Theology in the Raw - If God Is Good, Why Does He Allow Suffering? Dr. Chris Palmer

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

Dr. Chris Palmer is the Dean of Ministry and Theology at Southeastern University in Lakeland, FL. He holds a PhD from Bangor University (Wales, UK) and is the author of eight books. His research expertise includes the Book of Revelation, suffering/theodicy, and Pentecostal Studies. In this conversation, Chris helps us understand the age-old problem of evil. If God is good, then why does he allow good people to suffer. Register for the Austin conference on sexualtiy (Sept 17-18) here: https://www.centerforfaith.com/programs/leadership-forums/faith-sexuality-and-gender-conference-live-in-austin-or-stream-online Register for the Exiles 2 day conference in Denver (Oct 4-5) here: https://theologyintheraw.com/exiles-denver/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your mom hates it when you leave six half-full glasses on your nightstand. It's a good thing mom lives on the other side of the country. And it's an even better thing that you can get six IKEA 365 plus glasses for just $9.99. So go ahead, you can afford to hoard because IKEA is priced for student life. Shop everything you need for back to school at IKEA today. Introducing TD Insurance for Business with customized coverage options for your business. Because at TD Insurance,

we understand that your business is unique. So your business insurance should be too. Contact a licensed TD Insurance Advisor to learn more. Hello friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I got a couple of events coming up that you might be interested in. I'm going to be at Austin, Texas, September 17th through 18th at family life, life family church.

I'm posting a two day conference on faith, sexuality, and gender. If you want to attend that conference either live or virtually all the information that center for faith.com. And these go to the events tab, look up all the information there. We also have our two day exiles in Babylon conference in Denver, Colorado, October 4th to 5th space is starting to fill up. If you want to attend that exiles conference, and I highly recommend that you do, it's all the information is that theology in the raw doc. Okay. My guest today is Dr. Chris Palmer.

He is the Dean of ministry of theology at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida. He holds a PhD from Bangor University in Wales. He is the author of eight books and has spent a lot of his research time on the problem of suffering in the book of Revelation. And so we widen our scope a little bit. We don't focus just on the book of Revelation, but I did want Chris to come on the show to help walk us through the age-old problem of evil. If God is good, why does he allow bad things to happen? God can stop it, chooses not to. We don't know why. And so Chris and I wrestle with that really important question here on the show. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Chris Moorer. Chris, thanks for being a guest on The Owls of Iran.

It's so good to be a Preston, a big fan of the show. And as I was telling you earlier, so to be on for me is a special honor. Well, I'm honored to have you on. I mean, except for that tiger's hat you're wearing. But let that one slide. I didn't do it maliciously, but now that I have it on, I have to represent them. Give us a bit of a background of who you are, what got you into theology, what's your theological tradition? Yeah, so PhD from Bangor University in North Wales.

I studied under Dr. John Christopher Thomas. My thesis was entitled, Suffering in Theodicy in the Apocalypse, a Pentecostal Exploration, which speaks to the tradition that I've been raised in my entire life, which is Pentecostalism. If people don't know what that is and they Google it, they may find some pretty interesting things on a Google search. But currently, I'm the Dean of Theology and Ministry at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida. And so that's where I find myself at the moment. Just very interested in all things, theodicy, suffering, kind of the bigger questions of why these things happen and how we should pursue them and think about them

theologically and practically. What do we do? How do we offer a philosophical, theological, even practical and pastoral response? Pastored for seven years as a lead pastor in Michigan. And so in my tenure in being a lead pastor as well as traveling and speaking, I did missionary work in 40 nations. I've seen a lot of suffering. I've been next to people who have suffered. And I just think that that is central to how we go about ministry, how we think about God and how we serve the Lord. So these are things that were very much part of being in full-time ministry. And as I leaned into doctoral work, it was something that I wanted to give my best crack at and tried to do that in my thesis and don't find myself

any more closer to the answer. But I think there's some good takeaways from it that I'm happy to share with you today. Did you, did I hear you right? 40 nations? Yeah. You did administrative 40 nations? It spoke or did pastoral conferences or did missionary work. Wow. Yeah, 40 different nations. That's a lot. It's a lot. In my 30s, I spent a lot of time on airplanes. We'll just say that. Okay.

Wow. That's crazy, man. I don't know. This couldn't be offensive. I don't mean this offensive. It's just a genuine question. When I think of the Pentecostal Church, I don't think of... Am I right to say that the Pentecostal Church isn't typically producing loads of people who had earned PhDs in biblical studies?

Like I just don't- Yeah, that's not taken offensively at all. That is absolutely the case. Pentecostals in the early years, they were never anti-intellectual because when you read their early literature, you'll find that they gave reasonable thought to everything that they were doing, but they had a deep distrust for the academy because they felt at the time- That's my sense, yeah. Yeah, they had a distrust for the academy because of higher criticism and critical engagement

with the text that they felt was not offering a very vibrant presence in parts of the world that didn't have a thriving Christianity. So in their missional aspect after what the movement in American Pentecostalism that was taking place in Azusa Street, they kind of overrode the system at the time and felt that, you know what, we're not going to go with the current idea that it takes formal training to offer missionaries. So we're gonna go out there in faith and in the power of the Spirit that they experienced at Pentecost or I should say at Azusa Street, which they felt was a reviving of Acts 2 and they went and

they offered missionary support. And so the Pentecostal attitude or at least the American Pentecostal tradition has been not so much anti-intellectual as it has been anti-academy. But now there are scholars that are saying that there's another wave of Pentecostalism that's emerging that is a more thoughtful and more trusting of academics or the academy, I should say. So there seems to be a migration of Pentecostal scholars that are coming along and asking questions like, what does Pentecostal hermeneutics look like? What does the Pentecostal tradition offer to theological traditions and engagement with the text? And so that's where it finds itself. Things like Journal

of Pentecostal Theology, NUMA, these journals offer real good approaches to Pentecostal theology. So, usually people will say, well, Pentecostalism, and they think of the worst examples of that, what they may have seen on TV or some videos or clips on Instagram. But give it a fair shot and read some of the journals and that kind of shows you where the scholars are at at the moment. I had a colleague of mine when I was doing my PhD at Aberdeen, there was one, I think it was like 25 students maybe doing PhDs in biblical studies at the time and one, I think he was AOG, but he said, yeah,

but my tradition is not, he was, you know, produced, exactly what you said, I had this kind of anti-more academy kind of bet to it. And I could understand the concerns there, I kind of resonate with that. But if that spills over into anti-intellectualism, that's when it's a problem. But, and another buddy who did a PhD at Cambridge, same thing. He got, he got one deterrent.

