The Dark Side of God - Part B

Suffering in the hands of a loving God can produce great good.

Now we're getting personal here, to all of us. Suffering, pain, even evil in the hands of a loving God can bring about great good. David said, before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. The Apostle Paul said that our trials produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever.

And today on Connect with Skip Hi-Tech, Skip brings some clarity to the problem of pain, encouraging you to take your faith to a practical level. But before we begin, here's a great resource that will draw on philosophy and science to help you understand who God is and how you can know Him on a deeper level. Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King Jr., Winston Churchill, C.S. Lewis, all are outstanding men with amazing life stories.

But in all of history, one biography stands out above the rest. I'm excited to announce the release of my new book, The Biography of God, which gives an in-depth look at God's character and nature, diving into the theological and personal profile of our Heavenly Father. I invite you on a journey to search the scriptures to discover who God is and how sensitive He is to the human condition.

This process will both lift you up and humble you. Here's how to get your copy of my newest book, The Biography of God. Skip's new book is our thanks when you give $35 or more today to help keep this ministry on the air.

Call 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Okay, we're in John chapter 9 today as we get into the teaching with Skip Heitzel. There is today, as I hinted out at, a false theology and see if you recognize it. It says this, if you're a Christian, you're not under the curse that everybody else in the world is under. And thus, if you're a Christian and you have enough faith, you will never experience illness.

You'll always walk in perfect health. And for you to experience disease is because of sin or Satan. It's an oversimplification of a very complex issue. But essentially, this group of people will look at you if you're sick and ask the Saturday Night Live question from years ago, could it be Satan?

That's what they want to peg it as. Well, all one has to do is go back to the book of Job, where we look at this man whom God said was perfect, walked in integrity, and there was no one on earth like Job, and yet Job suffered immensely. But then his friends came along, remember? They said basically the same thing. They couldn't figure this out. You know, these wise men really showed how stupid they were the moment they talked.

They were really wise as long as they kept it zipped. But chapter after chapter reveals the same thing. Job, there must be sin in your life. You wouldn't have had this. Or if you had faith now, you would be healed. The truth is, God doesn't automatically remove pain, and He doesn't automatically heal all diseases if you're His child.

Chuck Holson puts it very clearly. He writes, It's absurd for Christians to constantly seek new demonstrations of God's power, to expect a miraculous answer to every need, from curing ingrown toenails to finding parking places. This only leads to faith in miracles rather than faith in God. And the truth of the matter is, sometimes God will calm the storm for His child, and other times He'll just calm His child in the storm while it's blowing in gale force all around you.

But you remain calm. That's one explanation though. It's got to be sin. Who sinned?

This guy or his parents? There's other explanations of evil and suffering. The common one among atheists or agnostics becoming atheists is that there isn't a God. This proves there isn't a God, because how could a God who's all-powerful and all-loving and all-knowing allow evil to exist? And it's often put in philosophy classes in a syllogism form or a series of logical statements.

And here it is. The biblical God is loving. The biblical God is perfect. The biblical God is all-knowing. The biblical God is all-powerful. Yet, massive evil and suffering exists.

Therefore, the biblical God does not exist. That's how they often put it. However, there's a problem just in the statement. See, whenever somebody says, there's so much evil in the world, it presupposes there must be a standard of goodness for you to say it's evil. Where did you get the idea that there was supposed to be goodness? You see, in a test taken in a classroom, if a student gets 90% and another student gets 70%, another student gets 50%, it supposes there's a real standard of what? 100%. So it's the same problem here. If there's no God, then where did we ever get a standard of goodness by which to call something evil or bad?

C.S. Lewis writes, If the universe is so bad, how on earth do human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good creator? Ask that to your atheistic friends next time they say, well, there's so much evil there can't be God. Ask them, why is it that 90% of the people who have ever lived on planet earth in much worse circumstances and suffering than we will ever know have believed in God as all good and all perfect? There's a third explanation, and that is, well, God would like to help.

