The Goodness of God and the Power of God: On Joseph, Part 2

That'll teach the little brat!--or not.

Last post, we left Joseph in prison.  Far from home, surrounded by pagans, a slave, accused falsely of a heinous crime.  Yet even here, he is characterized by what?  Pining away at the injustice of it all?  Does he cry out like Job, or maybe like David in his darker moments?

Maybe--we are not told.  He may have spent sleepless nights in tears and crying out at the injustice of it all.  Yet if that happened, the Biblical author did not deem it important enough to record.  It wasn't as if the Bible doesn't have those kind of dark nights of the soul recorded--it has plenty of them.  But for telling us about Joseph it wasn't deemed important.

Yet we are told that--in the midst of a stinking, squalid Egyptian prison,

21 But athe Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love band gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. 22 And the keeper of the prison cput Joseph in charge of all the prisoners who were in the prison. Whatever was done there, he was the one who did it. 23 The keeper of the prison paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph’s charge, because dthe Lord was with him. And whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed.--Gen 39:21-23

Wait, what?  The Lord showed him "steadfast love"?!  The Lord "was with him"?!  He's in prison!!!

Yet this is how the Bible presents it: in the very midst of prison, pain, torture--God is with those whom He loves.  Could God have pulled Joseph out of there?  Of course He could have!  But He did not.  God had other plans.  He did not forget Joseph, He had steadfast love--hesed--on him.  It wasn't when things got better that showed that God had mercy on him--it was there in prison He showed His mercy on him.

And it wasn't that God was just there comforting Joseph.  No, He was active--making whatever Joseph do succeed.  God was not powerless.  God was not passive.  God was not just a vague comfort in the midst of pain.  Rather, the God Who was with Joseph, was actively working to ensure Joseph's work succeeded.

We do not see the picture that God ignored Joseph until his rise to power.  God's covenantal love for Joseph was there in the midst of prison, long before he would come to Pharaoh's attention.  God did not forget His child, but prison was part of His will for Joseph.

Again, it is not "culturally relevant" today to state this.  We are told we're supposed to argue with God, to shake our fists at Him, to have the "catharsis" of screaming at the unfairness of it all.  But it was not viewed this way always.  Indeed, we are the theological outliers.  Oh, we can flatter ourselves with the conceit that we are 'advanced' and more 'sensitive' to those in pain.

Of course, we know what happens next.  Eventually, Joseph encounters two important officials of Pharaoh, accurately interprets their dreams--and is forgotten for another two years.  Finally, after more years of misery, Joseph comes to Pharaoh's attention, is elevated to be Vizier of Egypt, and saves both Egypt and many other people from a devastating famine.

Years later, Joseph's father Jacob (Israel) dies, and his brothers are scared of Joseph's wrath.  So they plea for mercy, saying "Dad didn't want you to punish us" (perhaps a lie, perhaps not--again, we are not told.)  Joseph's response?

19 But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for ham I in the place of God? 20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but iGod meant it for good, to bring it about that many people2 should be kept alive, as they are today.--Gen 50:19-20

Note what I bolded above.  Joseph doesn't say "You threw God for loop for a little bit, but He was able to fix it up."  No, he speaks of intention:  Joseph's brother's intended evil; but God intended good.  God wasn't faced with having to fix something to thwart the plans of evil men.  Rather, God intended Joseph's trial to bring about good.  God had an intention around Joseph's suffering.  No, it did not alter the fact that his brothers meant evil--but God had His reasons, and His reasons were good.

Again, we do not like this message.  We do not like the suggestion that pain and suffering can bring about good.  Oh, sure--we accept the adage "no pain, no gain" when it comes to exercise.  We may even appreciate delay of gratification (though even that seems to be a dying viewpoint.)  But we are faced with horrible evil that seems to us to have no good purpose--this is to bring about good?  Senseless acts of butchery and carnage--this is for good?!