He was, he, he wanted to really bring robust intellectual theology back into the Pentecostal church. And he was, he was a dynamite scholar too. He was really good. So, well, that's cool, man. So I, I brought you on because you did your dissertation on the Odyssey, the problem of evil and suffering. So this is a question I have not dug deep into.

I've got some almost like lay level thoughts on it, largely from the book of Job and the book of Revelation, which I know is your expertise. But let me just set it up. So if God is good and God is all-powerful, why do really horrific things happen to innocent people? Let's just set it up with that. Yeah, let's start with small questions. I think we all, I'm not going to duck the question, but I will preface it with this. I'm trying to be very sensitive in how I say things because myself, I think compared to a lot of people, I've experienced very little suffering.

Not to minimize the suffering I've experienced, but there are going to be people who are listening to this who have experienced tremendous suffering. They're going through tremendous suffering. I don't want to come across as trying to give an answer or trying to make sense of that for them and be very pastorally sensitive. I think what I have found, Preston, in my experience with this, that my pastoral commitments, I think I've placed, I've prioritized those, that whatever I offer theologically, metaphysically, or philosophically, I want that to be, you know, on pace with my pastoral commitments that whatever I bring to the table needs to be for the encouragement

and the edification of people that I'm talking to because the truth is we all suffer. And if we're not suffering now, we just need to live long enough and we're going to suffer and we often suffer through seeing other people suffer and so there's layers of that. To your question, the short end of it is I don't know. I don't have the answer to that and I think that theodyssean studies, that's a word that I think I haven't seen anybody use it. So maybe I created that word theodyssean studies. Theodyssean studies, studies on theodyssey, the question I just raised. Yeah, right. It doesn't necessarily have to get at that to think about suffering. The way that theodicy is typically defined, it comes from two Greek words, theos, which means God and dek, which means justice. So it's really a defense of the justice of God in

light of the fact that there's evil. So we have a conundrum that you presented that has been raised as early as the time of Epicurus, probably before him, but in a record show Epicurus was asking this question. Voltaire asked this question. Leibniz asked this question. David Hume really popularized this question. And that is, hey, we have the existence or we assume the existence of an omnipotent God who's benevolent and good, and yet we have the reality of evil. So how do we reconcile that proposition? As studies have continued forward, I think that where it finds itself, and we'll talk about this and unravel it, is that theodicy can

really just be any thoughtful exploration of the problem of evil and suffering, the goodness of God. And so that exploration that we do doesn't necessarily require us to always have to feel responsible to posit an answer, because we don't really We don't find that and so where I stand on this is I Don't know the answer to that but I do know that there are some good things to think about intellectually and That whatever we do should posit a pastoral response to help people that are in suffering now Sort of back to the conundrum that we set up, the syllogism that I just mentioned, what is interesting is that it seems that suffering is the big question and

it leads to people's deconstruction. Either they're moving away from God or they're never moving toward God. So there's two things you could say that, well, I was serving God and then I thought more about this question And then I'm no longer serving God or they find themselves in the agnostic position or even maybe a holy militant atheist position where they feel that it's their duty to you know warn people about The problematic issues that come with believing in God. What's interesting is that there's two different mindsets about this. There's the pre-modern mindset. And when the pre-moderns,

prior to the Enlightenment, thought about this question, they looked at it and said, okay, we have to prioritize one of two of these propositions in this conundrum. Do we prioritize the existence of God or do we prioritize the fact that there's evil? And they prioritize the existence of God. And so for them, they maintain that there was a God who existed and they were more or less okay with not being able to reconcile what is evil, how do we think about evil? That just sort of remained a mystery for them. And it wasn't, for the most part, part of or reason to move away from believing in God. A lot of that changed though in 1755, at least as we read history, we find out that there was an earthquake in Lisbon and it was on All Saints' Day, and thousands of people, even churchgoers, were

killed in that earthquake. And Voltaire comes along and he writes a poem, and the poem, basically, the effect of it caused people to readjust their commitments to that syllogism. So they're no longer starting with the presumption God exists, they now begin to prioritize the commitment that evil and suffering exists, does God exist? And that sort of became the modern mindset for this. And I think that's where we find a lot of our culture. We start with, we know that there's evil. However, we define that. That would be talking about the ontology or the theological look at evil would be a great discussion. But we know that there's something wrong with the world and we know that there are innocent people who suffer and it even seems that there are people who are not so innocent that get

off the hook. Where is God in all this? And that, I think the modern mindset is where we find ourselves today. Real quick, pre-modern, modern, and then maybe post-modern. Where does this shift from pre-modern to modern? Is it around the mid-18th century, like you said? Yeah, I think when it comes to theodicy, it would be at that time of the earthquake. I can't say that's absolutely certain, but it seems at that point there was something that took place that really

caused people to think differently about evil and the problem of evil and God. That was certainly a watershed moment for that. So for that question, I think that would be 1755. So as a Christian, let's just assume, for those who believe in God, the God of the Bible, you know, have a, for lack of better terms, I know this term is debated, but an evangelical approach to, you know, God and the Bible and everything. They believe the Bible is true, what it says about God is true. What are our various options for understanding the question you kind of mentioned? You know, where is God when one person is suffering tremendously? I can give specifics, but rather not, I don't, you know, um, but your, your mind can go there and just say, okay, let's just picture a scenario where it's, where

it's just a horrific suffering. And then right next to them, right next door is somebody who there are no choice of their own is just not there. They're actually living a great life. Maybe the person that's suffering tremendously is actually a really good person that they're very selfless or self, you know, they say they're a believer in Jesus, you know, they're following Jesus, they're very, they're very other centered, the other person, maybe they're kind of a jerk, maybe they're a

confessing Christian, but they're a, you know, a hypocrite, maybe they're very immoral internally, whatever, and then they have hardly any suffering in their life. How do we make sense of that? Where is God in those? And I guess the one Matthew does, what are our various options, just on a theological level of how Christians have approached it? Matthew 18 Okay, so we'll look at it from a theological level, and since you said as a Christian, we'll start with the presumption and the commitment that we hold the Bible as our authority. So we're not looking at it philosophically now. We're looking at it in a way that we are examining the text and what the text has to say.