He does see that there is evil. He just can't do it. He wants to. You know, be easy on God.

Give him a break. He'd love to do it, he just can't. God would love to be involved. God's out there somewhere. He's just impotent.

He's not powerful. Now, you might think this is laughable, and it is because it's wrong, but there's a whole group of people who claim to believe in God and believe in Christ who hold to this. It's called open theism or finite Godism or process theology.

And here it is. God is a deity in progress, they say. So the God today is not the same God as he was yesterday. He's not the same God as he'll be tomorrow. He's learning things. That God sitting up there going, whoa, huh? Well, I just learned that. That's cool.

That's not cool. So the God is in the process of learning is not absolutely knowledgeable and totally powerful. He's growing and learning and developing just like we are. And that's the basis of thinking behind a book put out a few years back by Rabbi Harold Kushner called When Good Things Happen to Bad People. He says God would love for people to get what they deserve in life, but he can't arrange it. Even God has a hard time keeping chaos in check. And then in the book, he tells the reader to forgive God and to pray for God.

I find that very funny. Who do you pray to God for? And a God like that is certainly not a God worth believing in at all.

It's kind of like having a big brother who can't stand up for you when a bully comes around impotent, powerless. Well, let's see what Jesus says here. Now he gives a very needful clarification after that question and that typical explanation. Verse three, Jesus answered, Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day for the night is coming when no one can work as long as I am in the world.

I am the light of the world. Don't misunderstand Jesus. He's not saying that this man is sinless and his parents are sinless.

He's simply saying that neither of their sin directly caused this malady. Now, one thing I really appreciate about our Lord Jesus Christ is he doesn't give pat, predictable, packaged little answers to the problem of suffering. What he does is he elevates it up to a higher level, taking us to the level of the sovereignty of God. So whether you're suffering or you're experiencing evil due to natural causes or sinful causes, Jesus would want you to know that behind it all, God is still in control.

He is still sovereign. So he says, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. Now, I want to give you a couple of points that speak to this. Number one, God did not create evil. He never created evil. He only enabled the possibility of evil to exist.

How did he do that? Because he created people with free will. He didn't create evil. He created or allowed the possibility, the potentiality of evil by creating people with free will. Man comes along and actualizes the potentiality.

You follow me? They make reality what is just a possibility and they choose to go against God, which brings up the inevitable next question. Well, then God, why would God create anybody with free will? If that's the case, knowing that, why make a creature with free will? Simply this, you can't have a world where people have genuine freedom unless there's the potential for evil and sin. And if there's no free will, then there's no genuine love. And if love is the greatest and highest the man can achieve, then a loving God couldn't create a world unless he gave creatures the freedom to choose anything they wanted. God didn't create it. Number two, I want to point out here, suffering in the hands of a loving God can produce great good.

Now we're getting personal here to all of us. Suffering, pain, even evil in the hands of a loving God can bring about great good. David said, before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word.

I'll give you an example, something that I read that really helped make sense to me. It was by a philosopher named Peter Kreeft of Yale University. He said, okay, imagine a bear caught in a trap. Hunter comes along, sees the bear in a trap, is concerned for the bear and wants to set the bear free. So he tries to win the bear's confidence, unsuccessfully, lack of communication. The hunter tries to reveal himself to the bear as sweet and makes happy sounds and dispense time and gives it a little bit of food, but it doesn't really help the bear in that cage. So he knows he has to shoot the bear with a tranquilizer gun, shoot it with drugs to sedate it, to move it out of the way. So he shoots at the bear and the bear is automatically in attack mode thinking this is an enemy, I've got to destroy it.

He wants something that's harmful to me. Furthermore, the hunter has to push, poke the bear back in the cage because he's on the mechanism that keeps the door shut. So all of these overtures make the bear think this guy's out to kill me. He's my enemy.

