Violence, Suffering, and Evil Are Not God’s Will

People are rejecting the Bible and losing their faith for no other reason than its honesty! They do not realize that the Bible very reliably portrays a nation of people who gradually gained deeper insights, whose flawed words and deeds are not always what the Bible teaches.

By Ralph D. Winter (compiled and edited by Beth Snodderly)

Editor’s Note: Today Beth Snodderly continues her four-part series exploring Ralph Winter’s Four Seeds of Destruction by compiling and condensing material from a number of Winter’s essays. You can read the previous installments here: Are We Building an Enduring Christianity or Not?, and Emotionalism vs. Intellectualism.

Insight into God’s Character: Violence, Suffering, and Evil Are Not God’s Will

We see two significant barriers to Christian belief: a Bible thought to have feet of clay beginning with Genesis 1, and the rampant violence and evil in this world. The reason I am so concerned to identify evil, and become known as a believer in Jesus Christ who is fighting it, is because a great deal of evil in this world is blamed on God. How attractive is our invitation to people to turn to and yield to their Father in Heaven if they continue to believe he is the one who contrives for most everyone and everything to die in suffering? Unless Satan is in the picture and we are known to be fighting his deadly works we are allowing God’s glory to be marred and torn down.

Violence in Nature

Is it a hazard to evangelism to be unable to explain why God’s creation pervasively contains so many violent elements, so much horrible suffering and pain? Ruth Tucker’s book, Walking Away from Faith, implies that to be the case. Do Christian missionaries need to think seriously about the apparent incongruity between the Bible’s “good creation” and a violence-filled nature? I think so.

The “good creation” of Genesis 1 describes both animals and humans as eating plants, not each other. The wolf lying down with the lamb (Isa 11:6) seems to be the kind of creation that could be attributed to God without qualification. On the other hand, most people have simply grown accustomed to the violence of the streets and the forests. Some people believe that everything—violent, painful, or not—is of God and we will someday be able to see this as part of his “mysterious purposes.” 

But now that we have inklings about how DNA can be altered, is it possible to hypothesize that fallen angels (who are at least as intelligent as humans) have been hard at work in distorting God’s original good creation into the violence in nature we now see? David Snoke, a physics and astronomy professor at the University of Pittsburgh, asks, “Why were dangerous animals created?” He suggests three possibilities: 1) fallen intermediate beings are responsible for dangerous animals, or 2) the Bible teaches that God is responsible for violence in nature, or 3) some process out of God’s control (like an unaided evolution?) is the cause (Snoke 2004, 119). I vote for the first of the three. He takes the second. Darwin, I suppose, chose the third.

But the phenomenal significance of all this for mission is plain. If dangerous animals are part of God’s original plan, and (thus logically) dangerous pathogens as well, we have no “mission” to eradicate dangerous viruses, bacteria, and parasites. And, in that case we have a perplexingly dangerous God to preach. What do you think?

Violence in the Bible

The danger is illustrated by Hector Avalos, former Pentecostal and now Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Illinois, who has lost his respect for the God of the Bible. He says that the Bible ought not to be studied and he is particularly offended by what he sees as the Bible’s “endorsement of violence” (Avalos 2007, 28). But in describing violence, is the Bible teaching it? Have people like Avalos “given up their faith” trying to explain away a number of disturbing things in the Old Testament, as if the Bible asks us to emulate or approve of all the gruesome and barbaric things it reports?

They may not realize that many things in the Bible are the result of a perfectly reasonable, progressively increasing understanding, which the Bible unblushingly reflects without the pretension of insisting that in the Bible there is “no progress of understanding.” At the time the Old Testament was put together as a book, later insights and interpretations were sometimes mingled with earlier understandings. One instance is the startling contrast between 2 Samuel 24:1-24 and 1 Chronicles 21:1-24. I have for some time considered these two passages to constitute the “Rosetta Stone of Biblical Hermeneutics.” In 2 Samuel the NIV says, “God incited David [to do wrong].” In 1 Chronicles the parallel account says “Satan incited David [to do wrong].” As I see it, the centuries-earlier passage speaks from the viewpoint of God’s overall sovereignty, while the post-exilic (post-Zoroastrian) passage adds a new insight. The people of Israel had become aware of the initiative of an intermediate being (Satan) that was created by God, not to be a robot, but with the same kind of freedom that humans have, namely, the freedom to do evil. The Bible does not attempt to pretend that either of these accounts was dictated from heaven.