I think, Preston, the reason why there is an open-ended question mark about this is because there are very few clean lines in Scripture for what actually evil is. And that can be difficult. I think it has to start with evil. What is evil? And I think the tax gives us four ways of looking at evil, all of which are somewhat different from one another, but in a way integrated. And we're not really left with this robust ontology of evil. It's still somewhat of a mystery to us as to what it is. And that keeps us from really making sense of the why question as easily as saying 2 plus 2 is 4 or the sky is blue and the grass is green because of this.

For instance, if we look at evil, we asked the question, well, what is evil? The scripture, I think, begins by showing evil as chaos. I mean, we come into the text and we see that there is a flood. We see that there are chaotic things that are taking place in the creation account. And then we look at Job, something that you have mentioned. We see a very orderly world that when Job questions God and asks God about the creation, or excuse me, his own suffering, God points to a very orderly world, but then he uses chaotic beasts, Leviathan and Behemoth, and we see, hey, these are very chaotic beasts that we don't know why they're there, we don't know what their purpose is, and they are part of an orderly world. And so it seems like

within the orderly, you know, there is the chaotic. We're not really given an answer for that. And then we move away from chaos language that we find in Scripture, and we see that there is the Old Testament, New Testament, that evil really is sin described as the transgression of the law. You know, when we disobey God and we don't do what He says, there is suffering that takes place. That's not to say that all suffering comes from that. I mean, those are usually, yeah, okay. So which would be a punishment, theodicy, the idea that suffering comes as a result of sin all the time, which is not the case. I would never suggest to say that. Some people do believe that, right? That is part of the Christian tradition,

that if you are suffering, it's because of some sin in your life. Yeah, that is a very online belief that people do hold to. And I think it's very over-truncated in one size as well. I mean, that can't be something that we always resort to. I think that's not to say it's not the result, but it doesn't always lead to suffering. I think the text is pretty clear about that in different places. And then number three, we look at evil as suffering. And so suffering as being a general misfortune that takes place. This may be where car accidents fall into sudden things that take place that we're not expecting to see.

And then finally, there's the metaphysical, uh, cosmic element of suffering. We spend in the modern mindset has resisted this. Modern hermeneutics has really resisted this. Um, people that have demythologized scripture have resisted this category of evil, but that is cosmic evil, um, Satan, demons, X, et cetera. And that seems to be evil. And so the question then is, what is the correlation between the cosmic and sin? What's the correlation between the cosmic and chaos? What's the correlation between suffering and chaos? And are they always related? And so we find ourselves with

this very unclean ontology and description of evil and there are no clear-cut answers as to why and we're left to make sense of our pain and our suffering and and probably the majority of people other people suffering pretty much suffering it in a sense of know, we look at the Holocaust and we look at the Cambodian genocide and the genocide that takes place in South Sudan and the suffering of people groups and the marginalized and, you know, wherever they're suffering, how do we make sense of that? And I think we're drawing lines. So what I would say is that as responsible thinkers, as responsible theologians, we should be very slow to draw those lines and offer answers as to why they're taking place because

that could cause crippling effects for people that are very deep and last a long time. I mean, there are individuals I've talked to, even pastoring, where these truncated answers for suffering have been given to them and has caused them to be traumatized for a long time and really loathe themselves, loathe their place in life, and even loathe God. So we have to be very slow and responsible. So I think that when we do, we're always thinking about the Odyssey. I mean, that's something we're always doing. We're always asking questions about why we suffer, why suffering happens.

We can either back those questions away, deal with them in the moment, or we can really fully investigate. The only thing is when we decide to fully investigate, we have to be responsible in doing that. So I think that responsibility is priority in these instances, Preston. Can you give us some examples of those truncated responses? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, okay. So number one, sin is caused somebody's suffering. So somebody goes into the hospital to do a

hospital visit, which I used to do, I mean, literally thousands. My first job in ministry, I worked in downtown Detroit, inner city Detroit, and I did 1800 hospital visits in two years. And oftentimes, I'd go and pray for people and ask the Lord to heal them and those people would die. And I heard at times just people say, well, they didn't have enough faith or they didn't want to believe. There's always something always went wrong on that person's end. And so in what that really is, is a theodicy that tries to defend God.

I mean, it's not God, so it has to be the person, even though they won't admit that. That's what you're led to believe. And so, that can be deeply troubling. I've walked through some seasons of life with people who are going through that. Another theodicy, which is very interesting, it's probably the primo theodicy in the Christian world, is Augustinean free will the Odyssey. Augustine was a very interesting character. I really admire him. I think Confessions is just a tremendous book. Everybody should read City of God. These are great books. In City of God, he wrestles with

the problem of evil and the Odyssey. And the way that Augustine really starts to get at it is that he boils it down to evil exists because of man's free will. We have a free will and because of human's free will or because of angelic cosmic free will, now we have the problem of evil. I think that only gets us so far because if you play this game long enough and try to answer that question, what you get to is the question's always going to come back. If God has created such a perfect creation, so perfect in fact, then why is there an impulse to actually sin?

So I really care about my health, which is why I try to eat healthy. But even though I eat healthy, there are certain nutrients that are just really hard to get through diet alone. This is why I've been drinking AG1 almost every day now for over a year. With every scoop of AG1, I know I'm getting nutrient diversity from a variety of whole food source ingredients.