Why? Because the bear isn't a human. The bear doesn't understand the motivation of the hunter. He has no faculties to understand it. In the same way, we cannot comprehend all of God's movements or allowances in our lives any more than a bear in a cage could understand what a hunter wants who's trying to set him free. And that's why you and I must be careful whenever we designate something as bad, when God is actually using it as something very good.

We say it's wrong, we say it's unjust, we say it's evil, we say it's bad and it might be actually very good. This is seen in chemistry. You can take two harmful substances when combined in the right way become a blessing. Sodium and chlorine, both in and of themselves poisonous, combine them. Sodium chloride, that's salt, can do people a lot of good. At least it can flavor your food an awful lot more than it would be if it didn't have it.

It can be actually good. Okay, this is all theoretical, right? Up to this point, let's get practical. God plays by his own rule book.

He tried this on himself. See, God took what most people would say is the very worst thing that could ever happen in human history and turned it into something that was the very best thing that could happen in human history. I'm speaking of the cross. What could be worse than the death of God? When Jesus was nailed to that cross, people around thought who knew who Jesus was, that this is the worst thing ever.

Not knowing that it was the best thing ever. That that would open the door for the salvation of millions of people from that point onward. Salvation. So, if ultimate evil can bring about ultimate good with Jesus, wouldn't we suppose that that could happen elsewhere? Like in our lives? So that if things are happening that are bad and painful and we're suffering, that maybe God's behind all this actually working out something good?

We don't understand it, but God's in control? I could list several benefits, but let me just give you a couple. Number one, the development of character. The people that you have met.

Who impressed you the most? Who in your life that you've met had the deepest character, the most to offer, the best perspective, but those who have suffered the most? If you were to ask Corrie Ten Boom, who was in a concentration camp while she was in it, where's God? She might be tempted to say at first, I don't know. But she came to know, and later on, she looked back on that as the plan of God. If you were to have asked Johnny Erickson Tada, who became a quadriplegic right after her diving accident, how she felt about it, she probably would say, I feel suicidal.

This is horrible. How could God allow this to happen? Years later, she would say, it's the best thing God ever allowed to happen in my life. Number two, what about repentance? How many people have we met who in times of suffering, be it a divorce, a sickness, a death, of a loved one, has been brought to Christ by that?

I can think of so many. One story pops out to me, a guy I had been witnessing to. He, at one time in his life, was a drug lord in another country and an attempted assassin of the president of that country. His mother called me and said, talk to my son about the gospel.

I did. He didn't want to hear it. Then he developed cancer. And right before his death, he gave his life to Christ. So, would that mother rather have a child that would live on and on and become a PhD and influence the world with his great knowledge and then die and go to hell? Or a son that would develop cancer, receive Christ and is tonight and forever will be in heaven? God used that. Here's my question to you, to me, to all of us. Are you willing to embrace your suffering if it drives you to God?

And if it drives you to God and the relationship is deepened, then is it really bad? I remember as a kid for Christmas, I'd get a lot of different gifts at Christmas. Some I liked, some I did not like. Bicycles and trains, I liked those. Gloves and underwear, uh-uh. I needed both gifts.

I can't live on trains and bicycles. I needed other things to balance out my life. And they were all gifts, they were all good. And that's why Job, when all of the bad things that happened to him happened, he fell down and he said, the Lord gives, the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord. We can't close there. We have to finish out the story. It leads us to a fourth point, and that is an obligation, a spiritual obligation.

Up to this point, we've just been dealing with the academic, the theoretical, for the most part, with some application. But look at verse 4 again. I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work.

As long as I am in the world, I'm the light of the world. And when he said these things, he spat on the ground and made clay with his saliva. I'm sure the disciples were thinking, what is he up to? Maybe he was forming an eyeball. But spit in your eye. I've always wondered why a lot of televangelists don't do what Jesus did.

Probably they wouldn't be so popular. And he anointed the eyes of the blind man with clay, and he said to him, go wash in the pool of Siloam, which is translated sent. So he went and washed and came back seeing.