Thus, here is an example where we do well to “lose our faith”—that is, lose our specious faith in the idea that our Bibles were dictated by God in the way that Muslims and Mormons claim for their holy books, the Qur’an and the Book of Mormon. Rather, we believe that “prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet 1:21, NIV). The key word here is “human,” implying limited, though inspired, perspective. In other words, many simplistic views of the Bible may need to be given up. Believing in an inerrant Bible is different from believing in inerrant interpretations.

The Bible is unlike any other religious book in the world. It doesn’t tell us of perfect people. It records horrendous evils and describes people who condone those evils. It even portrays the flaws of leaders. But it doesn’t teach those flaws. It records the literal truth of a chosen nation both seeking and denying God’s will. Does it intend for us to take its every sentence, its every event, as a model to be followed? Of course not. In one sense it mirrors for us how deep and dark our human past has been, how far we have come in better understanding God and his will for us. At the same time, for the same reason, it intends that we not slide back. Most important, we cannot logically criticize it for its honesty and accuracy!

But people are rejecting the Bible and losing their faith for no other reason than its honesty! They do not realize that the Bible very reliably portrays a nation of people who across the centuries gradually gained deeper insights, whose flawed words and deeds are not always what the Bible teaches, and that the story as it leads into the New Testament reveals an archangel adversary who is the most basic answer for the presence of suffering.

Human Suffering

Probably the most vexing and ineffective Christian teaching is what we come up with in the face of tragic and evil events. Why does God allow such things? One young person after his freshman year at college said to his dad, “There is so much evil, suffering, and injustice in the world that either there is no God at all or there is a God of questionable power or character.” This idea is all the more devastating when Evangelicals, having essentially given up believing in an intelligent enemy of God, take to explaining tediously that all this evil must be because God’s ways are simply mysterious. Satan, rampant and powerful in the New Testament, has mainly disappeared from significance following Augustine’s injection of some neo-platonic thought into the Christian tradition.

References

Avalos, Hector. 2007. The End of Biblical Studies. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Snoke, David. 2004. “Why Were Dangerous Animals Created?” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (June): 117-25. Accessed April 29, 2016. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2004/PSCF6-04Snoke.pdf.

Image: Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon by John Martin

Ralph D. Winter (12/8/24 – 5/20/09) founded the Roberta Winter Institute.

Beth Snodderly is the RWI's Theologian in Residence and Chair of the Board.

Are we building an enduring Christianity or not?

Communities of believers who do not do the hard work of answering the hard questions can expect their children and future generations to abandon their faith.

By Beth Snodderly

Editor’s Note: Last week, here on the RWI blog we published an introduction to Ralph Winter’s Four Seeds of Destruction. Today, Beth Snodderly begins a four-part series exploring these topics in more depth. Enjoy.

Ralph Winter often talked and wrote about why people turn away from faith. He wanted the mission world to be aware that newly reached peoples will eventually follow the pattern of post-Christian Europe if we don’t stop exporting a gospel that contains the seeds of its own destruction. He recognized that communities of believers who do not do the hard work of answering hard questions can expect their children and future generations to abandon their faith in God, as was the case in 19th and early 20th century England. Winter saw that intellectual insight into God’s Word, God’s world, and who God is, needs to accompany emotional and experiential awareness of God. Otherwise, as Winter observed, people turn away from faith once they start asking hard questions about the rampant evil in this world, thinking this is God’s will and not realizing there is a Satan behind it. And if they are unaware of what the Bible really says and means on key issues, if they perceive the Bible to have feet of clay, thinking people are unlikely to be interested in following the Jesus of the Bible.

