Tag Archives: Theodicy

Benjamin Button – more about death than life

27 Saturday Dec 2008

Posted by in a happy God, eschatology, Hell, love of God, movies, prophecy, religion, Theodicy, universalism

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I took my wife to see the Curious Case of Benjamin Button on Christmas day. We both enjoyed it a great deal.

It’s a love story, and an adventure story. Someone compared it to Forest Gump, but it’s never as emotional as that masterpiece, nor as funny. But it’s got some humor, I’d give it it a thumbs up for the quality of the writing, acting, cinematography, and directorial artistry. And I love the way sunrises over the water are like a character in the film … somehow Benjamin is attracted to them, and watches them regularly by himself, with family members, etc.

As I stated yesterday, what makes me resonate with the movie the most is the way it presents human growth backwards from the norms we see every day…. aging, failing, dying. Here, a person emerges from the womb as from the grave, in decrepitude, and then grows toward youthful vigor. The “youthful” Benjamin writes in his diary at one point (perhaps at 15 biological years, now with the body of perhaps a 60 year old) “Some days I feel different than the day before…” His wrinkles are disappearing, his hair is sprouting “like weeds”, his hormones are catching fire.

Does the Bible really support the idea that such a miracle is possible? That it will happen to the masses of humanity? Yes and Yes!

Jesus himself states the case as emphatically as words can say: “Don’t be amazed…. All in the graves will come forth.” Unfortunately the fog of neo-Platonic concepts like immortal soul and hellfire make it difficult for most Christians to really see what Jesus is saying here. It’s quite simple, though. The ones who enter into a relationship with God during this age, and continue walking in grace and faith, emerge in the resurrection of Life, what Jesus calls the First Resurrection in the book of Revelation. For such, their resurrection is instantaneous, glorious, and in heaven. The entire rest of mankind, who remain in their sins, emerge from the grave still in their sins, but experience a gradual resurrection, through a process of judgment or trial and testing. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul states that God gives each a body as it pleases him. This is tremendously reasuring, because it means that disfigured, disabled, distorted folks in this life can look forward to being whole upon emerging from the grave. Then, their education will begin and it will take most of the Millennium for each person to build the finegrained righteous character that is going to be their birthright and their ticket into everlasting life as a member of the human community.

Isaiah describes the scene in several places, including chapter 35. He defines its scope as “the ransomed of the Lord” (which by the authority of 1 Tim 2:4-6 I claim means “all the human race”). He states that they return (come back). That is, they don’t go to a place they never were before, they come back to where they were before.. planet Earth. They come back joyfully, and yet they have some travelling still to do. Isaiah calls it a highway of holiness. He describes it as a place that you can’t travel if you’re unclean (dirty or sinful) … and yet he says that it exists FOR the unclean. He says that the wayfaring man (Joe Sixpack), though they be but fools, won’t err therein. They will figure out how to navigate that highway to holiness, and with the help God has provided with his powerful Son and his patient Bride they will get to that place of moral excellence, of wisdom, of forgiveness, of victory over doubt and selfishness and fear. I envision the Bride or spiritual government of that age as all the great and saintly Christians of ages past; myriads of powerful spiritual mediators working overtime to help everyone with a cloud of supernatural help and faithbuilding efforts. The result of all this effort is the process of age-reversal that Job described in the verse I quoted yesterday… returning to the days of youth.

Isaiah hints at the remarkable reversal of all that we think about in this new living (un-dying) process. He says in 65:20, “”No longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his days; For the youth will die at the age of one hundred and the one who does not reach the age of one hundred will be thought accursed.”

