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February 18, 2008
A Painful Subject
Two agnostic authors face suffering--and come out at different spots on the faith spectrum.
Controversial biblical scholar Bart Ehrman has a new book out, but this time he's not bent on tackling issues of scriptural discrepancies, as he did in his most (in)famous work, Misquoting Jesus (see Books and Culture's review from 2005). This time, Ehrman founds his agnosticism on the Bible's seemingly equivocal answers to the question, How can a loving God allow terrible things to happen to people?
"I realized I couldn't explain any longer why there could be such pain and misery in the world that was supposedly ruled by an all-powerful and loving God," the religion professor at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told the San Diego Union-Tribune over the weekend. The problem of suffering "put me over the top," says Ehrman. "So, I became an agnostic."
God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer (HarperOne) traces Ehrman's change in convictions about God and Scripture based on his inability to reconcile the goodness of God with the suffering of man. Ehrman explores and ultimately disputes the way suffering is handled in biblical accounts: as punishment for wrongdoing (Genesis), as an outcome of others' wrongdoing (throughout the Psalms), as part of redemption (the Gospels), or as part of the mystery of God (Job).
Ehrman finds these varied explanations problematic, as he does chalking the question of theodicy up to something beyond human knowledge: "If you say it's a mystery, then what you're saying is there's no answer." And having no answer is apparently insufficient for Ehrman.
For other agnostics, though, encountering believers who have profound hope and peace despite suffering is enough to at least crack a window open for belief. This is what happened to John Marks, a former 60 Minutes producer who traces his journey into and out of faith in his new spiritual memoir, Reasons to Believe: One Man's Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind (Ecco). In a striking interview in this weekend's Boston Globe, Marks tells of a close friendship with an evangelical couple, the McWhinneys, that emerged from Marks's research for his book:
When I first met the McWhinneys, [I thought] they were almost walking caricatures of the evangelical Christian. They believe in the Rapture, that when the end time comes, people will be taken up into the air, and the nonbelievers will be left behind on earth to suffer. There was a cardboard quality, I thought, to their belief.
When I met them the second time, after we'd done the "60 Minutes" piece, they told me about their bipolar son, roughly my age, who had tried to kill himself [and] had disappeared and was believed to be living in a homeless shelter in Dallas and whom they had decided to commit. They spoke with great sorrow. They didn't say he was possessed by the devil. They resented that characterization - and remember, these are Christians who believe there is a living Satan. We agreed I would join them for church [the following] Sunday.
Five hours later, their son walked up the onramp of a highway and was killed by a car. On Sunday, I got in the car, we were having a chat, and then Don suddenly told me their son had been killed. [He said] his son was not gone - he was walking the streets of the heavenly city, and we know from Revelations that that city has walls made of pure jasper - describing this world that, for nonbelievers, is just pure fantasy. I became aware of the way this sense that God is real, that there is this heavenly kingdom - it is not window-dressing. In moments of grief and deep sorrow, people like the McWhinneys do reach for this, and it is the consolation.
While believers may not be able to give a thoroughly coherent reason for why God allows his followers to suffer - and debates about theodicy will likely continue among theologians until Judgment Day - we may at least be able to provide a glimpse into "the peace that passes all understanding" as we respond to crises in our own lives and come out praising the Creator for his unbounded goodness.
Comments
This is a discussion I have been having for years with a close friend of mine, and I always come down on the side of God. Almost by definition, we cannot know the mind of God, and there are plenty enough miracles in the Bible when people were redeemed from suffering that demonstrate God's love. Nothing in the Bible ever promises that we shall never see suffering. Quite the contrary, we are told that despite all that we may do or all that may happen to us, we cannot be separated from the love of God.
Some suffering is indeed the result of our own poor human judgment. Would we expect God to bail us out every time a human being made a stupid decision? Some suffering is indeed the result of other people's selfishness and evil nature. Would we expect God to defend us from all such people? Some suffering is simply caused by the natural world around us. Would we expect God to alter His creation to suit our desires? To expect God to constantly be saving us from every bad situation would take away every shred of free will we might pretend to have, and so we would be no more than pleasant playthings for a puppet-master God. Wouldn't we rather take responsibility for our own actions, bring others to live lives of love and caring, and thus find better ways to deal with the suffering we do face?
