In our “self-esteem-motivated” culture, this is very unpopular to say, but there really are no “good” people. So when bad things happen to us, it’s often at the hands of others. This is a hard truth, but if we take a brutally-honest look at humanity, historically we’ve fallen short of goodness in countless ways. For example, history shows that the most heinous crimes committed on mankind, despite what we want to believe, are by ordinary men. In World War II, for example, regular police officers were asked to kill Jews, male/female, young/old, by gunshots to the head as the victims lay defenseless on the ground. Officers were offered a chance to decline this “job,” yet only a handful opted out. Those who did were treated as cowards or traitors. Remember, Hitler was not able to murder millions single-handedly! Hundreds participated in the executions at German Nazi concentration camps, like Auschwitz, from 1940–1945. These exterminators were shopkeepers, dentists, businessmen—people just like you and me!
We would like think that we’d never stoop to such evil acts, but given the right circumstances, we might. I thought as a woman, I’d never do the horrors men committed at Auschwitz! However, after thinking about it, millions of babies have been aborted in the past 30 years at the “choice” of women. In a sense, this is more insidious because it’s subtle murder with support of our medical community and culture.
1. So, first off, we are all capable of doing awful acts to each other. God created us with free will, and this includes choices for great deeds or horrific ones.
“We … tend to overestimate the inherent goodness of human nature,” as Dr. John S. Feinberg states. “The problem with a Hitler (and all sinners) isn’t lack of knowledge, but perversity of heart and will.”
2. Secondly, bad things happen to people at the forces of demonic powers. This is also not a popular subject to discuss, and if you speak about this to non-believers, they’ll think you’re psychotic! Be careful to discuss this spiritual dynamic with someone who is a mature Christian. Regardless of what skeptics think, there is a vast array of evil and malicious spirits who make war against the people of God. The principalities and powers of Satan (Eph. 6:12) are beings that wield power in the unseen realms to oppose everything and everyone that is of God. That is why the good guys sometimes loose at the hands of the wicked. God also created angels with freedom who chose to rebel against His sovereignty, and they were banned to earth as demons until God’s plans are ultimately fulfilled.
3. Lastly, we are very limited in our understanding of how God works through the tapestries of the world and our own lives. We cannot know everything (despite what some think), and sometimes we just won’t know why bad things happen. We might suffer even if we’ve done nothing wrong! This should not cause us to question or doubt God because the New Testament warns us that we will suffer. It can be redemptive suffering—how we suffer as Christ suffered (see Matt. 5:11; 2 Cor. 1:5; Phil. 3:10; and 1 Peter 4:13)—and it can be persecution for taking a stand on truth. I believe suffering matters when you’re a Christian—it means something to God—it’s not for nothing.
If you’re experiencing suffering, or have had a string of bad experiences in your life, hang in there—heaven is not interwoven with earth… yet. Until that time comes (Rev. 21:1), we will have troubles in this life. That’s why we need to lean on each other, the Body of Christ, for fellowship and comfort, in addition to sticking close to Jesus in our prayer lives. Together, we can “press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize” (Phil. 3:14).
Heaven is interwoven with earth. Now.
Some have found heaven in torture chambers.
Hi Raina – thanks for your comment. I am not sure I completely understand your second sentence, though. Could you please explain it a bit more?
Sure. I’ll try.
I want to say that I actually liked a lot of your post. I liked how you explained that everyone has the potentional for sinning horrendously, apart from the protecting grace of God.
However, in the context of bad things happening…
I just feel that it is really important to remember, and when the time comes to know, that God allows/ordains everything for the good of His children, even in the then and now.
Someone who had been thrown into one of those nasty prisons somewhere (so many details I forget) said, when some people asked him what it was like, that it was a “seven year honeymoon with Jesus.”
In Philippians, Paul writes of his desire to “know Christ, in the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings.” (It is worth knowing that the power of His resurrection comes first.)
To know God in Jesus Christ His Son is eternal life – ultimately, heaven.
Thanks for your question.
Hi Raina! Thanks for your clarification. Wow, I can’t imagine being thrown in prison and seeing that as a “seven year honeymoon with Jesus.” That’s faith! But you are right – we should not expect, in this life on earth, to have everything go perfectly well. There will be trials, and there will be tests, and there will be tragedies. With God at our side, all those things can be endured. Having faith in the world to come is what got the original Apostles through their martyrdom as they kept their eyes on Jesus and the hope of eternity with Him. God bless you! Lisa Q
“That’s faith!”
Reminds me of the title of a post I wrote on my blog, Faith: The Sight of the Soul Upon God. Yes, that is what faith is/looks like.
