Some Theological Reflections on Japan’s Earthquake part 5 of 5

My last post was largely concerned with defining and defending the sovereignty of God in the midst of evil. God is directing, working with, and using the earthquake as a means towards a good end that only He fully knows and understands. How does this answer the problem of evil? I have offered no complex argument, it is basically: “God is sovereign.” Why do I think this is a good answer? For starters, it places God where he belongs: not as the conclusion of a philosophical curiosity, but as the One who makes inquiry possible, and provides the events that cause us to seek Him:

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ (Acts 17:24-28)

Secondly, it challenges the questioner’s question, which I think is crucial. Just as all answers come from a certain worldview and motives, so all questions come from a certain worldview and motives. It gives the questioner the response God gave to Job:

“Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?
Let him who accuses God answer him!”
“Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.

“Would you discredit my justice?
Would you condemn me to justify yourself?
Do you have an arm like God’s,
and can your voice thunder like his?
Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor,
and clothe yourself in honor and majesty.”

(Job 40:2-10)

Letting God be God

This answer preserves the Godness of God. Rather than suggesting we know the why, what, how, and when of God’s own inner counsel, we freely say that God’s ways are inscrutable, and this is what we ought to expect: if our answers did away with all mysteries of the Divine, we would essentially have proven secular humanism, not Christianity. If God could be explained, He would not be Higher than us, he would be merely “man writ large”.

There is a bad need to correct many contemporary well-meaning apologists who trot out a diminished deity as a response to the problem of evil. One way or another, their response amounts to this: “What’s that Mr. Skeptic? The idea of God being Sovereign offends your human autonomy? No problem, I have just the product for your skeptical woes in my apologist’s handbag! Introducing: Christianity! Now with 25% less Deity!”

The problem of evil and suffering brings us face to face with what we are commanded to surrender: our own personal claim to Lordship. God directs all events, and He is under no obligation to anyone to justify His actions or to explain what He is doing, or how He does it, or where evil came from. He is the Holy One, the Almighty, and we are His subjects under His judgment, not the other way around. To insist that God submit to our queries reverses the order of Creator-creature, as if God was bound to justify himself to His subjects.

The Evil Practice of Justifying Evil

This answer doesn’t pretend to justify or explain away the weight we feel in the face of evil and suffering. It seems to me that if you come up with an answer that justifies the existence of evil, you have failed to understand evil. Look closely at the suffering of the Japanese, and can you, O Philosopher, come up with any possible answer that makes this right, just, or fair? If you can, you have just justified evil. You have established that evil can be right and warrantable.

Any attempt to say that “Evil happens because of ___” is really saying that evil can be tamed by reason, and that its presence in the world may be rationally justified. This does great dishonor to victims of suffering, for it in turn demands that we argue that “the ends justify the means”. As if there is any end which could justify the existence of suffering. The answer I have given, which is basically the bible’s answer, is to refuse to justify evil. The demands of the rationalist cannot be met without a gross misperception about how evil evil really is.

By contrast, the bible never pursues this route, recognizing that evil is unjustifiable: that is what makes it evil. It cannot fit into rational categories. By its very nature, evil is defined in terms of what it isn’t, but it’s impossible to conceive of what evil is. Goodness is law, order and logic. Evil is lawlessness, disorder, unreasonable. So I think that beyond God’s own inscrutable purposes, it seems that evil itself is inscrutable as a subject. To try to bring the weapon of reason to bear against evil is like bringing a butter knife to a gunfight thinking you have the upper hand. It is hopeless to try and answer evil. What is by nature irrational cannot respond to rationality.

Conclusion

Evil and suffering is altogether an inscrutable menace. It is obviously in some sense a product of freedom, but it’s clear as day that freedom does not justify the existence of evil. (See part 2 in this series of posts) God knows why He allows it, and He merely asks that we trust He will do away with it on a set day that He has appointed. He defeated it on the cross, and will bring that initial victory over death and evil to a final conclusion. Ironically, though we have no idea how, Japan’s suffering will in some way serve the good purposes of God in bringing about the destruction of evil. For now, we must be content to let God be God, and leave the foe of death, destruction, suffering, and all other evils in the hands of the only one with the power to bring it to an end. In the meantime, we are commanded to let our faith work itself out in love, compassion, hope and patience.

Lastly, we must never lose sight of Jesus Christ, the Conquering One crowned with Sovereignty. As a foreshadowing of the fullness of God’s promise, evil has been utterly defeated and humiliated at the cross. Ultimately, Jesus himself is the response to evil, for in Him, suffering has been overcome, and death has been defeated.