What an odd verse! I think the normative experience during the Millennium will be to awaken from the grave near the beginning of the Millennium and live under the authority of Christ and his “Bride”. Joe Sixpack will be living, learning, getting the occasional rebuke but mostly lots of great instruction and encouragement, for hundreds upon hundreds of years. Then comes the end, when Christ turns over the Kingdom to the Father, and there is one last final test, known in the book of Revelation as the “little season” when one more time an evil deceptive intelligence (Satan) is allowed to try and organize opposition to God. This will finally settle who really has love in their heart and really wants to live eternally on the earth…(see Matthew 25:31 to 46)

So I think the Isaiah 65:20 text is saying that since every person can expect the better part of a Millennium to be their minimum opportunity,  anyone who dies at, say, 100 years old in that Messianic Age will be like a child in comparison to the 700, 800, 900-year lifespans that the vast majority will experience. And all those who die before the end of the Millennium would do so only as a final judgment… so after a 100 or so years of the most patient and thorough tough love imaginable, those who are executed will be truly sinners, truly deserving of the curse of death. They’ll be the few, the occasional incorrigible folks who simply refuse to buckle down to the righteous authority of the Lamb and his Bride. They will be recognized as accursed sinners by their fellow men.

The Button story isn’t remotely about any of these things. It explores the challenges and unique tragedies that would face a man whose 70 years of experiencing the hereditary fall of man if his growth pattern were reversed. So in the end his life is still a process of dying, not a real life as the Bible envisions it for all people in the future.

It’s tough for us to shake the perception that this life is LIFE. It ain’t folks. It’s death. Cradle to grave, dying we die. That’s why Jesus said weird things like “let the dead bury the dead.” Even the people he resurrected remained firmly dead … that is, dead in trespasses and sins, not released from the condemnation upon all who get their life from Adam.

Those who receive new life from Christ are indeed alive, however. Christians in this age are truly set free from death, and though their outer man appears to die, inwardly they are being renewed with an inner spiritual life that is the spark of an immortal, spiritual existence beyond the grave.

But those who do not receive Christ in this life remain in their sins, and will have to be dealt with in the next age. And of course, that’s where I differ from the main stream of the Christian community… in seeing a second age of grace for all the rest of mankind.

So enjoy a good love story… but also try to put your mind around the incredible love story of a happy God for ALL the human race. Not one that falls flat because most folks don’t respond… [SPOILER ALERT] not one in which the leading lady gets old and dies, and the leading man gets young and dies … but a love story that is reasonable, fair, and yet results in everyone who wants to living happily ever after!

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Not the last lecture

25 Friday Jul 2008

Posted by in a happy God, eschatology, love of God, media, orthodoxy, Theodicy

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The world has lost Randy Pausch. Temporarily. The Carnegie Mellon prof who gained acclaim and then wrote a best-selling book about dying of cancer has passed away in the last few hours. He was 47. His story is particularly touching to me because he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at precisely the time that my wife was initially diagnosed with the same illness. Our initial scans showed a mass on her pancreas and a number of spots that looked liked metastasized tumors on her liver. We spent several weeks contemplating the possibility that Beth would be gone within 3 months to a year, just like Randy’s family. Thankfully for us, when we went to the Mayo clinic a more focused scan revealed that the local doctors had seen false positives. But the confrontation with death left us with a deeper sympathy and deeper sense of purpose for living well and loving much. Randy’s response is bittersweet to say the least. While we admire his refusal to whine or complain, we cannot help but ask why death happens, and what the purpose of human life might be, if there is one at all. For myself, times like this make me embarrassed to have to identify with the Christian community… because the dark side of orthodoxy is that it believes, and sometimes even says out loud, that people like Randy are “lost”… a euphemism for an eternal destiny of hopeless, conscious torment “in the hands of an angry God.” Randy brings a tear to most of our eyes when he chooses to be satisfied with the amount of life he has enjoyed. He is thankful for his parents, thankful for his job, thankful for his family and the many dreams he has been able to achieve. But as a participant in the Christian community I’m embarrassed to say that the ugliness of Calvinist or even Arminian theology casts the darkest of shadows on every life, no matter how well lived, which does not end with the unqualified acceptance of their Molechian concept of deity. I know my Christian brothers who believe in hell would be offended by my comparison of their faith to the “God of drums” — the awful pounding of sacred drums to drown out the screams of children thrown, alive, into the red-hot arms of a flaming deity. And yet that is the unvarnished truth when you really face Christian doctrine head-on without flinching. Am I right? Challenge me if you think not. I am crying right now, in grief for Randy’s wife, his kids, his many friends and colleagues, his students. What a great man he was. But I am also deeply happy, because the Bible is so crystal clear, so brightly unambiguous, that orthodoxy is dead wrong and doomed to full disclosure and embarrassment; and that Randy has not delivered his last lecture. Randy will be back … with songs, with joy, with the same humility and fun-loving spirit that he carried into the grave. If I read Isaiah correctly, the karma of Randy is far closer to the truth than what Isaiah called the “refuge of lies”. I’m well aware of the proof texts that folks use, and I have spent years in sweet fellowship with good Christian brothers and sisters who are persuaded that these lies (which originated in the Garden of Eden) are true. But the hail that is now decimating the Christian church and making this the post-Christian era is forcing Bible-believing Christians to re-examine the Bible and see what it really says. And to admit that if God is indeed love, there is no way he’s got a guy like Randy Pausch on the wrong side of eternity. No way.

