God Is Not A Liar

Today God totally and completely blew my mind. I’ve been studying apologetics pretty hardcore lately. Partly because I’ve been in a friendly debate with a new blogger friend, partly because it’s part of the curriculum we’re teaching in Sunday School, and partly because I just find it intriguing, I’m curious, and I want to strengthen my faith in order that I might be a better witness to those that don’t believe. Anyways, today my mind wandered to the problem of evil. If any argument is the reason for a skeptic’s disbelief of God, or even of His lack of love for all of humanity, this would be the one. In case you’ve never heard the argument, here is the problem of evil:

1. If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
2. If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
3. If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
4. If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
5. Evil exists.
6. If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn't have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn't know when evil exists, or doesn't have the desire to eliminate all evil.
7. Therefore, God does not exist.

I’ve heard this argument a million times, and if I’m honest it always throws me off guard, because how can I explain away the suffering in the world when I myself don’t fully understand why it exists? The token Christian response to this question is the existence of free will. The loving thing for God to do is to give us a choice to love Him in return. That proves that God can be omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect and still allow evil to exist. And although I believe that to be a true statement, the result always seems to be so unsatisfactory. It still makes God seem so…small.

Well, as I was pondering all of this, I also happened to be listening to Josh McDowell speak about the attributes of God. And as I listened to him speak about who God is I suddenly saw the problem of evil in a whole new light. The argument is flawed. It sets God up to be a liar and there is no escape route from the argument in which we can confidently declare that either God exists or that if He does he is not a liar…even with our free will argument. I have never in my life reasoned through the problem of evil and come out with even greater confidence in God than when I started...until today. I think what gave me that confidence today is the realization that the God displayed within the argument is not really the God of the Bible at all. Why do I say this, you ask? Blasphemy, you declare! I know, I know. To say that does sound like complete blasphemy. Of course God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and morally perfect. And I say with full confidence that He is indeed those very things which He claims to be. But here’s my point: He is SO MUCH MORE than just those three things.

If we are to look at the character of God, who does He claim to be? He is holy, loving, just, faithful, eternal, impartial, incomprehensible, jealous, longsuffering, merciful, righteous, true, wise, wrathful, self-sufficient, self-existent, sovereign, transcendent, all-present and immutable IN ADDITION to being all-knowing, all-powerful, and morally perfect. When we look at these attributes we naturally assume that each attribute is a part of what makes Him whole, and yet I don’t think we could be more wrong. God is all of these things fully, and He is all of them at once at all times. If I am to ask you, who is God? You would probably say “God is love,” or maybe “The Creator of the Universe.” Those are probably the only two answers that the majority of us would give, yet such answers do not even begin to describe who God is. Is it not possible then, for God to be ALL these things, for evil to exist, and for Him to still never have acted in contradiction to His character because He is ALL of these things? God is so much BIGGER and GREATER than we can even fathom, and we are so tiny and limited and unrighteous, so why is it that when we don’t understand something the first thing we do is jump to the conclusion that God is a liar when it would only make more sense to assume that perhaps we are the ones who are wrong about who He is?

In all of this thinking, I know there are bound to be holes in my argument. And I know that while I am on this earth all my questions will not be answered, but I will keep asking because I know that my God will always speak for Himself and prove Himself true. And now I rejoice because in questioning I have only come to discover that God is even greater than I had ever thought before. And this greatness---God’s very character and nature---it all became evident in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, when in His mercy, faithfulness, holiness, power, sovereignty, patience, impartiality, jealousy, self-sufficience, knowledge, and all-encompassing love, He carried out justice and poured out His wrath upon Himself so that we might be declared righteous. He who knew no sin became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God. Christ Himself is the evidence that both evil and a God who claims to be all that He is can coexist.

So if you want to diminish God with limiting arguments, go right ahead, but I tell you here and now that the kind of God who you are imagining would allow evil to exist is no comparison in greatness to who God actually is.