An Introduction

My mission, as I’ve stated many times, is to address issues that thwart people from believing in God or accepting Christianity. Of all the barriers to belief, the most common are problems related to Christianity’s (and many other religions’) concept of providence. It will take several articles to explore this in a somewhat comprehensive way, but in essence, to make their God big enough and loving enough, Christians have made their God the providential ruler over all matters of life and history. Life and history, if we are honest, are full of injustices and unloving things. So, why do bad things happen in a universe that is micro-managed by a loving and just God? It is an untenable position. Often, it is a tragedy that strikes the providence-believing Christian. Sometimes, it is when the Christian honestly takes their thinking to the ultimate conclusion that they leave. I will start with an example of the latter.

Bart Ehrman

Dr. Bart Ehrman is one of my favorite New Testament scholars, but has left Christianity. Peter Einns is another favorite. Peter, while he is a Christian, I am concerned that he has been influenced by such post-modernists as Richard Rohr and his Center for Action and Contemplation. I like ex-Mormon Daniel McClellan’s Biblical scholarship and honesty. Yet I don’t put any scholar on a pedestal; I do my own due diligence and critical thinking about their content.

While Bart started his journey as a conservative Christian, his undergraduate studies at conservative schools, such as Wheaton College and Moody Bible Institute, he later became an atheist. I had always wondered why, assuming it was the conflict between believing the Bible is perfect in every way–an evangelical required belief–and finding ancient New Testament manuscripts that conflict on substantive material. I listened to one of his lectures (here), where he shared his anti-testimony. His de-Christianization. He was asked to teach a college course on the problem of evil. It was during the study and preparation for that course that he realized, as a theist, he had no answer for believing in a loving God while living in a cruel world, where there were wars, famine, and where little babies get cancer and died horrible deaths.

The Christian author Philip Yancy addressed this issue well (yet not comprehensively) in his best-selling 1988 book, Disappointment with God. That book was invaluable to me when I was facing my first personal disaster in 1990.

So, to state the simple problem, in colloquial, everyday Christianity, there is a belief that God is infinite, but because of his love, he knows every cell in our bodies, and there is no room for chance or cause and effect, because God is behind everything. At the same time, there are horrible injustices, and the innocent are suffering horrible deaths. Some even default to, “Who am I to question God?” as an easy, although disingenuous answer. The answer most often given is that it is part of God’s mystery. That he allows atrocious suffering, for some loving reason. There is a small slice of Christianity that accepts free will as the cause of suffering. Bad people hurting the innocent, yet, with that, I hear language suggesting that God is still involved in the outcome. But in the end, these ideas become absurd, and the atheist realizes that.

This is just an introduction of a topic I will spend several articles on.

In Respect, Mike