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STARTING OVER
IF ALL the grief of all the world throughout all the generations since history
began were to be heaped up, the mountainous size of it would blot out the
sun.
Life can be a blessedly difficult thing, its trials and tribulations and
the bitter tail ends of broken dreams and ambitions which straggle behind as our
years tick on accentuate the often grim reality of our condition. There are few
among us who would not like the chance to start again. The notion of a ‘second
chance’ is intuitive and informs relations in legal and social justice and in
our personal connexions. Forgiving another for wrongs committed is, at root, the
granting of a second, or a third, or a fourth chance. Jesus seemed to hint at an
inexhaustible number in Matthew 18, verse 22, when He enumerated ‘seventy times seven’. The figure is undoubtedly
figurative. In any event, most of us will very likely have exceeded 490 offences
well before we reach middle age.
Waters Under the Bridge
It always comes as a shock to me, on hearing of the death of a
little-known neighbour or a distant relative, to realise that he or she has
occupied the planet for decades, perhaps toiling at the same job for forty years
or more, marrying, raising children, out of my narrow vision, and in comparative
obscurity, unheralded outside of the tight sphere of associates, family and
friends. This is true for the rank and file, millions who have come and gone
from the face of earth, having collectively acquired a vast range of experience
and knowledge – an as-yet untapped mine.
It’s so easy to lose track of people. They disappear into the faceless
mass of humanity, cropping up now and then in the bereaved notices or the crime
statistics as victims. Which reminds me that in the not-too-long-ago, murder was
comparatively rare in Britain. Over the years we have all become inured to the
litany of misery which people inflict on one another. News presenters skip with
polish from one horrible, tragic incident to another, often winding up with a
light-hearted palate cleanser to cheer us up a bit. Added to the grisly toll is
the latest data on refugees hounded from one place to another, an earthquake in
a remote region, a crowd gone mad – well, it’s a long list. A curtain of benign
indifference has descended. It’s not that we have ceased to care. But the
problems now flow so widely and on such a global scale that our pool of
compassion is quickly drained and we are obliged to turn our attention to a
narrower, more comfortable arena.
Yes, it’s easy to lose track of people. How thankful I am that God does
not. ‘What's that?’ I hear you say. ‘If God were busy watching out for us the
tragedies wouldn’t happen in the first place!’ The point is well taken. It’s
certainly an understandable reaction. But the assumption underlying the
accusation – for it is an accusation – is not sound. God does not pay all His
bills on a Thursday. I don’t mean this as a trite response. Rather, it contains
a profound truth, which goes to the heart of why suffering exists at all and –
to more directly address the objections – why it has gone on for so long: God
does not work on anyone’s schedule but His own.
The Doctrine of Non-Intervention
‘Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall
to the ground without your Father [knowing].’ So says Jesus (Matthew 10: 29).[fn1] This is not
to say that God is in the business of counting sparrows, or hairs on the head,
or blades of grass. Setting aside the consoling aspect of this remark to His
disciples – namely, that God is watchful over His people in exquisite detail –
the secondary import of our Lord’s comment, and germane to the theme of this
article, is twofold: God knows about it . . . but permits it anyway. The sparrow
falls, and God does not prevent it from falling. This hard kernel of truth is
indigestible for most and is akin to those tough sayings of Jesus which caused
many to turn away from Him (John 6: 60,
61, 66). Jesus was not running in a popularity
contest.
Nor is God.
To repeat, God may not act to avert a tragedy. This has nothing to do
with the virtue or lack of it on the part of the victims. However, this is not
to say that He will never act. The tragedies accumulate until the Divine
hand is raised, Halt! In that better day to come (the Millennial Age)
grievances will not only be redressed, they will be more than adequately
compensated for (Acts 3: 20,
21). So much
so, that the restitution promised will reverse all the damage. Mankind
cannot learn the lessons crucial to eternal existence without
experiencing loss or suffering. This fact needs to be digested and understood if
you wish to put the history of the world in the context of an intelligent faith.
