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The Problem of Evil: Obstacles to Faith with Mark Mittelberg, Part 3

The Problem of Evil: Obstacles to Faith with Mark Mittelberg, Part 3

Last updated on: March 17, 2015 at 12:32 pm by Christian Podcast Central

The Problem of Evil: Obstacles to Faith with Mark Mittelberg, Part 3 2015-03-17T12:32:40-08:00 Christian Podcast Central

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People who are in the midst of suffering and pain, dealing with evil (moral evil, natural evil, whatever has invaded their lives) will sometimes “mouth” this question and look at you with tears flowing down their cheeks, and ask, “Why would God allow my sister to be killed in this accident?” or “Why would God allow my son to be inflicted like this?” or “Why would God allow these people to suffer as they are?”

Often times, they are asking a question that really isn’t a question at that moment. That is, they don’t really want you to answer it at that moment.

Too often, Christians make the mistake of, when someone is in the middle of pain, rattling off the apologetic reasoning supporting God’s sovereignty… and the person in pain wants to wring their neck! They may have verbally asked the question, but what their heart is typically asking is “Does God care about me?”

Most of the time, a person who is in the middle of a painful season of their lives does not need an apologetic or philosophical answer or even Bible verses. In most cases, they simply need a friend who will be quiet, be with them, hold their hand, love them, walk with them, care about them, help them with the day-to-day things, while extending the love of Christ. At some point down the road, when the pain is not so present or at least not so fresh, there comes a point where it would be appropriate to ask them if they are ready to talk about the very important issues they had previously raised.

The point is this: we need to be extremely wise and careful when it comes to these types of discussions before we glibly jump in and offer our solutions to their problems (as if we really had a full solution to such huge, eternal questions, anyway).

A friend of mine and his wife were driving down highway 42 at night, when it started raining heavily and they hit dense fog. He could barely see the white stripe at the side of the road. He didn’t want to pull over because he thought that if he did, the cars behind him would follow his taillights and lose their bearings on the road as well, or worse, he would get rear ended and cause a huge pile up. So, he just kept creeping along the road, praying that God would get them to where they were going safely.

Out of nowhere, a truck came by and passed them. They could see the truck’s taillights through the fog. Now the truck had amazing fog lights on and was traveling at a confident and deliberate speed, so my friend thought that if he could just follow the truck’s taillights, they could make it.

My friend told me, “The same principle applies to why there is suffering and evil in the world. We may not be able to make out all the peripheral details of why – those may be obscured from our view. But there are some points of light that can illuminate a few key Biblical truths for us, and if we follow those points of light, they will lead us in the right direction towards some conclusions that I think can satisfy our souls.”

Similarly, I believe that the Bible contains seven “points of light” that can help guide us to these conclusions.

The first one is this: The world is as Jesus predicted.

John 16:33 says, “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

You see, Jesus doesn’t sugarcoat the situation we are living in. He, along with all the other teachings of Scripture, readily acknowledges that we live in a fallen, messed up world that is not the way that it was originally intended to be. And so, even though it doesn’t take away the suffering, it tells me that Jesus is a truth-telling Savior, the Bible is a truth-telling revelation from God, and Christianity is a truth-telling religion that doesn’t sugarcoat things, but acknowledges reality.

For more engaging and encouraging videos and podcasts, visit the E-Squared Media Network at www.e2medianetwork.com.

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