Somewhere between nowhere and goodbye

23 Wednesday Jul 2008

Posted by in a happy God, eschatology, love of God, movies, Theodicy

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I just finished a couple of major deadlines in my secular work and I celebrated by watching a movie in my hotel room. I’ve seen Million Dollar Baby before, but this movie is told so cinematically, so emotionally, that even when I know the plot ahead of time I find myself going through the same gut-wrenching, agonizing struggles that Frankie (a boxing trainer, Clint Eastwood) and Maggie (his boxer, Hillary Swank) have to face.

The tears and sadness I feel when watching that excruciating story morphs for me into a warm and settled expectation at the end (after my cry). Not because that story ends well. (For those who still haven’t seen this 4-Oscar-winning best picture, I won’t share any details of the plot.) Yes, it’s a work of fiction that feels as sad and overwhelming as any of the myriad tragic stories we hear about every day. Yes, on the face of it I could agree with Andrew Sarris of the New York Observer who wrote that ‘no movie in my memory has depressed me more than Million Dollar Baby.’“[4]

The only real hope that comes from the Hollywood portrayal itself, in my opinion, flows from the crystalline quality of all 3 leading characters of the story. (Eastwood, Swank, and Morgan Freeman) All three face deep disappointments and overwhelming personal challenges. All of them, at some level, fail in achieving their dreams, and the film departs from the normal romanticizing tendencies of pop culture to allow the characters to find a way of coping with their own failure, rather than miraculously finding a way out.

This encourages me because, first of all, I am persuaded that the Bible does not romanticize the experiences of this life for anyone, either. “People die all the time” is not just the realistic pronouncement of the sage observer, Freeman. It’s also the simple story of the Bible.

And I also find encouragement because of the finely-tuned sensibilities of so many people, including the folks in Hollywood who Christians love to bash — people who are pursuing the truth of human life and spirituality with grit, objectivity, and fairness. Increasingly, the reality of the failings of heroes, as well as the mitigating qualities of the “bad guys” are served up in realistic ways. Again, I find this much more like the Bible than the romanticized pulp I here coming from, say, “Focus on the Family” or other well-intentioned but, in my view, simplistic advocates of a brand of Christianity.

For me, then, real hope comes, not from a sweet but ultimately romantic humanistic sentimentality which says that “getting our shot” (as Freeman put it) is all we can hope for. Nor does it come from the faith (?) of a  Churchianity that’s been, amazingly, quite deceived: that everyone already has all the shot God in his “sovereignty” has allowed for them…. forever. If either of those options were true, then all the many people who have died trying, or died without trying, or died meaninglessly because of the stupidity or negligence or evil of another, would have died for nothing. They would be just where Freeman thinks Eastwood might have gone… “somewhere between nowhere and goodbye.” Or, if the Christian mainstream is right, they’d be well beyond good-bye, into horrible, unceasing, conscious “good riddance”.

Hope comes from the promise of a resurrection. Not a tentative, deductive, inferential hope that comes from reading ancient poetry or believing myths. The Bible is quite concrete and direct in its promises of a universal resurrection… and more than that, a thoroughgoing exploration of all the lessons of life for every person. A day of reckoning that is transformational, hopeful, and reconstructive. An Act Two that builds on Act One, and doesn’t kill off any of the characters. And those characters who exit in Act Three (after the Millennium) will do so of their own volition, their own informed and fully conscious choice.