Winter wanted mission and church practitioners to recognize that they need to lead the way in restoring God’s reputation and glory in the eyes of the on-looking world. Believers need to help potential followers of Jesus see that suffering, violence, and evil are not God’s will and are not from him. Rather, societies and all creation experience the consequences of human and angelic choices, both good and bad, and God does not overrule the free will he has granted his creatures. Winter pointed to the importance of seeing the historical big picture—that God is in an ongoing battle with a spiritual adversary, starting even before Genesis 1. Salvation is thus not just a “ticket to heaven.” Rather, God is asking humans to choose to join him in the battle to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8) and demonstrate God’s will for shalom for human societies and all creation.

In my next installment, I’ll explore Ralph Winter’s thoughts on why Christianity has succeeded among rural populations all over the world but is facing increasing opposition from the educated world.

Photo Credit: vonderauvisuals/Flickr

Beth Snodderly is the RWI's Theologian in Residence and Chair of the Board.

Ralph D. Winter’s Four Seeds of Destruction

Why the Gospel we’re exporting around the world is destined to blossom today, only to fade tomorrow.

By Brian Lowther

Ralph D. Winter established the Roberta Winter Institute to address one major problem. Because of his background as a mission leader and a mission historian, he saw that Evangelical missionaries were exporting a gospel around the world that contained seeds of its own destruction. [1] He recognized that if we do not eliminate these seeds, we could expect people from the hard-won mission fields of today to abandon their faith tomorrow.

Helpfully, he identified four of the most serious “seeds of destruction.”

Ralph D. Winter’s Four Seeds of Destruction

1. The Seed of the Problem of Evil

He predicted that as the people of the newly won mission fields of today become acquainted with the traditional answers to the problem of evil, they will increasingly become skeptical of those answers and their faith in God will gradually collapse. The traditional answer to the problem of evil blames sin on humans, blames temptation on Satan, and blames everything else on God’s mysterious, divine plan. Natural disasters are called “Acts of God.” Deadly diseases prompt questions like, “Why did God take my wife?” In his mind, faith that rests on these approaches to the problem of evil doesn’t stand much of a chance.

His solution was to develop A New Story, a re-framing of the Biblical narrative that answers the problem of evil in a new way, rescues God’s reputation and places the blame for evil at the feet of Satan.

2. The Seed of the Creation Narrative Being Irreconcilable with Modern Science

Secondly, he predicted that as the people of the newly won mission fields of today inevitably become acquainted with the scientific worldview, their faith in God will gradually collapse. Because of his background as an engineer, he knew that the traditional creation narrative does not resonate with a good percentage of scientists or people born in a Westernized, Post-Enlightenment society.

His solution was to develop A New Story, a re-framing of the Biblical narrative that takes what science knows about the history of the universe into account. His story reconciles the Young Earth view with the Old Earth view in a way that he believed would be more plausible to the scientists of today and the believers of tomorrow.

3. The Seed of an Incomplete Mandate

Thirdly, he predicted that as the people of the newly won mission fields of today begin to evangelize and disciple others, they will eventually become disillusioned by the idea that the advance of God’s Kingdom consists primarily (or perhaps merely) of passing out tickets to heaven. He equated this truncated mandate with walking into a desolate, war-torn area and informing the survivors that democracy is all they need to fix their problems. [2] Beyond just saving souls, he saw through history—not just human history, but cosmic history—that God was also about reestablishing shalom in a corrupted creation and defeating the enemy who is responsible for that corruption. Without these larger aspects of God’s redemptive activity being communicated and demonstrated by the people of God, Dr. Winter foresaw a bleak future for the believers of tomorrow.

His solution was to develop A New Story, a re-framing of the Biblical narrative that explores the fuller mandate God has given his children to battle evil and restore shalom to creation.

4. The Seed of Violent Portraits of God

Lastly, on his deathbed he dictated a short essay [3] implying that as the people of the newly won mission fields of today begin to understand the Bible, they will become deeply troubled by the violent portraits of God in the Old Testament (e.g., narratives that depict God violently smiting his enemies, commanding merciless genocide, and causing familial cannibalism). These portraits seem categorically different from Jesus who tells his followers to love their enemies and bless those who curse them. We can extrapolate that some new believers—like so many other Christian communities throughout history—will use these harsh, nationalistic portraits of God to justify their own inclinations toward violence.

