EPISODE 88 2 Thessalonians Chapter 1 "The problem of evil"

Welcome to Share the Word. I think we can all agree that evil exists. And in this chapter, there's talk of false letters and tribulation, all with the attempt to sway beliefs. Have you ever struggled with evil and the reason why it exists? Then you need to listen. Second Thessalonians chapter one: The Problem of Evil.

An Arizona mother warned other parents in a news story I saw recently after she became the target of a kidnapping hoax that sounded too real. Jennifer DiStefano said her experience began when she received a phone call from a number she didn't recognize. She says she wouldn't have picked it up except her 15-year-old daughter was on a skiing trip just then, and she worried that there could have been an emergency, so she picked up. And it was her daughter's voice all right, crying, sobbing, Mom! And she said, What's wrong? What's wrong?

She said, Mom, bad men have me. Help me! Help me! Every parent's worst nightmare. Mrs. DiStefano said a man then came on the phone demanding she pay a ransom in exchange for her daughter's safe release.

He didn't want a wire transfer or an online payment, but demanded they meet in person. Luckily, they were able to confirm her daughter was safe within minutes. They later realized the scheme utilized artificial intelligence reproducing her daughter's voice. Experts say that voice cloning can now happen in a matter of seconds with the right software, and it's easy for savvy criminals to access and use. Great, that's one more thing we have to worry about. When I was thinking about what prompted Paul's second canonical letter to the Thessalonians, this story popped into my mind.

The problem is, even trickier now because of technology, but it's not a new problem. The problem is, it seemed that since Paul had answered some of the new Christians' questions in his first letter, another complicating and confusing issue had reared its head in that young church. Someone had apparently circulated a fake letter, which they claimed was from the Apostle Paul, which said that the day of the Lord, the time of extreme trouble on the earth at the end of this age we call the Tribulation, had in fact already begun, that they were already in it. Because those early Christians were beginning to experience persecution, this alarmed them. The gospel message had powerful opposition, both in the spiritual realm, but also in their city. But could this be true?

They were already in the Tribulation? Responding to that urgent question appears to be the primary reason that this second epistle was written and carried to the believers in Thessalonica. We'll see how Paul responds to their concern more in chapter 2, because there's another big idea I want to focus on first that comes up here in chapter 1. He begins his second letter, Paul, Silas, and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you. Paul, on behalf of his current team along on the second missionary journey, to the church at Thessalonica. I'm not sure if we've covered this ground adequately, but just to be sure we all understand, the word translated church here and throughout the New Testament is a compound Greek word combining the words for called and out of.

It was not a word Christians coined. It was a common word in the first century for people who came together around a common cause, a common interest. It was especially fitting for the believers in Christ to gather together regularly to worship God and learn His Word because they literally were called, people called out of the rest of the world through the call of the gospel message. So the address to the church of the Thessalonians means to those believers in that city who had responded to the call of the gospel, who were joined together by their Christian beliefs and who were meeting together now regularly to be built up in their faith. By the way, in the New Testament, the word church never refers to a building. It always refers to people who are followers of Jesus Christ.

As in his earlier letter, Paul again commends them, saying he is always thankful for them when he prays because he remembers before God their faith and their love and also their endurance. From what he hears, they are holding up well under the pressures that are mounting. No one's renouncing their faith in Christ in the face of opposition, which would be the easier path for them at this point. And then he writes this, and I'm quoting from the New Living Translation here: God will use this persecution to show His justice and to make you worthy of His kingdom for which you are suffering. In His justice, He will pay back those who persecute you, and God will provide rest for you who are being persecuted, and also for us when the Lord Jesus appears from heaven.

He will come with His mighty angels in flaming fire, bringing judgment on those who don't know God and on those who refuse to obey the good news of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then they will be punished with eternal destruction, forever separated from the Lord and from His glorious power. When he comes on that day, and this is not the rapture we discussed last time, but the second coming of Jesus after the tribulation is over, when he comes on that day, then he will receive glory from his holy people, praise from all who believe, and this includes you, Paul assures them, for you believed what we have told you about him. Besides the confusion resulting from the false report that they were already in the tribulation, there also was this more common, universal really, question that Paul felt the need to address.

I'm going to get a little bit philosophical in this podcast because this question may be the biggest challenge I hear coming against the reasonableness of the Christian faith still, of theism in general really. Philosophers call it the problem of evil. Paul realized that some of the Thessalonian Christians were no doubt struggling with this thought: If God is really who you taught us he is, Paul, a personal, all-powerful, loving being, then why are we having to suffer? Why isn't God intervening now? Several years ago, George Barna conducted a poll. One query was, If you had the chance to ask God one question you really wanted to know the answer to, what would your one question be?

And then his team distilled the responses from the thousands who answered that poll, and they came down with essentially eight tough questions. But the most cited one, number one, why is there so much pain and suffering in the world? It's certainly not a question just for our time. Epicurus, a Greek philosopher who lived four centuries before Jesus, Discussed it extensively in his writings, and he felt the existence of evil proved, logically, there is no good God. Very earliest written book in the Old Testament, called Job, is largely focused on this difficult question too. But Job came to a completely different conclusion.

