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Haiti and the 3 mistakes of modern faith
Q: Many have criticized Pat Robertson's suggestion that the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti was the work of the devil or a form of divine punishment. But if one believes God is good and intervenes in the world, why does God allow innocents to suffer? What is the best scriptural text or explanation of that problem you've ever read?
As we look at the unmitigated misery in Haiti, many of us ask, "Why, God?" Why should a group of people who have suffered so much be the victims of a tragedy this devastating? Haven't they suffered enough? Where is mercy for the poor, where is justice for the afflicted, where is healing for the wounded?
The specter of such suffering confronts our sense of moral order in this world, and it undermines the teaching of our most popular ministers. The bestselling "Prayer of Jabez" didn't say anything of substance relating to the innocent suffering and dying. And Christian bestsellers like "Your Best Life Now" by Joel Osteen are hardly a road map for dealing with the cruel injustice that afflicts many in this life.
By ignoring three central themes of Scripture, we have created a religion that is incapable of responding to calamity with anything other than Pollyannaish banalities designed to explain away tragedy, or with vindictive against the victims to console ourselves that their fate was just. But there are times when tragedy is simply tragedy - it is not a silver-lined blessing in disguise. The Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide, and the Haiti quake come to mind. And there are times when we are forced to admit that victims are not to blame for their suffering, irrespective of Pat Robertson's opinion on Haiti or the late Jerry Falwall's view of 9/11. In this life, all too often the wicked prosper and the good suffer.
In contrast to our most popular rewrites of faith, Scripture itself has much to say about understanding the injustice in a world created by a loving God. But if you preach it you will almost guarantee you will never have a megachurch, and if you write it, its unlikely you'll have a bestseller. But by ignoring these themes, modern faith has become impotent in the face of tragedy. To regain our vitality, we must first dismantle the core three mistakes of modern faith:
- Mistake 1: There is no devil.
- Mistake 2: We live in a just world where the good prosper and the wicked suffer.
- Mistake 3: Humans can judge God.
Mistake 1: There is No Devil
That we live in a world full of the signs of a loving Creator is undeniable. From the smile of a baby to the coolness of a spring evening, we live in a world of wonder and beauty. But that this world is broken in fundamental ways is equally self-evident. The good and the bad of this life cannot be fully understood without acknowledging there is a force for good and a force for evil in our world.
It is thought that Job is the oldest book of the Bible. If it is, it would be appropriate as it deals with life's most perplexing question: Why does evil happen? Job begins with a conversation between Satan and God. Satan is the accuser and the instigator of ill. The role of Satan in the affairs of this world comes up throughout Scripture, Christ Himself is personally confronted by Satan in the wilderness, and in the last book of the Bible, Revelation, Satan is destroyed in a lake of fire.
Some have thought to remove or ignore teaching about Satan because it appears unsophisticated; images of Saturday Night Live's "Church Lady" with her suspicion that all is the work of Satan comes to mind. But without understanding the counterbalance at work in this world, we are left to attribute every evil to God. There is nothing unsophisticated in acknowledging that a dark force is at work in our world, a force that works on the minds of those who abuse children, who torture and kill women, those who fly planes into buildings and those who deliberately exploit the vulnerable. If we accept the God of the Bible, we are bound to accept the Bible's description of Satan as well, and that his evil influence drives humanity to the madness that we inflict on each other.
Mistake 2: We Live in a Just World Where the Good Prosper and the Wicked Suffer
There is a second theme in the Bible that is often ignored: Justice is the exception, not the rule in this life. Job, who we are told is a good man, suffers terribly. His friends assume that because God is just, Job must deserve his fate. But, we find, nothing of the case is true. Quite the opposite, Job's friends are condemned by God, and Job is vindicated. Christ explains in Matthew 5 that people receive blessing irrespective of their character, noting that God "makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust." Similarly, in Luke 13, He tells listeners that people who died in two tragedies of the day were no more wicked than anyone else. It turns out wonderful blessings and unmitigated tragedy comes to everyone in this life, irrespective of our faith.
Solomon, surveying the state of humanity from the prospective of age, notes in Ecclesiastes 9 that "The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all." Time and chance - where is the justice in that?
Indeed, if justice were a factor of life, much of Christ's teaching would be incomprehensible. For example, when He states in the Sermon on the Mount that "blessed are the poor," one would logically have to ask, "if they are so blessed, why are they poor?" The message of the Bible is not that there is justice here and now on this earth, but rather, that justice comes at a Divine judgment. Job takes solace in his suffering knowing that "my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth, and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God.... How my heart yearns within me! If you should say, How shall we persecute him? Since the root of the matter is found in me. Be afraid of the sword for yourselves; That you may know there is a judgment. "
Without a judgment after this life, there is no justice. Even though Job was blessed, it did not take away the unjust loss and suffering he experienced. In Hebrews 11, we are presented with the sufferings of the best among us, "of whom this world was not worthy." They were sawed in two, outcasts, persecuted and despised. They weren't going to mega churches in new cars. They were more like the people who are suffering in Haiti, poor and neglected. But they were blessed. Why? Because God has Himself has called them righteous and their reward will come at the judgment. Justice comes at the judgment, not in this life.