Movies like Million Dollar Baby, Saving Private Ryan, and Schindler’s List leave me, after I’ve had my cry (and I really am a soft touch in those kinds of tragedies) with a profound satisfaction that the goals of God that are so clearly stated, and will indeed be achieved … and that the methods of God we see about us will yet prove to be so brilliantly wise and incessantly loving as to take our breath away.

When the world comes to its Act 3, there won’t be a nowhere, and there won’t be any more goodbyes. And I think that’s why God is happy.

Q: Why was Jesus sent to Earth?

04 Friday Jul 2008

Posted by in a happy God, Bible Questions, Calvinism, eschatology, love of God, Theodicy

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Hi, Brian and Kimberly,
My apologies for taking so long to answer you.

Jesus told us that God’s motivation is love, and that his goal is to bring life to whoever believes in Jesus. John 3:16

Of course, the mainstream traditional teaching is that most people self-select themselves out of that opportunity, by choosing to reject Jesus. My Calvinist brothers acknowledge that humans are not really free and capable of responding, but their perspective isn’t very comforting, either: they teach that God has chosen who will escape the wrath of God. Apparently in this view God has chosen to send the majority of the human race to eternal misery. Some Calvinists will tell you that God knew these folks would not do the right thing anyway … others will say that the sovereign God can’t fail, is always righteous, so of course this idea that millions, billions are fore-ordained to hell cannot be an unloving or bad idea. After all, “who are we to reply against God?”, they will say; “who are we to complain as lumps of clay against the potter’s will?” (language Paul used in Romans 9, but not to justify eternal damnation, it seems to me).

However Jesus was well aware that God’s sending of a righteous man into the sinful world would not just magically make everyone all sweetness and light… those who benefitted from the status quo would fight him… and so he states in John 3:17 that again, the goal is not to judge the sin-gripped world through Jesus, but to save that very world through Jesus’ efforts on their behalf.

Jesus stated that he came to give his flesh for the life of the world. Again, life for the entire world is what is clearly and unambiguously stated. It doesn’t say, “I came to give my flesh for every individual who receives me before he dies.” There’s a world dying, and Jesus sets his sights pretty darn high — “I’m going to save the world.”

Pause for a moment to consider the ways in which that phrase, “save the world”, is used so often today.

Here’s the first 5 things that come up in a Google search:

  1. The Save the World Project says, “Today we all face a great challenge…” Indeed. This one focuses on fossil fuels, something Jesus never even mentioned.
  2. The How to Save the World blog focuses on unequal distribution of wealth, species extinction trends, and other ominous facts that make thinking people worry.
  3. Justin Timberlake and Madonna apparently have an orgasmic focus in their 4 minutes to save the world.
  4. Foreign Policy magazine presents 21 solutions from various brilliant people on how to save the world. First is from Garry Kasparov the chess master: a Global Magna Carta.
  5. And at the Save Your World store, you can learn about body care, hair care, and other accessory items at the Rainforest-Mall:

    “By purchasing our products, you are contributing to the Save Your World® project, a partnership with Conservation International and the Government of Guyana Forestry Commission. The project secures rainforest habitat that would have been leased by mining or logging companies. Every purchase you make helps protect one whole acre of dwindling habitat…”

That’s just the top 5 ways various well-intentioned folks think we can save our world. Do you suppose that Jesus was equally misguided when he tossed out the notion that somehow if he died on a cross it would do something to save the world?

Or do you think that the historic results of Christianity so far were what he had in mind when he said “my flesh I give for the life of the world”? According to ReligiousTolerance.org, the percentages of the world that are Christian have barely budged in a hundred years — still roughly 33% of the world population. And that’s counting “Christians” in the broadest, most shallow ways possible.

ReligiousTolerance also quotes Samuel Huntington:

The percentage of Christians in the world peaked at about 30 % in the 1980s, leveled off, is now declining, and will probably approximate to about 25% of the world’s population by 2025. As a result of their extremely high rates of population growth, the proportion of Muslims in the world will continue to increase dramatically, amounting to 20 percent of the world’s population about the turn of the century, surpassing the number of Christians some years later, and probably accounting for about 30 percent of the world’s population by 2025.