One scoop a day provides you with essential nutrients, it promotes my gut health and also supports my immune health. What I do is I usually drink it first thing in the morning before I have my coffee. And I seriously, I notice a difference. I have more sustained energy throughout the day. I don't have that afternoon crash. My mind is clear and I just feel better.

I would say AG1 is perfect, especially if you're in a high stress job or if you're on the go a lot, especially if you travel a lot. So I travel a decent amount and I always pack AG1 when I'm on the road. Sometimes I'll even take it twice a day since traveling takes a lot of wear and tear on your body and AG1 really helps keep you healthy when you're on the go. It's super easy to drink. It actually tastes good. It has like a mild refreshing flavor that's not overly sweet. It goes down easy so you don't wake up dreading it. If there's one product out there that I trust to support my whole body health, it's AG1. That's why

we have partnered with them for so long. Start investing in your health with AG1. Try AG1 today and get a free bottle of Vitamin D3K2 and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. Just go to drinkag1.com forward slash TITR. That's drinkag1.com forward slash TITR. Check it out. Where my mind went is like, DQ presents, picture this, picture the Reese's extreme blizzard back for a limited time. Reese's peanut butter Cups and Reese's Pieces blended together with world famous soft serve in one Blizzard treat! It's a dream treat for Choco Peanut Butter lovers. Wait, are you dreaming? Well check, are there any dinosaurs around? Are you riding a unicorn? Are you back in high school?

No? Then oh yeah, this Reese's Extreme Blizzard is real! Hurry in to DQ today. DQ, happy tastes good. Okay, but God, that doesn't address the question, because of course humans are evil, they do bad things. There's a genocide in South Sudan. Why? Because people are evil and they like to kill others. And, you know, but God can overcome that. He's sitting up there with all the power in the world, able to stop it. And he's choosing not to stop it. And yet, if there is a evil that's solved in somewhere

else in the world, we would say, thank you, God, for intervening. But that raises a question. Okay, if that's true, why are they not here? Is he not omnipresent? Is he not omnipotent? Was he not fast enough to go here and there? I mean what? Yes, we definitely help. Yeah, so on to the next right? So we see that Augustine and free will doesn't really help us get to get to that I mean it may answer give some overtures, but it doesn't really answer the question So there was a brilliant man I say brilliant doesn't mean a group everything he did and says I should say but his name is John Hick a Theodicist he comes along and and he attempts to look at this and say, hey, the reason why evil is here is because

evil offers this opportunity for good to come of it, right? And so when evil or suffering takes place, good comes of that suffering. And he makes the best case for that. But again, you see the apparent problem with that, that it seems that evil and suffering is necessary to bring about good. And the problem with that is, and people will use that in less formal ways. I mean, oftentimes, you know, when somebody is going through, when we have a deep tragedy that takes place, and I don't even like to mention the kind of tragedies that we face, somebody might say, but you know, somebody got saved because of this or somebody, somebody,

you know, this and that. And I don't subscribe to this. Yeah, no, no, this is a very popular and I want to respond to this, but yeah, keep going. I would detour that. I would detour that for a lot of ways because usually more times than not, and not to say it doesn't happen, but usually what we find is the sufferer is not the one saying that. The victim is not the one saying that. It's usually people that are around it. You know, we just had this conversation with some friends the other day. I was talking to them and they said, well, what's your take on it? And I said, my take is that we have to be very slow about making these sorts of conclusions and

trying to tell the story. And the goal should not always be having a very clean cut answer for this because it just, we never get to that place. I think being responsible is saying, hey, I'm okay with not having a very robust clean cut answer for this, but what I know I'm not going to do is offer these truncated examples. So, I mean, again, if you have this idea that the reason that evil still exists is because good comes of it, What that does is it diminishes the atrocities of evil sometimes. It diminishes the effects of evil. It downplays the tragedy and the evilness of evil, I should say, because we're like, well, good's come of it. Good does come of evil, but that's not, that is not the reason why, that cannot, I should

say, that cannot be the reason why evil happens. I have a good friend, they listen to the podcast. So they, I hope they get this. Well, I won't give the nitty gritty specifics, but they lost a daughter to cancer. The daughter was, I believe seven, maybe eight years old, like under 10. Um, and as one of those were tons of people, you got cancer. Obviously, you know, this is such a rare thing. People prayed, I think she got healed and then went back and ended up dying.

And, uh, gosh, I'm there just can't even imagine. Um, and you know, people said, they said this, but you know, but, you know, God's going to use this to bring people to himself. And, and he did. I think if you look at the results, good things came about, but you know, she sat there saying, well, can, can, can God use somebody else's kid as a, as a teaching lesson? Like really is that like, how does that comfort me? You know, like could, could God not bring good about not letting this absolute horrific thing happen?

Um, God uses other people and doesn't take away their young kids. And he can still use either he, there's, there's other ways you can teach the world about, you know, the goodness of God. So yeah, I, I, um, as much as that response, it could sell good on paper again, to people that are the ones suffering and maybe there's some truth to it too. The good comes about. It's just pastoral. It's just.

Strange. Really cringe. And I think is it lacks, I think a holistic biblical response to, but, um, yeah, really does. So what are we? Yeah. So, okay, keep going. What are we left with? We're leaving. Yeah, so we're leaving. There's actually identified 11 different ways in my thesis, but we'll just talk about a few more here. 11 different ways in which Christians have tried to solve the problem of people.

Okay. Yeah, and there's ongoing innovation in, in this. We're, we're, we're still in the philosophical areas here or the theological areas. So another, so maybe you're somebody who gets tired of this, which would be the intellectual enterprise of trying to figure this out. You kind of become the anti-theatrist. Okay. Where you're like, you know what, this entire project is a cat's game, this entire project is a failed project, and to think about evil and explore it intellectually only causes more suffering.