Consider the alternative for a moment: if God is as we theists claim, He could instantly stop any and all evil.  But He does not.  So we are faced with a God who allows such evil because (a) He has some purpose or (b) He has no purpose.

Think about that for a moment: God allowing suffering--for no purpose?  That is somehow better than the viewpoint that God actually has a purpose?  Not just from a moral standpoint--God just ignoring evil--but from a coherence standpoint: how is purposeless evil coherent with the theistic conception of a God who is a Personal Being (or Tri-personal from the orthodox Christian viewpoint) who acts according to purpose and volition?

And turning to the pages of the New Testament, we see exactly the same picture of God.  Stay tuned for more.

The Goodness of God and the Power of God: On Joseph, Part 1

The privileged son of Israel

The story of Joseph is well-known to most Christians and Jews (and Muslims--a whole Surah is about him.  The story is parallel, though not identical, to the Biblical story).  The story hits so many themes that are constant in classic literature: the favored son, sibling rivalry, slavery, sexual temptation, false accusation, alienation and restoration--you name it, the story has it.

It takes up a great deal of Genesis.  It's too long to quote the whole passage; read it yourself from Genesis 37-50, where Joseph is the major character (except for a rather bizarre story about Judah and his daughter-in-law in Chapter 38).

Now, some people think that Joseph was probably some kind of spoiled brat who was his father's favorite and rubbed that in the faces of his brothers.  Maybe.  We do know he was less than diplomatic in sharing dreams about his brothers--even his father and mother--bowing down to him.  Not a great way to score points with your family.  But there's little to state one way or another that Joseph was some kind of insufferable brat or saintly kid in the text that we have.  At any rate, it's pretty cold-hearted for your older brothers to plot your death, and then after discussion decide to "merely" sell you into slavery, hoping that you'll die in some far off land as the dregs of society.  It's hard to argue that even a bratty kid deserves such punishment.

So here's Joseph: betrayed by his family, sold as a slave to a far-off land, surrounded by idol worshippers--not exactly the fulfillment of his dreams.  But, things start to look up: he's bright and handsome, and advances quickly in his household, eventually being put in charge of the whole house of a very important man.  Maybe not ideal (hey, he's still a slave, remember?), but much better off than many, many people at that time.  Count your blessings, Joseph!

Then things turn ugly: his master's wife wants to have an affair commit adultery with him, which may have been tempting on one level, but is a great way to be killed in a slow, painful way by a jealous husband (no legal protections for slaves back then, remember?)--though Joseph doesn't use that as the reason not to sin: he says "How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?”  In spite of the horrible things that have happened to him, Joseph still does not want to sin against God.

And then, God rewards him for doing right?  No way for this José--he's false accused, not of adultery, but rape!  His commitment to being sexually pure is rewarded by one of the most despicable acts one human can do to another.

Somehow, miraculously even, Joseph isn't killed--he's put in prison.  We're not told why Joseph wasn't put to death in some particularly gruesome way.  Maybe his master was suspicious of his wife, and figured that Joseph wasn't that kind of a person, but he had to do something.  We just don't know.

So there Joseph is: from bad to worse--the only lower than a slave, a slave in prison.  Thanks, God.  Thanks for all those dreams of being the big cheese in my household.

Yet we don't read about Joseph being in lament in prison.  Maybe he did--we don't know.  We don't have recorded in Scripture any such Psalm or prayer, like we have in Job.  But somehow, I don't think he was some kind of Pollyanna who always looked on the bright side of things.  Nevertheless, his conduct in prison seemed to be more than moaning and singing "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me."  He again shows that he's a bright kid, and ends up the Warden's right-hand man.  Certainly, still very far from his dreams.

But that is not all.  The story doesn't end there, with a message that "Things may not be great, but at least you're alive."  Though to be honest, many who suffer are right now in that prison.  We don't have the end of the story.  We might be in the darkest pit at this moment, and cannot see how things can get better.

But more on Joseph tomorrow.