Islam is growing faster (2.9% annually, faster than world population growth), while Christianity is slowly slipping as a percentage of world population.

If we try to evaluate Christianity according to the number of adults who have chosen to claim themselves practicing followers of Jesus, a survey published in Crosswalk.com in 2001 stated that 11% of the world “know Jesus”. Quoting ReligiousTolerance.org:

Missiologist Ralph Winter estimated in early 2001 that there are 680 million “born again” Christians in the world, and that they are growing at about 7% a year. This represents about 11% of the world’s population and 33% of the total number of Christians.

So getting back to my main point: Christianity as we know it should not be viewed as a fulfillment of Jesus’ claims that he came to save the world.

Jesus said, “If I be lifted up [on the cross], I will draw all men unto me.” Here he doesn’t talk in general terms about the world, he makes a pretty bold claim about individuals. That’s especially significant, since elsewhere he said, “no one comes to the Father except through me” and “no man CAN come to me unless the Father who has sent me draws him…”

And Jesus not only claims that he is the only way to life, he claims that the opportunity comes from God, and ALL men will indeed be drawn to him.

It should be obvious, it seems to me, that either we should dismiss Jesus entirely as a raging, self-deceived lunatic, or else we should try to find a rational explanation for these amazingly grandiose statements.

Paul, writing about it later, said that Jesus brought life and immortality (two distinct things) to light through the gospel. (That’s from 2 Timothy 1:10)

I would submit that life for the human race (on earth beginning in Messiah’s worldwide reign) was brought to light through the gospel. The whole world will be saved when the redemptive plan of Jesus is fully accomplished. The earth will be restored, the garden paradise will expand to fill the world, the nations will be healed — whoever wants to — and only after they have made their choice will Satan be allowed to attempt to instigate one last rebellion. (see Revelation 20) Though Christians lost sight of this world-wide redemption, orthodox Jews have held fast to it in one form or another and it’s still a prominent part of their hope for the future.

The Gospel also brought to light the promise of immortality or death-proof-ness, the power to live without external sustenance, forever. This distinct quality was not even enjoyed by angels, but only God and the resurrected Jesus. And yet it in the Christian “high calling”, this opportunity is opened up for the victorious followers of Jesus, who will live in heaven as spiritual beings. This is the “special” salvation for the “church of Christ.” In the “first resurrection” they will become part of the “bride, the lamb’s wife”. They will be given the kingdom. They will judge men and angels. They will shepherd the nations with a staff of iron with Jesus in his throne.

In summary, Jesus came to save the world. And he’ll really do it. First he saves a small group who will be so close as to be called his “bride” … but then they together turn their attention to the world and continue the hard work of saving it, through a process of resurrection by judgment, and teaching the world what it means to live in harmony and follow the principles of God’s universe. When they’re done, every man, woman and child who has ever lived will have fully learned what God expects of them, and how wonderful things can be if everyone follows those loving and just principles. Then a final test, and those who choose death will receive it. The vast majority, no doubt, will choose and forever enjoy life and love on a restored earth. “And they all lived happily ever after…”

An Unfinished Life

28 Thursday Dec 2006

Posted by in a happy God, eschatology, love of God, movies

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Einar Gilkyson: You think the dead really care about our lives??
Mitch Bradley: Yeah, I think they do. I think they forgive us our sins. I even think it’s easy for them.
Einar Gilkyson: Griff said you had a dream about flying.
Mitch Bradley: Yeah. I got so high, Einar. I could see where the blue turns to black. From up there, you can see all there is. And it looked like there was a reason for everything. 

Just saw a great movie — An Unfinished Life. Ranks right up there with Places in the Heart and My Life As a House as stories of redemption and forgiveness, told in realistic terms by a real thinkers who understand the complexity of human experience.

The quote above is from the end of the movie (not giving away the plot). Two crusty old cowboys played by Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman are reflecting on the dead because at the beginning of the movie we learn that Redford’s character Einar had a son who died in his 20s, and the old man never got over it. Every day he would sit at the grave and tell his son what had happened, what he was thinking, and ask for his opinion. It was not eerie or spiritualistic, just a man coping with life by metaphorically speaking to his son’s memory. So at the end Einar asks Mitch if the dead can forgive. The movie has just explored the more practical question, “can the living forgive?” The title comes from the inscription the father has cut into the son’s gravestone — “an unfinished life.”

