The Word for today: Job 20:1 -- 21:34
Don't tell anybody, but no specific answer is given in Job to the question, "Why does God allow evil and suffering?” The only guidance God gives is to point Job toward a new way to interpret suffering--from God's own perspective.
Follow this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion in order to glimpse God's point of view—
1. God has endowed mankind with the stamp of his image. Mankind therefore is a free moral agent, able to make choices. The choices have consequences, good and bad. If their choices had no consequences, they would not be choices at all, and mankind would not therefore have been endowed with moral freedom.
2. If God were to pronounce immediate judgment upon every injustice caused by sin, all sinners would be destroyed.
3. Allowing the consequences of evil (suffering) makes manifest the reality of evil, that mankind might turn from it.
4. Therefore, God permits the exercise of evil (Satan) but only to "the end of his chain."
5. If the consequences of evil were not permitted, they would not have been visited upon Jesus Christ, and salvation could not be achieved.
6. In the end, God is a gift-giver. That we have misused those gifts to create sorrow and suffering, it is still God’s party, and He’s still giving out gifts because it is inherent in His character to do so.
Job, then, is a story that shows how our moral compromise—sin—allows evil to parade its consequences: sorrow and suffering. God noted the sorrow and could not allow it to thwart his generosity and love. There being only one way out—one unstained heart—He set his face for Jerusalem, and took the evil and the suffering on Himself.
So, why does God allow suffering and evil? He doesn’t.
Don't tell anybody, but no specific answer is given in Job to the question, "Why does God allow evil and suffering?” The only guidance God gives is to point Job toward a new way to interpret suffering--from God's own perspective.
Follow this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion in order to glimpse God's point of view—
1. God has endowed mankind with the stamp of his image. Mankind therefore is a free moral agent, able to make choices. The choices have consequences, good and bad. If their choices had no consequences, they would not be choices at all, and mankind would not therefore have been endowed with moral freedom.
2. If God were to pronounce immediate judgment upon every injustice caused by sin, all sinners would be destroyed.
3. Allowing the consequences of evil (suffering) makes manifest the reality of evil, that mankind might turn from it.
4. Therefore, God permits the exercise of evil (Satan) but only to "the end of his chain."
5. If the consequences of evil were not permitted, they would not have been visited upon Jesus Christ, and salvation could not be achieved.
6. In the end, God is a gift-giver. That we have misused those gifts to create sorrow and suffering, it is still God’s party, and He’s still giving out gifts because it is inherent in His character to do so.
Job, then, is a story that shows how our moral compromise—sin—allows evil to parade its consequences: sorrow and suffering. God noted the sorrow and could not allow it to thwart his generosity and love. There being only one way out—one unstained heart—He set his face for Jerusalem, and took the evil and the suffering on Himself.
So, why does God allow suffering and evil? He doesn’t.
You and I--our sin--"broke" God's perfect universe. God's in the process of fixing what we broke.
He sent a carpenter, with a hammer and three nails, to do the job.
He sent a carpenter, with a hammer and three nails, to do the job.
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