My childhood and youth were so wonderful, even in the midst of the common troubles and trials that every young human faces, no matter how good their family.
At times, we suffered in minor ways, but my sister and I were blessed beyond measure.
And far better and deeper and wider and higher than everything, than the whole limitless universe was the wonder of God, that despite all of the horror and tragedy and suffering facing all of humanity--in many cases situation so much worse than our minor scrapes--
there was the Infinite Care of the Father who loved every single human being forever.:-)
Of course, early on, despite a powerful conversion experience with God, I asked many confusing questions, deeply troubled by contradictions in life, in the Bible, in Christianity that didn't match the view that Life's essential essence was Love.
#1 Why did so many innocent people die of cancer, terrible tornadoes, earthquakes, and famines?
Especially very young ones, infants, children, young people, before they even had a chance to live their lives and do good?
#2 And why were there so many evil texts in the Bible since it was supposed to be inspired by God?
But living in the wonder of the joy of Christian trust and faith, I could transcend
these deeply troubling questions, even if there seemed to be no answers...
Because we were enveloped in God's infinite love--
That is until I met face to face....
with the leaders of Augustinian-Reformed Christianity, who claimed that our Baptist religion was an aberration, heretical, and that we had never been saved!
I met the first one of thousands of these nay-sayers when I was 17. This Calvinist youth leader also tried to convince us that God will call us Christians to commit immoral actions for God!!
(Note: Thank God, I've already recounted numerous times on this blog doing battle for over 50 years against that many-headed theological hydra, so I don't have to go down into that detailed abyss again here, nor share of how it murdered our faith, our trust, our hope, destroyed our lives. It has destroyed so many millions of humans' lives.)
Instead, in this article, I wish to deal with a few of the deep, puzzling and difficult-to-answer questions that have gouged my mind and my life over the years and still are there today:
One of my questions beginning when I was about 12 years old:
#3 Why didn't God emphasize to all of God's people down through the ages that slavery is inherently evil?
And related questions:
#4 Why does Exodus 21: 20 say, "When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave...if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money"?
And I Peter 2:18 "Household slaves, submit with all fear to your masters, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel"?
Think of the millions of humans killed or tortured and harmed and abused because of these and other verses!!
It was Christian and Muslim leaders, ship captains, merchants, plantation owners, etc. who carried out these rules and command, sure that God blessed their slave-owning, even when they were harsh and cruel, even when many of the slaves died in transit.
#5 If the Ultimate Reality of Existence (God, the Divine, the Spirit) truly has benevolence for all things, all beings, why didn't God reveal to humans 50,000 or 75,000 years ago the lethal danger of germs and viruses?
#6 Why did the Divine even allow destructive germs and viruses to come into existence and to thrive?
#7 Why didn't this loving God protect billions of humans from the Black Death, small pox, malaria, cancer, birth defects, and so forth?
#8 For that matter, why didn't God ease the suffering, even protect, all sentient animals, billions of them from excruciating harm and tortured deaths over the last billion years?
To be continued--
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
4 comments:
So Dan, now as a mature believer how do you view these early questions that a lot of young Christians posit?
Hello Scooter.
I wouldn't describe myself as a "believer" but as my bio says, "A committed theist, humanist, Enlightenment ethicist, moral realist, free-seeker--an avid seeker of the Good, the True, the Beautiful, and of equality, peace, justice, mercy, compassion, purity, generosity, and so forth.
I try and model my life on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and his parables such as the Good Samaritan. I've a deep passion for worldwide outreach to those in need. Loving and living for the Divine--Ultimate Reality in whom we love, move, and have our being."
As for the "early questions," as I studied, learned, experienced more of life, lived in the Middle East, became a youth pastor, elder, teacher, parent, etc., my questions multiplied, often to the 7th power (to borrow an odd metaphor from algebra).
Not so long ago I write a poem about how I realized I really know much less than I thought I did.
Less Is More
When young
I knew so much
So I thought
But the less time
The less I know
By the time of my death
I will know nothing
But will be known
By God who knows all
--
What is your perspective on the questions?
Do you have a blog or one to recommend?
Thanks for stopping by.
Thanks Dan, I can certainly identify with the sentiments in your poem as the years have flown by with the realization that there is so much that remains to be known or discovered. It's interesting that you don't see yourself as a "believer" which most Christians would see themselves as and yet you identify with the teachings of Jesus.