My wife and I loved every character in the movie, and appreciated that the story saw hope and joy in even the bitter, disappointing aspects of human experience. In the end, the reason for everything comes out.

It makes me happy to see Hollywood types who are cynical toward churchianity, yearning to pierce the veil of time and ask what the purpose of human life might be. And it makes me happy to see them often arriving at the view that our lives are not in vain — that there is hope for everyone.

No life is wasted

07 Saturday Jan 2006

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Like millions of others, I was deeply moved by Paul E. Schroeder’s op-ed about the death of his son, Augie. (Washington Post, Tuesday, January 3) I agree that from the perspective Paul is viewing it, a misguided foreign policy and foolish military tactics, Augie became yet another wasted life, an unnecessary casualty of war.

My comments are more about the theological implications of a wasted life.

It is a waste whenever a person’s life is snuffed out in the prime of life, after they have developed their own unique personality, after they have been educated and prepared to benefit the people around them, just by being themselves.

It is a waste whenever a person’s life ends in ripe old age, after they have raised a family, worked all their life, gone to school, gained wisdom, insight, humility, and historic perspective.

It is a waste whenever a person’s life is aborted before they can start it, or they are born dead, or they die in infancy, or they die in childhood before they can reach their potential.

Each death, of every person, is indeed a waste if we do not view it in the context of God’s promise of a second life, a fresh opportunity to return with the same memory, the same personality, the same dreams, to continue growing and be re-united with loved ones.

I believe that Augie is now firmly in the loving memory of God, just as freshly and warmly as he lives in the memories of his family. And I believe that God is happy because he knows that all people are in his memory* … and that when the time comes for Augie and all other people to return, the education, usefulness, love and dreaming will continue. And new vistas will open, as horizons expand to fill the entire world, and timeframes expand to fill eternity.

Augie will meet the guys who planted the bomb that killed him, and anyone that he was asked to kill by Uncle Sam. They’ll shake hands, learn each other’s languages, music, and stories, discover the world through each others eyes, and walk together toward Isaiah’s vision. A world that is at rest, and quiet, and spontaneously breaks forth into song.

*The Greek word for tomb (mnemion) literally means memory device, and comes directly from the Greek word for memory itself. When Jesus said that all in the tombs will come forth, he meant more than literal graves, because many or most people who have died are not in graves at all. They have died at sea, or in holocausts or tsunamis or earthquakes or wars that took them away without a trace. But all who died reside in the memory of God. Their unique personality, memories, and character have been recorded.

Refreshing honesty

06 Friday Jan 2006

Posted by in love of God, orthodoxy, prophecy, Theodicy

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My apologies to anyone who may have missed me during thee last month.
But it’s a new year, and I’m kicking it off with a post spurred by a refreshing post I just found at Rondam Ramblings.

Ron Garrett points out that just the mathematics of the idea that unbelievers of this life will spend eternity without the possibility of peace and repentance, is too awful for words. The darkness of “Christian” eternity for the masses of mankind is infinitely more evil than slavery, or the Holocaust, or any of the millions of lesser evils spawned by men and devils.

I gave Ron my take on the matter at http://rondam.blogspot.com/2005/12/queasy-about-christ.html

I hope that eventually my Christian brethren wake up to the simple common sense of folks like Ron Garrett, and re-examine the Bible to see that it really speaks of a loving God …. who loves his enemies just as he commands Christians to do, and provides the opportunities to learn valuable lessons and gain the humility and breadth of experience they need to freely choose ways of peace and justice as their way of life. That’s the kind of love God wants from his creatures — service to each other, appreciation for each other and a willingness to listen to God’s wise insights into how to live in harmony while treasuring diversity.

I love dialog!

21 Monday Nov 2005

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Yep, I’m an insignificant microbe in the TTLB Ecosystem but I really appreciate hearing from MM and Tim Challies about the posts I made concerning their sites. The exchange with MM follows the “Problem of Pain post of a couple of days ago.

