument stands:  "Everything that begins to exist has a cause.  The universe began to exist. 

Therefore, the universe has a cause."  Scientists can no longer deny that the universe has an beginning and now must resort to denying that existence must have a cause.  Next time we will look at the argument from design.

[1]  This paragraph closely mirrors Tim Keller's Reason for God, 122.

[2]  Dinesh D'Souza, What's So Great About Christianity

[3]  Ibid.

What these skeptics are asking for is what has been termed ‘strong rationalism, meaning that no one should believe any proposition unless it can be proved rationally by loci or empirically by sense experience.  According to Tim Keller, proof, "in this view, is an argument so strong that no person whose logical faculties are operating properly would have any reason for disbelieving it.  However, ‘strong rationalism' is impossible and cannot be defended.  It cannot abide by its own most foundational premise.  How could you empirically prove that no one should believe something without empirical proof?  Notice how W.K. Clifford's statement betrays that belief, not science is at the core of strong rationalism:  "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient [empirical] evidence."  This is a statement of ethics, belief, and faith, not a statement of science.  Thus, any call for ‘strong rationalism' is by nature self-defeating.  This is why the books of the new atheism have not found kind quarters among even fellow atheist reviewers.  Marxist scholar Terry Eagleton wrote a scathing review of Dawkin's God Delusion, attacking the naïve ideas that faith has no rational component, and that reason isn't based on faith:

"Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith, and that Christan and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly.  Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school taught that.  For mainstream Christianity, reason, argument and honest doubt have always played an integral role in belief...Even Richard Dawkins lives more by faith than by reason.  We hold many beliefs that have no unimpeachably rational justification, but are nonetheless reasonable to entertain."

Historically, scientists did not always think this way.  In fact, you may be surprised to know that science once acted on core theistic beliefs, namely that this world was a product of God's mind, that His personhood, replete with personality, thought, and love, were the basis for our trusting our basic senses and rationality, and that science was a way to investigate the mind of God.  Not surprisingly, these beliefs brought us what has been dubbed the "Scientific Revolution."  Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Pascal, many others were Christians who brought their beliefs to bear on science. 

The best approach to take is what C.S. Reppert called "critical rationality."  It assumes that there are arguments that many or most will find convincing but that in the end, there will always be some way to rationally avoid ANY conclusion.  On this basis, we can evaluate belief without requiring empirical, conclusive proof.  This is exactly how science works.  Even Dawkins admits that Darwinism cannot be finally proven, and that "new facts may come to light which will force our successors to abandon Darwinism or modify it beyond recognition."  But as Tim Keller writes, "that does not mean that science cannot test theories and find some far more empirically verified if it organizes the evidence and explains the phenomena better than any conceivable alternative theory.  In exactly the same way, we can test to see if there is a God.  In other words, as a hypothesis, does naturalism or belief in God best explain that we have a universe, that regular laws operate within it, that it contains human life with consciousness and moral sense, and that we are personal in nature?  That's the question I'll seek to answer on this blog for the next few weeks, but we must go forward on the basis of "critical rationalism," not self-defeating "strong rationalism." [1]

[1] This entry closely follows the thought laid out in Tim Keller's book, The Reason for God.

I'm not a book promoter or publisher, and I promise not to spend much time on this blog promoting books, but it's hard to resist this one.  Tim Keller's recent publication, The Reason for God:  Belief in an Age of Skepticism is a worthy read no matter your view or position on Christianity.  He spends the first 7 chapters answering our culture's biggest questions about faith like "Does a good God send people to hell," "What about suffering and evil," "Christian Hypocrisy," and others.  The second half of the book offers logical, philosophical, practical, and scientific reasons that warrant belief in the Christian God.  While Keller's arguments resound with deep thinking, his presentation is winsome, accessible, warm, and personal.  If you are a non-Christian, you need to think through Keller's arguments if you're going to be intellectually honest with yourself.  If you're a Christian this book will deepen your faith and give further evidence that it takes more faith to be an atheist than a Christian.