Those that do that, we usually appeal to the book of Job. When Job's friends come to Job, try to explain to Job, hey, and they use a punishment theodicy, okay, hey, the reason you're here, Job, is because you've sinned. There's some really fascinating observations we can make about that. There's some goodness, they're speaking for God, they're thinking they can speak for God, they're thinking that they understand the mystery of the divine, they really draw these big presumptions. And Joe comes back to them and he says, you know, these are whitewashed truths. He comes back to them and says that, you know, your assertions

are like ashes. And he really has a problem with their attempt to make sense of his suffering. So that's the anti-theodotist who says, hey, it's just going to cause more suffering to do that. And I completely get that. But I also think that there is something to be gained to think about suffering. And I'm really not comfortable with nixing the entire Christian tradition that has given time to explore an evil, I'd rather just accept that these explorations of evil, including my own, are insufficient. And intellectual enterprise is usually the last thing somebody is looking for in the moment of immediate suffering or in the aftermath of horrendous evils is that intellectual enterprise, and this is really what I argued in my thesis, in and of itself is really deficient to provide what the sufferer is in need of, and that's not

always an intellectual reconciliation or people that are confused or distraught, I should say, not confused, but distraught and disparate by suffering. It's just that it can't be that we just need intellectual answers for these things, because at the end of the day we don't have a good clean answer for this. And my thing is, it doesn't have to be the bane of Christian theology. I mean, we... So, what is interesting, the interesting point to make is that Christian theology, even after our best systematics, even after sitting with Millard Erickson and Wayne Grudem and Michael Burbs, you know, cis theos, we still have questions and we still know that the Trinity is a mystery to us. We understand that the hypostatic union remains a mystery to us. And I would

put the problem of evil, the ontology of evil, really, somewhere in that category of mystery that just because it's a mystery doesn't mean we stop thinking about it. Just because it's a mystery doesn't mean that we offer truncated answers for it. But it helps us in the spirit of humility, in the spirit of Christ, in the spirit of Christian unity, and with a pastoral heart that has been deeply affected by the Spirit in our communion with God to think about these things as we look for the hope of Christ coming. That makes sense, Preston. Yes, it makes perfect sense. And I, um, I appreciate the nuance with that. If, if, if, if we just asked kind of just a raw, rough, biblical, like asked for a biblical response.

Um, I've often thought that, you know, canonically the book of Job is really where we should go. Like then it's one of the largest books in the Bible. The entire book is dedicated to this question. There's other passages that are very relevant and we will get to the book of Revelation. And there's parts in the book of Romans, I think that are relevant. There's lots of Psalms, you know, but here we have, and this is, this is my theory. Please, you know, after I've done explaining correctly, if I'm wrong, the

book of Job is from beginning to end really dedicated to this. So canonically, we should say, okay, let's give some kind of pride of place to the book of Job. The response is, um, it's not Job's sin. Okay. So it wipes that one off like that, that, you know, his three friends are capturing bits of the truth, but they end up being given an inadequate response. There must be sin in your life.

That's still, you know, if there's bad things that happen, they must have done something wrong. We know that that's not the best response in the end. God basically says, uh, I'm God, you're not trust me. And I'm not going to give me the answer. The end. Yeah. It's like, I mean, it sounds hard, but I'm just, again, it's, it's, sometimes the Bible's

not very pastorally sensitive, if I could be honest. And God seems pretty upset at Job for even asking the questions. But then he does get like his family or he gets a new family and he gets kind of restored. So you have a little bit of this like kind of trends. I mean, it's like reward theology going on. But then if you think practically like it's okay, he got a whole new family back, but he's not his old, his whole family is so dead. You know, it's like, I don't know.

So it's just, in a sense, it's a very God-centered response that's not really satisfying to me, quite honestly. But maybe that is, like- I think you're saying it right. I think you're absolutely saying it right. Especially, I mean, I live by a saying, well, I should say my scholarly mind in this field kind of reminds myself of a saying,

and that is, there is no satisfying theodicy. There just isn't. And we have to start off with that foot. I mean, I have to remind myself pretty regularly that, hey, if you're going to explore this, you're not going to get something that really satisfies you intellectually. And I can speak to that in just a second. We just can't tie up the loose ends here. And then the question becomes, well, does my faith in Christ, does my service to His kingdom, does my service to the body of Christ, and does my prayer life and how I pray and how I interact with the suffering world depend on that? And I don't think it does. I think our life in Christ depends on the work of the Spirit that transforms us and leads us into Christ despite the horrors and the tragedies and the atrocities

that we find. And so, where I tried to move the project of Theodicy, and I'm not saying others haven't done this, but I tried to build on it and maybe push it as far as I could go, was to say if we're going to do theodicy, as an intellectual enterprise, and think about it, there has to be a formative work of the Spirit that is taking place within us, that is drawing us into Christ, drawing us into God's heart for the world, drawing us into God's heart for the suffering. And I think that as we're shaped in Christ, and as the Spirit works in our lives, that gives us a better orientation, not a perfect orientation, but that begins to give us a better orientation to how we should speak to the suffering. And here is probably the bigger point, how we should help the suffering make sense of their suffering. And here's probably the bigger point, how we should help the suffering make

sense of their suffering. Because that's where we find ourselves a lot of the times is coaches, I should say, for lack of a better word, to those who are suffering as mentors, as confidants. When someone says, I'll give you an example, Preston. When I began pastoring in Michigan years ago, I was two weeks into being a lead pastor and a dear woman in my church who I loved tremendously. She was someone I knew prior to pastoring. She had come to the church with her son. Two weeks later, her son died in a drug overdose.

He had just graduated high school. It was her only son. And his name was Matthew, which meant gift of God. And she looked at him his entire life as a gift from God. And this tragedy kind of popped up. And I remember going to do the funeral. And it was just stark because here he is, laid to rest in the same outfit that he had in his senior picture. It was a very, very frightening tragedy. And I remember really pastorally thinking to myself, I have nothing to say to this precious woman of God. I have zero answers to offer her. And at times, it was challenging to even piece anything together

in prayer or in pastoral counsel. I just constantly felt that I was falling short. But over time, I mean, it was, I think we marched through this together for five years. There was a trial that took place. Being present at the trial, being near her, calling her, having the saints call her. We weren't giving to her intellectual answers, which she really wanted, but in offering the support, loving her by the Spirit, it was after, I think, five and a half years, she came up to me on a Sunday,