Although I know Ehrman to be a fine scholar, I think he is a lousy theologian -- even if he pretends not to be a theologian at all. Ehrman presents arguments that have nothing new to offer and have been countered throughout Judeo-Christian history. But his journey from faith to agnosticism sells books and pays the bills, so it must be "necessary" to talk about it. I have had a couple of agnostic friends bring up Ehrman's change of heart, as if a scholar changing his mind about the very topic he studies (the Bible) should be reason enough for me to change my mind. Honestly, I am getting tired of hearing about him.
I have had tragedy recently in my life, the kind of things I wouldn't wish on anyone. And yet it has only served to strengthen my faith in a loving and benevolent God. Sure, I expected suffering in my life, but I never saw this coming. Nonetheless, I cling to our Lord and make an altar to Him in my heart, knowing that in the end He will take me home to be with those who have gone before -- including His Blessed Son.
Posted By: Glenn | February 19, 2008 11:55 AM
This is a very delicate issue. I have wondered about it. The Scriptures give all of the above possiblities. The only I accept is human free will and responsibility.
There are some Christians who believe that since God is sovereign then nothing can happen without his permission or command. Some even think that the evil some human being do is God's will!
I remember an article from the now defunct MOODY MONTHLY magazine written 26 years ago. It was titled "It CAN Happen to a Christian." A woman from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, sent the magazine a testimony about how she had been raped some ten years before. She ended her account by stating that "God's will for us can take us through some dark and unsuspecting routes, including rape, but he is always there with us." That sounds like God is a sadist and Christians should take a masochistic attitude toward suffering. It's sounds blasphemous to me!
A holy God would not will his creatures to do evil.
Posted By: Barbara Rainey | February 19, 2008 12:39 PM
99 0/0 evangelical answers to suffering out there are incomprehensible or just naive. Two great books with real answers:
"It Not God's Fault" and "God At War" by Gregory Boyd. As a physician who deals with real tragedy, i find these books unique, fresh, satisfying, and throughly biblical. Jack Carter, MD
Posted By: Jack Carter | February 19, 2008 12:40 PM
It has always seemed to me that the general intent of the argument that is posed as "The Problem of Evil" is really to solve the atheist's "Poblem of God." The argument is designed to eliminate God, but it leaves us with the evil and the suffering and pain, unmitigated and now wholly meaningless. This is preferable?
It seems to me that the first place a Christian goes to when he confronts the existence of both God and evil/suffering is to the fact that, in Jesus Christ, God has suffered with us in every particular. The whole message of the atonement is that Christ did not simply suffer his own painful torture and death, he was not only suffering for us, but he was also suffering WITH us. After all, if God has perfect love for each of us, and has perfect knowledge of each of our lives, both the suffering we endure and the suffering we inflict on others, then He has to have perfect empathy as well. In other words, a God who is truly omniscient knows every thing that each of us goes through, not as an abstract statistic, but as vividly as we ourselves experience it.
This is the hope that Christ holds out to those who suffer, that in our deepest despair, in our strongest suffering, He is there with us. He knows what we are going through, have gone through, and will go through. He needs to know this in order to forgive others for inflicting suffering on us, and He needs to know this so He understands why we have acted as we have and can judge us justly, as well as mercifully.
This is not a mystery; it is plainly in the pages of the Bible. The only reason it becomes a mystery is that there is, overlaid on the Bible, the notion of a God who does NOT suffer, who CANNOT feel pain, or abandonment, which has been borrowed from ancient pagan philosophers like Aristotle and the neo-Platonists. In seeking to deduce a god whom they could worship as perfect in thought, they forgot that what humans need is a God who is perfect in love. The two versions of god are different. They cannot be reconciled. To require people to pledge allegiance to the contradiction creates the entire mystery that drives rational people to atheism.
