Thoughts on Life

I recently wrote a response to Mal Fletcher’s article on Sight regarding science and Christianity. Fletcher states, correctly, that “atheism offers us no explanation for the presence of evil in the world”. The atheist response is to state that it doesn’t have to, and to ask how there could be a loving God when there is so much evil in the world. As Fletcher also correctly states, this is “one of the great dilemmas facing people who believe in God - and perhaps particularly Christians, who believe that God is love”. 

However I was reading Philip Yancey’s book Rumours of Another World this morning in which he gives a brilliant response to this problem. Yancey recalls a conversation with Bob Seiple, then president of World Vision, after he returned from Rwanda at the time of the genocide there.

Here is Yancey’s description of what Seiple told him: 

“Standing on a bridge, he (Seiple) had watched thousands of bodies float beneath him on a river scarlet with their blood. Hutu tribesmen had hacked to death with machetes almost a million Tutsis - their neighbours, their fellow parishioners, their school classmates - for reasons no one could begin to explain. Seiple seemed badly shaken. ‘It was a crisis of faith for me,’ he said. ‘There are no categories to express such horror. Someone used the word bestiality - no, that dishonours the beasts. Animals kill for food, not for pleasure. They kill one or two prey at a time, not a million of their own species for no reason at all.’ 

“As I listened to Seiple, I too could think of no force in nature to explain what was happening in Rwanda, only a malevolent force from supernature - the same kind of inexplicable force that caused Hitler to divert badly needed resources during wartime in order to carry out genocide against the Jews.” 

Yancey goes on to explain that:  

“…the Bible’s language about spiritual powers speaks to actual realities that cannot be adequately described in terms of [natural] evolution and politics. Try to explain on rational grounds the mass insanity that seized Germany in Hitler’s day. Explain the logic behind the Cold War arms race, in which the two strongest nations pursued the precisely-named policy of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction). Explain the rationale behind the overnight collapse of economies in Asia and Latin America, or a sniper who starts picking off suburbanites in shopping malls and gas stations. What keeps a wealthy nation like the United States from finding shelter for its homeless population? What keeps the world from feeding the thousands who die malnourished each day? The experts have no answer but ‘forces beyond our control’. New Testament writers agree and do not hesitate to identify those forces.”

While I don’t agree with Yancey and Bob Seiple that the genocide in Rwanda happened for no reason - there were deeply complex reasons for it - I still came to see that, as I read this piece from Yancey’s book, my doubts about evil in the world and the seeming conflict with this and a loving God went some towards being satisfied. I had been troubled by the point of atheism not needing to explain evil and that the lack of necessity for an explanation in a sense does explain it for an atheist. But then as I read Yancey I began to think that the presence of evil in the world is, in a strange paradoxical way, evidence for God. If we simply kill for pleasure, or out of a sense of bitterness, where does that fit into the evolutionary cycle? If there really is evil, it is something beyond nature, which then points to supernature, and then by definition to God. This may sound simplistic to some, and is by no means any proof at all, but it does state to me that the presence of evil points beyond nature to something bigger.

Along with evil, deep down we also know that if we live by love, then survival will be enhanced for all people. This often means going against our own instincts. Giving and forgiving are not just nice Christian things to do; they are vital for our survival as a species. Martin Luther King said that our options are nonviolence or nonexistence. There is evil in the universe but it can always be overcome by love. And when it is, the human race is better off because it not only survives , but it also thrives.

I believe the universe was made by God, who doesn’t need to be explained. The only other option is that it came out of nothing or that our universe is one of a number of many millions of universes. This is the multiverse theory. Firstly, regarding the idea of the universe coming from nothing, we know that you can’t have something from nothing and it has almost been proven that the universe had a beginning when time and space began. So the universe began outside of time - it had a supernatural beginning. Regarding the multiverse idea, there is literally no evidence for this because we have no way of knowing about other universes, at least not yet. And if there are other universes, it simply takes the problem back a step. How did universes begin in the first place?

U2 have a song called Peace on Earth which I take as a song of frustration at the lack of peace at a time of year when we see those words on Christmas cards and hear them in church services the world over. That song became real to me again after hearing of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Once again a person looking for democracy in their country has been cut down in an act of violence. I felt shocked when I first heard of it while listening to the cricket on the radio. When will we ever learn that violence simply begets more violence and hate begets more hate? Violence will never ultimately achieve what its perpetrators want. That is simply a fact of life, as surely as night follows day. While this is not the space to go into the details of the ultimate motivations of terrorists and suicide bombers, even if they got what they ultimately wanted, it would still be a society based on fear, which can never be a society at peace, either with others or with itself.

Perhaps some of the words of U2’s song say it best:

Heaven on Earth, we need it now
I’m sick of all of this hanging around
Sick of the sorrow, sick of the pain
Sick of hearing again and again
That there’s gonna be peace on earth

…Jesus sing the song you wrote
The words are sticking in my throat
Peace on Earth
We hear it every Christmas time
But hope and history won’t rhyme
So what’s it worth, this peace on Earth?

Pretty much my sentiments exactly. Benazir Bhutto lies dead and her country is in turmoil. Despite the allegations of corruption surrounding Bhutto’s past, she was a leader in a country looking to the future. Just like Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln in years gone by, the murder of Benazir Bhutto will not achieve the end goal that its perpetrators seek. Only love will do that. Love, peace and justice.

Fear and rage have boiled over in the streets of Pakistan because people created in the image of God decided that violence was the best course of action. They are wrong. Martin Luther King said that there can never be true justice without peace. His words ring true this Christmas time as we once again witness the cutting down of a political leader and lament the lack of peace on Earth.