The Goodness of God and the Power of God: Part 7

So--what is our choice?  Are we faced with annihilation or oblivion?  Is there no refuge found in God, only a harsh questioning, as Job faced?  Do we see a great lion, who makes no guarantees on not eating us, guarding the water of life?

No, the story does not end there.  Both with the blind man and with Job, there is more.  The blind man in John 9 is healed--though even that is not the end.  Not just healing--there is more; and not all of it is pleasant.  He is questioned by the religious leaders, twice.  His own parents do not stand up for him.  Finally, he is excommunicated.  Cast out of the people of Israel.  Abandoned from all he has ever known, the covenant people of God, the holders of divine revelation.  Physically whole, is he now to be spiritually empty?

Remember, this is not 21st-century America.  This is not a case where there could be some mild social awkwardness when someone changes churches, some strained Thanksgiving dinners and a few friendships lost.  This is 1st century Palestine, where a Jew's religious identity was literally everything to him.  Cast out of the people of the covenant, God's chosen nation on earth.  Cast off from the faithful, those who have kept the flame of faith in the One God burning for centuries, through persecution and exile.  The great heritage of Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, the Prophets--cut off.  Abandoned to a sea of pagan darkness, cast off from the rock of Israel.  This is progress?

So what does the man do?  Despair?  Does he tell Jesus "Thanks for nothing!  I've lost everything because of you!"  Does he curse God and die?

He does not.  He now can see! 

35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in qthe Son of Man?”3 36 He answered, r“And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and sit is he who is speaking to you.” 38 He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him. 39 Jesus said, t“For judgment I came into this world, uthat those who do not see may see, and vthose who see may become blind.” 40 Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, w“Are we also blind?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, xyou would have no guilt;4 but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains. --John 9:35-41

He does not bemoan the loss of what he had; he worships the One who gave him sight.  He now sees what is real...he does not yearn for an illusion.  He has completion--he does not wish for the partial.

Born lacking what most have; gaining it, and losing everything else.  And in the process, gaining all that truly matters.

And what of Job?  So many of us moderns are disappointed with the ending of Job--it's too neat, too nice.  Job regains more wealth, more children, more everything.  We--that is, hipster Americans--like the complicated, we like the ironic, we like the deeply symbolic.  We don't like a happy ending that involves material wealth--we're much too gnostic for that.  It's gauche to consider material wealth a blessing from God.  We think of the story of Job as offering too simplistic a lesson here: Job was good, he suffered, but God restored all that he lost because he was faithful.  Do the same.

But that's not the lesson of Job.  Remember, Job's lament was not answered--at least, not with words.  God gave; God took away; God restored.  In it all, God was God, making His sovereign choice.  And sovereignly, He gave Job wealth, took it, and gave it back.

There is no set formula.  The book explicitly disallows formulaic thinking that bad things only happen because you're bad, or because Satan is too strong (remember, he had to ask permission before striking Job), or even "we live in a fallen world."  God doesn't offer a dissertation on free will.  No--these conclusions are not allowed in the text.

Job suffered real loss.  He did lose his children.  He did suffer great pain.  Nothing would change that.  I suppose Job could have said, "No, God--not good enough!  You killed my children!  I will not accept your consolation--you caused my pain!"  I'm sure that's what Christopher Hitchens would have done, and many of us are proud--oh, so proud!--to shake their fists angrily at the God who could end their pain, but did not.

No; Job responds in faith:

4  “Behold, I am zof small account; what shall I answer you?

aI lay my hand on my mouth.

5  I have spoken bonce, and I will not answer;

btwice, but I will proceed no further.” --Job 40:4-5

We don't want a sovereign God.  If we want God at all, we want one who is either too weak to stop our pain, or one who speaks so sweetly that we avoid the question of our pain.  But these images of God can never truly comfort--for they are as false as an image of Baal.

In the end, we are faced with an inescapable fact: if God exists, then yes, He could stop our pain--but He doesn't.  The God who holds the oceans in His hands is in control.  And that frightens us, shakes us to the core in the midst of our pain.

