Can we vindicate God?
Can we justify God? Can we vindicate how he works with his creation? Even if we said he created the universe and left it to take care of itself—could we justify that divine decision in light of the horrors that are present every long day without fail? Would questions not arise about a God who’d make vulnerable humans and shrug when they make a colossal and anguish-bringing muck of things? "Well, it’s your own fault! You got yourself into this mess; get yourself out of it." And on he’d go on his merry divine way while blind unstoppable forces and torrents of evil roll like juggernauts over the bodies and hearts of an unending stream of the defenceless and voiceless? Wouldn’t we think a God like that has something to answer for?
Does God care one way or another what we think of him? Well...yes and no!
Whether he does or not there are many believers that think they should defend him against criticism. So we trot out generalised defences about freewill, the character-building nature of suffering and the importance of having a predictable natural environment without which life wouldn't be possible. I say we "trot them out" but that isn’t quite fair for some among us labour long and hard to put these defences of God together. Kierkegaard wished a pox on all that defending of God business and called for sheer, unquestioning trust. I think he went over the top but I think his approach takes the Bible and the biblical call more seriously than this intellectual approach.
Recently John Mark Hicks (one who knows about suffering up close and personal and who is anything but short of intellect) remarked that the justification of God "must arise out of the story we have been given, and perhaps it is not so much ‘theodicy’ as ‘kerygma’ that is our task." I think that that is right on target and it comes from a man who wrote a fine book of a theodicean nature (Yet Will I Trust Him). It isn’t for Christians to begin at any place other than their Story. If God is to be justified in the face of wars, famines, genocide and the rape and pillage of nations he’ll have to do it himself for, in the end, only God can vindicate God! And what he offers as self-vindication is self-revelation; self-revelation that comes to its laser focus in Jesus Christ. But since this is true, then as Hicks points out, our business isn’t really theodicy (justifying God) but proclaiming the God we have come to know via the biblical witness; the God that has called us to trust him.
But I can’t help noticing that often we have more trouble justifying God in the eyes of his own—the people of the Story—than before those who say there is no God (or if there is, he isn’t fit to be worshiped). The non-believers often see the scandal of our Book more clearly than we.
There’s a mighty challenge in coming face to face with the God of scripture. It’s easy enough to come to terms with the God that a few select and cherished texts tell us about. And if—praise God—our lives are pleasant and joyful these warm and cherished texts are proved true and often that’s as far as we want to go. But if we’re willing to embrace the total picture sometimes our eyes will go wide with fear and amazement. You don’t think so? Have you read Habakkuk recently? Or Isaiah 34 or Ezekiel’s anguished outburst, "Ah God, are you going to keep killing until we’re all destroyed?" What do you make of Noah’s flood and the Sodom and Gomorrah destruction? Oh, they got what they deserved? Who, the innocent children? What do you make of this, "I will visit the iniquity on the children of them that hate me unto a third generation?" In Bible classes on comfortable seats we nod at these fierce outpourings of wrath, (wrath that engulfs little babies)—they cost us nothing; anyway, they deal with events millennia ago. Try telling believers today that God still acts toward a sinful humanity in wrath that often results in the death or suffering of the innocent and righteous and they get all fidgety if not downright angry. [(Romans 1:18—note the present tense verb.]
There’s a mighty challenge in coming face to face with the God of scripture. It’s easy enough to come to terms with the God that a few select and cherished texts tell us about. And if—praise God—our lives are pleasant and joyful these warm and cherished texts are proved true and often that’s as far as we want to go. But if we’re willing to embrace the total picture sometimes our eyes will go wide with fear and amazement. You don’t think so? Have you read Habakkuk recently? Or Isaiah 34 or Ezekiel’s anguished outburst, "Ah God, are you going to keep killing until we’re all destroyed?" What do you make of Noah’s flood and the Sodom and Gomorrah destruction? Oh, they got what they deserved? Who, the innocent children? What do you make of this, "I will visit the iniquity on the children of them that hate me unto a third generation?" In Bible classes on comfortable seats we nod at these fierce outpourings of wrath, (wrath that engulfs little babies)—they cost us nothing; anyway, they deal with events millennia ago. Try telling believers today that God still acts toward a sinful humanity in wrath that often results in the death or suffering of the innocent and righteous and they get all fidgety if not downright angry. [(Romans 1:18—note the present tense verb.]
Let’s face it, not only do we not like suffering pain (why would we?) we don’t like to be associated with a God that inflicts it—it doesn’t really matter what the reasons are, a God that inflicts national loss is not what we’ve signed up to. We don’t want to be identified with a God who’s capable of drowning an entire world, or burying whole nations, who’s capable and willing to bring famines or pestilence or war. That’s not the sweet, tender and wooing God whose business (his only business apparently) is to keep all us Christians from being unhappy as well as answering to their satisfaction every question the trustless non-believer can come up with.
So are we to settle for a God that threshes about dismantling worlds and burying the millions because he’s able to do it and delights in pain and death? Never! He is the "living" God and he’s all about life and not death and he is working his strange work of cosmic redemption. Compare Isaiah 29:1-3 where he lines up his armies against the beloved city itself, as once David did, in order to capture it for himself and bring it back to himself. And as he so speaks he assures the beloved city that he will destroy her enemies (29:5-8); the very enemies he is using to afflict her to bring her back to him.
Oh, earth, earth, God is not against us in his outpouring, he is unchangeably for us!
We are called to trust! But the God we are called to trust is the God of the Story and not some conclusion to some rational arguments driven by our love of comfort and too much sugar. And is the God of that Story, then, hard and callous and hot-tempered? Take a good long look at the Christ of the gospels and the rest of the NT and ask again. There must be something sinister beyond the imagination of mankind that God is dealing with. There must be something of inexpressible glory that God is bringing us to. When we ask how God is to be vindicated in the face of the world's great wrongs and pain, God points to Jesus Christ.
It's proclamation we need and not theodicy.
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