randomly, gave me a big hug and she said, Pastor, if it wasn't for the church, if it wasn't for your support in these five years and your patience and your kindness, I don't know if I would be here today. And so that demonstrated to me something I think is important and that is, as we work through suffering, especially other people's suffering, we do it through the work of the Spirit and it's a process. And it's not a process that requires an intellectual solution, immediate especially, but we're in it for the long haul for people. And in that time, when we're devoid of answers, we look to the Spirit to help

shape our faithfulness to Christ when we don't have answers. And I know that sounds, it can sound cliche, but I think that is where we find ourselves. So you're saying even if somebody, so I guess now we are leading a little bit more into the pastoral response, you're saying even if somebody is wanting an intellectual response, where was God in this? How does this make sense? What does the Bible say? Are you saying it may still be best to say, you know what, I don't know,

but I'm going to be here with you in the process and just be more emotionally and physically present with the process and just be more emotionally and physically present with the person and just kind of... Yeah, and I would caveat it through, yeah, however this looks, it would be another conversation, but through the presence of the Holy Spirit and the power and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. I think that's very key and that's very central. But yes, because I don't think at that time when somebody's suffering, I

remember one time I sat down with a young gal, her brother had committed suicide. And she sat with me and she was two years after this and she said, why, why did God let this happen? And I attempted to give her my best crack at it intellectually and just, it just wasn't working. And it wasn't like I was making bad cases. I mean, this was, I think at the moment I was dotting all the I's and crossing all the T's into how it approached the discussions in the classroom, but I really didn't do it for them. And so, I don't think that there is an answer to why. Again, I think that goes back to theologically, we don't have a robust ontology of evil. You know, when we look at suffering and sin, I mean, we don't have an

answer in Scripture for the original impulse of sin. I mean we don't have an answer in Scripture for the original impulse of sin. I mean we kind of show up, we kind of open up the story. There's creation then it cuts to a garden and there's a serpent in there. So we see evil in the Garden of Eden and we don't know how it got there. We don't know where it came from. Those that make the hermeneutical move of reading Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28, and those passages to show Lucifer falling in his own rebellion. Then the question goes back to the same question. How in his

perfectness did he have an impulse to rebel and how can that be? And guys like Karl Barth tried to explain evil as nothingness or just the absence of God. But see, and I think the issue that I have with that, I think not to deduce Bart and reduce him, but I think that to say that evil is nothing is problematic because when evil manifests, it shows up as the corruption of the thing it's corrupting. So it is something. And I don't think you can just reduce it to nothingness, but it's present. So I had to approach this going back to kind of what we first talked about, Preston. I asked the question and tried to further this because there wasn't

a lot of discussion about it. In my tradition, speaking as a Pentecostal, and I realized that if someone's Reformed listening to this, they may disagree with what I'm saying about Augustine. I totally respect that. A Catholic may disagree what I'm saying about Aquinas. I respect them tremendously And hey, this is a discussion. You're fair to take the position you want. My thought is what does a Pentecostal do? You know, how do the Pentecostals in? Approach this and when I started to notice that I read the literature beginning in 1907, which was a very interesting time because you know know, in 1917, 1918, 1990, even before that, you had World War I taking place and you had the Spanish, you had the

flu pandemic taking place. And, you know, you had this deep time of tragedy that's going on. And it seems in the literature that Pentecostals really did not try to go beyond a theological explanation. They just kind of followed the text. They said, hey, sin is suffering and is a result of the fall. Sin is a result of the fall. But they never went beyond that to offer any type of metaphysical explanation, any philosophical explanation.

They just kind of stayed with where the text said, and they did that minimally, but when you read those texts, what you see is efforts to go and aid the famine that's taking place in India, efforts to go to South Africa and bring aid to the people that are that are suffering down there. There was one-way tickets bought to Africa, Western Africa, because there was deep tragedy at the time. So there's this real hefty emphasis on response and doing it through the power of prayer and through the power of the Spirit. And I think that when we focus on having an accurate pastoral response, that there can be glimpses into the character and nature of God that are revealed through there that we can't derive solely from intellectual

exploration, if that makes sense. Yeah, that's really good. I think it's honest. It doesn't solve the problem though. But I think that, you know, like I had written this about Pentecostals is that their response to the Spirit, their being, using their language, prayed up, full of the Spirit, you know, these types of charismaticisms. became their theological engagement with the text where it allowed them to see things or I hate to use this word renegotiate what they had already understood from the text and see sides of God and dimensions of God in suffering that maybe they wouldn't have seen before. It doesn't solve the problem, doesn't answer it, but what it does I think accomplish is it for it may produce endurance to continue to be faithful to Jesus,

faithful to the Lamb, and maintain eschatological hopefulness until Christ returns and makes things right. This episode is brought to you by Mazda. When you drive a Mazda, you'll find out why our SUVs won more 2024 IIHS top safety picks than any other brand as of June, 2024. Find out what makes Mazda different at Mazda.ca. It sounds like, so at the end of Job, I think it's chapter 42 verses four or five, six, seven somewhere around there, where Job says, I have heard about you at the end of Job, I think it's chapter 42 verses four, five, six, seven, somewhere around there, where Job says, I have heard about you at the hearing of the ears, but now I see you with my eyes. Basically I had a more distant, I had a rudimentary view of who you are, but now

having gone through suffering, I see you more clearly. Again, it sounds, this isn't my pastoral response necessarily to someone in the moment, but if you want me to step back and think theologically does God's allowance of suffering invite us deeper into the mysterious heart of God. And it sounds like that's kind of what Job's getting at. Okay. So if that sounds harsh, blame Job if I'm reading correctly. But also another question kind of followed up on that is, where does the suffering of Christ play into this? If Jesus is the most perfect revelation of theos of God and he is most fully revealed in his suffering, how does that factor in both

theologically and pastorally to bring in the suffering of Christ? Yeah. Well, this brings us to actually another theodicy, cruciform theodicy, which Moltmann popularized a lot in his response. But without getting into his theology, I should say that this, to answer your question most specifically, when we look at Christ, what makes the gospel beautiful, and I mean beautiful with the nuance of unique and promising and hopeful, is that in solving the problem of evil, Jesus, who is God, suffered with us and joined us in our suffering. So, he's been touched, he's been nicked, he's been brutalized with suffering, and he's joined us in that. So, he's not unfamiliar

