CityView Magazine

20 | April • 2014 H e set down his overpriced latte with the eco- friendly sleeve and looked right at me. "Here's my deal," he said, "I want to be- lieve in God, I really do, but when I look at the world we live in and how messed up it is, I don't see God in this. If he is incapable of stopping this, I don't need to know him and if he is capable of stopping this, but doesn't, then I don't want to know him." As a pastor, I hear this struggle a lot. And I think it is legit. Any person who longs for a peaceful, safe, beauti- ful world, wants God to act against in- justice, darkness and oppression. If he doesn't or can't then he is nonexistent or superfluous. Since it is easy to see that our world is in disarray with wars, sick- ness, terrorism, deeply skewed wealth THE rEv. CanOn Dan aLGEr faith Is God Inept? (Or Even There?) distribution, starvation, etc. etc. it seems that God (if he exists) has proven him- self to be at best irrelevant and at worst part of the problem. Let me try to give a different take on this issue. e problem with this seemingly logical conclusion is the assumptions that get us there. First of all, to follow this logic we as- sume that the evil in the world is greater than the good. For example, a plane crashes killing 120 people on board and we ask, "Where was God when that happened? Why didn't he stop it?" We question God's existence and/or abil- ity. What we fail to take into account is that there are over 50,000 commercial flights a day with over 3 million peo- ple in the air and the odds of dying in a plane crash on a flight on major com- mercial carrier are almost 20 million to one. I'm not downplaying the serious- ness of the loss of any single life, but it seems unfair to paint God with a broad brush of being completely absent or in- ept when tens of millions of people do arrive safely at their destination. If we are going to make God take the blame, shouldn't he be allot- ted some credit as well? is one example cannot fully answer our question, I mean for it to only to encourage some perspective and call into question our assumption that evil or tragedy is greater than the goodness and blessing that exists in the world. e other issue with this line of thinking is the context. We need to consider the whole story to better judge God's actions and attributes. For example, I am a fa- ther. I set rules for my kids. ey are not rules to restrict fun, they are rules to keep my kids safe by helping them avoid doing things that they think will be fun, but in the end can hurt them. I love them, so I set boundaries. Some- times they don't listen. Some- times they do whatever it is they In My Place a dramatic musical Village Baptist Church Village Baptist Church presents 906 S McPherson Church Rd Fayetteville For more information contact (910) 678-7178 Saturday, April 19 at 7pm Sunday, April 20 at 9am & 11am want to do, disregarding my rules and my authority and oen times they end up hurting themselves and others. en, more oen than not, they get angry with me because they are in pain or because one of them punched the other in the stomach. I'm the bad guy. God reveals himself as our Father and he set rules, not to remove the joy from life, but to keep us safe, teach us to avoid the booby traps of our own desire and instead pursue the things that actu- ally do bring health and joy. We have oen disregarded his ways and we hurt ourselves and we hurt others. Our own actions cause our pain, or we feel pain at no fault of our own, but because some- one else did it to us. It does not seem fair to blame God for the consequences of our actions that came due to rebellion against the loving rules that he set up. It is tragic that the world that we live in is catawampus; that sin has gotten so far reaching and complex that it shapes the very fabric of our society and the func- tions of the world. It is grievous both to us and to our God who created things to be different, but our actions do not merit the conclusion that God does not exist or is in someway inept. Finally, I say this; Christians believe that Christ has promised to return to make all things new, to remove every tear from our eyes and every stain of sin in the world. is is our great hope. So, we work to pursue the ways of God now in our own lives, we strive to reverse the effects of sin in the world by combat- ting injustice and serving others, and we long for the day when God comes to redeem his world. He is neither absent nor inactive. e struggle with this question is real and valid. e answer, however, is not as clear as it seems. I assure you that God is real and I assure that he is both capa- ble and willing to put an end to evil and pain. He loves you and he is calling you to know him and work alongside him to straighten out this crooked world. CV

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