As a solution we can utilize resources like Greg Boyd’s forthcoming book, Crucifixion of the Warrior God to build into Dr. Winter’s re-framing of the Biblical narrative a new way to reconcile the violent-tending God of the Old Testament with the self-sacrificial enemy-loving God revealed in Jesus Christ.

A New Activity

In addition to addressing these seeds of destruction through his New Story, Dr. Winter knew that we couldn’t just go out and share a story. That story would have to be backed up and empowered by action. That fuller mandate would have to be obeyed. Therefore, he identified and championed a specific New Activity for the Body of Christ to focus upon: disease eradication.

Why Disease Eradication?

Perhaps the most strategic way to battle evil, restore shalom to creation, and rescue God’s reputation is to address the world problems that are causing the most human suffering. Many of the great human problems such as spiritual darkness, poverty, injustice, and illiteracy have already significantly caught the attention of the Body of Christ. Some of the resulting efforts are focused on addressing the roots of these problems, not just the symptoms. [4] And, while treating the symptoms of disease has always been a hallmark of Christianity, where are the Christian organizations devoted to addressing the social, microbiological, and genetic roots of disease with an eye toward eradicating those diseases, not just healing them?

Conclusion

In the end, we in the Roberta Winter Institute believe that the chief reason the burgeoning mission fields of today will collapse into gospel resistance tomorrow is because these seeds of destruction are unknowingly exported with the gospel like rats on a cargo ship. Where is the wisdom in zealously building a widespread movement to Christ on a foundation of sand? This will continue to be a problem until and unless we eliminate these destructive seeds and obey the fuller mandate God has given us as disciples of his son.

Join us as we explore and expand upon these ideas in the weeks and months ahead here at www.robertawinterinstitute.org.

Endnotes

[1] “When the Church Staggers, Stalls and Sits Down (In the Middle of a War!),” by Ralph D. Winter, Mission Frontiers Magazine, May-June 2008 - http://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/when-the-church-staggers-stalls-and-sits-down-in-the-middle-of-a-war
[2] “Beyond Unreached Peoples,” By Ralph D. Winter, November 2004. Published in Frontiers in Mission, pg. 186
[3] “Let’s Be Fair to the Bible,” Unpublished essay by Ralph D. Winter, May 2009
[4] For more on this, see: http://www.robertawinterinstitute.org/blog/2014/7/4/who-is-addressing-root-causes-of-the-biggest-human-problems

Photo Credit: Richard Thomas/Flickr

Brian Lowther is the Director of
the Roberta Winter Institute

Three Views to the Problem of Evil: View #3

Nick Kenrick/Flickr

By Brian Lowther

Ralph Winter once said, “There are very many people, even Bible-believing Christians not just non-Christians, who are profoundly puzzled, perplexed, and certainly confused by the extensive presence of outrageous evil in the created world of an all-powerful, benevolent God.” In other words, if God is all-powerful and all loving, then why is there so much evil, disease, and suffering in the world?

In this third and final post, I will explore one last Biblical view addressing this question. [Click here for Part 1, and here for Part 2.] As before, I won’t venture to interpret any scripture passages. I’ll simply list the passages that at a surface level, seem to support the view I’m exploring.

View #3: Suffering and Evil are a result of a Cosmic War between God and Satan.

This conviction shows up any time someone encounters evil such as disease, demonization, or natural disasters and understands them through the lens of the warfare worldview. For example:

• “Life is war and the world is a battlefield, ravaged by eons of conflict among powerful invisible forces.”
• “Evil originates in the wills of Satan, fallen angels, and sinful people, rather than of God.”
• “The mystery of suffering resides not in God’s providence or because of an arbitrary streak in his character, but in the warfare that engulfs creation.”
• “Evil happens because in a war, casualties and accidents are expected and very likely. ‘Bullets fly, bombs explode, mines are stepped on, and children are maimed.’ [1] In a war, suffering is not an intellectual puzzle to solve. In a war, suffering is a given.”

Scriptural Support

This understanding is taken from the Bible, where you can read of numerous indications of a cosmic war between God and Satan.

