Prayer Challenges

Current Challenge from Doug Knox.

October

Theology of the Gospel 3

Psalm 8

UNDERSTANDING THE REASON FOR EVIL IN THE WORLD, PART ONE

An Unusual Reply to an Important Question

Several years ago, I had the privilege to watch a young man’s ordination before a body of church elders. During the interview, one of the pastors asked a question that interested me deeply. “Why did God allow evil to enter the world?” It was an important question, and I waited to hear the candidate would say about it. However, he answered, “I don’t know.” I could not fault him. He was still young. But then the minister who asked the question replied, “I don’t know either.” I thought to myself, “No, no, no, don’t skip this question! The answer goes to the heart of the gospel!” This segment, along with the next, will explore that question and answer it.

The Genesis Account of the Beginning: Creation, Rebellion, Condemnation, and Salvation

The previous challenge discussed the importance of the creation account in Genesis 1–3 in the gospel message. Think about the account for a moment. The narrative for the entire Bible unfolds in three short chapters of Genesis. First, God created an unblemished man and woman, placed them in a perfect environment, provided them with everything they needed to experience satisfaction and fellowship with their Creator, and gave them a mandate to fill the earth and subdue it. That is, they were to take Eden into the world. Yet he placed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the Garden and told Adam not to eat from it. The first tragedy in history revolves around this single tree.

Second, we witness the man and his wife’s corruption. The serpent (the term in the original language suggests a majestic angelic being rather than an ordinary snake) enticed the woman into coveting the fruit for its forbidden qualities. The text says that she saw that the tree was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise in the matter of knowing good and evil. Their rebellion reaps devastating consequences. They experience shame in their nakedness and cover it with fig leaves. They hide from the LORD God. Their former marriage harmony degenerates into blame.

This results in the third stage when the LORD God pronounces condemnation on them. The effects of their sin follow throughout the remainder of human history. Finally, the unexpected occurs. In the middle the pronouncement of their death sentence, God utters a cryptic promise that ties the serpent to the woman (Genesis 3:15). Then he slaughters animals and clothed the man and woman with the skins (Genesis 3:21). Salvation comes into view by the death of the innocent for the guilty.

Difficult Questions

All of human history turns on these events. The story would have been so much easier if they had not occurred. The mystery drives us to the question that has confounded people for ages, “Why did God allow evil to enter the world?” Thankfully, the Bible answers the question. To grasp it, we must recognize the weight of two critical either/or decisions that the Bible records in the beginning:

The first decision involves God’s act of creation:
If he had made a “safe” world in which human beings were protected from rebellion, the tragedy not would have occurred. Instead, he created a world in which the man and woman had the capacity to choose evil. Why did God build the possibility for such a failure into his creation? This will be the focus of the present installment.

The second decision belongs to the man in the Garden:
God gave Adam a choice. He could trust his God and live in unbroken harmony, or he could eat the fruit of the tree and die. As we know, he and his wife indulged in it. Ever since, world history suffers under the consequences of their rebellion. This reality brings us to a what-if question. What would have happened if Adam and his wife had obeyed the LORD God’s command? We will consider this in the next study.

I promise good news. The questions have genuine answers, and when we see them spelled out, we will discover that the Bible’s ultimate answer is glorious beyond imagination.

The First Big Question

The question about a safe creation is a universal issue. Christians and non-Christians ask it at one time or another. And it is far more than a smoke screen to hide from the “real” issue. To the contrary, it is part of it. Let me explain. Years ago, I came to understand the importance of the biblical creation account for our witness. When we talk to people who lack a biblical background (which is most everybody), it is the only logical starting point of the gospel. This is what Paul does in the Greek cities of Lystra (Acts 14:8–18) and Athens (Acts 17:16–34). Whenever I raise the subject about God’s work as the Creator of humanity, people’s response is as predictable as wet sidewalks after a rain shower. “If God knew that we were going to sin, why couldn’t he have protected us from it?” The question is actually an objection that tries to shift the blame for our error to God. “God had the chance to keep us safe, but he didn’t.”

