My wife shared a video with me in which a Christian apologist was debating an atheist. The atheist brought up a story of a woman who was locked in a dungeon for 24 years, raped most nights by her father, had seven children, one of them died. She begged God to rescue her, and He did not. Then he asked the question, “How could God allow this?”
The apologist went through his arguments which were all good, but I think I would have approached this question differently.
The challenge before us is this: How could God allow horrible things to happen to innocent people? If these horrible things happen, then that must prove that God (a) is not good, (b) is not strong enough to intervene, or (c) does not exist, right?
The first thing we need to understand is this: There is no slick answer. You can’t string together 50, 100, 30,000 words that will settle this question once and forever. That’s not how questions like this work.
But what we can do is this: We can start to think theistically, and in so doing maybe our world will make a little more sense.
Here’s how I would do that: First of all, can we all agree that what happened to this woman was horrible? It was terrible. It was horrific. In fact, our words fail us. We don’t have strong enough words to draw a circle around the evil that happened here.
We need to acknowledge this because if we deny it at any level, we’re not seeing the world as it really is.
And what would be the appropriate human emotional response to this? Shock. Horror. A deep, deep sense of hurt for this woman who was victimized. And anger at the injustice that was perpetrated against her.
Horrible things happen to people. And I think if we were honest with ourselves, we would say this: At some point, we need to look away. To protect ourselves, we cannot take in the full picture of evil that takes place in this world. We can’t handle it. Our psyches aren’t strong enough. The hurt is too deep; we cannot take it in.
But here we find the first difference between God and us.
He never looks away.
He feels the full measure of your hurt and mine. Every moment of this woman’s 24 year ordeal is etched in the heart of God. He never looked away. He feels all of the hurt. And He feels the full load of anger at the injustice that was committed against her.
To be fair to God we must acknowledge something else. Sometimes—maybe most of the time—He does prevent or stop evils like this from happening. There are people in this world who would love to see you suffer. To see you suffer and slowly die would be like candy for them. If they had the power to make that happen in your life, they would use that power today.
But something stops them.
One time, years ago, I was in a bad place. I made the decision to do something evil—something that would have hurt many people that I care about today. I was on my way to commit this sin when God sent someone to stop me.
Hundreds of times I have thanked God for intervening and saving me from my own stupidity and sin.
But other times I have done wrong. I have hurt people. I have damaged relationships. And God did not intervene to stop me. I have regrets. But God allowed me to do those things even though He knew that people He loved would be hurt in the process.
Maybe you can say the same thing.
So why is it that God sometimes intervenes and stops bad things from happening to people and sometimes He doesn’t?
Is it because He likes some people more than others that He protects them from harm?
Apparently not because who would God like more than Jesus, His only Son?
Even though Jesus asked to be spared, God stood off to the side while evil men stripped Him, mocked Him, beat Him, tortured Him, and finally murdered Him.
I think any of us would beg God not to allow what happened to Jesus to happen to us. But Jesus wasn’t spared.
And if the story ended there, then I think it would be safe to conclude that we live in a meaningless universe where God—if He exists at all—has lost all interest in His creation, and has abandoned us.
But the story doesn’t end there.
Jesus stepped out of the grave. And when He did, He made a statement about God:
There’s no hurt I cannot heal. There’s no damage I cannot fix.
Back to the woman who suffered: What would be the appropriate human response? To rescue her, right? To bring her tormentor to justice. To protect her from further harm. To begin the long process of trying to heal the injury that took place to her soul.
We would use our limited power to do what we can to undo the damage.
But God has power that we do not have. He can heal hurts we cannot heal. He stands on both sides of life and death. He holds eternity in His hands.
And when God brought Jesus back from the dead, He made a promise to all of us:
Whatever has gone wrong in your life, whatever hurts you have endured, I can make them right. I will make them right if you come to Me.
Thanks!
Dwight
PS. For those of you who follow me on YouTube, I hope to have this post up as a video in the next day or so.
