Paul Young (The Shack) and I Discuss, "Is God Good?"

Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you? I'm Gracie Rosenberger, and in 1983, I experienced a horrific car accident, leading to 80 surgeries and both legs amputated. I questioned why God allowed something so brutal to happen to me.

But over time, my questions changed, and I discovered courage to trust God. That understanding, along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs, led me to establish Standing With Hope. For more than a dozen years, we've been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people. On a regular basis, we purchase and ship equipment and supplies.

And with the help of inmates in a Tennessee prison, we also recycle parts from donated limbs. All of this is to point others to Christ, the source of my hope and strength. Please visit standingwithhope.com to learn more and participate in lifting others up. That's standingwithhope.com. I'm Gracie, and I am standing with hope. He will be strong to deliver me safe, and the joy of the Lord is my strength. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver here on Family Talk Channel, Sirius XM 131. If you want to be a part of the show, 877-655-6755.

That was Russ Taft with my wife, Gracie, off of her new record, Resilient. John, if you're with us, I hope that you're with us. John, are you with us?

I think I am. Oh, John, that beautiful voice of yours. Listen, one of my favorite people in the whole world is a guy that wrote a book that affected so many people around the world.

It's The Shack, it is Paul Young, wmpaulyoung.com, if you want to go to his website. He's also got another book out called The Lies We Believe About God. And as I've been watching all the dialogue going on across the country, I've been watching the stories and the op-eds and all this stuff.

And, you know, again, we come back to this constant questioning of the goodness of God. And so I wanted to reach out to someone who has wrestled with that issue and helped a lot of other people wrestle with that. So my friend Paul Young has agreed to call in the show. Thank you, Paul, for this. It is great to have you with us. Such an honor to be with you, Pete. I so appreciate what you do.

Well, thank you. You know, that is the question. The goodness of God, it always comes down. Do we trust him? Do we think that God is good? Do we think that he is all that we would hope him to be when we see things like what's going on with the virus and what's going on with this and so forth? Open that up a little bit and just talk about that, because that's almost the crux of everything you do, isn't it? It is.

That's right at the centerpiece. And for those who don't know any of my story, you've got to understand that I am not someone who sits in an ivory tower and has not experienced the losses that happen in this country. We had a six-month period where first my 18-year-old brother, Stephen, was killed, and then three months later, Kim and I had just been married just about a year and a half, and her mom goes in for routine surgery, has a massive coronary, and passes away over the course of three days.

That was three months after Stephen was killed, and then three months after Shirley died, my five-year-old niece was killed the day after her fifth birthday. And these are things that are just not in control. I mean, most things aren't in your control, but it's one thing to cause pain and loss and suffering when you're the perpetrator, which is also true. You know, I've done my share of that, and I don't say that with any pride whatsoever. If I could go back and change one time, I hurt somebody, I would if it cost me, you know, all this thing about the shack and all the smoke and mirror stuff. You know, you learn to live with regret as part of grieving and not part of shame. Shame was, you know, the centerpiece of my life. So shame and fear, I think those two things. And fear is always connected to trust.

If you, and fear is also the antithesis of love, right, because perfect love casts out fear. And so all these questions, you know, I grew up with a very angry father, I didn't ask to have an angry father, he didn't ask to have an angry father and his father before him. But, you know, the abuse of disciplinarianism got passed down the line and dumped on me and my brothers. And then sexual abuse was part of my childhood. And so, you know, there's all these things that happen in this world.

So that's on the one side. Let me tell you about a conversation that I had with seven of my grandchildren. We have 12 all together, all ranging from age 12 to two-year-old twins. And I do a class now, you know, because we're in quarantine and all that kind of stuff. So we're doing a lot of stuff online and things like that. So I do a class for seven of my grandkids every Tuesday afternoon.

And a couple weeks ago on our Tuesday afternoon, I started with the question, so do you think God made viruses? And I wanted to ask that because I think a lot of times there's all this adult conversation going on and the children are just trying to assume something, you know, just so that they can think about it. And it's like when parents fight and a child assumes it's their fault, right?

If there's not a conversation, they don't have a chance to process anything. And they'll always think that it's partly their fault. So, you know, obviously they're aware of how much hurt and change that this virus has infected, to use the word advisedly, on us during this period of time. And so I said, do you think God made viruses? And of course, you know, their immediate response was no, you know, because COVID's a virus and viruses are bad.

And I said, oh, okay. So if you don't think God created viruses, where do you think they came from? And, you know, two of my kids have been around enough churchy thinking that their immediate response is Satan, you know. And it's like, oh, I don't think Satan's a creator at all. So I kind of don't think that viruses, you know, are something that Satan thought up. And then they're thinking about it and they go like, then it must have been like Adam and Eve.

And I said, you know what? Let me tell you something about viruses. If it weren't for viruses, human beings could not live on this planet. And in fact, viruses, their main job is to take apart bacteria. And we need bacteria for all kinds of reasons on this planet. But if bacteria had full reign, we'd in no long time end up one giant bacterial slime ball. And once the bacteria had eaten all the natural resources, everything would die on this planet. And so viruses have a very important job.