• Paul describes the necessity of the Armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18) in this war, which is not a war between flesh and blood, but against “the cosmic powers over this present darkness and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12)
• Jesus repeatedly calls Satan "the ruler of this world" (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11), Luke suggests that Satan owns all the authority of all the kingdoms of the world (Luke 4:5-7), Paul calls Satan "the god of this world" (2 Corinthians 4:4) and "the prince of the power of the air" (Ephesians 2:2), and John says “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one." (1 John 5:19)
• Luke summarizes Jesus’ ministry as “doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil.” (Acts 10:38) Similarly, John explains, “the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). And Paul confirms that the death of Christ was meant to “break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14).

Key Advantage

One of the great benefits of adopting this view is that it creates a posture of revolt and resistance in the face of evil, rather than a passive resignation that often characterizes the response to the other two views. Evil isn't to be puzzled. Evil is to be confronted and overcome.

Surprisingly this conviction doesn’t come up nearly as often as the previous two views. However, it is older than Christianity itself. In fact, the primary way the early Church Fathers (such as Origen, Athenagorus and Tertullian) explained evil in nature was by blaming Satan and his demons. [2] This view was pre-dominant until St. Augustine in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries. Before he became the most influential Christian thinker of all time, Augustine was part of a religious sect called Manichaeism, which had two equal gods, one good and one bad. As he was inching back toward Orthodox Christianity, he reacted against this dualistic worldview so dramatically that he essentially banished references to an Evil One, taking a view in which there was no intelligent angelic opponent to God at all. Or, if there was, he did very little, all things instead being God’s initiative. 

Questions

But should we take this view to be the universal explanation for all evil? If so, a few questions arise.

• To take this view seriously, we have to take angels and demons seriously. To many people today, especially in the West, the notion of a personal, real, and active Satan who has great power in the world is ludicrous.  
• How does this view make sense of texts like the book of Job? In Job, it’s clear that Satan caused all of Job’s suffering. It can also seem that God controls every move Satan makes.
• Does this view attribute to Satan more power than he has?
• Does this view inevitably lead to Christians who are angrily militant, authoritarian, or even violent? In other words, does this view inevitably lead to tragedies like the ones that occurred in Waco in 1993 or Jonestown in 1978?

Conclusion

I personally feel that the explanation that people suffer because the world is engulfed in a cosmic war offers some important philosophical and explanatory advantages to the two other views I’ve explored. However, this is partly because I grew up with the other two views as the pervading theological assumptions, and frankly I always felt something was missing. Can these three views be synthesized into a more complete answer to the problem of evil? Is it possible to hold all three views in tension? Or does the third view cancel the other two or vice versa? These are questions for another day.

Endnotes

[1] Greg Boyd, God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1997) 58.
[2] See more here: http://gregboyd.blogspot.com/2007/07/argument-from-early-church-fathers.html

Brian Lowther is the director of the Roberta Winter Institute. 

Three Views to the Problem of Evil: View #2

Nick Kenrick/Flickr

By Brian Lowther  

Ralph Winter once said, “There are very many people, even Bible-believing Christians not just non-Christians, who are profoundly puzzled, perplexed, and certainly confused by the extensive presence of outrageous evil in the created world of an all-powerful, benevolent God.” In other words, if God is all-powerful and all loving, then why is there so much evil, disease, and suffering in the world?

In part two of this three-part blog post, I will explore a second Biblical view addressing this question.  [Click here for Part 1] As before, I won’t venture to interpret any scripture passages. I’ll simply list the passages that at a surface level, seem to support the view I’m exploring.

View #2: A mysterious, loving, sovereign, divine plan lies behind all evil, disease, and suffering in our world.

This conviction shows up every time someone suffers a tragedy and interprets it with a version of one of the following statements:

• “Everything happens for a reason.”
• “God’s ways are mysterious.”
• “There are no accidents in God’s providence.”
• “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.”
• “You have to trust that God always does what is best.”
• “It is the will of God...hard to understand…providence writes a long sentence, we have to wait to get to heaven to read the answer.”

