Some time ago, I attended a conference on human trafficking. The horrors of this modern day slavery for purposes of sexual exploitation were poignantly described. I shuddered as I listened to how young girls and boys all over the world are being enslaved by this hideous system of evil.
People look at things like this and ask “Why doesn’t a God of love do something to stop this evil?” Even worse, why does He allow it to continue? If He’s all powerful, surely He could stop it. And if He is goodness, then you’d think He’d want to stop it. The fact that it continues unstopped indicates either He’s not all powerful or He’s not good. Otherwise, He’d do something about it. So why doesn’t God do anything?
First of all, it’s not an issue of Him not being all powerful and hence unable to stop it. He was powerful enough to bring all this into existence, so He can control it too.
So, yes, He could stop all evil and here’s how. Suppose someone was about to kill another person. God could literally freeze him in the act. He could intervene so the murderer couldn’t pull the trigger or stab the knife. He could and I think you’d say, that’s super.
But then you would probably hear someone else say, “Sure, murder is bad and should be stopped, but so also should all rapists!” So again, just as another man is dropping his pants, he’s frozen stiff by God and no rape happens! Wonderful!
But a third person might say, “Yes, God should stop murder and rape but a lot of hurt is also caused by the vicious things people say…” So, now every person who opens his or her mouth to say a hurtful thing similarly is frozen in the act. How great is that?
Let me ask you a question now: by nightfall, how many people on planet earth would remain unfrozen? We would all be frozen solid because each of us, in one way or another, hurts others.
Look at it this way. If you think God should use His will to overrule our wills, think of this potential scenario: you hate going to church and even worse, donating to it. But Sunday, you wake up to find yourself strangely being pushed out of bed by an unseen Hand and forcing you to dress in your Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. You’re pushed into your car and it heads to a nearby church.
There, you’re pushed out of the car, into the building and onto a church pew. Your eyes and ears are forced to listen to the sermon. Then, as the offering plate is passed around, you are shocked to find your hand going to your wallet, pulling out a couple crisp hundred dollar bills and dropping them in the plate…
I’ll stop there. Not a fun scenario, is it?
So what should God have done? Before He allowed the world to get into the mess it’s now in, He could have exercised His option to wipe Adam and Eve off the planet after their sinful choice to disobey Him. Stop the entire program from unfolding. That’s one option He had.
But so that life on earth would not simply be a bunch of robots doing what a Supreme Being wants, God chose to allow people to use their free will, even when they do evil.
Next week’s column will give some answers as to what God’s thinking on that matter is and how everything ultimately works out.
