Is God a Moral Monster?

Great video discussion here.

A Powerful Reflection on the Moore, OK Tornado

Mike Horton:

No matter how many times it’s been asked–and answers offered–the perennial question is provoked by fresh wounds: “How could a good and all-powerful God allow such a tragedy?” The massive 2-mile-wide tornado that leveled much of Moore, Oklahoma, exposes the fragility of life—but also the apparent contradiction between a God who is good and all-powerful.

Receiving the news, my heart raced as I thought about my brother, sister-in-law, nieces, nephews, and cousins in Moore. My parents were from there. It was a place I’ve known well since childhood, visiting extended family. So I scanned the local OKC TV stations for updates. I knew by the description of the devastated area that the home of my brother and sister-in-law was in its path.

Finally, late at night I received an answer to my text-messages and talked to my brother by phone. “It’s all in God’s hands,” he said. It was from him that I first heard the doctrines of grace. He and Linda are enthralled with the God of grace and glory who has revealed himself in his Son. We don’t know why, but he does—and that’s enough. It’s one thing coming from me, and another thing hearing it from my brother just after he and his wife had lost every material treasure they had.

His wife was away for the afternoon, beyond the range of the tornado. Their children were just out of its path. Waiting it out at home, my brother—a veteran of “Tornado Alley”—changed his mind when he heard it was a Category 4 or 5. Climbing into his truck with debris already falling, he drove off for several miles until he saw the twister pass his neighborhood. Returning only 5 minutes later, he found only a heap of rubble. Yet there they are, extending a helping hand to neighbors. Why? Because life is meaningless and “sympathy” is just an expression of self-interest?

Without answers, we are faced with senseless tragedy. Arbitrary, meaningless, random. We search for answers—to make some sense of things—because our hearts and minds are not satisfied by this shrug. It’s not an easy thing to affirm faith in a good God who could have restrained this ferocious storm but didn’t. But it’s more offensive both to reason and to life itself to imagine that we live in a world where there is no ultimate meaning or purpose. The only thing worse than losing a loved one in such a tragedy is believing that their death—and their life—had no transcendent purpose.

I noticed that evangelists of atheism—mainly from other parts of the country—quickly appeared in chat rooms. “If a god who allowed this does exist, we would have to call him evil,” said one. It’s struck me that this person lives in a world as simplistic as any radical fundamentalist claiming to read God’s mind. For both, the answers are clear. For both, God is not hidden and he does everything directly and immediately. Both imagine a God who sends natural disasters like Zeus throwing thunderbolts from Olympus, either for sadistic pleasure or for specific judgments.

The nihilistic shrug is not an answer—even a partial one. It’s not a comfort at all. It has absolutely nothing to say in a situation like this. “Stuff happens” is the only response consistent with a naturalistic worldview. But the emptiness spreads. It’s not just the bad things, but the good ones, that are reduced to meaningless trivia. It also means that the love that has been overflowing in extravagant generosity shown not only to but even among victims of the tornado themselves is meaningless.

Out of darkness, light is already emerging. And instead of turning on God, like many of the faraway critics, they are turning to God for comfort, even as God sends his people to tend to their temporal needs.

This is in no way to treat lightly the tremendous loss incurred. The amazing spectacle of victims who have lost much extending a helping hand to neighbors who have lost more is a testament to the fact that there must be something more to life than making up meaning as we go along. Yet it doesn’t assuage the grief over losing a loved one.

The choice is between placing our confidence in a God who is both good and sovereign despite the moral and natural evils—even when we don’t have all the answers, and giving up on any transcendent meaning for love as well as suffering.

And that choice isn’t arbitrary. How can we be so sure? Perhaps it might have been, except for the fact that the Triune God revealed in Scripture has fulfilled every one of his promises in history. Most conclusively, he has sent his Son to rescue sinners by his life, death, and resurrection. Who knew what God was doing at the cross? Jesus’ disciples fled, the Romans jeered, and his own people judged him cursed by God. By the look of things, Good Friday yielded only one of two choices: a God who doesn’t care or a “Savior” who was a fraud. Because Christ has been raised in history, our lives are no longer “the show about nothing.” We have come from somewhere grand and although we have fallen from it, we are being taken far beyond that glorious beginning, in the train of the Conqueror who has defeated death and hell.

Read the rest.


Books by Michael Horton:

• The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way
• Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church
• Putting Amazing Back into Grace: Embracing the Heart of the Gospel
• For Calvinism
• The Gospel-Driven Life: Being Good News People in a Bad News World
• A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship
• The Law of Perfect Freedom

"We dare not speak on God’s behalf to explain why He allowed these particular acts of evil to happen at this time."

Al Mohler:

...the Bible points us to the radical affirmation of God’s sovereignty as the ground of our salvation and the assurance of our own good. We cannot explain why God has allowed sin, but we understand that God’s glory is more perfectly demonstrated through the victory of Christ over sin. We cannot understand why God would allow sickness and suffering, but we must affirm that even these realities are rooted in sin and its cosmic effects.