Scriptural Support

This understanding is taken from the Bible, where you can read of numerous examples of God saying or doing very mysterious things, such as:

• “The Lord kills and makes alive; He brings down to Sheol and raises up. The Lord makes poor and rich; He brings low, He also exalts.” (Samuel 2:6-7)
• “It is I who puts to death and gives life. I have wounded, and it is I who heals.” (Deuteronomy 32:39)
• “The Lord has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil.” (Proverbs 16:4)
• “I am the Lord, and there is no other, the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well being and creating calamity [Lit.,"ra", evil]. I am the Lord who does all these.” (Isaiah 45:6,7)
• “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both good and evil go forth?” (Lamentations 3:38)
• “Not one bird falls to the ground apart from the will of your Father.” (Matthew 10:29)
• “For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it in hope...” (Romans 8:20)

Key Advantage

The explanation that a divine reason lies behind every occurrence in history—including evil—has brought comfort to countless people down through the ages.

Questions

But, should we take this view to be the universal explanation for all evil and suffering? If so, some very troubling questions arise. Below I’ll illustrate these questions by paraphrasing a story from Greg Boyd’s book, Is God to Blame? [1]

Melanie’s Story 

For as long as she could remember, Melanie had wanted to be a mother. Once she got married, she and her husband began trying for a baby. A few years went by with no success. They found out that a medical condition would prevent her from conceiving a child. Melanie was devastated.

But, her disappointment was short-lived, as unexpectedly she conceived. The pregnancy moved forward without incident. Finally the day came and she and her husband went to the hospital to deliver the baby. However, during the birth the umbilical cord wrapped around the baby’s neck, choking the child to death.

Melanie was understandably inconsolable and in deep despair, tormented by questions like, “Why would God miraculously give us a child, only to take the baby away while coming into the world? Why did this happen to us? And why is God preventing us from conceiving again?”

After years of depression and confusion, Melanie and her husband sought answers from a Bible teacher they respected. The answers they received were consistent with the theology she had been taught all her life: “God is still on his throne. There’s a silver lining in every cloud. All things work together for the good. Maybe God is trying to teach you some kind of lesson. Or maybe it’s just not God’s will for you to have children.”

Melanie accepted this advice, but felt extreme guilt because she was starting to lose her trust in God’s “mysterious” plan, not to mention the fact that her marriage was slowly deteriorating as well.

What was so confusing about the situation was that God had seemingly given Melanie a strong desire to mother a child and then miraculously set her up to believe he was going to fulfill that desire, only to kill the baby just before it was born. One can’t help but ask, does that seem like something a loving God would do? Can you picture Jesus doing that to someone?

In addition to these questions, this belief that a mysterious plan underlies all evil reduces the problem of evil to an intellectual puzzle to solve, needing books and devotionals to parse out its meaning. Also, if all evil is believed to serve a higher divine purpose, what is the point in fighting against it?

Conclusion

If the explanation that people suffer because of a mysterious, loving, sovereign, divine plan was the only Biblical answer to the problem of evil, I think we would all be forever “profoundly puzzled, perplexed, and confused.” Thankfully, there is at least one other predominant answer in scripture. Tomorrow I’ll explore the third view.

Endnote

[1] Greg Boyd, Is God to Blame? Moving Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Evil, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2003) 11-13

Brian Lowther is the director of the Roberta Winter Institute. 

Three Views to the Problem of Evil: View #1

Nick Kenrick/Flickr

By Brian Lowther 

Ralph Winter once said, “There are very many people, even Bible-believing Christians not just non-Christians, who are profoundly puzzled, perplexed, and certainly confused by the extensive presence of outrageous evil in the created world of an all-powerful, benevolent God.” In other words, if God is all-powerful and all loving, then why is there so much evil, disease, and suffering in the world?

In this three-part blog post, I will explore three Biblical views addressing this question. Where I list scripture references, I won’t venture an interpretation. I’ll simply list the passages that at a surface level, seem to support the view I’m exploring.

View #1 - People suffer because they deserve it.