There's another story in the Bible that might shed more light on our dilemma.  The story of Joseph...another one of those incredibly unfair stories, but one that again, has unexpected twists and turns, and an unexpected ending.

But that's for another day.

The Goodness of God and the Power of God: Part 6

Not a real cuddly whirlwind, I think

Returning form a few days hiatus, I'd like to follow-up my question: What is God's purpose in creating a universe with suffering?

Remember John 9:3?  When Jesus was asked by His disciples, "Why was this man born blind?  Who's sin caused it?" Jesus replied “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him."

What does this tell us?  This man was blind for his entire life up until this point.  Yes, he was healed--after a lifetime of suffering.  For what reason?

Remember, the question was not "Why did Jesus heal the man?", but the question was "why was the main born blind?"  We can--and should--emphasize Jesus' compassion in healing the man.  Nevertheless, the question is not why Jesus healed him.  We get that.  We know a big part of Jesus' earthly ministry was healing.  No one is questioning that.  But why was he born blind at all?  Did he have to be born blind?  When Jesus was creating the cosmos, indeed keeping the cosmos existing by His active work, did He say "I think I'll make this man who will be born blind, so I can display my work in him"?  Because that sure looks like what this passage is saying.

Remember the reason gave:  "That the works of God might be displayed in him."  Boy, that sounds pretty tough.  You mean a man can suffer for 20-30 years or so just so that "the works of God might be displayed in him?"  That God actually planned that this man be born blind, stay blind all of his childhood and into his adulthood, all to "display the works of God"?

Does that sound harsh to you?  Does that sound unloving, like this poor man was just a pawn in some kind of divine game, just to prove that God has power?  One might ask if God's power could have been shown some other way, rather than someone going through suffering and then being relieved of it.  I mean, if we acknowledge that yes, God could have insured that this man was born with seeing eyes, then we acknowledge that yes, God has a purpose in this suffering.  Indeed, right here, right in this very passage (in the red letter part of the Bible, remember), Jesus claims that this guy was born blind for a purpose.

I know it is passé to say "God has a reason for your suffering."  It's seen as harsh, deterministic, unloving, unpastoral, cold, unhelpful in suffering, and generally not very nice.  And probably Calvinistic, too.

As I mentioned before, Job's friends felt that suffering had a purpose in Job's life--but it wasn't the reason Jesus gave.  Rather, the reason they gave was "Job, you're a sinner, and God is punishing you.  If you were good these things wouldn't happen to you.  Repent, because you are wicked."

But God, speaking out of the whirlwind, didn't agree with Job's friends.  He didn't say "Yes Job, you're a sinner, that's why I'm punishing you.  Listen to them."  No, he said He was angry with them; that what they said wasn't right.  Job's suffering was not because of his sin, even if that would make a nice, neat theological package.

But did God tell them why He let Satan attack Job?  Does God tell Job in some kind of sweet, loving way, "Oh my dear child, I did this for you.  It's for your good.  I have a reason for the suffering, and it's all about you, my precious son!"

Read the book--but spoiler alert: He does not.  In fact, God's answer in Job 38-41 seems remarkably harsh: here is this man, who just lost all his children, all of his worldly possessions, has three miserable friends who berate him for being a sinner, and has a wife who tells him to die and get it over with--and how does God answer him?  With hugs?  With just a sense of peace and love, that everything's going to be alright?  With soft lullabies and cuddly kittens? 

No.  Instead, He says, "Be a man!  Listen up!  Get ready for a cross-examination that I know you can't answer!"

Yes, this is in the Bible.  The Bible that Jesus quoted from, said could not be broken, said testified of Him--the Bible that was written under the inspiration of His Spirit.  He didn't disavow it, didn't try to minimize it or correct it.

Or did Jesus give us fluffy kittens?  Was the view of God in Job an error that had to be corrected, that it was just a terrible misunderstanding of God, that He really did act more sweetly than those primitive people thought?