In fact, you know, they take apart bacteria and those little pieces of bacteria float up into the sky or are thrown up into the sky by a volcano or an earthquake. And those little pieces of bacteria are the main centerpiece for our water system. If we didn't have bacteria floating in the sky, pieces of them, then we wouldn't have rain. We wouldn't have snow.

We wouldn't have sleet. They are essential to the water cycle. And there's another thing. And so they're thinking about this. And it's like, I said, so, you know, I really think God made viruses. And then why are they hurting us?

Why are we living in a world where viruses, you know, are hurting people? I said, oh, that's a good question. And I mean, they're asking the question of theodicy. How do you have a God who is good in a world that is full of loss, you know?

And I said, you know, we know that the whole Earth, the whole cosmos is groaning. And we know that human beings, they're amazing beings. They have power and authority. I mean, they can say no to love. You know, they can say no to kindness.

They can say no to treating the planet well. And it's like, you know, there's a lot of things that we've done that have impacted how this planet works. And so, you know, a lot of this is because we have not in love related to each other. And, you know, that takes you back to something really simple. And that is, and this is, I got this from Ravi Zacharias, who I love dearly. And he comes from the same denominational background. I'm a missionary kid, preacher's kid from the same denominational background as Ravi.

And I grew up in Asia and, of course, he grew up in India. And I heard Ravi talking one time and he said, you know, when it comes to creation, God only has four real choices. And I agree with him. I have never thought of a fifth one. But the four choices are, I'm going to create a universe, or let's see, choice number one is, I'm not going to create at all.

Like, no, not going to do it. And because God doesn't need creation, God doesn't need to be worshipped, God doesn't need anything. That's Acts 17, right? This is not a God who could be served by human hands as if this God needed anything. So God could have said, no, we are not going to create.

And that's choice number one. Choice number two is God could create just a machine. Like everything works by natural law. So gravity and the strong and weak nuclear forces and all of this. So it's one big massive machine.

And that's all. So it could have been just a machine. The third choice is to also create human beings who think they have an ability to choose but actually don't.

Right. So it's the machine. But human beings, they think that they have an ability to choose, but they're actually part of the machine.

They're just a very intricate and complex part of the machine. So in that kind of a universe, we would be no wiser. That is that we would think that we were making choices, but actually everything was programmed.

And so it's a machine with a degree of complexity to it. That's the third universe. The third possibility of creation. The fourth one is to create a universe in which there is natural law. That is things like gravity exist and in this universe is created this unbelievably magnificent being called a human being who can say no to love.

I mean actually say no. And it's like that of the four choices is the only universe in which love is even possible. We are in it. And this is a God who has such incredible respect for this human creation that God will never take away that ability to say yes or no. Because without it, there's no relationship and there's no love. And that is grounded in the relationship of Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And there's another element to this too. This is a God who submits by nature. You know, when it says submit one to another, God's not asking us to do anything that is not already part of the image and likeness of God and the reality of relationship within the Trinity. And so this is a God and people say no, this is a God who's in control. Well, God was in control, in a sense, until he creates a being who can say no. And then what does God do? God submits to that being and says, all right, your choice actually matters.

You know, and I thought about this a lot. And I think that if there was a way that God could have created a universe in which we would have the ability to choose and we would have never chosen to say no to love, we would be in that creation. But we're in the best creation possible for will to exist and love to exist and relationship to exist. And it comes with this magnificent capability of saying no to love.

And it comes with this terrible capability of saying no to love. And we do. And we have.

And we continue to. And when we say no to forgiveness and no to kindness and no to gentleness, we are denying the truth of how we are created in the image and likeness of God. And God goes, all right, I'm going to submit, I'm going to climb because I never leave you or forsake you. So I'm going to climb inside of your no and I'm going to work without violating your ability to choose as coerced as your will already is. I am going to work to free your will so that you have the capacity to say yes to love, yes to forgiveness. And people who struggle with the idea that God could submit to us, they don't understand the cross. If there's anything that the cross yells out, it is this is a God who submits to human beings. Well, you've heard the sermon from Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. And I don't know if it was R.C. Sproul or somebody that flipped that and said it's God in the hands of angry sinners. That's it. That was Baxter Kruger.

Yeah. I thank you for the correction on that because John will tell you I source things poorly. But listen, don't go away.

We've got to take a quick break. We're talking to Paul Young, author of The Shack, and also a new book, Lies That We Believe About God. How can a good and loving God allow these things? This is an issue I see so many people asking. My son, Parker, when he was nine years old, he said, why should I believe that God cares about me when I see what he allows mom to deal with?

That's a hard question. And nine year olds can often ask the best questions, don't they? They do.

They don't have the filters that we inherited. We'll be right back. Don't go away.

I'm alive. Lift up my voice. Love the chaos and the noise. It's all my hope. I miss the pain. I shout this song against the rain with joy. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver here on the Family Talk channel.

