Contemplating God

Even with the gift of free will why doesn’t God intervene in the horrendous things of earth’s history? Bart Ehrman raises this challenge: “the God who created this world is a God of love and power who intervenes with answered prayers and worked miracles. Where is this God now? If God intervened in the biblical narratives, why doesn’t he intervene now? Similarly, Roth argues that the God of Christianity must possess the power to prevent such evils. In his view, the God who raised Jesus from the dead “plausibly has the might to thwart the Holocaust long before it ended.”

While these statements rightly note that God did intervene in the biblical narratives, they assume that God intervenes arbitrarily or inconsistently. But when we examine scripture closely, a different picture emerges: God intervenes purposefully, and His interventions always serve the movement of His salvation plan. It is true that God intervened dramatically in the Old Testament but notice who and what He acted for in a few examples:

• God allowed Israel to be captured due to their covenant infidelity.
• God destroyed the soldiers persecuting Elija the prophet
• God saved Rahab and allowed the destruction of the rest of the Canaanites
• Most significantly, God refused to intervene in the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, allowing the ultimate sacrifice to reveal His great, awesome love for fallen humanity and His free gift of salvation. 

A clear pattern emerges. God’s interventions are not random. They are aimed at preserving faith, revealing truth, and sharing salvation. He seems to act when action best protects the eternal good of His children and refrains when intervention would undermine the purpose He is working toward. Often, it is in suffering that the heart becomes receptive to God. Scripture, history, and experience continually show that while God never causes suffering, He can and does use it to draw people closer to Himself. 

But is suffering truly necessary for people to come to God? John Hick proposed the “soul-making” view of evil: that immature creatures are placed in an environment that is challenging to form their character. They have to live in a world that seems to be without God so that they might grow into God’s children through their own choices. The capacity to love would never be developed  in a world in which there was no such thing as suffering. The evils of this world are necessary for soul making.

But this perspective raises a theological problem. It suggests that evil is necessary for good, that suffering must exist for God to accomplish His purposes.

Paul directly addresses this in Romans 3:5–8. He rejects the idea that sin is needed to reveal God’s glory:

• But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unjust who inflicts wrath? (I speak as a man.) Certainly not! For then how will God judge the world? For if the truth of God has increased through my lie to His glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner? And why not say, “Let us do evil that good may come”?–as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just. (Romans 3:5-8)

Paul’s point is clear: God does not need evil in order to bring about good.

Therefore, Hick’s soul-making argument cannot ultimately explain why God allows evil.

The question continues then: If God intervened so powerfully in the Old Testament, why doesn’t He intervene the same way today? There are numerous instances in the Bible where God used his power for destruction. Is this proof that God is easily angered, impatient or violent?

Dr. Tim Jennings offers a compelling thought that helps explain the difference between God’s actions before and after the cross. 

Jennings argues that if God’s Old Testament actions were punishments for sin, He would still be doing them since wickedness continues. “Has evil disappeared? Are there no longer problems of hedonism, idolatry, violence or abuse equal to what transpired prior to Christ’s arrival on earth?  Evil has continued unabated after the cross, just as it did prior to it. But despite all this God has not intervened as he did before the cross.”

Then why, if not to punish, did God put so many people to rest in the grave during Old Testament times? Why do we see such a drastic difference pre- and post-cross?

Jennings argues that God’s Old Testament interventions were not acts of punishment in the judicial sense but may have served another purpose entirely:

• Humanity had severed the circle of love and was plummeting toward eternal death, a permanent, irreversible death. But God loved too much to let go. A Savior was promised, One who would reconnect the world to God’s circle of love. God had to keep open the channel for Jesus to come, and Satan, knowing full well the eternal consequences of that coming, fought furiously to obstruct him. Prior to the cross, God intervened to keep open the avenue for our Savior to make that journey from the courts of heaven to the manger in Bethlehem. But, once Jesus completed his mission on earth, God no longer needed to work in this way. The circle of love had been rejoined.

We see this same question Biblically. During Jesus’ earthly ministry, people longed for Him to “do something.” To remove the wicked, to end evil immediately. Jesus answered this longing through the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13:24–30).

• “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. 

The servants asked the very question we ask today:

• “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. 

Jesus’ response is that an enemy had done this. Evil was not placed by God just as the weeds were not.

• “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’  “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’” Matthew 12:28-30

But when the servants asked to remove the weeds, the Master refused. John Nolland comments, the tares “are to be removed with as much urgency as is consistent with the protection of all the wheat.” 

According to Jesus’ own teaching, God restrains intervention not out of indifference but out of mercy. He waits because someone still has time to be saved. “The Lord is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9).”

Scripture paints a consistent picture: God’s ultimate intention is our salvation. His interventions throughout history were not arbitrary acts of power but purposeful movements preserving a path for the hope of our salvation– Jesus Christ. His restraint today is not weakness but mercy. It seems at times God allows the weight of our circumstances to press upon us that we may “call upon [Him] in the day of trouble” (Psalm 50:15). Let us not be deceived by the enemy: evil is the work of the devil while redemption is the work of God. From the beginning, every act of God, whether intervention or longsuffering, has been an expression of love aimed at securing our eternal good. And one day, He will intervene mightily once again “and the God of peace will crush satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20).