Listening to Christian radio this morning, I heard back-to-back songs with God’s promises as the theme. The lyrics encouraged the listener to hold on to God’s promises, even - or especially - when they seem slow in coming. One line says, “Jesus is alive, so hold on tight; hold on to the promises.”
It occurred to me that one of the most common defeaters to faith, usually referred to as “the problem of evil in the world,” is actually one of the greatest invitations to Christian faith. The supposed problem is the existence of evil (meaning not only malicious personal activity but also just general calamity) in the world, in spite of the claim that God is both absolutely sovereign (powerful) and absolutely good. The Christian apologist knows that many people conclude that a perfectly good and sovereign God must not actually be at least one of those things since a lot of bad stuff happens in the world.
But let us turn that around. Since there is no doubt that evil exists and bad things happen, where can one turn for hope? Oneself? No. We all learn soon enough that we don’t have real power to hold off the chaos of life. Other people? No. We too learn that they are no more powerful nor trustworthy than ourselves. Even collective forces, like social movements or governments all will fail us. No surprise, since they are composed of humans. Many turn to impersonal spiritual forces of mysticism or the multiplicity of deities in other religions. But where is the hope in an impersonal everything or force? Evil still happens. Where is the logic in counting multiple beings as gods, when “god” by definition is the greatest conceivable being (and more, cf. Is 55:9; Job 38-41; Rm 11:33; Col 1:15-17)?
There is only one answer to the desperate need of every human - Jesus Christ. Paul, in Col 1 above establishes that Christ is God, the ultimate creative power who holds everything together. Evil and calamity exist only because God has decreed to allow free will and its consequences - for a time, and somehow for good purposes. There is no other hope but to trust in the all-powerful God, to trust in his goodness and his timing when our suffering seems undeserved. When he seems too passive, or too slow to act - this is when our trust has meaning. He has always proven trustworthy, and we do not have the information he does, no perspective to justify questioning his goodness (see Job’s story, and his response to God in ch.42).
And here’s the kicker. Jesus is not only the all-powerful, perfectly good and trustworthy God. He is also the Son of Man, who himself had to trust God in light of the worst evil of all. No one can teach Jesus a thing or two about abuse or injustice - he took the worst of both. No one has a one-upper story of betrayal on Jesus - he was betrayed by one of his closest, hand-picked friends. He was rejected by his people, his supposed friends, even his own family. No one has ever carried more suffering, or more shame - he carried the shame of ALL mankind’s sin’s, as well as the weight of the wrath of God himself. In all this, he made the simple choice for which he was born into humanity - he trusted God his Father, even to the point of the cross.
And now because of his perfect obedience he is exalted and victorious over all kinds of evil. And this is our hope. If we trust in him, identify with him in death and resurrected life (Rm 6:1-14; 8:1-30), we take on his indestructible life (Heb 7:16; 1 Pt 1:23-25). This is the true hope in the promise of a real future in the hands of the Almighty God.
Jesus is alive, so hold on tight. Hold on to the promises of God for those who love him and are called according to his purposes (Rm 5:8).