That suffering is unevenly distributed is indisputable. But in this respect the
general observation of the atheist is correct: suffering is random. This,
however, does not denote powerlessness on the part of the Creator. Nor is it
targeted affliction by a vengeful, malicious supreme
being.[fn2]
Cosmic Scale, Cosmic Problems
We live in a universe of jaw-dropping scale and variety. From the
infinitely large galactic universe to the infinitely small sub-sub-atomic micro
universe in and around us. This astonishing complexity and organisation is
largely incomprehensible. We assemble our knowledge of it in fragmentary fashion
and often labour under false ideas about it for years until new information
comes along. The construction of a systematic understanding about anything
requires the combined efforts and insights of numerous minds and fortunate
accidents – discoveries chanced upon in the process of looking for something
else.
The belief that Science has all the answers may prevail for some time
yet. Far from operating the machinery, it appears to the casual onlooker that
God has got lost in it. So Science has taken it over, nodding sagely over bits
it likes, finding fault with other bits, taking credit for great chunks of it,
but is not vaguely interested in the Engineer.
It’s not necessary to understand how the internal combustion engine works
in order to drive the car. Likewise, failure to believe in God does not prevent
the human mind from dissecting or explaining accurately various aspects of the
physical world or achieving noble ends. The painter need not be virtuous to lay
down a masterpiece, nor a composer a saint to produce a majestic symphony. I’ve
often wondered about this myself. It would be so much neater if virtue and
talent were linked, would it not? So, for example, you couldn’t write godly
music unless you were pious, or you couldn’t make profound or life-altering
statements if you didn’t have faith. Sort of like not being able to start your
car if you were drunk because an electric sensor wouldn’t let you. But it’s not
like that, all neat and tidy. It’s messy and complicated and there are great
gaping holes all over the place into which unbelief fits very nicely, thank
you.
Take Me to Your Leader
At the launch by the USSR of Sputnik in 1957, scientists in the United
States – who had been taken off guard by this achievement and were suitably
grumpy – attempted to decipher the signals emanating from it, looking for a
meaningful sequence which would give a clue to its purpose. In the same way
astronomers today use expensive, sophisticated listening equipment to track
signals from space, hoping to find a ‘non-random’ stream of data, coherent
enough to identify intelligent life.
Yet confronted with the laws and forces of physics and the immense
complexity and directed purpose of the genetic code they generally choose to
ignore the possibility that intelligent Mind is behind it. NASA, the ESA, or the
space programmes of Japan do not plan their explorations to prove the existence
or desirability of a Creator, but to find evidence to the contrary. One suspects
that the too-easy dismissal of an Intelligent Cause has less to do with the
evidence in Its favour than with the reluctance to have to acknowledge
It.
What has this to do with the permission of
evil?
The disarray in human affairs is traceable to the injection of free
will into the equation. This masterstroke on the part of the Creator made
possible a creature crafted in His own ‘image’. But the dark side of this
equation introduced the possibility of chaos, which is indeed what we got when
the first man, Adam, chose to disobey. But this is no experiment gone awry – a
sort of Dr. Frankenstein writ large. God has allowed the chaos but is not
outdistanced by it. Omniscience permits what Omnipotence need not
control. That is, the random experiences of human existence will, in total,
produce the intended result. God can permit rebellion in His creation without
fear of losing control. This is true Genius.
Dictators don’t operate this way. They issue edicts, prescriptive laws,
sanctions for everything. They check up on you, monitor what you say, what you
write, what you think. ‘Sorry, can’t go to that Website. Sorry, can’t travel to
that country.’ If you don't conform they throw you in prison, or worse. This is
not how God operates. He is not the Great Aggrandizer popularised in atheistic
literature a la Richard Dawkins. God is not on a vendetta against His own
creatures.
The wail of an ambulance siren may be the most hopeful sound in the
world. For all the callousness a world weary of suffering has developed, there
remains a fundamental respect for human life. Every response to a 999 call to
save a life is a tacit acknowledgement that humanity has worth. This faculty is
a remnant of the original imprint on man’s character as formed by God. It will
be rescued and burnished, fit for eternity.
– A. Prentice
Copyright May 2009 A. Prentice and
ukbiblestudents.co.uk
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Notes
[fn1] The companion text to this is Luke 12: 6, which
informs us that five sparrows could be had for two farthings. This suggests that
there was a discount in effect – the more sparrows you bought, the more you
saved. The detail is interesting in that it adds authenticity to the account.
For more details, see Clarke’s Commentary on both
texts.
[fn2] The randomness of suffering, quite apart from the existence of it, is often adduced to prove that an intelligent First Cause cannot exist. But the evident non-randomness of the atomic structure or the purposive nature of DNA is never used to prove that it might.