With John Ankerberg, Dr. Norman Geisler, author of If God, Why Evil?, and Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
Dr. John Ankerberg: And Rabbi Kushner, you said that you went through the tragedy of your son’s untimely death, and were compelled to rethink everything you had been taught about God and God’s ways. And then you said there was a key idea in your book. I’d like to focus in on that. You said, “All the events that happen in our world do not reflect God’s choices.”
You believe God’s hand is not behind every bad thing that happens. Rather, bad things just happen and there is no reason for them doing so. There is randomness of events that take place in our world. Then you say this about God when these things take place, “These events sadden and anger God,” but you say He cannot stop bad events from happening, even when He wants to.
My question to start with is this: How can your concept of God do what you say it can do? Namely, sustain and comfort us when we’re experiencing tragedy? It seems like God is handcuffed by His own universe.
Rabbi Harold Kushner: John, I would prefer a world where God had the capacity to guard innocent people from harm, and did it. I wish I lived in that world. I wish you lived in that world. Tragically, we don’t. We live in a world where innocent people suffer illness, and accident, and crime, and all sorts of other things. Given the reality of those things, how do we understand them? You either believe that God wants these things to happen because He’s in control of the whole show—and then you have to understand why is He doing this, what are we being punished for? What is the lesson He’s trying to teach us—or else, as I prefer to believe, to choose to say that these happened for other reasons which are beyond God’s power to prevent and that God is on our side.
How does my understanding of God sustain us? Because it says to people, “God is on your side. God feels as bad about this, as hurt by this, as you do. He’s not punishing you. You don’t deserve it.” The key to surviving misfortune and tragedy is one’s own self-esteem, one’s own sense that, “I am a good person; this shouldn’t be happening to me.” Religion should not defend God and justify misfortune. Religion should bind the wounds of the bleeding human being and tell him that God loves him and does not want him to suffer.
Dr. John Ankerberg: Dr. Geisler?
Dr. Norman Geisler: Well, I certainly agree with that. I think that God is on our side, God does love us. He’s manifested it by creating us, by sustaining us, by giving us air to breathe, our heartbeats within our bodies. He gives us food, every good thing in its season. He’s manifested His love in innumerable ways to us. But, what really comforts me is not simply that God loves me, but that the God that loves me has the power to fulfill the desires of that love. That He’s not handcuffed by laws He has made, He’s not tongue-tied by the creation that surrounds Him. That God is in sovereign control over the world and that He can bring about exactly what His love desires to be brought about.
If I didn’t have a kind of God who was both all-powerful and all-loving, there would be no reason to be assured from His love, because He might be so impotent that He couldn’t accomplish any of His loving desires for me.
Rabbi Harold Kushner: But, Norm, I think the question becomes: If God has the power to do these things out of His love, why doesn’t He? Why does the person die? Why does the accident happen? Why does the rapist mutilate the body of the young girl?
Dr. Norman Geisler: I think that’s a good question. As I see it there are two answers to that, or two aspects of it to the Bible. One, we’re free, and God gave us freedom. And two is that this world is not the whole story. If we assume that this life is the whole story, then it seems unjust.
But if we assume there is a life after this and that God is not finished with us yet, that He’s going to resurrect the dead, that there’s going to be a day of reckoning, of reward, and punishment, then of course it takes on an entirely different color. The Bible says that Jesus Christ brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel [2 Timothy 1:10]. And what gives me hope as a believer is that Jesus reversed the course of death. He suffered for us and He brought us hope of an immortal life. And, therefore, I am encouraged.
Dr. John Ankerberg: Let me answer for Harold at this point from his book: “Sometimes we desperately want to believe that God will be fair to us and so we fasten our hopes on the idea that life in this world is not the only reality.” But, he says, “We should reject telling people this, because neither I nor any other living person can know anything about the reality of that hope.” Is that a true statement?
Rabbi Harold Kushner: That’s a true statement. I think I would go on beyond that and add a second point. Taking what you said, Norman, and reading it backwards, the danger of comforting ourselves with the affirmation of life beyond this life, the danger is, we will not take the injustices of this world seriously enough. I think it is absolutely tragic and blasphemous that people are murdered. I think it is absolutely unacceptable that people are cheated and starved and pushed around. If I were to believe too confidently in a world, another world, where the last shall be first and all moral debts are squared, I would shrug that off.
I remember my teacher, Abraham Heschel, used to tell us in seminary, “Plato would have laughed at Isaiah for getting so upset that some widow was being cheated. Think about the idea of justice. Don’t think about the poor widow.” And yet it has been the genius of the Judeo-Christian tradition to take every widow and orphan seriously, to see every act of fraud and oppression as a monstrous offense against God. I worry that people who place too much trust in their belief in the world to come will forget to be outraged by the crimes and the oppression in this life.
Dr. Norman Geisler: I, too, share that same feeling, but I don’t think it’s a necessary consequence of that to deny an afterlife. I think that you can take this life seriously. In fact, I think the Day of Judgment, where good is rewarded and evil is punished, is in itself a necessary concomitant to the view that evil is real, and evil is ugly, and evil is terrible and that’s why it has to be judged and that’s why the good has to be rewarded. So contrary to your anticipation that a day after this would negate the reality of evil, to me it accentuates the reality of evil, because God hates it so much that He is going to take care of it. But a limited God can’t take care of it, can’t defeat it, and can assure no victory over it.
(to be continued)