The Problem of Evil: Obstacles to Faith with Mark Mittelberg, Part 8

To purchase the entire DVD set of the Summit Lecture Series, visit summit.org.

God can use pain to grab our attention and teach or redirect us in ways that will be important for our lives.  C.S. Lewis famously wrote:

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain.  Pain is His megaphone to arouse a deaf world.”

You know, most of us don’t change our lives, or wake up to things in our lives, unless we go through hard times.  And often, God uses horrible things to help us be able to do good.

I think of Chuck Colson – a great Christian leader who started Prison Fellowship that has ministered to countless thousands of people in prison.  It has lead many, many people to Christ.  And yet, he started that ministry because of his own failings that led to him going to prison.  He went straight from being one of the top guys in the White House to federal prison and it was out of that pain that God woke him up and led him to ultimately serve other people in prison.

Finally, God can use pain to lead us to Himself.

I have a letter that I received from a friend years ago that I keep handy.  My friend had recently visited a man in the hospital who was diagnosed with inoperable malignant brain cancer.  This man knew he was going to die soon.  At first, he thought “Why does God do this to me?!” – which led to many spiritual discussions with my friend, Ron.

Over time, Ron was able to introduce this man to Jesus Christ.  The man prayed and received the forgiveness of Christ, and securing his eternal life in heaven.  Believe it or not, he ended up actually saying the words, “Thank God for cancer.  Not that I’m enjoying the process or that I want to die, but if I had to go through cancer and this short-term suffering in this life to gain eternal life with God… THANK GOD FOR CANCER!”

Ultimately, God can bring the good of eternal salvation even from the worst of bad and painful suffering, if we will submit to Him in the process, humbling ourselves and willing to say, “Lead me to truth.”

So, going back to my other friend’s story about driving through the night in the dense fog of Wisconsin, following the taillights of a truck in front of him.  He didn’t know what was ahead of the truck, but he trusted the truck to lead him to safety.  My friend told me, “The fog eventually began to lift, the rain began to let up, and we ultimately made it to a town with some streetlights.  There, as we rounded a curve, silhouetted in the night sky, was the steeple of a church and the cross of Christ.  It’s that cross that gives ultimate meaning to our suffering.  Because it tells us that we do not have to suffer alone.  Jesus suffers along with us.”

Psalm 34:18 tells us:

The Lord is close to the broken hearted

and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

So, I’ll just conclude with this:  Evil is not good, but God can bring good out of it.  The problem of evil is not easy to answer, but we have good things to say about it.  We don’t have the full answer, but we have the best answer.  I certainly would rather have the problem of evil than the denial of evil of atheism or the deification of evil that we see in eastern religions.  And ultimately, I believe that we can trust the God who came and suffered in our place so that we can have salvation.

For more encouraging and engaging videos and podcasts, visit the E-Squared Media Network at www.e2medianetwork.com.