with it. This kind of brings us to Revelation, which I know you're very familiar with. But we see what I dealt with was in Revelation 6, 9 to 11, I mean, you have souls that are under the altar in Revelation chapter 5, or excuse me, in the fifth seal, and they cry this, how long, O Lord, prayer, which, you know, this isn't the first time we've heard how long, O Lord. This is a cry that we've seen all throughout the Old Testament in the Psalms in times of Israel's distress, in times of the distress of the people of God, where they're vexed. I mean, vexed. They're just completely perplexed without answers. So that echoes that. How

long, O Lord, until you avenge our death? And you know, what we see is that the answer that they're given is they're given robes of white and they're told to wait. And as the narrative unfolds, what we start to see is that they're being encouraged to follow the lamb. And as you see, as they see the, and prior to that, the lamb, the first time we see the lamb, he's bloodied. He's a slaughtered lamb. He's been slain, but he's standing. And the heavenly host prays him because he's the one who was slain and he's conquered. So the question is, how do you conquer? How did Christ conquer? In Christ, he conquered in his death.

He overcame in spite of his death. And so I think that when we look at Christ and we look at the suffering question, Christ suffered, but in that suffering He overcame. And when we look at our lives as believers and as Christians, we look at it as though as we follow Christ and as we're faithful to Him, through the Spirit there is an overcoming that takes place as we remain faithful to Him. That doesn't mean that all of us are going to die. That doesn't mean that we should seek death and that we should seek more suffering, but it does mean is when that happens, we can trust that as we remain faithful to Christ, no matter what takes place in our lives, we overcome the way that he overcomes. And what assures

us that we will overcome is that he overcame. That's good. So it doesn't answer. There's like a bigger umbrella question of, well, why would a good God even set up the world this way? Why would he even ordain the path to reconciliation to be sending his son to suffer? He could have snapped his fingers and you know, he didn't, but he did do it this way. So we're working within a worldview where this is the centerpiece of reduction. Yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Yeah, yeah, go. Yeah, so, Dostoyevsky got into this question. You know, Brothers Karamazov is a tremendous book. They just think it's phenomenal. If I had to recommend one book, I'm not just

saying that to go with the crowd hype behind it, but it is tremendous. Ivan Karamazov is sitting in a pub with his brother Aloysia, and he's thinking about this very same question. If suffering, Aloysia is chatting with him, he's in the priesthood, he's starting to become a priest, he's on the father's oestimony. Now he has to answer this question, and Ivan starts to get at this. Okay, so suffering exists because it is through suffering that we have a more beautiful world. This is the problem that he's dealing with. And he says the famous line, if that's the case, I'm going to return my ticket to this world.

I don't want this kind of world. And he uses, and Dostoevsky, I mean, I heard somebody, he's my favorite author, I love him. But somebody mentioned that Dostoevsky, it's funny because when he writes, he could take 20 pages describing one little scene and then conclude in two paragraphs and you're like, but the writer says that what Dostoevsky is doing is he's just centering your head and getting your eyes to focus so they can bash you in the nose with the truth. I mean, he really does that the way he sets his rate up. And he uses the example of a child who is destroyed and torn apart by wild dogs, and he's using something so blatant and doesn't really hold back anything to answer that question.

So it's through this child's destruction that God brings about a perfect world. And you know, it seems that's deeply sinister and that there's deeply wrong. And I don't think we have, I think the point in that is we really don't have an answer to that. But then if you put that in conversation with Elie Wessel, Elie Wessel's book Knight, which is, I mean, I wept through that book. I read it. I think I would, I give it to my students to read. I tell them, before we start having the conversation of suffering, before we get into any intellectual enterprise, you need to read this book. Sob through that book and, you know, here he is in the Holocaust and someone says to

him, where is God after the hanging of a 13-year-old boy, and Elie Wessel points to the boy, this is his words, not mine, and says, up there. And what he's saying is that God has joined us, God is with us, God is present in this with us, and he points to the boy as the example, that God is on the gallows. I mean, articles have been written about that in particular. And so I think that what El know, what Eliwes' response to Ivan would be is that we don't know

why these horrendous evils take place, but from one sufferer, answering the question of a modern mind like Ivan is Jesus, or, well, Eliwes would have said, God, he's present with us in this. That's coming from a Holocaust victim there. So I'm just commentating this and suggesting some overtures toward this. But the unique place that Jesus plays in this with us is that he has suffered and he has suffered a very torturous death and overcame. But why is the world set up that way? Again, I think that goes back to the fact that we don't have a very robust ontology of evil and we don't have an explicit answer in the text. And I don't think that we should speculate in there because I think it is going to constantly

lead to dead ends. And also, I appreciate that you brought up Dostoyevsky. I read Brothers Karamazov a couple of years ago. That's a chore to get through. But man, the scene... You know, everybody talks about the Grand Inquisitor, that famous chapter of the book. To me, it's the chapter before that where Ivan is just pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing. And Walt with the problem of evil. So for those who don't know, Ivan is the agnostic intellect. Like he's an agnostic because he just is unsatisfied with the kind of like, he's

unsatisfied with these kind of cliched responses. And I, you know, I felt almost guilty that I resonated more with Ivan than Eliocia. I have the faith, hopefully, of Eliocia. You know, Eliocia is the Christian, the pastor, the good person, you know, like I want to be Eliocia. But if I'm honest with myself, I have a lot of Ivan in me and I appreciate that Dostoevsky. I think Ivan is, well, are all three characters kind of capturing a bit of Dostoevsky? Like, there's a bit of Ivan in him. Like these are genuine, heartfelt, unsolved questions

that Dostoevsky has as a believer, you know? But he pushed the problem of evil. And I remember ending the chapter before the Grand Inquisitor and I read it at night and I was like, okay, I need to wake up early tomorrow because I'm not gonna sleep all night because I was like, okay, I need to wake up early tomorrow because I'm not going to sleep all night because I need Alyosha to come rescue me because I'm about to lose my faith.