If Christianity simply wakes up to the bargain between 4th Century "science" and the Bible that created the non-Biblical scab of pagan philosophy in the Creeds, and returns to the Bible as primary over any philosophies invented by men, especially philosophies that are 2000 years old and have no relation to modern science, then we can cut the Gordion Knot that is the "Problem of Evil" with the sword of Christ's atoning sacrifice, his suffering for and with us. God does not "inflict" pain on us, but suffers with us. We cannot complain God is unjust or unfair to us, that He plays with us. He is, rather, a loving parent of perfect empathy, who is with us in every trial.
Once we know this, then we can focus on the promise that, as Christ overcame suffering and was resurrected, we too can follow Him to a state where suffering is vanquished and what is left is joy. And we will understand that going through it, and retaining love through it all, is of the essence of what makes Christ the Son of God, and the essence of what it means to be a joint heir with Him.
Posted By: Raymond Takashi Swenson | February 19, 2008 12:41 PM
Bravo, Katelyn! I'm tired of hearing Ehrman, too. Three major ways suffering tends to be explained are limited retribution(punishment), telic vindication(suffering will have some good result come out of it), and theocentric consolation(God is with us in our suffering). The latter is what he cannot seem to understand without experiencing it. I, too, have faced serious suffering, and I agree that the times when God seemed most intimately close to me were those when things looked most hopeless and bleak. For a scholar to attempt to argue an issue that he apparently has not experienced is academically suspect, to say the least. I don't want to face suffering without God's presence, even though I don't believe most suffering is divinely caused. The agnostic answer is no answer at all.
R. Larry Shelton
George Fox Evangelical Seminary
Posted By: Larry Shelton | February 19, 2008 12:52 PM
The first thing I did today was to use one of Selwyn Hughes daily devotion and went on to meditate on two portions from the scriptures. The first one is from Psalm 119:50 where the Psalmist has boldly stated " My comfort in my suffering is this; Your promise preserves my life." While writing on this he quotes both Dr. G. Campbell Morgan and Malcolm Muggeridge. Just to remind myself and others let me place what Muggeridges has kind of concluded ... everything that he had learned in life which had been of benefit had been through anguish and not through happiness. It may sound to some one as sadistic pleasure. But for me this is reality.
The other portion I would like to quote here is from Heb.2:10 "... it was fitting that God ...should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.". I read that Selwyn Hughes himself went through so much of suffering that he concludes that "... rewards of suffering are of infinite value."
As I keep grappling with this I am convinced that God speaks to us and the art of life is to get the message.
Just to remind us that none of us can cling to God, we can only be like that of a weaned child in His arms as we read in the scriptures " ...underneath are the everlasting arms" Deut 33:27. The question is can we stop striving and rest or be still?
Prayerfully,
Sam David
Posted By: Sam David | February 21, 2008 1:33 AM
Interesting that it was the topic of human suffering that the author used as a reason to turn agnostic, when it was the same topic that led C.S. Lewis to discover the existence of God. It's not beyond reason to consider that suffering wasn't the creation of the author's degree of faith as much as revealing its true nature. Lots of people live among the saints, blessed by the proximity of faith, even included in the fold by association, yet never really was one of God's children.
Posted By: Ronny | February 21, 2008 2:30 PM
Ehrman needs to go back to Sunday School and relearn the basics about God all over again. I am amazed that someone in such a high position of academia seems to know so little about the heart of God. If we fail to understand, it is not because God's explanation is wrong; it is because our finite minds fail to grasp the magnitude of God and his internal mechanations. Thinking that we MUST be able to understand things like the problem of evil is humanistic arrogance in the extreme.
Posted By: Roger Morris | February 24, 2008 6:15 PM
I know of no other evangelical Christian who believes the Bible to be inerrant that has had the guts to ask the questions that Dr. Ehrman has asked. He is looking for the truth but doesn't know where to find it. Most Christians rely on the scriptures mingled with the philosophies of men. Your lips draw nigh unto God but your hearts are far from Him.
Posted By: Stephen Todd | March 5, 2010 2:16 PM