In a word, no.  Not just no, but μὴ γένοιτο--by no means!  And if you look at reality, the theist must realize this: suffering is real.  Life is not fair, the righteous often suffer and the wicked often prosper.  And if we acknowledge that God exists, and that yes, He created and sustains the Universe by His Word, then He deems--for whatever reason--to allow it.  And, at least in some cases, to create it.

And so, once we realize this, we grow terrified.  We realize how utterly, utterly feeble and foolish we are.  We become like Jill, in this famous interchange in The Silver Chair:

“If you're thirsty, you may drink.”
They were the first words she had heard since Scrubb had spoken to her on the edge of the cliff. For a second she stared here and there, wondering who had spoken. Then the voice said again, “If you are thirsty, come and drink,” and of course she remembered what Scrubb had said about animals talking in that other world, and realized that it was the lion speaking. Anyway, she had seen its lips move this time, and the voice was not like a man's. It was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice. It did not make her any less frightened than she had been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way.
“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.
“I'm dying of thirst,” said Jill.
“Then drink,” said the Lion.
“May I - could I - would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.
The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.
The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.
“Will you promise not to - do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.
“I make no promise,” said the Lion.
Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.
“Do you eat girls?” she said.
“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn't say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.
"I daren't come and drink," said Jill.
"Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion.
"Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer. "I suppose I must go and look for another stream then."
"There is no other stream," said the Lion.

So that is our dilemma:  a very, very scary Lion guards the only stream to quench our thirst.  We are utterly under His power, and fear Him, fear our annihilation, our destruction of self in His all-consuming jaws.  We face Him, and we face annihilation; we turn from Him, and we face oblivion.

Sorry to leave you hanging, but to be continued...

 

A Break from the usual: Culture and Dreams

A very 80s Album, still timely

 

 

This morning I had a dream where I was listening to the radio, some pop station.  I thought to myself, "Hey, this sounds a lot like a song from 30 years ago, but I know it's not."  So I started singing the words to this song:

 

Welcome to the truth custom made
Come in and have some lemonade
Reality will readjust while we evade
The issues that are pressing us
And getting so depressing but
Undressing and unstressing
Makes them go away

We're tired of solid ground
We're wired up for sound
From any fool who'll keep us
Cool with all his lies
Cool with all his lies

Ba-ba-ba-ba
Ba-ba-ba-ba
We believe, we believe
Cuz we felt it burning in our hearts
Ba-ba-ba-ba
Ba-ba-ba-ba
And it's true, yes it's true
If it gets us all thru the night
For the rest of our lives

If there's a master race, we're one
And if by chance they drop the bomb
The heat will never find us
Cuz we've learned to run
No absolutes to spoil our time
So we won't have to change our minds
Just hope that we won't die
While we're still in our prime

 

(Please, click the link to hear some good old 80's music you probably have never heard unless you were into "CCM" at the time.)

 

In the dream, I was amazed how the timing of the song was perfectly aligned with these lyrics...as a good hipster, I was recognizing the irony of pop music not evolving for 30 years past the formulaic constructions of a satirical Christian band.  (Although the 77s, Daniel Amos, Randy Stonehill, Mark Heard and others of that era were pretty innovative, IMO--especially lyrically.  Even when Terry Taylor was channeling the Beach Boys and the Beatles.)

 

It goes along well with Randy Stonehill's "Die Young" of the same era...and frankly, the criticism implicit in both songs is more appropriate than ever.  The ever-elusive promise of fulfillment through absolute freedom ends the same way, every time.  A happy nihilism is still nihilism...and happy nihilists often just turn into grumpy old men who can't stand anyone having any hope or suggesting that there's something more than being born, having fun, then being eaten by worms.





The Goodness of God and the Power of God: Part 5

A Robot Angel: Is this the eternal state of the Blessed?