Some of you, like this woman, have been the victims of religious hypocrisy before, you have seen the judgmentalism, arrogance, and pride in a church or in a Christian make you think, ‘if that's Christianity, I want no part of it.'  What Jesus shows you here is that long before your experience and long before the criticisms of Karl Marx, Bertrand Russell, Frederic Neitchze, and Richard Dawkins, Jesus was condemning religious hypocrisy in much stronger terms.  Jesus says that religious people have no claim on Him, so if you're a critic of religious hypocrisy then Jesus is with you. 

Of course, now we see the real problem with Jesus.  It isn't that Simon doesn't have enough proof to believe, it isn't the intellectual arguments against Jesus, it isn't the issue of suffering and injustice, it's the fact that Jesus is willing and daring enough to stand in the face of a righteous, self-sufficient, independent, highly knowledgeable Pharisee and say, You are no better than this prostitute and in fact worse, and you need Me.  Jesus is an affront to Simon's pride.  It is the same today, the biggest problem with Jesus isn't the proof (there's plenty of proof), it isn't the scientific arguments, it isn't the intellectual arguments, it isn't the issue of suffering and injustice (none of those keep the woman from coming), it is that Jesus Christ is willing and daring enough to stare 21st century Americans like us who are good, respected, money-donating, religious, moral, independent, self-sufficient people and say, ‘You need Me.'  The real problem with Jesus is that He addresses me and says, Jeremy, I have something to say to you.  The real problem with Jesus is that He is unrelentingly offensive, He never stops confronting us; He never stops exposing our slavery to self-righteousness.  The real problem with Jesus is that He says I will come in and affect every area of your life, just as He did for the prostitute.  See, Simon's self-righteousness was a way to keep Jesus at bay, a line in the sand for Jesus.  But the prostitute saw that Jesus will rub out your line in the sand and step right over it; she saw that He was coming to affect her finances, her sexuality, her lifestyle, her career, her recreation, everything.  The real problem with Jesus is that He requires us to admit we are on the same level with that sinful woman; the real problem with Jesus is that He says you can't do it, I must do it for you.  The real problem with Jesus is that He doesn't operate on quid pro quo basis.  He gives you everything for nothing, and you fall at His feet and worship.  Dan Allender said this, "The cost for the recipient of God's grace is nothing-and no price could be higher for arrogant people to pay."  

Let me try to illustrate this with what I believe is a Biblical illustration b/c Jesus uses it in other places.  Imagine Simon's life is an apple tree and what he really wants to do is to give off really nice, delicious apples for everyone to see.  The problem is that some of the apples are good and some are bad.  What he thinks he needs is for the apple farmer to come by every week or two and take off the few bad apples here and there.  But the problem is there's a sickness in the roots of his tree, and no matter how many bad apples the farmer takes off, more bad apples will grow back.  Simon's solution to the problem is to ignore the sickness in his roots, hide his bad apples, and only show people the good apples; then everyone will think he's a good apple tree.  That's how Simon is and I think it's how we often are; like Simon, we're happy to have Jesus come around for a meal or two, help us knock off a few bad behaviors, as long as he leaves the rest alone.  But the sinful woman knows differently.  She only cares about what the farmer thinks of her apples.  She admits that the problem is not just her bad fruit but her bad roots, so instead of asking the farmer to come and knock off a few bad apples, she asks him to come and uproot her from the ground and replant her completely new. 

What happens to Simon?  It doesn't tell us.  What we know is that when the self-righteous man invited Him, Jesus went.  When Simon insulted Him, Jesus staid.  When Simon refused to apologize, Jesus taught.  When Simon hardened his heart, Jesus flung open the invitation to paradise, saying to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace," to say to Simon how about you? Will you go in peace?  Will you have your sins forgiven by me or will the price be too high?  How about you?  Is the price too high?  Is it too hard to say, it's not just the fruit it's the root?  God flings open the door of His grace and mercy and says, I am sufficient to save the righteous and the unrighteous, the moral and the immoral, the religious and the irreligious, the sinner and the saint.  And how he would have you walk through.  If the Gospel is true, you don't have to pretend anymore, if the Gospel is true, you no longer have to be strong, if the Gospel is true you no longer have to be enslaved to what everyone else thinks, if the Gospel is true you no longer have to have all the answers and pretend there's no bad fruit, if the Gospel is true you no longer have to hide that skeleton in the closet, if the Gospel is true you can come now like the sinful woman, undignified, unabashed, uncaring about status and reputation, and fall at the feet of Jesus.

