Evil: The Rock of Atheism
Scott Maze
John 16:33
Jesus warned about the difficulty ahead: ''I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world'' (John 16:33).
Yes, He told life was going to be tough and life as a Christian was going to be tough, but He didn't really in that passage address the question of Why. And that is the question that has been on peoples' minds since the beginning of time. Why is there pain? Why is there suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people? It's gone back to the beginning of time. We can see it in the Old Testament. That was the cry on the lips of Job, ''Why is there suffering?'' That was the cry of the psalmists as they wrote. We're coming out of the twentieth century where we saw suffering on the biggest scale of any civilization - two world wars, the holocaust, the killing fields of Cambodia, the devastating famines that took place in Africa, the emergence of AIDS, genocide in Uwanda, and ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. We've seen all this stuff and the world wants to know why. Why pain, why suffering? Why September 11th?
George Barna conducted a national scientific poll within the last several years, in which he asked people this question, ''If you could ask God anyone question and you knew He would give you an answer, what would you ask?'' The number one issue on peoples' minds, the number one question was, ''Why is there suffering in this world?'' He gave a huge compilation of all the statistics and I did find one interesting statistical quirk. It showed that people that were married were much more likely to want to know why there is so much suffering.
I know for many of you this is not just an academic question, this is not just a theological issue that you bat around the dining room table over dinner. This is a very real issue. You have gone through pain. You have gone through the loss of a child. You are going thro ...
Scott Maze
John 16:33
Jesus warned about the difficulty ahead: ''I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world'' (John 16:33).
Yes, He told life was going to be tough and life as a Christian was going to be tough, but He didn't really in that passage address the question of Why. And that is the question that has been on peoples' minds since the beginning of time. Why is there pain? Why is there suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people? It's gone back to the beginning of time. We can see it in the Old Testament. That was the cry on the lips of Job, ''Why is there suffering?'' That was the cry of the psalmists as they wrote. We're coming out of the twentieth century where we saw suffering on the biggest scale of any civilization - two world wars, the holocaust, the killing fields of Cambodia, the devastating famines that took place in Africa, the emergence of AIDS, genocide in Uwanda, and ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. We've seen all this stuff and the world wants to know why. Why pain, why suffering? Why September 11th?
George Barna conducted a national scientific poll within the last several years, in which he asked people this question, ''If you could ask God anyone question and you knew He would give you an answer, what would you ask?'' The number one issue on peoples' minds, the number one question was, ''Why is there suffering in this world?'' He gave a huge compilation of all the statistics and I did find one interesting statistical quirk. It showed that people that were married were much more likely to want to know why there is so much suffering.
I know for many of you this is not just an academic question, this is not just a theological issue that you bat around the dining room table over dinner. This is a very real issue. You have gone through pain. You have gone through the loss of a child. You are going thro ...
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