“Wow, I can’t even imagine…” There are a lot of things we aren’t meant to imagine. But, God is eager to give His very best to all His children, so we can be confident that His grace will always be sufficient. In the “Our Father/Lord’s Prayer/Disciple’s Prayer” Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” God always gives us the grace for the moment – Himself. He never gives tomorrow’s grace until tomorrow has become today. This is so that we may trust Him. Have we not all prayed, “O for grace, to trust Him more,” so, this is itself grace. He wants us to love Him and look to Him, not our feelings of strength or confidence, glory be to His name for all the ages.
God bless you.
Raina Nightingale
Well said, Raina. I agree especially with your statement here: “He wants us to love Him and look to Him, not our feelings of strength or confidence…” Studying apologetics has helped me to not only rely on my “feelings,” but to know the TRUTH despite how I “feel.” Amen! God bless you.
In the post/essay I referred to above, I wrote something to the effect that I don’t believe faith has any more to do with the intellect than with the emotions. Faith is the sight of the soul upon God and it is from the Holy Spirit; it is spiritual and entirely foreign to any of the faculties/powers of fallen, fleshly man.
Ultimately, purely intellectual and rationalistic knowledge isn’t really more important than purely emotional knowledge. I would never in a million years have doubted that Jesus is the Son of God who became man, died for our sins, and rose again, or the Trinity, or any of that stuff. But, I didn’t know Him, and I decided, faced with such a choice, I would rather deny Him than face torture or death (obviously, God has changed me).
I say this partially because I was reading another of your posts, which seemed to be on the use of apologetics. I like a lot of what you write, and there ARE uses for apologetics, but it is generally highly over-rated. You wrote about making Christianity seem reasonable through its use, or that Craig said it, and, I mean, Christianity is NOT reasonable to fallen man; it is reasonable in the highest order, spiritually reasonable, but Paul wrote that, while the spiritual man can discern and judge all things, the man in the flesh cannot know the things of the spirit because they are spiritually discerned. There are definitely uses for apologetics, but they are more limited than people often suppose.
The introduction to William Lane Craig’s On Guard suggested that Christianity will languish if it is rejected as unreasonable by the world. He suggested that knowing intellectual reasons for what one believes will make one bolder.
Wherever did the understanding that God’s Church will thrive always go to? The idea that the Church will languish if everything seems to be against her, that she must grow in a way that we can understand, seems to be so deeply entrenched in the West that many people don’t even notice it cropping up everywhere.
As I said, I like much of what you write. I appreciated “By His Stripes You Are Healed… Physically?”
It’s just, I want it to be understood that the Church lives and thrives by the power of God and the Holy Spirit within her. As for me, I know Jesus is alive because I have known Him through the promise of His Spirit. It is my absolute certainity that He is, even if the whole world goes against Him, that gives me confidence.
Some people are mixed-up about things, and unable to discern what is in fact the working of the Holy Spirit, often thinking their own emotional hysteria is the working of the Holy Spirit. I say this simply so you will know that when I speak of the witness of the Holy Spirit to Jesus I don’t mean anything of that sort.
God bless you.
Raina Nightingale
Hi Raina! I wanted to give your post a thoughtful response, and ended up writing a new blog on it. Ultimately, I hear what you are saying as this: only God can save a person, drawing them into spiritual truths to come to recognize the Truth. I agree. But, I also am convinced that we are called to be His ambassadors, which is “a diplomat with the highest rank that holds credibility.” How do we earn credibility in a culture that distrusts authority? We must have good answers to reasonable questions, and show that believing in Jesus Christ is not a thoughtless faith, but one that not only engages the emotions but engages the mind. Many blessings to you! Lisa Q.
I read your post, and I appreciate it.
I would, however, like to clarify a few things; possibly from my own end. I would never confuse faith and emotions; I actually hate the term “blind faith.” There’s nothing blind about faith – it’s spiritual sight (which means that it’s more real, not less real, than fleshly sight).
>But, I also am convinced that we are called to be His ambassadors, which is “a diplomat with the highest rank that holds credibility.”
I agree.
>Ultimately, I hear what you are saying as this: only God can save a person, drawing them into spiritual truths to come to recognize the Truth.
You did correctly understand me. However, I don’t think you completely understood me. I’m also saying that in much of the Western Church there is an issue of people courting the world’s favor, and this issue is so prevalent that few realize that is what is going on. I read your post, and I totally agree that apologetics is useful for helping this person or that person over a particular problem they may have with even considering the Gospel.
However, I think we must be very careful not to compromise in any way. We must NOT seek or expect the world to accept us in any way. We MUST accept the fact that the world is God’s enemy, and so, ours. It will not accept our teaching any more than it accepted that of Jesus (John chapter 16). We must not ask it to. We must remember that God delights to show His might when defeat looks inevitable to the untrained eye. Apologetics must never be used to gain the world’s acceptance; that is a form of compromise.
