Every human being must find some explanation for suffering and evil in the world. Some people seem to suggest that only theists, those who believe in a personal and all-powerful God, have a problem finding an explanation for evil. This simply is untrue. All of us must find ways to explain the pain we see and experience around us:

• If we say that this world is all there is—all has come into being by chance, life has evolved out of inanimate slime with no creator and designer, human beings are nothing but chemicals—then suffering is simply intrinsic to the way things are. The pain we experience is the outworking of the survival of the fittest. There is no ultimate real basis for right and wrong. Logically, we should be guided by a “might makes right” way of life.
• If we tend to think that there are impersonal life forces directing the universe, some good and some evil, then the universe is up for grabs. We might have some inner longing for goodness to prevail, but we will have no confidence in the ultimate triumph of goodness. Indeed, we will find it impossible to determine what is good or what is evil if we have no person outside ourselves who identifies and determines morality.
• If we try to deny that evil and suffering exist, we will find that our experience of the world will make that denial untenable.

This weekend, we come to the chapter in the Bible that provides the foundation for our understanding of the suffering in our world. We may be surprised when we discover that the Scriptures insist that the root of suffering is human inability or unwillingness to believe that God loves us and wants the best for us. From the beginning, we who are human doubted the love of God—rejected it—and then acted in disobedience to him. We go our own way, thinking that we will live better without trusting and obeying God. From God’s Word, we will see that this lack of trust in God is the foundation for all the violence, corruption, unfaithfulness, anxiety, and greed in our world.

And, if we become convinced of that, we will not be surprised that the way back to “life” is trusting God. As Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

To God’s glory,

Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor