God Cares (Part 1)

Does God not Care? (Part 1)

“For the Lord will not cast off for ever: But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he does not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.”

Lam. 3:31-33

That the eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good is unquestionable. That God could interfere with and stop all forms of evil is undoubtedly true. That He has not done so is manifest; but that the time will come when all evil shall be fully restrained is His distinct promise. Hence it is as proper to say that God permits sin, wickedness and crime, as it would be false to say that He causes, creates, instigates, or is in any sense the author of such things. The truth is that so far from creating sin, or inciting to crime and wickedness, God’s actions where He had interfered at all have been toward the restraint of sin. The Deluge in Noah’s day was for the restraint of sin; so also the destruction of Sodom; the destruction of Korah and his followers; the destruction of the Canaanites; and the captivities, famines, etc. permitted to come upon Israel were designed to have the same effect.

No difficulty, perhaps, more frequently presents itself to the inquiring mind than the question: Why does God permit the present course of suffering and evil? If we keep the thought in mind and do not lose sight of the ultimate purpose of God and of the fact that the present is only a preparatory stage progressing toward full completion, we need never be skeptical about an overruling providence which now permits a cyclone, tornado, earthquake, hurricane, volcanic eruption, or any other of nature’s distresses.

But while God’s tender mercies are over all His works, we must not overlook the fact that man, by sin, has forfeited all claims upon divine providence. As a son of God, Adam had a son’s claim upon his heavenly Father’s benevolent providence, but when God condemned him to death on account of sin, God thereby rightly repudiated all human claims upon His fatherhood. The creature was thenceforth unworthy of life and of the divine providence which alone could sustain life. Therefore, the condemned world has no right to question why God permits calamities to overtake them and take their lives. The whole human family, then, being born in sin and under the curse pronounced upon Adam in Eden, sometimes finds the death penalty is executed by the disturbances of nature, such as cyclones, tempests, earthquakes, etc.; sometimes by the sinful, angry passions of mankind resulting in wars and in private and domestic feuds and revenges; and sometimes through lack of good judgment in discerning and avoiding danger. All of these are but the executioners of the just penalty for sin--death, pronounced against the whole race.

The Beneficence of Evil

While the condemned race is thus left to its fate, men are permitted largely to pursue their own course in the management of their affairs. They may take such advantages as they can of the elements of nature, or of their own medical and surgical skill to prolong their days and to assist their condition under the curse; they may institute and maintain such forms of civil jurisprudence as they can agree upon, though hindered by the influence of Satan, the god of this world. But their course is their own course and God is not in it; hence God has no responsibility with reference to it; nor can He in any sense be held accountable for the misery men bring upon themselves and each other in the pursuit of their own godless and evil ways. Yet God could, and undoubtedly would, put a sudden stop to misery and sin now in the world were it not that His farseeing judgment counsels its temporary continuance for a benevolent ultimate purpose toward which even the wrath of man is unconsciously ministering.

God has devised and already partly executed a plan for the redemption and restitution of all who will, by and by, repent fully and submit themselves to His righteous requirements. In their present alien and outcast condition, He is giving them such experiences as will in time bring them to realize their own helplessness and to seek the favor of God. To this end God has also been overruling the affairs of men for the past 6,000 years, that is, while He has been permitting men to rule themselves according to their own ideas, He has been, unknown to them, so directing events as to make even their blind and evil course bring to pass circumstances and events which they did not foresee nor contemplate, but which in the long run minister to His plan.

Thus, for example, the world’s present blind and wrong course has brought about a great time of trouble upon everyone, which God foresaw and has been permitting, whose final outcome in the divine providence will be the overthrow of human governments and the establishment of the Kingdom of Christ under the whole heaven. In this way God has been overruling both man’s and Satan’s designs in the affairs and destinies of nations, so as to give to mankind the largest possible experience with sin and its consequences, thus to prepare them eventually for willing submission to the righteous reign of the Prince of Peace. They have had experience with every shade and form of government; and now the world is expressing its complete dissatisfaction with all conditions, with world-wide anarchy in the offing. However, as the crisis fast approaches, man’s extremity will become God’s opportunity. When, with broken and contrite hearts, the people turn to the Lord, they will find Him indeed willing and able to bring to them the benefits of the Kingdom of Christ.

With these thoughts in mind, mark the stately steppings of our God along the aisles of history. The rise and fall of empires and the wars and revolutions that have disturbed the world; while they were great evils in themselves, nevertheless saved men from sinking lower into lethargy and vice. They kept the human mind awake and set men to thinking and planning to improve their condition. They brought men of different nations together, sharpened intellectuality, stimulated ambition, led to discoveries and inventions and thus helped mankind to keep above the level of the brute creation. Similar providences we can also mark in the great persecutions and distresses of the Old World, which drove the lovers of liberty to a New World, there to establish a free government with all the benefits that have accrued to the individuals fortunate to live there under.

God’s Overruling Care

But, it may be asked, how is the love of God to be seen from the standpoint of a deliberate arrangement beforehand which, in its outworking, has involved so vast an amount of sin, suffering, and death? In thinking of this question we must rid our minds of the erroneous thought that sin, suffering, and death are only preludes to an eternity of woe. Then we are to remember that God is not in any way our debtor. We are His debtors, even for existence; He owes the race nothing. Suppose we could rid in all minds the idea of eternal torture, or a purgatory of suffering after death, and should then say to them: Consider, now-would you prefer to live on for a few more years, or would you rather die at once? Or suppose we put it this way: Are you glad that you have an existence, or would you rather that you had not been born? We believe the great majority would reply that they desire to live, and to live as long as possible. Those who feel that they would be glad to die, or wish that they had never been born, are those who have had more than ordinary evil experiences, or have an unbalanced mind. God could have made mankind devoid of ability to discern between right and wrong, or able only to discern and do right; but to have made him so would have been to make him merely a living machine, and certainly not a mental image of his Creator. Or He might have made man perfect, and a free moral agent, as He did, and have guarded him from Satan’s temptations. In that case, man’s experiences being limited to good, he would have been continually liable to suggestions of evil from without, or ambitions from within,3 which would have made the everlasting future uncertain, and an outbreak of disobedience might always have been a possibility.

Adam already had a knowledge of evil by information, but that was insufficient to restrain him from trying the experiment. Few appreciate the severity of the temptation under which our first parents fell, nor yet the justice of God in attaching so severe a penalty to what seems to many so slight an offense; but a little reflection will make it plain. The Scriptures tell how Eve was deceived and thus became a transgressor. Her experience and acquaintance with God was even more limited than Adam’s, for he was created first and God had directly communicated to him before her appearance, the penalty for sin, while Eve received that information from Adam. The severity of the penalty was the necessary and inevitable result of the evil which God thus allowed man to see and feel. No injustice has been done to Adam’s posterity in not affording them each an individual trial. God was in no sense bound to bring us into existence and having brought us into being, no law of equity or justice binds Him to perpetuate our being everlastingly, nor even to grant us a trial under promise of everlasting life if obedient.

God assures us that as condemnation passed on the whole human family as a result of Adam’s sin, so He has been graciously pleased to accept the death of Jesus on the Cross as a complete settlement toward God of the sin of Adam. As one man had sinned, and all in him had shared the penalty of that one sinner, so Jesus, having provided the ransom price at Calvary, bought not only Adam, but all of his posterity and the earth. As a result of that act, Jesus offers to adopt Adam’s posterity as his children, and in this way bring about the first free and full opportunity for the human family to obtain life and deliverance from sin and its curse under the ministry of the Messianic Kingdom referred to so often in the Bible.