I’ve got to work on my brevity. Too verbose. I’ll hope to do better, especially if I start getting some welcome complaints!

Problem of Pain

18 Friday Nov 2005

Posted by in eschatology, Theodicy

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MM writes in her “Theology of the Body” blog yesterday that as many philosophers have noted, there are two primary issues relative to evil that we must lay at God’s feet: the “acts of God” that involve human suffering in an incomplete or unfriendly planet, and the “moral failures” that flow form human free moral agency.

She writes an interesting conclusion:

I would submit also that people tend to become uncomfortable with these explanations of pain as resulting from a broken world and moral failure; such an answer seems incomplete. In fact, such an answer is incomplete, until both you and your audience have acknowledged your own “breaking” role in the broken world. May I suggest that such a conversation about the problem of pain is a good opportunity to recognize (gently) the sin and brokenness of the one who brings these troubling questions about the reality of pain, and the consequent need for the Savior?

The approach advocated by MM, it seems to me, may come across as insensitive — sort of like blaming the victim. (as Anonymous seemed to be saying). Yes, we all need to repent. But even after we have repented we will still hurt. And hurt even more on behalf of those who are darkened and discouraged by the prevalence of invincible evil, while the only invincible force in the universe does not interfere. So to force people to wait for an answer about the goodness of God, until they have personally taken full responsibility for their troubles, is both incomplete and unnecessary.

Unnecessary because the Bible is full of answers on this topic of God’s goals and ultimate designs. Incomplete, because the process of repentance and growth toward Godlikeness is a long journey, not a single step. In fact, when we envision the world as it will be toward the end of Messiah’s rule — a world that by today’s standards will be a paradise, with scarcely a problem visible anywhere, victory over evil will still be quite incomplete. In that world, all the people who have ever lived will be back, outwardly obedient and living happily. They will have acknowledged the Savior, and learned substantially much more about how to live and love, freely … and yet the probability of a major explosion of evil will still exist. And it is predicted that evil will indeed come roaring back at the end of the Millennium, in the “little season”. Jesus puts his finger on why in his parable of the Sheep and the Goats. There, when queried as to their sins of omission, exposed at the end of Messiah’s rule, both categories of people are unconscious of what they omitted. Or at least they say they are.

I therefore submit that what God is working toward, the goal he has laid down of complete victory over evil, will only come when all human beings and angels will have fully learned how to be unconsciously, constantly good. So good that they will not only avoid transgression, their love for others will not miss opportunities to do good. This level of character growth will require God’s mighty help, and it will begin to be extended while people are weak.

At the moment, the weak are still saying they are strong. The proud are still “happy”. But God will intervene, he will cry, yea, roar. He will defeat every human rival institution, including and especially the “Christian” ones.

Yet God will also be winsome in victory, and even with the toughest cases of wickedness, God will rise to the occasion by revealing his judgments in an educational way, and by attacking the wickedness of the wicked, until he finds no more wickedness. (Psalm 10:15)

This will take some amazing teaching on God’s part, and some long experience with the subtleties of human and angelic pride. But it will happen, and it is promised. And so I would disagree that God did the ultimate good by creating free beings who can and do sin. If that is all he did, he would be the author of confusion, bitterness and death. But God will make the anger of man, the sin of man, the wilfulness of man, praise him by turning it into a learning opportunity, and nurture every willing heart toward complete victory. All godlike creatures carry destructive possibilities within their hearts and minds — so pain and suffering at the present time is only a problem when viewed shortsightedly. In the long view, it is a necessary part, and everyone will be able to graduate with honors from this long and arduous class.

In his image

16 Wednesday Nov 2005

Posted by in a happy God, love of God

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When a father begets a son, he sees his own image there. He sees the similarities, and yet the distinctive qualities. He sees the potential for unique and individual achievement, as well as the stamp of resemblance and inheritance.

I think that is what makes God happy as he contemplates his human and divine family. One family, in his name, in heaven and in earth. Myriads of sons and daughters, each bringing a spark of unique intelligence and character to the symphony of praise which is still tuning up.

Copyright 2005 by Richard Kindig — This photo may not be used without my express written permission. Family and friends may copy to their own computers for viewing enjoyment.