So let's recap what I've discussed so far:

• God is all-powerful and can do anything
• God's actions can be limited, however, by His character and free choices
• Sometimes we do/allow certain painful things to achieve a greater good
• There's a lot of evil in this world
• Some evil is caused by evil humans; a lot of evil is caused by something else
• The free will reason for evil can explain some human-caused evil, but not natural evil--unless Satan has some power over natural forces
• Biblically, God sometimes intervenes to stop human-caused evil and sometimes intervenes to stop non-human-cause evil--but not always

With me so far?  And if not, why not?  (There is a comments section...please use it!  Well, politely, please.)

So let's get back to the character of God.  "Free will" is a popular theory, but it's not a full explanation for evil.  Even if you assign some pretty strong powers to Satan, he is still limited by God saying "thus far, and no further."  And Biblically, God does demonstrate periodic intervention to prevent evil--so Deistic claims that He just started the ball rolling and left it unfold "naturally" can't be called "Biblical" in any meaningful sense of the word.

So what can we know about His character?  If the free will theory is correct, this would reveal that God puts an enormously high value on the evil choices of human beings (higher than preventing all evil), but sometimes (rarely?) steps in to stop the evil that they chose.  There's also that pesky thought that the Telos for the universe contains a heaven of the Blessed, who are really, really better off than we are today--but free from doing evil (or even the possibility of doing evil).  So why go through all this pain and evil in the first place?

Some might think that a free choice must be made at some point for it to be real.  In that sense, then, the free will theory requires that for the best state to exist (heaven), there must be a real moral choice at some point.  And for that choice to be real, some will inevitably choose evil.  Therefore, for good to exist, evil must exist (or at least, have existed at some point.)

Think about the implications of that: that means that God is required to create a universe with a certain amount of evil in order to achieve the most goodness possible.  (In a round about way, we've just entered the "best of all possible worlds" theory...though this theory can be independent from the free will theory, too.)

Think of another implication: what of those who, dying at a tender age, have not exercised "free will" in a meaningful sense?  Infants who die shortly after birth?  Or before birth?  Are they permanently crippled with a "lesser" blessedness because they never faced a free moral choice?

Another implication: can God be meaningfully called "good" if the highest good can only exist because evil exists (or has existed)?  In His eternal state, was God not fully good because evil was lacking?  (Or was evil existing in eternity past if His knowledge of future evil existed in the eternal past?)  And if God knows for certain what He will create in the future, did He ever have a meaningful choice?

 

Ok, I'm getting a bit too philosophical here.  And my point isn't really to try to reason through something philosophically...enough of the rabbit holes for now.  Let's instead turn to Scripture.

 

So, when confronted with evil, what do we do?  We'll talk about free will.  Or we'll talk about God punishing people--that's why bad things happen (Job's "comforters" did this with lofty theological language about the fate of the wicked, to which God said essentially "Your friends are a bunch of idiots.")  But Jesus gave some insight on this:

 

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, c“Rabbi, dwho sinned, ethis man or fhis parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but gthat the works of God might be displayed in him.  --John 9:1-3

Does this give us any insight?  Here, Jesus is asked a question by his disciples: who's fault caused this man's blindness?  Who did wrong?  Jesus said, no, it's not about sin, it's about displaying the works of God.

Of course, we know the rest of the story: Jesus heals the blind man, he goes along praising God, gets himself thrown out of the Synagogue because of his fanaticism, and people start saying Jesus has a demon because of this healing.

Is there some general principle that we can extract from here?  In my next installment, I'll hunt for other Scriptures that might show what Jesus was getting at.  Was it merely a very limited lesson, that the man was born blind so that at this moment in history Jesus could cure his blindness and thus show God's power?  Is there something more?  What does this tell about God's character?

Stay tuned.

The Goodness of God and the Power of God: Part 4

No, no...not "Free Willy", Free Will.  But making Killer Whales live in tiny bathtubs is evil.

So...what shall we say, then?  Given the universe as it is, and given the theistic God as all-powerful, what motivates His actions?  Why is He content to have things the way they are (even if it is for a limited amount of time?)