Yep. Yeah. I thought it was going to solve the problem of people that didn't. No, it doesn't. He paints his characters in such a way that I think we find a little bit of Dmitri, a little bit of Ivan, a little bit of Alyosha in all of us. And we find, I mean, in Crime and Punishment, we find Raskolnikov, at least the way he thought

in some of us. But as the book, yeah, I think you're right. I think the chapter rebellion is better than the Grand Inquisitor. I know everybody reads the Grand Inquisitor, but I stopped assigning Grand Inquisitor. I signed that chapter Because it really about the rebel is the one before yeah rebellion. Yep. It is it is powerful I mean not a good way sort of in a good way, but in a very honest way Yeah, and you know and then as the as the book proceeds forward Ivan really starts to crack up You know he has that scene where he sits with the debt he has this Hallucination of the devil and he sits with the devil and

he's losing his mind to the whole process. And there's different interpretations of what Dostoevsky is attempting to get at, one of which what I heard, and I'm not sure if there's Dostoevsky scholars that would listen to this would agree with this, but it is posited, is that even in our deepest questions about God, abandoning God in those questions doesn't really leave us in a better place to handle the suffering that we find in the world. So an agnostic can become agnostic about whether they believe in God or they could become a militant atheist, a new atheist. They could start siding up with Dawkins over there. But I don't think that

it posits, or it helps us in the face of suffering because then we get into some of the humanist sorts of questions and we just open new doors and find new dead ends, I think. Yeah. I've got a couple more thoughts, love that you hear your thoughts on it. First of all, the problem of evil is a problem for any worldview, right? I mean, if you have a completely naturalist, materialistic worldview,

that kind of just leads to nihilism, doesn't it? I mean, it seems like that would be the, like if I was a naturalist, I would just, I feel like I would end up being Samuel Beckett, you know, I would Like Yeah, I said I love that you went there press I get excited when you say that well Beckett when you read his books I mean just put Google his plays on on YouTube

It's kind of very disheartening to see I mean a seven second play of two people in a trash can Our breath is played. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. If you think about it really intentionally, it tends to lead to that. It leads to determinism. And the problem with determinism is, I mean, if you become an atheist, or you become, or I should say a naturalist, a very avowed naturalist, and you think that we're just living in this world that has nothing external to it, and you get into Sam Harris sort of determinism, and everybody is doing what the firings of their brains tell them to do, then how do you really call somebody bad and how do you really call somebody evil? And how do you really call somebody evil?

And how do you prosecute that person? So you get into questions of criminal justice and criminal ethics that lead to some dark, dark places. Right, yeah. Yeah, so it's not unique to the Christian worldview. It's in whatever world you have, you have to try to make sense of the problem of evil and suffering.

And the Christian worldview is the only one that has God participating in the suffering. That doesn't solve all our intellectual questions, but that does give a very unique and one might even say compelling take on it. My other thought is this, and this might stand, this might be part of what is underlying God's response at the end of Joe. I'm God, you're not. Where were you when I created the world?

I often thought this came up when people were losing their faith after 9-11. How could God allow this to happen? Which is a bit of an ethnocentric thing to say, really. I mean Not to minimize the suffering not 11, but it's like look around the world like this is this is but it happened on our way You know But then I thought well wait a minute. We have no clue. This is kind of hypothetical, but we have no clue How much evil God is stopping? We don't know if every day there's a hundred airplanes that God is stopping from flying into buildings where he's intervening to prevent people from doing evil things.

We don't know how many cases say of abuse or whatever that he's intervened and stopped. We don't know how many premature deaths that he has halted. We just don't know. If what if theoretically, what if God lets 1% of the evil go through and stops 99%? That doesn't solve the question about that 1%. But at least it wouldn't put it in perspective though, if we did have, if God said,

okay, I'm gonna peel back the curtain and I'm gonna show you all the stuff going on behind the scenes, then you could respond and have your opinions about, you know, my goodness. Yeah, that kind of goes back to the Ivan question, right? I mean, is it that Ivan is making an assumption that his modern mindset is able to account for what the divine is doing? And I think that could be one of the holes of modernity is that modernity was very confident in itself. Modernity was very confident in its methods

of making sense of the world, its science and its philosophies of economics, its philosophies of geopolitics, its philosophies of et cetera. And the modern mindset asserted itself as correct more times than not. I mean, but look at what modernity gave us. We ended up with two world wars. We ended up with famines. I mean, we ended up with a lot. We may have ended up with steam engines and etc. etc. But we got a lot of problems with it too. So modernity wasn't flawless. And I don't think the modern mindset is in this, Wallace, especially when it comes to asking questions about the divine. And Ivan may have been presuming something about God that he should not have been presuming at all.

And that is because they're suffering, there can't be God or he can't possibly be good. I mean, it is an appeal to mystery and it may be considered intellectual suicide to do this. But I think that, you think that we can't assert that just because that God isn't good because these things happen. There could be something that we don't know and we have to hold and believe that God is making things right in that.

And then again, to your point, Preston, God does miracles. I mean, there are miracles that do take place. We see those things. I firmly believe in that. Even cessationists, I think, would still attest the fact God does miracles. And because of that, He does intervene. So how do you explain the times He intervenes and the times that He doesn't intervene? Again, I don't think that we can explain it, but I think we can help people in their journeys into Christ and in their journeys and following Christ to make sense of those ways that I

think are faithful and keep people faithful to our Lord. That's good, man. Well, Chris, this has been a great conversation. You've given us a lot to think about. Do you have a, have you written some books or do you have a website you can direct people to to know more about you? Yeah, if they go to Chris Palmer on Amazon and they type in, I've written a book called Greek Word Study, Letters from Jesus. They can check that out. Chris Palmer, you just type that into Amazon and my stuff will pop up. I'm the dean at SCU, so you can check me out on the SCU website. Just go to SCU faculty, you'll see my little smiling picture there. And so we are ramping up for a school year and excited about it. But yeah.

We'll put links in the show notes below so if people want to check it out. Thanks a lot, Chris, for being a guest on The Algenra. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Preston. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.