Life is not intended to be a cakewalk. We are all born into a sinful world that is afflicted by so many problems: Poverty, corruption, sickness, unfairness, violence, war, crime, etc. Indeed, the issues that face humanity are so numerous that it would take two or three pages to list every single one of them.
Some of us were born exceedingly lucky because we won the genetic lottery, which is another way of saying we were fortunate enough to be born in a prosperous country such as United States, Canada, Britain, or any of the other first-world nations. We don’t struggle like they do in third-world countries where hunger is rife and people make it on less than $2 a day. In fact, many of these impoverished people don’t even have showers or toilets and have to do nature’s call out in the open.
Yet even as Americans or other first-world nationalities, we still have our problems. Maybe you struggle with poverty (relative to our country’s standards) or unemployment, or maybe you deal with other problems not related to economics.
Many unbelievers think that the world’s problems constitute “evidence” against Christianity and belief in God in general. They figure that an all-powerful, all-loving god would not allow so many problems to transpire in the first place. But this is such a silly indictment against faith: The unbelievers reason that a global problem such as the existence of violence, whether it is widespread war or just one instance of murder, means that God cannot exist, since they think it is incompatible with the nature of God for violence to exist.
But the death of Jesus on the Cross, which was indeed very painful and violent, debunks the unbelievers’ silly indictment against faith. Jesus was martyred and suffered prodigiously, but from it came the salvation of all believers. “The problem of evil,” as it is called, does not entail the absence of existence of God. If it did, why would God have allowed Jesus to die so painfully for the salvation of all believers? Pain and suffering exist in our world because we are born into a world of sin. Yet the whole time God is there, watching over us and helping his believers find love, hope, peace, joy, and salvation in a world full of problems.
Some of us were born exceedingly lucky because we won the genetic lottery, which is another way of saying we were fortunate enough to be born in a prosperous country such as United States, Canada, Britain, or any of the other first-world nations. We don’t struggle like they do in third-world countries where hunger is rife and people make it on less than $2 a day. In fact, many of these impoverished people don’t even have showers or toilets and have to do nature’s call out in the open.
Yet even as Americans or other first-world nationalities, we still have our problems. Maybe you struggle with poverty (relative to our country’s standards) or unemployment, or maybe you deal with other problems not related to economics.
Many unbelievers think that the world’s problems constitute “evidence” against Christianity and belief in God in general. They figure that an all-powerful, all-loving god would not allow so many problems to transpire in the first place. But this is such a silly indictment against faith: The unbelievers reason that a global problem such as the existence of violence, whether it is widespread war or just one instance of murder, means that God cannot exist, since they think it is incompatible with the nature of God for violence to exist.
But the death of Jesus on the Cross, which was indeed very painful and violent, debunks the unbelievers’ silly indictment against faith. Jesus was martyred and suffered prodigiously, but from it came the salvation of all believers. “The problem of evil,” as it is called, does not entail the absence of existence of God. If it did, why would God have allowed Jesus to die so painfully for the salvation of all believers? Pain and suffering exist in our world because we are born into a world of sin. Yet the whole time God is there, watching over us and helping his believers find love, hope, peace, joy, and salvation in a world full of problems.