The judgment is a rather unpopular topic today. And for good reason, who wants to be judged? But if we exclude the judgment, there is no justice. And all we are left with is pretending a justice that will never exist in a sinful world, is somehow already in operation - so, like Job's friends, we are falsely lead to believe the Haitians somehow deserve their tragic fate. Or, in the alternate, we are left with a God indifferent to justice, or no God at all. While we may embrace any of these, such concepts are in direct opposition to Scripture.
Mistake 3: We Have the Right to Question God
Finally, in our narcissistic culture, we forget that it is not our job to question God. In Job 38, God answer Job by stating, in part, "Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer Him! Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn Me to justify yourself?" The answer of many Americans is that we would do just that. We would condemn God in order to justify ourselves. Job, however, had a very different reaction after seeing God: "My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."
We will never understand God in full. As He has said in Isaiah 55, "just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts." Who do we think we are to imagine we could judge God? We are mere creations of the All Powerful. It is not for us to advance our faulted human understandings of justice against His authority. It is God who told us to care for the poor. It is God who told us to love our neighbors as ourselves. It is God who in Isaiah 58 condemns societies that are unjust. And it is God who instructs us in Matthew 25 that we will be judged by whether we use the time and talents He has entrusted us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and house the homeless. Haiti is our chance to do just that. Not to earn grace, but to show the grace we have already received.
By
James Standish
|
January 21, 2010; 4:41 PM ET
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Posted by: djmolter | February 2, 2010 3:16 PM
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I applaud Rev. Standish for assailing popular religious views that are "incapable of responding to calamity with anything other than Pollyannaish banalities designed to explain away tragedy." But when he adduces the Book of Job to remind us that Satan is "the instigator of ill," he leaves out a crucial bit of the story, namely that Satan afflicts Job with God's express permission: "And the LORD said to Satan, 'Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand'" (Job 1:12); "And the LORD said to Satan, 'Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life'" (2:6). So to say, "God doesn't inflict evils on us; Satan does," is like saying that the man who hires an assassin—or, to stick closer to the story, tells a thug, "Do whatever you want to him, as long as you don't kill him"—is not guilty of his hireling's act.
As for God's answer to Job (Job 38–42), there are only two plausible ways to interpret it: (1) God is infinitely powerful, and ipso facto is just; in other words, might, when infinite, makes right. (2) God is so far beyond our comprehension that it is senseless for us to apply our concepts of justice and injustice to him. On either interpretation, to say that "God is just" is to "darken counsel by words without knowledge." The point is that God can kick your arse and that's the end of the matter.
I have written a blog entry that discusses Job in connection with Pat Robertson's remarks, by the way, if anyone is interested.
Posted by: _MKR_ | January 25, 2010 7:56 PM
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I'm going to presume that you list only three mistakes simply because you cannot count past three.
Posted by: PSolus | January 25, 2010 1:52 PM
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Why does a powerful and merciful god permit the innocent to suffer? The only possible answer, one that does not lead to explanations based on pathetically tortured logic, is that no powerful and merciful god exists. QED.
Posted by: spencer1 | January 24, 2010 9:55 PM
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Eternal life?
I wonder how I would feel after the first 100000 years with Robertson as my neighbor.
Posted by: frederic2 | January 24, 2010 3:02 PM
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I would generally agree with his article, but I would explain evil a little differently: God created a good creation ("it was good" is the constant refrain from the Genesis litany on creation), but he also gave human beings the freedom of will: The ability to choose. If one can only choose the good, or right, then there is no wrong or no evil. But to be truly human, we must be truly able to choose between all possibilities. And given that, evil/death/sin/error/whatever comes into the world. God sees the evil that people do, sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of intent, sometimes out of ignorance. But the result is the same: evil, damage, death is sometimes the result of people's decisions.
But John 3:16 says something profound about God: He so loved the world that he sent his Son, that...
Most of us know this verse, and the emphasis is on sending the Son. And that's where the emphasis should be. BUT the first phrase is often skimmed over: The motivation for the sending: That God SO LOVED...he loved and still loves his creation. All parts of it. He loved it BEFORE he sent the redeemer; in other words, in its broken, damaged state, he loved and still loves it. The NT promise of the redeeming of the world is not just among the human population, but ALL of creation, which is in need of healing and repair. And his response is not to wipe out all who do evil. No, it was to choose the way of powerlessness: to send his son to suffer under the political laws of the day.