How does God exercise His rule? Does He order all events by decree, or does He allow some evil acts by His mere permission? This much we know–we cannot speak of God’s decree in a way that would imply Him to be the author of evil, and we cannot fall back to speak of His mere permission, as if this allows a denial of His sovereignty and active will.

A venerable confession of faith states it rightly: “God from eternity, decrees or permits all things that come to pass, and perpetually upholds, directs, and governs all creatures and all events; yet so as not in any way to be the author or approver of sin nor to destroy the free will and responsibility of intelligent creatures.”

God is God, and God is good. As Paul affirms for the church, God’s sovereignty is the ground of our hope, the assurance of God’s justice as the last word, and God’s loving rule in the very events of our lives: “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, who are the called according to His purpose.” [Romans 8:28]

We dare not speak on God’s behalf to explain why He allowed these particular acts of evil to happen at this time to these persons and in this manner. Yet, at the same time, we dare not be silent when we should testify to the God of righteousness and love and justice who rules over all in omnipotence. Humility requires that we affirm all that the Bible teaches, and go no further. There is much we do not understand. As Charles Spurgeon explained, when we cannot trace God’s hand, we must simply trust His heart.

And so, we weep with those who weep, and we reach out with acts of care and compassion. We pray for those who are grieving and have experienced such loss. We cry for the children lost in this storm, even as we are so thankful for brave people who did their best to save lives as the winds raged. And, we pray we we know to pray: Even so, Lord come quickly.

Read the rest.


Books by Al Mohler:

• Conviction to Lead, The: 25 Principles for Leadership That Matters
• He Is Not Silent: Preaching in a Postmodern World
• Words From the Fire: Hearing the Voice of God in the 10 Commandments
• Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost of the New Sexual Tolerance

The question is not "how can a just God send people to Hell?" The question concerns how a just God can allow sinners into Heaven.

Doug Wilson:

If there are ten innocent citizens rounded up, and five of them are shot by a despot, there is a gross injustice. But if there are ten inmates on death row, and the governor pardons three of them, there is no injustice done at all to the remaining seven. The only question of possible injustice arises with regard to the three who were pardoned. In other words, the question of justice does not arise when we are talking about Hell. It does arise when we are talking about Heaven.

The question is not "how can a just God send people to Hell?" The question concerns how a just God can allow sinners into Heaven. A God-centered concern about justice would worry far more about Heaven than Hell. A self-flattering, man-centered approach would worry aloud, and does worry aloud, about the purported justice of Hell. But we needn't worry. The Scriptures teach plainly that at the point of judgment, every mouth will be stopped. The Bible tells us that when it comes down to it, there will be nothing to say. The debates will be over.

The real problem, the problem of justice and Heaven, is resolved in the cross. Christ died as a blood atonement so that God could be both just and the one who justifies. God could be just and send us all to Hell. He could be the one who justifies and let us all into Heaven on a boy-will-be-boys basis. But in order to be both just and the one who justifies, Christ had to bleed.

And that is our final theodicy. Christ is the one who bled.

Read the rest.

Whither is God?

Guest post by Jason Kanz


Most Americans, if they are honest, go about their days without much regard for the world around them. They may feel small microtremors of brokenness, but rarely do these events shake them out of their complacency in any real way. After looking up and wondering what they just experienced, they turn back to playing Angry Birds, the already faint memory fading quickly.

Unlike these microtremors, earthquake stories about the brutal murders in Aurora and the years of depravity and cover up at Penn State have shaken many Americans out of their blissful unawareness of the daily tragedies that surround us. Once people recover from the initial aftershocks of stories like these, they begin to ask questions. "How could this have happened?" "Why did this tragedy occur?" "Where was God?" People are searching for answers, but secular answers leave people wanting, at least for a season. Eventually though, the stories fade from the limelight, people stop asking why, and they slowly fade back into their blissful slumbers.

As I thought about these events, Friedrich Nietzsche's Parable of the Madman came to mind. He begins,

"Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: 'I seek God! I seek God!' -- As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? -- Thus they yelled and laughed.

"The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. 'Whither is God?' he cried; 'I will tell you. We have killed him -- you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him"

The atheist philosopher understood that to "kill God" would lead to nihilism, relativism, and amorality. Though he welcomed the death of God, he would not have been surprised at these tragedies occurring today.

When you seek to kill God and rely solely upon naturalism, morality is no longer grounded in a moral law giver. When relativism prevails and there is no objective morality, people can no longer claim that something is morally right or wrong in any objective sense. For the relativist, the outrage over tragedies like this merely represents personal preference. Nineteenth century philosophers understood the consequences of killing God, but most people today do not. Indeed, many are on a conquest to do so.

The next time a tragedy like this occurs (and it will), stop and ask why you are morally outraged. The next time you find yourself asking "whither is God?", let your answer be "We have killed him--you and I." Rejecting God not only has grave salvific consequences for the individual; on a societal level, rejecting him destroys cultural morality and goodness. If you don't believe it, turn on the news.