Here's what I want you to see. To Jesus Christ, this blind beggar was not an academic case to be discussed in a theology class or a school of ministry. He was a person who needed compassion. He needed to be healed.

And he said, the day is going to wear out. That's the time where I have opportunity and we have opportunity to help and to heal and to bless and to fix. You see, there's coming a day when you and I will be forever in perfection, in heaven. And in heaven, we're not going to be able to pray for people to be healed. Everybody will be. We're not going to be able to counsel people or alleviate suffering or pass out a track and evangelize.

So right now is the day, here is the period of opportunity. So we can't just deal with the problem of pain and evil theoretically or academically. That's a cop-out.

We have a spiritual obligation. I saw a cartoon that had two turtles. Why turtles?

I don't know. But the cartoon guy wanted two turtles, so they were talking to each other. And one turtle said, you know, sometimes I'd like to ask God why He allows poverty and disease and famine and injustice when He could do something about it.

And the other turtle said to him, I'm afraid God might ask me the same question. Here we are, the body of Christ, the hands, the feet, the mouthpiece, the outreach, the expression of our Savior. And we have that responsibility. If you think about it, throughout history, who have typically been the ones to alleviate suffering and pain and hardship? It's been the believers in Jesus Christ who would go into war-torn areas and in His name alleviate suffering. So how do Christians deal with evil? How do we deal with evil and pain and suffering in the world that God made? By putting it all in perspective. Yes, the biblical God is all loving.

Yes, the biblical God is all knowing and all powerful and everywhere present. And one day He will judge evil and He will eradicate injustice. And until then, until He does, I need to help alleviate it and I need to let it work for me. And not be so quick to say it's evil or bad or unjust or unfair, but to allow it to work for me.

Let the pain work for you. I close with a parable. Once upon a time there was a little plant, small and stunted, growing under the shade of a broad spreading oak. The little plant valued the shade that covered it and the rest which its noble friend the oak afforded. But one day a woodsman came along and with his razor sharp axe cut down the oak tree. The tiny plant wept and cried, my shelter has departed and now the rough winds will blow upon me and the storms will uproot me.

Nonsense, said the woodsman. Now the sunshine will reach you and now the rain will be able to fall in more abundance on you than ever before and your stunted form will spring up. That's really good for me to hear. God looks upon my stunted Christian growth and says, I've got just what it takes to make you into a strong, persevering, godly, well-rounded person.

I'm after your growth. All things. Boy, wouldn't it be a lot easier to believe if Romans 8.28 said, there's a few things that work together for good. Or, okay, most things work together for good to those who love God. But remember what it says, all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.

Do you believe that? All things. Remember, all things. Next time, pebble.

It's your little theological windshield. All things. When you hear the bad news, all things. When the doctor calls, all things.

All things. That concludes Skip Heitzig's message today from the series The Biography of God. Right now, here's Skip to tell you how your support helps keep these messages coming your way and connects more people to God's love. We've all experienced pain and hardship in this world, but when we have Jesus Christ, we can look beyond those hardships to our future glory and home with Him in heaven. And we want others to experience eternity with Christ.

That's why we're always working to share the gospel with as many people as possible. We would love for you to consider partnering in that work today so that you and many others can live in the light of Jesus' love. Here's how you can give a gift today. Visit connectwithskip.com slash donate to give your gift today. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate. Or call 800-922-1888.

Again, that's 800-922-1888. Coming up tomorrow, Skip Heitzig uses the apostle Paul's life to show you how God guides and leads you in yours. 2 Corinthians 5-7 says, For we walk by, and not by, that's right, we walk by faith. We don't walk by sight. We don't walk by a printed-out agenda. We don't walk by a ten-year plan.

There's nothing wrong with if you make a ten-year plan. Just know if you're a Christian, God has editing rights. We walk by faith. We trust Him.

We believe Him. And that's the guidance principle, the principle of faith. Make a connection. Make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, a connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig. It's a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.