“I know what plans I have … for you … Yahweh declares …” Jeremiah 29:11 Losing Faith III

Introduction.

The last two posts have catalogued reasons why former believers have either lost their faith in God (and religion) or have come to seriously question His existence or their faith.  In this post we will begin to answer some of these objections to faith.

Reasons for a former believer’s loss of his/her faith are as diverse as the people themselves.  The prior two posts were not intended to detail every circumstance that could cause a believer to turn away, but rather to deal with three broad themes that can be used to summarize those circumstances.  Those are:

• The believer’s becoming mad at or disappointed by God.
• The believer’s becoming mad at or disappointed by the Church (or their religion).
• The believer’s becoming mad at or disappointed by individuals claiming to be Christians.

We’ll deal with these in order.

Objection One.  The believer’s becoming mad at or disappointed by God.

Expectations of God.

As we stated previously, this objection centers around either an action attributed to God that is incompatible with the believer’s concept of Him, or an action that God didn’t take that the believer sees as necessary for his/her continued belief.

These complaints have in common the contention that a ‘real’ God would not allow ‘bad’ things to happen to ‘good’ people.  Their concept of a true God seems to require Him to prevent misfortune from happening to those who don’t ‘deserve’ it and visiting misfortune on those who do.

In short, they don’t see God as Just because He doesn’t conform to their desired world order.  They object to a God who allows injustice, evil, disease, or misfortune to occur, whether by commission or omission.

They find the concept of God as Love incompatible with such misapplication of justice.  They commonly express the feeling, “If God “loves” us all so much, why does He allow disease, sin, and injustice to flourish?”

Their argument continues, “If these things do exist, then either God doesn’t exist, or He simply doesn’t care.  And I’m not going to worship such a deity.”

An Aside.

Before I answer this complaint, I remind the reader that few people come to such a position without having encountered significant events which cause them to raise this question.  And those events are frequently physically or emotionally painful and traumatic.  Therefore, we must respect their feelings of loss, abandonment, and anger at perceived injustice as real and valid for their experience.

It is my sincere hope that nothing I say herein will seem disrespectful of their feelings or the position they’ve adopted.  We rarely convince someone of our argument just after we’ve told them how silly or trivial theirs is.

To Continue.

That having been said, I do believe that there are several points which, in my mind at least, effectively answer these objections to God.

The first is that the idea that God is somehow responsible for every unfortunate event that occurs is not consistent with Christian teaching.  It is my firm belief that God does not visit misfortune on us. [Jeremiah 29:11-12] Although I believe He is active in our world every day, and that we are each touched by Him on a regular basis, it does not mean that God is controlling every event of our lives.  Thanks to our free will, we decide what we will do and how we will behave.  The consequences of our decisions and our actions are ours to bear.  Blaming them on God is irrational.

And while my personal faith does include the fact that evil is real and active in our world, I do not see misfortune to be the result of a malign force or personality.

Two Active Agents.

I can identify two active agents that are responsible for most of our physical or spiritual trials and tribulations.  Those are free will, and the nature of God.

The Nature of God.

First, let’s deal with the nature of God.  I explored this topic rather extensively in my Post 4, July 6, 2018, and if you’ve not read that post, I encourage you to do so.  But, briefly, I see the most basic aspect of the nature of God as that of the Creator.  Creation is fundamental to His being.

Obviously, He could have created a ‘perfect’ universe where nothing unpleasant ever happened.  But He’s already got that.  It’s called Heaven.  If He’d created the universe as perfect, it would have been a static, closed system.  There would have been no variation or oscillation of elements or existence.  All possibilities would have been frozen, and God’s drive to create would have gone unfulfilled after He’d done His first work.

But the universe is a place of infinite variabilities and possibilities.  God is still creating (stars are born every day) and His urge to create is continually on display.  However, this variability comes at a “price.”  That price is that the universe is not perfect, and that allows things to happen that couldn’t happen in a perfectly aligned and symmetrical universe.

Therefore, the universe that God created has to allow for some things to happen that aren’t necessarily pleasant.  Asteroids can hit planets and have devastating consequences (just ask the dinosaurs!).  But out of those calamitous events, new possibilities emerge.  We humans are a result of one of those new possibilities.

Diseases can evolve and decimate whole populations.  But the survivors of those events are stronger and better able to deal with similar events in the future.  Many of us who had the measles are now immune to them.

Star systems can collide with tremendous energy obliterating the stars themselves with the result that the fundamental elements and necessary resources for life are spread across the universe.  Scientists tell us that each of us is made, literally, of stardust, the remnants of such collisions.

Some element of chaos must be for change to occur, and in that change, God’s infinite creativity is at work.

So, yes, God does allow ‘bad’ things to happen. But if He didn’t, our universe and our world would not be a place of infinite variety and creativity.  So, unfortunately it is inevitable that we are sometimes caught in disruptive circumstances.

Prayer.

This also speaks to the question of why He may seem not to respond to our fervent prayers and pleas for clemency from the unavoidable tribulations that life entails.  The best treatise on this topic that I’ve read is C.S. Lewis’ book, The Problem of Pain (Collier Books, Macmillian Publishing Company, NY, NY, 1962).  In it, Lewis makes the point that out of a sense of universal justice and impartiality, for God to respond to anyone’s prayer in the timeframe and manner they desire would require Him to respond to everyone’s prayer in a similar manner.  The problem with this is that people frequently pray for opposite outcomes.

Many of the combatants on opposite sides in many of the wars fought in the history of the world have prayed fervently that their cause be the one favored by Him and rewarded with victory.

I’m a fan of a particular football team and we have a long-standing rivalry with another in-state team.  I assure you that fervent and urgent prayers are offered by fans of each team before and during each game.  And, every Saturday approximately one-half of the fans go home disappointed.

God does not play favorites.  For Him to answer everyone’s prayers in the timeframe and manner they desire would inevitability place Him at odds with the needs and desires of others.  Being a “just” God (meaning that He is unwaveringly fair) He cannot favor one supplicant over another.  We are all equal in His eyes, and to treat any of us with anything other than impartiality would demean His character.

He Does answer.

Make no mistake, He DOES answer prayers.  The issue is that He rarely does so in the timeframe or the manner most desired by the person making the prayer.  He answers in His own time and in a manner that is in the best interest of the person issuing the prayer (whether the supplicant realizes it at the time or not).

The Proper Alignment.

Does the fact that He does not always answer our prayers when and how we want, make Him less God?  No.  It is not for us to “tell” God what to do or how to do it.  If that were effective, we would be God, and He would be us.

God always takes the “long view.”  He is more concerned with our souls and our salvation than whether someone recovers from an illness or who’s football team wins on Saturday afternoon.  All our experiences work toward His ends, not necessarily ours.

Creativity.

He is still intimately involved in His creation.  But He does allow his Creation and his creations (i.e. us) to live and to breathe, and, most importantly, to create.  For it is in that ability and urge that (I believe) we are most like Him.

We share His imperative to make new things.  Doing something that hasn’t been done or creating something that hasn’t existed before shows our innate connection to and our reflection of Him.  And, for me, that is reason enough to celebrate Him and to thank Him for the wonderful gift of creativity.

Free Will.

This brings us to the second agent of unfortunate events, free will.

We’ll cover this topic in next week’s post.  We’ll then cover the other two major objections to God and religion.  Stay tuned!

 

Until then,

God’s Blessings on you All.

Richard

November 30, 2018