Series XM 131-877-655-6755. If you want to be a part of the show, that is Gracie. I love to listen to her voice and I'm so glad that she's gotten stronger and she's singing more. She fought the COVID and the COVID got beat. I don't know if that's correct English there, John, but she did. She fought it and she fought it well. She has fought many things that she's dealt with since being on this planet.

She seems to have started off with some hard knocks, but she's done well with it. Thank you all for the prayers about us. And now tomorrow I get to be tested and see if I got the antibodies. And if I do, they want to take those and distribute among the masses. And so John and I have agreed that it is okay to share this great TV preacher quality hair with Idi and Olaf.

Absolutely. Well, you know, they test you, Peter. They test you. They test me.

They test me. To quote Ricardo von De Waal. We're talking with Paul Young, one of my favorite people on the whole planet. And he and I have talked privately many times about these types of issues of trusting God. Because I think that we have this, I love the concept of these lies that we believe about God.

I had to wrestle with that myself. And I think I probably always will. Because I have this image of God that I created. All the bad things that happen to me are, you know, somehow we need to throw a flag on the play. And he's some kind of cosmic referee to, you know, we get these strange thoughts in our heads.

And as the whole country and the world really is wrestling with, okay, how can you have a conversation about a good and loving God when you see all these things? Gracie and I have wrestled with that for years. And I took a picture of Gracie and I put it out there on social media. And I just was struck about how beautiful she is.

Not was, is. And I think I came to this revelation that Gracie's beauty continues to increase. And I think a lot of that is due to the fact that she is not striving with why God doesn't do something about her situation. And has accepted that he's in the wheelchair with her.

He's in the prosthetics with her. He's in the chronic pain with her, which goes back to Psalm 23. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. And when you're not fearing that evil, it changes your countenance because you are able to relax and trust. And then I've just watched this beauty emanate from her that somebody with her resume of suffering should not have.

And I've seen people with far less that don't have the beauty. They have bitterness instead. And so I think that is, that's one of the reasons I wanted you on the show today, Paul. Because that is the whole point of the shack, was learning to see beauty in the midst of great sorrow. And in that great sorrow, that's where he meets us when we stop striving with him to somehow make, I don't know, not sense of it. But to, God, why would you inflict this? And that's that tension that we have in our spirit. Am I saying that right, Paul?

Am I getting that right? I have a friend who says that, you know, God rarely responds to a why question. You know, the why questions are so immense.

But if you ask, like, how do you want me to look at this? This is not a God who runs away from suffering. You know, we brought the suffering to the table, and God fully joins with us in it. You know, I want to read you a short poem by a friend of mine named David Tencent, because I think it captures, Pete, what you are saying in so many ways.

And I think you'll love this. And David is a young man in Australia. I think he's in his 30s. He's working on a master's degree. He's a singer-songwriter. He's also a pastor, and he's got a couple little kids. And he's got a poem called Kind of Way. And here's how it goes. I know that you know, talking to God, I know that you know, so I should probably confess it.

I think that's a really great way to start anything. Like, so many times, we don't even tell God how we're feeling about anything. We don't tell God the truth. We tell God what we think God wants us to say.

And as a result, you can't build a relationship. You know, you need to be truthful about what you're feeling. And sometimes it's like, God, you know what? Right now, I don't feel like you're bigger than this.

You know, I mean, that's an honest prayer. Right now, are you in me? Are you here? Are you in this situation?

Those are questions that are absolutely essential to ask when that's where you are. So back to the poem. I know that you know, so I should probably confess it.

Not because it's a bad thing, but because it's normal and necessary to admit. You disappointed me. And continue to, although I don't mind as much now. Still, there were many times I prayed and I followed the rules and I gave my two mites and I did all the things I was told would work. Others certified with charismatic conviction to do more, give more, faith more, sacrifice more, lots more, and still nothing. No breakthrough like I believed and like I prayed for. While I underestimated you, I wanted to believe you were containable, constrainable, and reliable in the my way kind of way.

Magician, hit man, slot machine, deal maker, earth shaker, genie in a bottle kind of way. And then I recalled that on a dark but necessary day you took yourself and my kind of way and the cosmos to a cross. And then you went missing for three days and my world fell apart and all my hope exhaled, all that they can surrender, and my heart broke, and my dreams broke, and my kind of way kind of died again. And then there you were, alive and the same, but not really, a resurrected form of you that even took familiar friends by surprise. And that's what you keep doing to this day. You keep failing and disappointing me in the best kinds of ways. Every time I think I've got you where I think I need you, you disappoint and disappear, and then you turn up incognito on a familiar path or at a regular meal in an average garden with a spark in your eye that demands my attention, and you invite me again to put my hand in your side, embrace you and kiss you, and get to know you again in a new kind of way.

You know, that's the way I want to end the show today. Paul Young, you didn't disappoint. Thank you very much for just reorienting our thinking here. He's far bigger than we could imagine. As C.S.

Lewis said, he's not a tame lion. This is Peter Roseberry. This is Hope for the Caregiver. Thank you so much. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. We'll see you next week.