Almost immediately after saying this, however, the person makes a course correction in his thinking. “But we have to have free will.” Of course, the two human demands lie in conflict with each other, and the people realize it quickly. If God creates “safe” human beings who are programed to love God, our loyalty is only a mechanical response. He gains nothing, and we matter for nothing. Conscious loyalty to God has meaning only if it is voluntary. That eliminates the moral safety net.

The Real Issue: Tameness Versus Dignity

The fact that men almost universally abandon their desire to be safe for their need to act with genuine will is a testimony to the way that God has created us. He gave us the power to choose good or evil, and with it the consequences. “Free will,” however, is an inadequate term to describe what God has created in us. (We will discuss the term at length later.) A more accurate term would be dignity. That is, God created us to worship with our minds and our wills. This is the only way to experience full joy under his care. It falls under God’s self-counsel in Genesis 1, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” But Genesis is not the only place that affirms the truth about dignity. Psalm 8, a creation psalm, celebrates it. The psalm is symmetrical in form. Here is its structure:

Prelude: The Marvel of the Name (v. 1ab)

Following the superscription, “To the choirmaster: according to the Gittith. A Psalm of David,” the text begins,

Psalm 8 begins and ends with this declaration of God’s greatness over creation. God’s position as Creator marks the beginning of the gospel. The first step in our obedience to the gospel is to recognize him as Creator.

Stanza I: The Majesty of God

The first stanza introduces a curious mix of elements:

What do the mouths of babies and infants have to do with God’s glory in the heavens and his strength over his foes? The common denominator between the three appears to be God’s ministry of justice in the world. That moral glory is shares the greatness of his physical glory from the heavens. Further, when the enemy and avenger wreck havoc, babies and infants cry. God hears them and responds to their cries with justice. A similar sentiment on God’s passion for justice occurs in Psalm 9:7–10.

Stanzas 2–4: The Dignity of Man

David’s observation on babies and infants marks only the beginning of the psalm. The bulk focuses on the dignity that God has granted man in his creation. The second stanza compares the grandeur of the cosmos with what God has created man to be.

The heavens are vast. The fact that David uses the term, “the work of your fingers,” rather than “the work of your hands” to describe them, emphasizes the intricacy of the moon and stars that God has “set in place.” David spoke about what he could see on a dark night. Modern astrophysics has revealed a universe that is unimaginably vast and yet one that is unimaginably complex. Gravity, for example, works over the entire universe. Yet it is balanced with the subatomic forces that hold atoms together and make electricity for our homes possible. The balanced precision has been described as hitting a two-foot target at the opposite side of the universe. This balance is necessary for biological life to able to exist. God created the universe in order to assign life to the earth. Yet the LORD has marked out a unique niche for man.

The third stanza focuses on the dignity that God placed in his covenant creation:

We should not be surprised that man occupies a lower position than heavenly beings. After all, they live in the very presence of God. But the heavenly beings do not exercise dominion over God’s creation. That office was assigned to man during the creation week (Genesis 1:24–28). This psalm indicates that we still possess remnants of that dominion, even after the fall of man in Genesis 3. The fourth stanza expands on the degree of man’s dominion:

We have discovered that many animals demonstrate high-level intelligence in communication, recognition, of tool-making. But no other living creature possesses the creativity, intelligence, and moral understanding that God has given man. No wonder that David begins and closes his psalm with the words,

This is what I mean by the term dignity. “Safe” creatures would lack any sense of worth or ability to think. God gave us something infinitely greater than simply “free will.” He gave us his image. But with the gift came equally great responsibility. When Adam and his wife rebelled, they redirected world history and wrenched it from blessing to curse and from life to death in an instant. Yet our fall does not mark the end of the story. Even that great failure continues to serve God’s interests. In the next segment, we will see why the answer to the big question is not just good. It is glorious.

¹ Samuel Terrien, The Psalms: Strophic Structure and Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 226. Verse numbers are changed to reflect contemporary numbering. ↩

Doug Knox

Return to Top