This conviction turns up every time a natural disaster strikes. For example:

• The 2011 earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands of Japanese citizens was viewed by some as divine retribution.
• Some blamed Haiti’s 2009 earthquake on the Haitians' "pact to the devil."
• Some explained Hurricane Katrina as a direct result of New Orleans’ embracing gay pride events.
• Some blamed the September 11 tragedy on liberal civil liberties groups, feminists, pagans, homosexuals, and abortion rights supporters. 

Scriptural Support

This understanding is taken from the Old Testament, where you can read of countless examples of God punishing the disobedient, such as: 

• When God ordered the Israelites to slaughter countless men, women and children in the conquest of Canaan. (Deuteronomy 20:16-17)
• When God killed every firstborn child in Egypt because Pharaoh was stubborn. (Exodus 12:29) Ironically the Bible tells us it was God who hardened Pharaoh’s heart towards God's people. [1]
• When God ordered King Saul to butcher thousands of children and babies in the genocide of the Amalakites. (1 Samuel 15:1-35)
• When God ordered the Israelites (through Moses) to capture 32,000 young girls of the Midianite tribe “for yourselves” after killing their families. (Numbers 31:7-18)
• When God drowned every man, woman, child, and animal on the face of the earth during the flood of Noah, with the exception of eight in Noah’s family and the animals on the ark. (Genesis 7:17-24)

One could point out that in the passages above, the wickedness of the people more than justified God’s judgment. In many of these situations, the Bible makes it clear that human violence and evil had grown to be so pervasive that it touched everything and everyone that existed at the time. The Canaanites, for example, were apparently an incredibly sinful people who practiced extreme cruelty, incest, bestiality, cultic prostitution, and child sacrifice. [2] If such acts were perpetrated today and broadcast on the news, there would be a universal outcry for retribution. 

One could also point out that, in many of these Biblical contexts, God’s judgment is preceded by warning and/or a long period of time to repent. For example, during the construction of the ark—which took as long as one hundred years—Noah is described as a “preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5) to the people around him. This means the people had perhaps one hundred years to listen to the message of Noah and to repent of the wickedness that was bringing the floodwaters upon them.

Lastly, many who contend that people suffer because they deserve it, assert that God is required to judge people for sin, simply because he is just. He has to threaten to punish sin and then follow through with those threats or the world would become overrun with crime and evil.

Key Advantage

This understanding of suffering seems to fit with our innate sense of justice, e.g., all parents instinctively seem to know that bad behavior cannot go unpunished.

Questions

But, should we take this view to be the universal explanation for all evil and suffering? If so, some troubling questions arise.

• First is the age-old question, why do the wicked often prosper and the righteous suffer? It seems so arbitrary.
• Second is the question of unwarranted suffering, such as the suffering and death of newborn babies. In other words, why is it that sometimes the punishment doesn’t fit the crime?
• Third is the question of animal suffering. Wild animals surely can’t learn from their suffering, or be improved by it.
• Next would be the question of understanding our own personal tragedies. For example, are we to interpret a terminal cancer diagnosis or a child kidnapping as God’s judgment? Isn’t this one of the main things the book of Job refutes?
• The last question is similar to the first, in terms of the arbitrary nature of suffering. Oftentimes our suffering happens when we least expect it. Many of us know a devout friend or relative who spent their life serving God, only to be knocked down by some ghastly disease. In these cases there is rarely a direct reason from God explaining the “punishment.” This situation is similar to a parent saying to a child, “I’m going to spank you, sometimes when you’re doing right, and I won't generally tell you why.”

Interestingly, Jesus addresses this general idea in Luke 13:1-5 where he responds to two catastrophes: Pilates’ slaughtering of some Galileans and the fall of the tower of Siloam that killed eighteen people. About both events Jesus asks his audience, “Do you think these people were more guilty than anyone else?”

Conclusion

If the explanation that people suffer because they deserve it was the only Biblical answer to the problem of evil, I think we would all be forever “profoundly puzzled, perplexed, and confused.” Thankfully, there are at least two other predominant answers in scripture. Tomorrow I’ll explore the second view.

Endnote

[1] Though, we are also told Pharaoh hardened his own heart many times.
[2] https://www.knowingthebible.net/the-extermination-of-the-canaanites#_ftn6

Brian Lowther is the director of the Roberta Winter Institute.