Anyway, you present several challenging questions that I've wondered about at times myself. However my grounding in any of the "difficult" passages of the Bible is in the goodness and justice of God and thus to keep the attributes of the Trinitarian God in mind while grappling with such questions seems to me to act as a moral compass. Your first question, "Why didn't God emphasize to all of God's people down through the ages that slavery is inherently evil?" suggests that God is unjust or partial or even unloving. However we read in Exodus 23:9 that on the way to Canaan God tells the Israelites through Moses that the alien or foreigner among them should not be oppressed. Of course the israelites would have known the oppression of slavery in Egypt. Perhaps we could call this the first statement on human rights as the alien was to be treated as a citizen. So right away I have to rethink my idea that God is unjust or partial. Dan, you point out that love is the highest ethic which I concur with. I further think of God's goodness when I read Leviticus 19:33-34 where the alien is also to be loved as one of their own people.
I read too in the New Testament the effort by the Pharisees to trap Jesus on the subject of divorce. Jesus asked them what Moses had to say on the subject. They happily quoted the permission of Moses to divorce one's wife. Jesus pointed out that certain Old Testament commandments were to be understood as concessions to the hardness of the human heart rather than expressions of God's holy character. Jesus points out that this wasn't the way it was in the beginning, that is, before the Fall of man.
So I wonder if in a similar vein the regulation of slavery should therefore be seen as a practical step to deal with the realities of the day resulting from the human fall.In the big picture the hostilities and aberrations that lead to alienation among races are the result of a fundamental broken relationship between the Creator and the created. While the Bible doesn't reject slavery outright, the conclusion that it favors it, I think doesn't hold water. The scriptures do reveal that slavery is not ideal, both in the Old Testament laws forbidding the enslavement of fellow Israelites, the law of Jubilee, and in the New Testament applications of Christ's teachings.
I've heard the follow up question to your question stating, "Why doesn't God stop all evil if He is powerful enough?" Any thoughts on that?
Hello, again, Scooter
>>You wrote, “It's interesting that you don't see yourself as a "believer" which most Christians would see themselves as and yet you identify with the teachings of Jesus. “
As explained in lots of detail in my previous blog articles, after fighting against the determinists and DCTers for over 50 years, and being told repeatedly that we Baptists never were Christians, not even when I was a Baptist youth pastor, elder, Bible teacher, and that our Christianity was an aberration, etc., I finally gave up.
That was when my wife’s church (formerly mine) did the umpteenth Reformed promotion, this time of Matt Chandler’s horrific book, The Explicit Gospel which claims that infants are "in essence, evil" and that God didn't create us humans for loving communion but because he wanted self-glory.
Whew:-(
I realized that if I was going to follow Jesus’ messages, and to continue to have even the slightest faith and hope and trust in the God I met so many years ago, then I would have to admit that Christianity is a delusion. Too long to explain in a comment.
Check out my stories of being confronted by Reformed, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic leaders. The first one I met was our new Christian youth leader. Not only did he believe in the usual Reformed theology, he also taught that God would call upon us to commit immoral actions. And he quoted Bible verses to back up his claim. And he told me personally that God would call me to commit immoral actions.
Then one of the next leaders, a nationally known one, in a Bible study of Phillipians declared that God plans every rape and every murder.
:-(
Based on our totally contrary view of God, you can see these were shocking encounters. I spent the next 50 years or so, trying to show Reformed people why their God wasn’t the God of Jesus.
>>And you wrote, “Of course the israelites would have known the oppression of slavery in Egypt. Perhaps we could call this the first statement on human rights…”
?!
Read Exodus 21: 20 say, "When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave...if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money"?
:-(
And I Peter 2:18 "Household slaves, submit with all fear to your masters, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel"?
Think of the millions of humans killed or tortured and harmed and abused because of these and other verses!! Christian leaders, ship captains, merchants, plantation owners, business men, etc. carried out these rules and command, sure that God blessed their slave-owning, even when they were harsh and cruel, even when many of the slaves died in transit.
You wrote, “While the Bible doesn't reject slavery outright, the conclusion that it favors it, I think doesn't hold water.”
Look at the pro-slavery verses again. One of the most horrific evils of history, slavery, is justified—that a human is a thing, a person’s “money” or in another translation, a person’s “property.”
Sadly, there are even Christian leaders now in the U.S. who claim that slavery isn’t inherently evil!
And you wrote, “I've heard the follow up question to your question stating, "Why doesn't God stop all evil if He is powerful enough?" Any thoughts on that?”
No, I don’t know why. That is another one of my many questions. I’ve speculated about it and read a bunch of books by theologians and philosophers, but I don’t know.
Thanks for the dialog.
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