The Problem of Pain: Part 4
The Reality of Common Grace
One of the most common questions skeptics ask is: If God is all-powerful, why doesn't He simply step in and stop every single bad thing before it happens? When we ask this, we must first recognize that, generally speaking, that is exactly what God is doing every single day. The Bible teaches an important idea called common grace. This means that God actively restrains, or holds back, the full power of human hatred and natural chaos from destroying us.
Jesus reminds us that God makes His sun rise on both evil and good people, and He sends rain to both the righteous and the unrighteous. Most of the time, the ground stays perfectly solid under our feet. Most of the time, rivers stay inside their banks, our bodies successfully fight off deadly diseases, and cars pass each other safely on the road.
Our daily lives would be full of chaos, violence, and terrible pain if God were not constantly working in human history to keep the world safe, orderly, and predictable.
The Complexity of Freedom
But what about the massive, terrible exceptions in history? Why didn't God step in and stop Adolf Hitler before he caused the horrific destruction of the Holocaust?
In the ultimate sense, God did stop Hitler. The Nazi power was broken, the dictator died, and the world entered a time of peace and recovery. But when we ask the painful question of why God didn't stop him sooner, we meet a deep mystery. The only completely honest and humble answer we can give is: we do not fully know.
What we do know is that Hitler did not act alone. He succeeded because millions of individual human beings chose to use their moral freedom in a terrible way. It happened because soldiers chose to follow evil orders, because churches and institutions chose to stay silent instead of being brave, and because nations took years to work together to stop it.
When we demand that God instantly step in and take away human freedom to prevent evil, we usually want Him to do that in everyone else’s life—but never in our own.
"We want God to instantly stop the freedom of bad leaders and criminals, but we don't want Him to stop us when we lose our temper, hold a grudge, or use a situation for our own selfish gain."
The Cost of Real Meaning
Think about what the world would look like if God stopped every action that went against His perfect will. If you tried to open a website that would ruin your moral character, your computer would instantly crash. If you said a mean word to your husband or wife, your voice would temporarily stop working. If you made a selfish decision with your money, your bank account would lock up.
If God acted this way, He would completely take away the dignity of human life. Our choices would no longer have any real meaning. We would live in an artificial world where true love, sacrifice, courage, and faith would be completely impossible. Why? Because the choice to do wrong would be mechanically blocked. God values our humanity far too much to turn us into unthinking puppets, even when our freedom puts our comfort and safety at risk.
One of the most common questions skeptics ask is: If God is all-powerful, why doesn't He simply step in and stop every single bad thing before it happens? When we ask this, we must first recognize that, generally speaking, that is exactly what God is doing every single day. The Bible teaches an important idea called common grace. This means that God actively restrains, or holds back, the full power of human hatred and natural chaos from destroying us.
Jesus reminds us that God makes His sun rise on both evil and good people, and He sends rain to both the righteous and the unrighteous. Most of the time, the ground stays perfectly solid under our feet. Most of the time, rivers stay inside their banks, our bodies successfully fight off deadly diseases, and cars pass each other safely on the road.
Our daily lives would be full of chaos, violence, and terrible pain if God were not constantly working in human history to keep the world safe, orderly, and predictable.
The Complexity of Freedom
But what about the massive, terrible exceptions in history? Why didn't God step in and stop Adolf Hitler before he caused the horrific destruction of the Holocaust?
In the ultimate sense, God did stop Hitler. The Nazi power was broken, the dictator died, and the world entered a time of peace and recovery. But when we ask the painful question of why God didn't stop him sooner, we meet a deep mystery. The only completely honest and humble answer we can give is: we do not fully know.
What we do know is that Hitler did not act alone. He succeeded because millions of individual human beings chose to use their moral freedom in a terrible way. It happened because soldiers chose to follow evil orders, because churches and institutions chose to stay silent instead of being brave, and because nations took years to work together to stop it.
When we demand that God instantly step in and take away human freedom to prevent evil, we usually want Him to do that in everyone else’s life—but never in our own.
"We want God to instantly stop the freedom of bad leaders and criminals, but we don't want Him to stop us when we lose our temper, hold a grudge, or use a situation for our own selfish gain."
The Cost of Real Meaning
Think about what the world would look like if God stopped every action that went against His perfect will. If you tried to open a website that would ruin your moral character, your computer would instantly crash. If you said a mean word to your husband or wife, your voice would temporarily stop working. If you made a selfish decision with your money, your bank account would lock up.
If God acted this way, He would completely take away the dignity of human life. Our choices would no longer have any real meaning. We would live in an artificial world where true love, sacrifice, courage, and faith would be completely impossible. Why? Because the choice to do wrong would be mechanically blocked. God values our humanity far too much to turn us into unthinking puppets, even when our freedom puts our comfort and safety at risk.
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