One of the most famous ideas for God's motivation is that of free will: God wanted to make a universe with free moral agents, knowing that some would choose evil, and others would choose good.  Only by "risking" the existence of evil could God insure the existence of the truly good.  There had to be a real choice to make beings truly "in the image of God" who would reflect His character--not because they had to, but because they chose to do so.

It's easy to see why this solution is attractive.  Since God wanted true moral choice, it was inevitable that some would choose to do evil.  So Hitler, Stalin, the Unabomber, Timothy McVey, Osama bin Laden, and the guy who just cut you off in traffic all chose to act the way they did.  That is the inevitable result of God allowing free choice.

But some might raise this objection:  exactly who's free choice is respected in this view?  I mean, maybe Hitler had some free choice...but what about his victims?  I don't think the Jews freely chose to be put in cattle cars, led to death camps, and ultimately gassed and cremated?  Where was their free will?  Or let's say a woman is drugged and sexually abused by an evil man--the man's free will was protected, but the woman did not freely chose her actions, did she?

This is often answered by saying that "free will" involves moral choice and not freedom of action.  That is, neither Hitler's victims nor the victim of rape made a moral decision to do good or evil in being subjected to evil; yes, their freedom was limited--but they were not compelled to act in an evil way against their will.

That's not a bad explanation, but it does reveal something about this universe:  in at least some cases, God is more interested in protecting the free will of evil people than protecting the freedom, health, or even life of the innocent.

Let that sink in: if the free will theory for accounting for evil is true, then the right to choose evil is often more important than stopping evil, at least in God's point of view.  There is a "higher good" (the free will of the evil choosers) than the "good" of stopping evil.  (Sounds a bit like the secret will of God, but I'm not going into the Arminian/Calvinist debate...yet.)

But a Biblical Christian who accepts this will also say that this freedom is not absolute--in the Bible, God often intervenes to stop evil:

• He stops wicked men from abusing Lot and his guests (Gen 19:4-11)...but He did not stop the men of Gibeah from abusing and murdering the Levite's concubine (Jud 19:22-26) 
• He stops the Egyptian armies from destroying the recently-freed Israelite slaves (Ex 14:26-31) ...but He did not stop Herod from murdering some Galileans while they were sacrificing (Luke 13:1-5)
• He heals Hezekiah from his sickness (2 Kings 20:1-11) ...but lets David's infant son die (2 Sam 12:14-23)

I could list many examples.  However, it is clear: the God of the Bible sometimes miraculously intervenes to stop evil, and sometimes does not.

So, we ask why?  Why does God sometimes stops the choice of evil men to harm the innocent, and sometimes does not?  Or, in the last example, allows sickness to kill, but at other times He heals the sick?  What is His motivation in all this?

Before I address this, I'd like to point out two more serious questions of the free will explanation for evil:

(1) Only a limited amount of evil can be explained by the choices of evil men.  There are other things that seem to have no connection with the free choice of an individual or groups of people: earthquakes, random genetic mutations, certain diseases, etc.  As I mentioned in the last post, these natural evils" often cause far more pain and suffering than the act of fellow humans.

There's a variation of the dualistic view of the Zoroastrians (two equally powerful Gods duking it out) where the devil is not as powerful as God (or anywhere close to it), but nonetheless can cause lots of evil, even what we call "natural evil."  The story of Job shows Satan in control of some natural forces...but please note: he still has to ask permission from God to take action against Job.  Thus, God is still not "off the hook" for the evil that befalls the righteous.

(2) In theistic belief, the eternal state of the blessed (for universalists, everyone) is an eternal blissful place called heaven, where we are in God's very presence forever and ever.  It's viewed as much, much better than our current state.

But the question arises: in the eternal state, are we still free moral agents?  Could we freely choose to do evil?

Some counter that we wouldn't want to do evil, so it wouldn't enter our minds--so we would never sin, it would be against our nature.  Well then, if it's possible for free beings to live in a state of sinless perfection and be free, why do we have to go through the current state of "free will means there must be some evil"?

I'll let you ponder that before my next installment.  Stay tuned, my friends.