I think it was in the 18th century that the philosopher David Hume popularized a syllogism, I'm going to paraphrase him: Is God willing to prevent evil and suffering, but not able? Then he is impotent, as opposed to omnipotent, as Christians claim. Hume continued, Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent, that is evil, again as opposed to the good and loving God that the Bible presents. He then asks, He can't be both willing and able, or no evil would exist. You see the problem?

I'll be the first to admit this is a pretty difficult philosophical problem, and not just philosophically; it's difficult personally. Just ask anybody who's wrestling every day with a life-threatening disease, or someone who has had a loved one taken out by a drunk driver, or a guy who is rotting in a jail cell for a crime he didn't really commit. And there's no shortage of pain and seeming injustices in our world, that's for sure. So let's personalize the question for a moment. Have you ever had to deal with serious evil, suffering, injustice in your life? If so, did you feel the need to blame someone for what was happening with you?

Who did you ultimately blame? Let's consider the options. Pure materialists would answer that there is no one to blame. There's no rhyme or reason to much of what happens in the world since everything around us is only the result of a big cosmic accident eons ago. There's no answer if this is a senseless universe. Others would conclude that God has to be to blame since he is the ultimate cause of everything and everything is ultimately under his control.

I've had people say to me more than once, A God who let this or that happen, I don't want anything to do with that God. Others blame Satan and his spiritual forces for everything that is evil, and still others point the finger back at humanity, saying, Our sin and rebellion against God are responsible. We've brought it on ourselves. Which of these makes most sense to you, or do you think it's a combination of more than one of them, or something else entirely? Getting back to Mr. Hume's questions, first we need to ask, What do you mean by evil, David?

I challenge the premise of his complaint. Apart from God, is there even a standard for distinguishing between good and evil? This is a real question for the pure materialist, the modern-day evolutionist, for example, who claims everything in our world is accidental, the result of time and chance randomly. How can a person with that worldview talk about evil? For evil to exist, doesn't there need to be an infinite reference point that is also absolutely good, which evil could be measured against and defined by? If you frame a question in moral terms such as good and evil, then you need to take a step back and ask, Where did that sense of right and wrong, good and evil, just and unjust, where did that even come from?

Augustine, a Christian thinker from the fifth century, wrestling with the same question in his time, turned the question around by asking, If there isn't a God, why is there so much good? That's a good question too, but still somewhat begging our original one: Why couldn't God eliminate evil in this world? Well, think about this. If God intervened today, as some people demand He should if He is real, and declared that everything evil ceased to exist as of this moment, what would be the outcome? Poof! When the smoke cleared, I'm not sure we'd like the outcome.

Why? Because every human being on this planet would have to be taken out. To a greater or lesser degree, evil exists in all of us, doesn't it? Do you really want God to destroy everything tainted by evil? Let's go a little further with this question. To say that if God could do something about evil, that He must necessarily do it now, is also missing another key point.

When we say that God is all-powerful, does that mean He can do anything imaginable? No. Even God has limits. Like what? Well, God cannot do things that are contrary to His nature. For example, God cannot lie.

God cannot change. God cannot sin. These things would be inconsistent with who He is. Neither can He do things that are irrational, like create a rock bigger than He can pick up, or undo the past. He's a rational God who has created a rational universe. In light of these things, how could God eliminate evil in the world without violating aspects of His own nature and kind of altering the architecture upon which our whole creation is built?

Does that question seem too abstract? Let me explain a little bit. What part might the fact that God created us as free moral agents have to do with the problem of evil? The Bible teaches God created human beings with a capacity to choose right or wrong. Why do you imagine He did? The claim in the Bible is that God created us that way in His own likeness.

It's called in Genesis rational, emotional, moral creatures, and He did it to have a real relationship with man. Doesn't a real relationship mean we must be capable of freely loving Him and following Him, or choosing not to? A real relationship is mutual. It's not based on compulsion. Tell me, how could God have created people that are free to love Him, obey Him, and do good, without them also at the same time being free to reject Him, disobey Him, and do evil? Since God has created us with the ability to make choices, the ability to make wrong choices is baked into that cake.

And when men make wrong choices, sinful choices, evil results. And that evil often affects others, lots of others. On the other hand, love is the highest, purest value in our world, but only because God created a world where love is also a choice freely made from the heart. So we can choose good or evil. That's the original storyline from the Garden of Eden. Let me pose another question.

Is it fair to conclude that because God is not dealing with evil as we want, He is incapable or uninterested in dealing with it? Doesn't that overlook the possibility that God is going to deal with evil, or even is dealing with evil now, but he's doing it on his timetable, that he is doing it in different ways, progressively, let's say. Consider first that God built into our world some natural consequences for sin and disobedience that demonstrate his judgment of evil. And beyond that, he has also built into the human conscience a desire for justice in order to deal with evil so evil would be dealt with in societies by laws, by our judicial systems. Third, the Bible says the Holy Spirit is right now in our world actually restraining evil, limiting evil in our world.

