thought of the Day 03.09.09

The most challenging question in the history of theology is the problem of evil: Why does a loving and powerful God allow bad things to happen to good people and good things to happen to bad people? Millions of people have struggled to solve this, and, at the risk of claiming the unthinkable, I believe I actually have.

See, the question starts from the premise that good people are entitled to rewards and bad people are entitled to punishments because our behavior controls God’s responses. But this premise is actually a heresy called legalism. In contrast, the Gospel shows that God’s goodness is precisely in that He loves all men, blessing those who don’t deserve it and can’t repay Him, a beautiful and stunning condemnation of our conditional notions of love.

So why do bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people? Because this world belongs to God, not Santa Claus. And until we recognize that legalism is the at the heart of this objection, we’ll miss the fact that only the Gospel’s portrait of God can possibly answer it…by rejecting it’s heretical starting point.