You spoke of a diplomat with the highest rank that holds credibility. And, then you said, “How do we earn credibility in a culture that distrusts authority? We must have good answers to reasonable questions, and show that believing in Jesus Christ is not a thoughtless faith, but one that not only engages the emotions but engages the mind.”
Again, I don’t believe faith is any more emotional than it is intellectual (though it affects both).
The problem isn’t that Western culture distrusts authority. The problem is that men hate God’s authority; they will always want to find “reasons” that appeal to their carnal nature to distrust God and claim that He is not good. We can see that the problem is not distrust of authority in the Middle East or in Asia or in any number of other places. The problem is that “if any man comes to you in his own name, you will accept him,” but they will not listen to the word of God (Jesus told this to the Pharisees in the Gospel of John).
We must not get caught in an endless cycle of trying to make God’s word appeal to the standards set by hostile men. To do so is to dishonor our God.
It is true that we are ambassadors of the King. We must remember that we are ambassadors of the King to whom is given all authority in heaven and on earth (last chapter of Matthew). We are the ambassadors of a King who was crucified in shame, folly, and weakness, and who, because of this crucifixion in shame and weakness, has risen to glory and sits at the right hand of God and will come again to judge men by His own word.
God bless you,
Raina Nightingale
Hi Raina! Thanks for clarifying your points. Overall, I think we agree about the main points of why apologetics is a worthwhile area of Christian study and knowledge.
For a brief background, I have a Master’s degree in apologetics, and have been making friends in the field for the past four years. In that time, I have never met an apologist, personally, who in any way wanted to “compromise with the world,” as if the study of apologetics, philosophy, or metaphysics would in some way be a compromise with the world’s system. This attitude appears to be an anti-intellectual attitude that sees academic pursuit as somehow compromising faith with worldly knowledge. That is a poor understanding of apologetics.
The actual term, “apologetic,” comes from the Greek word “Apologia,” and is used in 1 Peter 3:15, where he encourages believers to: “but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense [apologia] to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence;” (NASB). Apologetics is, in essence, case making for Christ.
Regarding “blind faith,” I hate that term, too. There is a great misunderstanding of what makes someone have faith. Many people think it is purely a choice based on personal experience or opinion. But what separates a justified belief from a mere opinion or experience?
A Mormon claims a “warming in the heart,” leading to belief in Joseph Smith’s testimony, who claimed to be a latter-day Saint, and wrote another testament. Mohammad said he was the final prophet in the Koran. Muslims are taught this is the truth. Unitarians believe all religions are basically the same, and it’s intolerant to claim there is only one way to God. Atheists don’t believe in God, yet often blame this ‘non-existent God’ for the existence of suffering.
Many beliefs exist, but do they have evidence to back them up? Once thoroughly examined, Christianity remains the most verifiable faith—one that is not simply based on personal experience or opinion. The Christian religion is based on thousands of ancient historical manuscripts and archaeological finds confirming Biblical records. In addition to physical evidence, there are millions of lives dramatically changed from faith in Jesus Christ. And one must not forget the apostles’ personal eye-witness accounts of seeing the Resurrected Christ. Their testimonies have been shown to be reliable. This handful of people were used by God to eventually convert the entire Roman empire to the Christian faith. This is no coincidence… this is truth! All these facts together put the Christian faith in a category of its own: it’s evidentially-based. There are many good reasons to believe.
You said that “apologetics must never be used to gain the world’s acceptance; that is a form of compromise.” When have you seen apologetics used to gain the world’s acceptance? Personally, I have not seen that in the years I’ve been in study. Instead, I have seen apologetics used to correct falsities and lies that discredit the truth of the Bible and what the Scriptures proclaim.
I also agree with you that many people, as you say, “hate God’s authority.” When shown the reasons to believe in God and the Bible, if a person still vehemently rejects the truth, there is usually an emotional reason behind it. It could be that they are in blatant sin and want to continue sinning, or it could be that they were hurt because of a Christian or some church, or they continue to reject God because a prayer wasn’t answered in the way they had hoped.
We disagree on the distrusting of authority. I do think that the cultural distrusts authority because, from government to educational institutions and even some churches, authority has been abused many times and left a path of pain in its wake. That is an area that we, as the Body of Christ, need to work on. We need to show seekers that the Church has Christians who sometimes make bad mistakes. The key is to allow God to heal the wounded souls, as we ask for forgiveness.
Apologetics is not an area of theology that is trying to “make God’s word appeal to the standards set by hostile men.” Again, this is a misunderstanding of what apologetics is. Apologetics is simply providing good reasons for curious questions about Christianity, discussing theodicies, and correcting false teachings. Apologetics has been going on since Paul’s day, and it should continue until our Lord returns.
I appreciate your time and interest in apologetics. May God richly bless you with His love and His presence and the knowledge of all things good, true and beautiful. I must move on to the next pressing need. Thank you.
Lisa Q