So things could be much worse, and they will get much worse when that restraint is removed during that short era we talked about last time called the Great Tribulation before Jesus returns again. Fourth, the Bible claims God has already, ultimately, judged evil and sin at the cross of Jesus Christ when he punished his perfect Son there for the sins and evil of mankind. Jesus came into the world to deal with evil, to take it on and to defeat it. The Bible claims he did that at his powerful resurrection. So sin, death, and all other evil has already, in fact, been defeated. It just hasn't capitulated yet, we would say.

To use a phrase from Genesis there, Jesus crushed the serpent's head at the cross, Satan that is, the embodiment of evil. But he's still thrashing around for a while. Lastly, God promises us in his Word, as here in 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, that the day is coming when he will finally, actually, judge and punish all evil and all evildoers, all those who have rejected him, and will do away with them forever. So the chapter, the final chapter, we would say, of the story between God and evil and mankind has not yet been written. Premature to pass a judgment on whether God can and will deal with evil justly. He says he will.

He says he will at Jesus' second coming and in the judgments that follow. We're to patiently endure until then. Can you think of any possible reasons why God might allow evil and sin to go on without stepping in? One reason seems to be God wants people to see and experience the effects of evil so they will turn away from it. The Christian philosopher C. S.

Lewis once said, Pain is God's megaphone to a morally deaf world. Suffering is many times a tool from which good can come. Suffering many times turns people toward God and can help us value the things that God values rather than the superficial temporal things, or certainly the evil things. Paul is saying at verse five, that's how the Thessalonian Christians were responding to suffering, which showed that they were really God's children. Another reason that God may allow sin and evil to go on is indicated in 2 Peter chapter 3, where that apostle writes, You must understand that in the last days scoffers will come scoffing and following their own evil desires, and they will say, 'Where is this coming he promised? Ever since our fathers fell asleep, or that is died, everything goes on and on as it always has since the beginning of time.'

Then Peter reminds his readers about a time God did step in to judge and remove extreme evil from our world, the judgment of the universal flood in Noah's day. And he adds, So don't forget this one thing, dear friends. With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord is not slow about keeping his promise, his patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. God is going to step in, and maybe soon. But one reason for his delay, Peter is saying, is to allow more people to be saved.

Time is very different to us than it is to our Creator, who lives in eternity. Isn't it somewhat arrogant for us to think, because we cannot put all the pieces of the good, God, evil puzzle together neatly, that therefore God doesn't exist? God is so much bigger and more intelligent than us. The truth is, much of the time, we cannot see what he's up to or understand why. But in reality, he is very deliberately working out his plan, and evil will be judged, Paul says. Trust him, it will be judged.

The best illustration of this is the life and death of Jesus himself. Dorothy Sayers, a 20th century author and essayist, once wrote, For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is, that is, limited and suffering and subject to sorrow and death, he had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with this creation, he has kept his own rules and played it fairly. He exacts nothing from us that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, referring to Jesus, from the trivial irritations of family life, the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money, to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, betrayal, despair, and violent death. When he was a man, he played the man.

He was born in poverty. He died in disgrace, and he thought it all well worthwhile. No one, not the religious scholars of the time, not Jesus' disciples, not even Satan, understood God's plan for our redemption as it was unfolding, did they? At the time, Jesus' arrest and humiliation and violent death looked like an absolute triumph of evil and injustice, didn't it? Yet, in the very midst of that, God was brilliantly working out an amazing plan, a way no one could have imagined, which allowed him to remain just and holy while saving us sinners. Mrs.

Sayers is right. It's unreasonable for us to cry unfair at a God who came into our world and experienced pain, injustice, betrayal, and the worst kind of physical and psychic suffering men have ever devised, and who did it for us. For us. He deserves the benefit of the doubt, don't you think? Paul's assurance to the Thessalonians, who were starting to face suffering and persecution, was, Hold on. Jesus is coming back, and when he does, justice will be done.

Those who are willfully disobedient to God, knowingly turning away from the truth of the gospel, Paul warns, will face punishment and eternal destruction away from the presence of God. Yikes. But you, he says, of the believers, you will experience relief then, and Christ will be glorified in you and you in him, according to the grace of our God. I grant you, God does not always, even usually, immediately intervene when evil and its many manifestations occurs in our world. But he promises us that one day, perfect justice will be done. For those who know Him and for those who love Him, He promises anything we lose in this life will be made up to us 100 times over in the next.

And He has all eternity to do that. This might seem like an insufficient answer when we're going through suffering and evil is apparently triumphing, but I believe it will be clear looking back from that perspective, an eternal perspective, 100, 1,000, 10,000 years from now, when we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, as the old hymn says. From that vantage point, any pain, injustice, suffering we've endured here will seem unworthy of comparison to the joys we're experiencing then. This is what Christians believe. This is God's promise. This is our hope.

This has been Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul. When we struggle regarding what happens in our lives, we seem to forget about free will and the parts that we play every day. At Share the Word, we tackle tough topics and so many important topics that are available in our archives. If you have any questions, please email us at info@sharetheword.org. Remember, Share the Word is a Great Commission project, and we hope that you share the Word as well.

From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.