{"id":7875,"date":"2020-08-12T21:34:29","date_gmt":"2020-08-13T04:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7875"},"modified":"2020-08-12T21:34:32","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T04:34:32","slug":"the-question-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2020\/08\/12\/the-question-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Question"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The question of\nwhy bad things happen to good people is a question that is directed at a\nparticular someone: God.  And inherent in\nthe question is blame.  \u201cWhy did you<\/em>\nlet that happen?  Couldn\u2019t you have\nstopped it?  You\u2019re the almighty creator\nof heaven and earth.  Couldn\u2019t you have\ndone something?  Couldn\u2019t you stop the\npain, the agony, the loss?  Why did my\nbaby have to die?\u201d  Our query is not\nunreasonable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also at the\nheart of what is sometimes called \u201cthe new atheism\u201d in the bestselling books by\nSam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Victor Stenger, and\nothers.  Of course, calling it the \u201cnew\u201d\natheism, is a bit of a misnomer, since it\u2019s what has driven atheism for a long\ntime.  Voltaire submitted the same\nquestion back in the eighteenth century in his book Candide<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the horrors\nthat fill both our histories and our memories, the atheist recoils and\nconcludes that either God is a sadistic son of a bitch, or that he doesn\u2019t\nexist at all. The atheist has decided that the best explanation for the world\nas it is, is to believe that there is no one to believe in, no one to put one\u2019s\ntrust in, no hope, and no future: God does not exist. There is no one out there\nthat cares. And that\u2019s why bad things can happen to good people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are atheists\nright? How can we answer their\u2014and our\u2014agonizing howl of why? <\/em>What does\nsuffering demonstrate about God? What does pain tell us about who God is, how\nhe relates to his universe, and what our expectations are?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The better we\nunderstand God, the easier it will be for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* *\n*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yea, though I walk\nthrough the valley of the shadow of death,<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will fear no\nevil: for thou art with me   (Psalm 23:4)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is what life\nis like.  We are all walking through the\nvalley of the shadow of death.  Bad\nthings are going to happen to me.  If\nthey are not bad now, just wait.  If they\nare<\/em> bad now, just wait.  Back and\nforth we go, like a ping-pong ball.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem of the\nultimate question, the question of suffering, is that our emotions are in\nplay.  We are not just thinking about an\nintellectual, academic issue. We mostly don\u2019t approach it with cool, clear\nlogic.  It is personal.  Our guts are fully engaged.  We too often have tears in our eyes.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We get mad when\nour expectations are not met.  That\u2019s\npart of the difficulty in our relationships in general.  We go to McDonalds.  We order a strawberry milkshake.  Then they tell us they are out of strawberry,\nbut they can give us a chocolate shake. \nWe get angry.  Because our\nexpectations were not met.  Our reasonable<\/em>\nexpectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When something bad\nhappens to you, and you get mad at God, the reason you are mad at God is\nbecause he didn\u2019t meet your expectations of what he would do for you.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But consider a\npossibility: that our expectations of God are out of whack.  Who we think God is, what he has to do for us,\nhow he has to behave\u2014we might have misunderstood everything.  It would be ludicrous, for instance, to go to\nMcDonalds and then get mad because they refused to sell us golf clubs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need to worship\nthe God who actually is, not the one we wish for, not the one we made up in our\nheads.  If we are mad at God, perhaps the\nproblem is that we don\u2019t know God as he actually is.  We might be mad at the god we made up in our\nmind.  In which case, we need to stop\nbelieving in our made-up god and find the real one.  Then we won\u2019t get mad at the real God.  The real God won\u2019t disappoint us. The real\nGod won\u2019t tell us that we can have a strawberry shake when he knows there\naren\u2019t any there.  There won\u2019t be any\nbait and switch with the real God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The characters\nportrayed on the pages of scripture sometimes get mad at God.  They accuse God.  But that\u2019s because they had expectations that\nweren\u2019t accurate.  They\u2019d made something\nup in their head about God that wasn\u2019t so. \nWe all do it, and we all do it all the time.  We need to work at minimizing that.  We\u2019ll probably be happier if we ever can.<\/p>\n

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The question of why bad things happen to good people is a question that is directed at a particular someone: God.  And inherent in the question is blame.  \u201cWhy did you let that happen?  Couldn\u2019t you have stopped it?  You\u2019re … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7875"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7876,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7875\/revisions\/7876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}