And so, because of the human freedom to decide, evil exists. It is not something hypothetical. And yet, God's response is not to destroy the world--he still loves it--no, like a sorrowing father who has lost a son, he grieves with all others who grieve. He walks with us through the "valley of the shadow of death". That is the greatest promise of scripture: I will not forsake you; I know and share with you what is the hardest for you to bear.
Eternal life is the promise to all who believe; but it is in this life that I find God's actions the most important: He is with me through all the injury, death and injustice I face. He encourages me to seek justice for victims and to protect against evil. The rest I leave up to him. My grace is sufficient for you, says God. That's my experience of life.
The Haitians are not cursed a la Robertson. They are not being punished by God. The creation, damaged as it is, has caused tremendous suffering to the Haitian people. It could have happened here in Southern California just as easily. The imperative for us who are Christians is to "work together with God for good". To accept the opportunity to work out our salvation, if you will, by being God's actors in the world. Everything else is above my paygrade.
Pr Chris
Posted by: CalSailor | January 24, 2010 12:41 PM
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"Without a judgment after this life, there is no justice."
And there in a nutshell, chickadees, you have the reason that man invented God. Everlasting life, and redress of grievances.
Posted by: Pamsm | January 24, 2010 1:19 AM
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I think the above comments say it very well, but I would really like to know why Christians believe that God is good if God created Satan. You can try to say it's all linked to "The Fall" in reference to a literal or metaphorical Garden of Eden, man's rebellion against God, etc., but you're still left worshiping a God who created Satan in the first place.
And isn't worshiping a God who created Satan just as creepy as worshiping Satan, if not more so?
Posted by: Chapel_Hill_Science | January 23, 2010 2:53 PM
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An earthquake doesn't make "sense", as little sense as it makes that you even exist, Sir.
It is nature that made your parents beget you, and it is nature that causes friction between plates of the earth's surface.
The sense something makes is what you put into it, nothing more and nothing less.
It is inconceivable that any somewhat "evolved" and even educated human being desperately clings to the kindergarten brain washed fairy tales in the vain attempt to make some "divine" or "satanic" sense in events of nature.
Posted by: frederic2 | January 23, 2010 2:25 PM
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Wow,
Indeed a throw back to the puritans.
Let us consider:
1) the devil. Either god created the devil (and called it good) or there is an anti-god that god can not control, ergo this is not a monotheism but a duotheism fundamentally in binary opposition - with us or against us. But then how do you know who is the devil and who is the god? The one that promises salvation no matter what you do, or the one that gives freedom to make mistakes and be punished for them as a learning? The one that says thou shalt not kill but then commands you to destroy the Canaanites. The one that says don't steal but then has the Hebrews go back for Egypt's gold. The one that says my son died and suffered, so your suffering is alleviated but then jesus never watched his son's leg fall off after a brick tore it apart, he never saw his wife raped by a knife in religious warfare, he never was raped by a priest and told god bless you for it... Did he really suffer that much?
2) We live in an unjust world. Then the creator was an idiot. Did he despise justice so much so as to make his creation unjust, and was he so cruel to then claim, it was good? Or perhaps this so called loving god created a place that sent people to hell to glorify himself in a sadistic self agrandizing ego trip. Not really worthy of worship this fallen god of yours - or perhaps he is the devil.
3) Questioning god. If you don't question god, how can you know him. Some space alien lands on your head, revives somebody in a coma, says I come in peace if you obey me without question - and the faithful say, what gives you the right to question. No, we must question god, otherwise we can not tell god from the devil.
hariaum
Posted by: Navin1 | January 22, 2010 2:06 PM
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Are you saying you don't really worship a "god" of peace, forgiveness and unconditional love, but rather one who dangles us like spiders over the fiery pits of hell, and, at his unquestionable whim, fries his children who question him or don't blindly worship what you say he is?
hmmmmmmm - sounds like you are in hell already.
Posted by: areyousaying | January 22, 2010 1:48 PM
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This article demonstrates very well why I am a secularist.
Posted by: WmarkW | January 22, 2010 4:34 AM
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Hmmmm, according to your religion, we live in the world that your all-knowing, all-powerful and all-loving god created. So if it is unjust and if satan is causing evil, it would be the fault of the aforementioned god. So yes, I can question why a supposedly all-loving god would create and apparently support evil.
Posted by: grashnak | January 21, 2010 8:24 PM
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This torturously convoluted and illogical post illustrates how difficult it is to attempt to logically explain one's belief in magic.
Posted by: PSolus | January 21, 2010 6:45 PM
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The comments to this entry are closed.
If we have no right to question God, why then did God give us the ability to question? If by exercising my God-given ability to think, I offend God, he seems a petty God indeed.