     Now, my question comes from my recent reading at the end of the Gospels about Jesus' resurrection. When reports spread that Jesus had been bodily raised from the dead, one disciple in particular, Thomas, says "Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe (thus the name "Doubting Thomas, John 20.25)." Well, Jesus actually shows up to let Thomas do exactly that. He says to him, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side (John 20.27)." So, if what I said in the first paragraph about God making everything new is true, then why does Jesus' new body, which is the model of what ours will be (Philippians 3.20), retain these brutal scars of suffering? Didn't God make them new? Didn't God heal? Didn't God wipe away those tears? Why does Jesus still bear these scars in His new body?

     The answer I believe is that of course God has healed, but the scars are not simply forgotten as though Jesus had never previously lived; instead, they are redeemed. Jesus' scars now are the marks of redemption; Jesus' scars are now the mark of reconciliation; Jesus' scars are now the mark of forgiveness, atonement, love, peace, joy, and intercession. He has not forgotten that He has suffered; rather He remembers in His suffering the great act of salvation He achieved. God has vindicated Him and wiped away his pain, but the suffering He experienced in the past only makes the glory He experiences in the present all the more sweet. For us, I definitely believe God will give us completely new, healed, disease-free bodies (see I Corinthians 15.42-57), but I believe he will do it in such a way that the new life we experience with Him for eternity will be all the sweeter and more enjoyable because of (not in spite of) the suffering we experienced temporarily here.

     One pastor compared this to a dream he had where his whole family was brutally murdered. When he awoke, having experienced that horrendous grief and loss, he found that his already deep love and enjoyment of his family was still further deepened and became still more enjoyable because of the temporary suffering. So it will be for us. In an almost unimaginable way, God will turn our marks of suffering and pain into beautiful testimonies of majestic redemption. Eternal life will be infinitely better because we will eternally worship the God who will do these marvelous things. Are you looking forward to the story God will write with your pain?

     Since we have been so focused on the suffering and pain in the world, which is often asked in the form of "Why do bad things happen to good people?," I wanted to turn the tables a bit and ask the alternate question which is almost never considered, "Why do good things happen to bad people?" There is a verse in Scripture that prompts me to do this (many actually, but this one says it best). Romans 11.22 says, "Consider then the kindness and the severity of God." We have considered the severity, and now I want to consider the kindness. Many of us, me included, are quick to ask God why or to blame him when something doesn't go our way, and yet we rarely take the time to consider Him when things are well. Today, I just want to offer three very brief lines of thought on this subject.

     First, look at the world. Do you realize that God could have created a dark, bleak, gray, flat plain of existence for us to live out our days? Instead, in contrast to every other major worldview, the Christian God created the universe out of joy and delight (his and ours!). With each passing day of creation, He sat back and took pleasure in all that He had made. So, day in and day out, we experience the wonder and beauty of sunrises and sunsets, snowstorms and thunderstorms, the warmth and the cold, the dry and the wet. The world is filled with colors of every hue, landscapes of every size, and species of every type. God gave us a world teeming with such variety and diversity of animals, insects, and vegetation that even after thousands and thousands of years, we are yet to discover and classify them all. Take time today to observe the sky, look closely at a tree, or just examine the grass and the insects that live there. Do we realize the immense kindness of God in such continued acts of beauty?

     Second, look at your life. Simply by the fact that you are able to read this blog, I can guess that you have a home or apartment with running water and electricity, access to the internet, and some means of transportation. This puts you in the top 5% of income earners in the world. Though many of you have likely experienced financial crises, you still remain more affluent than 95% of people on the face of the earth. Consider what capabilities you have. I just returned from a short walk around the block, an activity I take for granted every day. I have the ability to think, write, and discuss. I have a relational capacity where I can experience and enjoy the other people in my life. I will go home from work today and take a hot shower. Many of us have different capacities and capabilities but nevertheless, these are kindnesses from God to which most of us now feel entitled to rather than blessed by. In other words, we experience them as what the world owes us rather than free gifts from a good God.

