Heart of a Friend
The Heart of a Friend podcast was born out of a desire to share some of the most important things learned from a lifetime of experience. It is hosted by Andy Wiegand. Andy retired in 2017 after 40 years of pastoral ministry. He and his wife now reside in Columbus, Ohio. They have raised six children and are now very happy to be grandparents.
Andy grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and received his education at Harvard University (B.A. ’73) and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (M.Div. ’78). In his retirement Andy devotes time to charitable work, visits with friends and family, exercises and continues to do a lot of reading and thinking about life.
Heart of a Friend
Ep. 23 | Mere Christianity | Part 2 | Why is there so much evil?
Highlights - Mere Christianity (Part 2) Episode 23
Lewis is more than a pipe-smoking, ivory tower, arm-chair academic. He had literally/personally agonized and bled in the “trenches” over this question: If there is a God, then why is there so much evil and suffering? He knew first-hand, in a way that few of us have ever experienced, that “something is seriously wrong with our world.”
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust.”
“If a good God made the world why has it gone wrong?”
“God created things which had free will. That means creatures…which can go either wrong or right….If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having… The alternative is a world of robots…a toy world that only moves when He pulls the strings.”
So, does the sole blame for all the suffering and evil in the world rest on us? Lewis claims we’ve had an “accomplice.” In addition to our own free-will, there’s a malevolent and powerful supernatural being who is active on planet earth. This is “enemy occupied territory.” So these two factors account for a lot of the suffering and evil in the world: Human free-will and the malevolent dark powers.
“What the Devil put into the head of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could “be like gods.” Invent some sort of happiness outside God, apart from God…And out of all that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history - money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery - the long terrible story of man trying to find some thing other than God which will make him happy.
“God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on gas and it won’t run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn…There is no other…Happiness and peace apart from Him is not there. There is no such thing. That is the key to history… civilizations are built up…but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down. They are trying run it on the wrong juice. That is what Satan has done to us humans.
My own response…three thoughts:
1. His answers are a good start. See The Problem of Pain for more.
2. I agree about the existence of the devil. See The Screwtape Letters for more insights.
3. Is the human experiment worth it? Apparently, God thought so.
“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage…that in the world’s finale… something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.” (Dostoevsky)