Download PDF1 MB

WOHActLikeGodTitlePages.indd 1 2/22/11 10:12:30 AM WOHActLikeGodTitlePages.indd 1 2/22/11 10:12:30 AM DAVID BAST WOHActLikeGodTitlePages.indd 2 2/22/11 10:12:31 AM Why Doesn’t God Act More Like God? Habakkuk and the Problem of Evil Copyright © 2003, 2011 by David Bast Published by Words of Hope 700 Ball Ave., N.E. Grand Rapids, MI 49503-1308 USA Email: woh@woh.org World Wide Web: www.woh.org All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, me- chanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked (cev) are from the Contemporary English Ver- sion Copyright © 1991, 1992, 1995 by American Bible Society. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked (kjv) are taken from the King James Version. Public domain. Scripture quotations marked (nrsv) are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the Nation- al Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked (rsv) are taken from the Revised Standard Ver- sion of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Cover design: Pete Van Regenmorter. Image credits: 123RF.com, iStockphoto.com. Words of Hope’s mission is to proclaim Jesus Christ by radio and literature in the languages of the world’s peoples, seeking with our partners in ministry to win the uncommitted everywhere to faith in Christ and to encourage Christians in the life of discipleship. Printed in the United States of America 11 03 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Second Edition CONTENTS Introduction 7 Chapter One “God, Why Don’t You Answer?” 11 Chapter Two The Problem of Evil 23 Chapter Three Standing on the Ramparts 37 Chapter Four Justified by Faith 53 Chapter Five Woe to the World! 63 Chapter Six The Coming Flood 83 Chapter Seven Where Is God? 95 Chapter Eight Learning to Sing Again 105 Chapter Nine Faith in Hard Times 119 INTRODUCTION There are many reasons not to believe in a personal God. The grounds for atheism—or its more cautious cousin agnos- ticism—is a plot that has been plowed over many times. The modern scientific view of the world seems to be one long argu- ment for unbelief: materialistic assumptions about the origin of the universe and of life, which challenge the notion of design (and therefore the existence of a Designer); reductionist accounts of human consciousness, which eliminate the soul; naturalistic explanations for the rise of religious faith; and so on. As a skeptical scientist once quipped when asked why he made no mention of God in his writings, “I have no need of that hypothesis.” Then there is the difficulty of reconciling traditional Christian teaching with both our observations of the world around us and our own painful life experiences. The doctrine of the Incarnation affirms that God assumed human nature and entered our world to save us. Such an event may have been believable once upon a time, when people still thought the earth was the center of everything and man was “the crown of creation.” But set against the backdrop of a measureless WHY DOESN’T GOD ACT MORE LIKE GOD? universe in which humanity plays such an infinitesimal role, the Incarnation is hard to accept any longer. Would the God of the entire universe really take that much trouble over “an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet” orbiting “a small unregarded yellow sun” in “the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of . the Galaxy” (Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)? Moreover, a belief in Divine Providence would encourage us to trust that everything that happens to us is part of the master plan of a loving, all-power- ful God—a view that, to say the least, is not clearly evident to a patient in the middle of chemotherapy or to the residents of a shanty town in one of the world’s countless slums. And these are merely the most obvious intellectual problems that challenge faith in the God of the Bible. But for the believing Christian, one difficulty stands above all others—the experience of unanswered prayer. This is much harder to deal with, far more painful than any atheistic argu- ment or secularist’s sneer. Experiencing the silence of God, the absence of God, threatens the very heart of faith, which is a confidence in our connectedness to God. As believers our faith is not merely a set of intellectual propositions about God, the world and ourselves. It is an experienced relationship with God, grounded in the conviction that we really have come to know the God of the universe as our Father in and through Jesus Christ. If we speak to this Father in prayer, pouring out our soul as we express to God our deepest needs and concerns, and then seem to hear no reply and receive no help, what are we to think? I’ll tell you what I sometimes think. In the night, when I’m tossing in bed unable to sleep, it creeps in: the thought that my faith is all just make-believe; that when I pray I’m only playing a game with myself; that there’s really no one listening, no one there. Of course, there is nothing new about the experience of unanswered prayer. I’m not the first person to entertain doubts in the dark. How to deal with our doubts is one of the 8 Introduction surprising but comforting lessons of the book of Habakkuk. The thesis of that little book (as well as this one) is that faith isn’t easy. Faith is not neat and clean; it’s messy, with lots of gnarled knots as well as loose ends. Those of us who can iden- tify with Habakkuk often have more questions than answers; or at least we’re more certain about the questions than we are of the answers. But neither can we simply give up and walk away. As easy as it sometimes is to think there is no God, it is unthinkable to believe there isn’t. For me, for Habakkuk, and I hope for you, there’s just no viable alternative to faith in God. We ask with Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). We have no real alternative; we can’t not believe. So we struggle to answer our questions and to deal with our doubts and fears. And when suffering or hardship comes to us, we try to sing (along with Habakkuk) a song of trust in the Lord whose ways we can’t explain, but whose goodness we confess and whose grace we praise, not just because of what happens to us but sometimes in spite of it. 9 Chapter One “GOD, WHY DON’T YOU ANSWER?” Have you ever wondered why God allows so much suffering in the world? Have you ever prayed for help and he didn’t seem to answer? Well, you’re not alone in struggling with those problems. The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet received. How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted. iHabakkuk 1:1–4 WHY DOESN’T GOD ACT MORE LIKE GOD? YOU HAVE PROBABLY HAD one of those “It’s a small world!” experiences. In the summer of 1972 I was a student traveling through Europe with my fiancée Betty Jo (now my wife for the past almost forty years). One day we happened to be in Amsterdam, wandering through the main square of the city. As I stood staring in some amazement at the rather bi- zarre collection of humanity that had drifted into that Mecca of the counter-culture, I exclaimed, “Look at all those hip- pies!” Whereupon Betty Jo, examining the crowd more close- ly, pointed out that one of them happened to be a college classmate of ours. It really is a small world after all! I have a similar feeling of shocked recognition when I come to the book of Habakkuk. Here I am, among the twelve Minor Prophets of the Old Testament. It’s sort of a strange place, really. This is one of those areas that someone has called “the clean pages” of the Bible. There are a lot of books here that aren’t read very often, written by people with odd-sound- ing names like Obadiah and Haggai. They are talking about problems and issues in civilizations that have been dead for 2,500 years, in places I have never seen and can’t even imagine. And then, just as I’m tempted to leave, I turn a corner and bump into somebody I know.

Load more