     Third, look at Jesus. He has entered and experienced suffering with you. Not only that, but He has experienced the ultimate suffering of hell itself, deciding to drink the cup of suffering to the dregs, rather than have you sip the foam for all eternity. He has not only created a beautiful world and given you blessings to count, He has called you to come to Him, to drink of His salvation, to taste His goodness, to delight in His pleasure, to be part of His family, and to be part of His work to recreate this world and further spread His blessing. We must see God's ultimate kindness, not in the things He can do for us, but in the person He is for us. After all, we don't simply rejoice in the fact of the sunbeam which gives us light, but we trace the sunbeam back to its origin, the sun itself. In the same way, we must not finish this task by looking around us and concluding, "Well, it is true, we do have many things for which we should be more thankful." That would only be half of the story. The right ending is to trace those wonderful gifts back to an even more wonderful Giver and to begin to enjoy, adore, worship, and serve the kind of God who would give such things. The last thing we must do is to consider ourselves citizens or taxpayers in some divine or universal economy where we pay our taxes/dues, live within the system, and expect the rights we are due to flow accordingly. God will be a debtor to no one! Rather, we must see that we are undeserving recipients of beauty, and thus to consider not just the kindness of God but to consider the God who is kind.

I believe we need to know that God is angry.  Much of the talk about God today is sappy sentimentalism.  The fact that God is love somehow comes to mean that He's the ‘nice guy in the sky' who sits back in a big recliner and puts a big rubber stamp of approval and affirmation on everything that happens.  But since when is love, sitting back and doing nothing while loved ones are destroyed, when has love ever meant approval of injustice, when does love mean letting oppression rule, when does love mean not caring about the downward spiral of the ones you love?  So, you're darn right that God is angry.  He better be angry when His children are victimized, when His creation is ruined, when families are abandoned, when diseases take lives, and when relationships are destroyed.  If He is not angry, He is not just.  People ask, 'What kind of loving God is filled with wrath?' But any loving person is often filled with wrath. In Hope Has Its Reasons, Becky Pippert writes, 'Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships. Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might toward strangers? Far from it...Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference.' Pippert then quotes E. H. Gifford, 'Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.' She concludes: "If I, a flawed narcissistic sinful woman, can feel this much pain and anger over someone's condition, how much more a morally perfect God who made them? God's wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the cancer of sin which is eating out the insides of the human race he loves with his whole being."

After all, what is God's wrath if it is not God's willingness, commitment, authority, and power to dispel all that disrupts His glorious shalom (His peace, wholeness, beauty in the world)?  What is God's wrath if it is not the fulfillment of His eternal desire to set the world free by liberating it from evil, suffering, brokenness, and death?  The question then, is how can we be angry at God for allowing suffering and then also angry at him for his willingness to do away with suffering?  Why do we want to have God both ways, i.e. gentle, nice, and loving while simultaneously being strong enough to oppose and destroy suffering and pain?  I think the answer (and the modern offense) lies in the fact that God says that the problem of suffering and pain is rooted in human sin AND He says that sin is in us (not merely outside of us).  As long as God is judging perpetrators of evil in Darfur, we are happy, but when God gets personal with us, we get nervous.  But what has God determined in his judgment of us?

     When Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail, he remarked that the only way to know that a law is unjust is if there's a divine, higher law from God that tells us so. If there were no divine law from God, then how could anyone know if a human law was out of accord or not? With what would it be out of accord? If there is no God, someone could say that a law was unjust but that would be according to their standards or their feelings. Let's take it a step further to say that if there is no God, then there is no way to say that an historical situation is unjust. If there is nothing but nature, what is more natural than violence; it's how you and I got here-natural selection, the strong eating the weak. Dostoevsky wrote, "If God is dead, then all things are permissible." If there is no God, then on what possible basis could you object that the natural order of violence is unnatural? On what basis do we ask for a better world? Without a God, what we have is what we should expect, namely suffering and pain. Without a God there would be no reason to construct any concept of injustice or suffering or pain, for on what would it be based? The better question to ask is if there is no God, why do I (and apparently all humans) have an innate sense of justice, right, and what "ought to be." It's hard to get those feelings and desires unless a personal God made us like Him to desire those things and unless a personal God created a world intended to be pain free. So suffering and evil is a problem for the existence of God but an even bigger problem for the absence of God!

     Nobody could say this better than the one time atheist C.S. Lewis: "My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself 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. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that 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 fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, 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 without meaning."

     In the end, I believe we must force ourselves back to the beginning question of fickle hearts, namely does my concept of God really center on me and not on Him? In other words, do we believe in God only when He is granting our desires and functioning after our model of God like a genie in a bottle or do we believe in a God who is bigger than our own small perceptions of Him, a God who is big enough to have perfect reasons for allowing suffering to continue? Indeed, if you have a God who is big enough to be angry at for not stopping suffering, then you have a God who is big enough to have very good reasons beyond our comprehension for allowing it to continue. You can't have it both ways.

One of the best and most powerful statements regarding God's seeming absence in a suffering world comes in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamozov, chapter 4 when Ivan is talking to Alyosha about Russian children:

There was a little girl of five who was hated by her mother and father...This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents.  They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason till her body was one bruise.  Then, they went to greater refinements of cruelty-shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy (outhouse), and because she didn't ask to be taken up at night (as though a child of five sleeping its angelic, sound sleep could be trained to wake and ask), they smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement, and it was her mother, her mother did this.  And that mother could sleep, hearing the poor child's groans!

Can you understand why a little creature, who can't even understand what's done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark in the cold and weep her meek, unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her?  Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble novice?  Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted?  Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil.  Why should he know that diabolic good and evil when it costs so much?  Why the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to dear, kind God!

Dostoevsky's description is powerful and must be answered.  Many Christians have responded rightly that God Himself experienced and took on our suffering and pain on the cross, but I think we must take this a step further.  I believe it is even more comforting in our pain if God not only experienced suffering but experienced the reality we feel of a God who could stop it but doesn't.  As I was reading Luke 23 a few months ago I had a thought on that issue and here's my attempt to get at it.  This will serve as the first of many "answers" to this problem. 

We must see that not stopping suffering is a question of which God Himself has faced the pain.  Take a look at Luke 23.35-38.  Notice what the crowd cries out to Jesus, "He saved others; let him save Himself, if He is the Christ of God, His chosen one.  If you are the king of the Jews, then save yourself!"  They are calling on him, not to stop the suffering of the world but to stop His own suffering.  They are mocking God for not stopping the blood-letting.  Does God have the power to stop it?  Of course, remember Jesus' words in Matthew 26.53, "Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?"  In other words, more than 60,000 angels with flaming swords would be at His bleeding side in a moment if He called them.  Now put yourself in the Father's place, watching your Son be tortured, hearing Him scream out, seeing the mocking, watching Him rise to gasp for air only to slide back down again breathless, hearing Him be rejected, and observing His death, all while you had the power to send more than 12 legions of angels to His side.  You better believe if that were my son, I would move heaven and earth to be there; I would be an unstoppable force to armies, soldiers, bystanders, and weapons.  And yet God watched on; Jesus died on.  God Himself has faced the reality of not stopping His own suffering infinitely more powerfully than we ever will b/c He not only allows suffering to continue in our world but He allowed it for His own Son.  We face the pain of powerless suffering, where we have little control over the situation, but God faced the pain of powerful suffering, that is, suffering with the full power to end it and yet letting it continue in horror.  There would have to be an amazing reason to do something like that, and there is.  He did that for the infinitely valuable result of the salvation of you, me, all of creation, and the display of the infinite riches of His glory.  Christianity is the only religion that gives us a God who is not removed from suffering but comes and Himself takes on the suffering that should have been mine and should have been yours.  He does not require your blood but provides His own.  John Stott says that he personally could not believe in God if not for the cross where the One who is all powerful humbles Himself and suffers a type of punishment that you and I will never experience.  So, we don't know fore sure what the reason for suffering is but we know what it isn't, what it can't be.  It can't be b/c He doesn't love us; it can't be b/c He doesn't care; it can't be b/c He's aloof.  God loves us and hates suffering so much that He was willing to come get involved in it personally.

            Next time we'll ask if giving up believing in God all together would help us out of this problem...