Good God? Faith and Reason in the Face of Suffering | John Lennox at Rice

welcome to the Veritas forum engaging University students and faculty in discussions about life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life good evening ladies and gentlemen I better try that again because I think I've alone good evening ladies and gentlemen that's much better I'd like to thank you for your very warm welcome to this very distinguished and famous University and indeed I move to think that the presenter who has just introduced me is a fellow Oxford graduate and you'd even take care to supply be a mathematician to encourage me in commencing my lecture tonight so thank you very very much indeed it is enormously encouraging as I travel around the world to see how so many students and young people are interested in these very difficult questions I find the problem of suffering and evil the most difficult problem that I face and indeed I think that is also true for my atheist friends it is an immensely difficult problem and I suppose we can focus on the famous statement of David Hume who reflecting on this problem he said this Epicurus --is old questions are yet unanswered is God willing to prevent evil but not able then is he impotent is he able but not willing then is he malevolent is he both able and willing whence then this evil that's a very famous statement of the problem of evil coming from the ancient world coming from the philosopher Epicurus who decided partly because of this problem that this universe is all that there exists there is no transcendence there are no gods there is no God and so today in the Academy we find Epicurus philosophy which we know called naturalism dominant in the Academy and many of my colleagues at Oxford will say to me quietly please don't talk to me about a personal God how can there be a God when this world is in such a mess how can there be a God when my world is in such a mess so as sensitively as I can I'm going to not ladies and gentlemen insult you by offering you simplistic panaceas answers to this question what I'm going to try to do is to share with you what I found helpful as a way into this that can begin to make some sense now of course there are two distinct problems we're dealing with first of all there is the problem of moral evil that is the evil that people do to one another and then there is what's often called the problem of pain where people aren't necessarily involved the catastrophes that occur earthquakes tsunamis lightning strikes meteorite strikes and so on these two problems form what is often called the problem of evil but then there are two ways of looking at both of these problems that are very different an oncologist sees cancer in a very different way from the patient who's just been told she is six months to live the question of suffering and evil will look very different if you're a spectator theoretically trying to analyze the problem or if you're a person who's participating at this moment in deep and hard to understand suffering so there are two perspectives there's an intellectual side to our question and there's a pastoral side people's hearts are breaking I remember when my sister telephoned me and told me that her lovely daughter of 22 just married had a brain tumor an earthquake in the brain what do you say I didn't have an earthquake in my brain so I had to face the question theoretically she had to face it and the pain that it involved it's hard and part of the difficulty in handling it is that I know in an audience like this our experience of suffering is vast we observe it but we maybe have experienced in our own lives and the way we've been treated by our parents maybe even and so I shall try as best I can I shall fail but I shall try as best I can to be sensitive to it I remember years ago that it's happened many times but this is typical I was in a country far away and I was having breakfast with two Jewish friends from Israel they were brilliant engineers and we started to talk and the question of God came up and I I said to them how do you stand and they said we don't believe in God and I said that's odd because part of my reason for believing is God in God is your history well they said we don't actually believe in God and I said would you tell me why and I remember the man saying he said no I don't want to tell you why well I said that's alright so we went on talking and I could say husband-and-wife them looking at each other and they came to a decision and he suddenly said we're going to tell you why but he said don't blame me if it destroys your faith and I said well I said you know my faith in God is evidence-based if it's destroyed by what you say it wasn't worth having in the first place so he said all right he said my wife and I love literature we read books to each other we were reading a book by Bosch of its singer the brilliant Israeli Nobel laureate for literature he wrote a book called the slave and he said we were reading this book one evening and we came across a passage where singer described a horrific event in Russia for Jewish women and children were buried alive and I'll never forget this man with pain in his eyes he said to me in that moment the light went out and we've never believed in God since so what do you say he was looking at her theoretically but of course I knew he'd lost so many of his relatives of the Holocaust and I've been in Auschwitz many times ladies and gentlemen and I've wept every time that's one example of moral evil that could be multiplied of course so I said to them all right then there's no God they looked at me strangely and they said we thought you believed in God I said yes I do but you seem to solve the problem there is no God that is just the way the universe is and I couldn't help thinking of Richard doc when he talks about the ultimate nature of reality in this direction and when he says this universe is just as you would expect it to be in a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication some people are going to get hurt other people are going to get lucky and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it or any justice the universe we observe writes Dawkins as precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom no design no purpose no evil and no good nothing but blind pitiless indifference DNA neither knows nor cares DNA just is and we dance to its music I've mentioned that to Richard Dawkins publicly several times he's never retracted it and ladies and gentlemen we need to face this analysis because it is increasingly prevalent in the Academy listen carefully to what it says there is no good there is no evil but half a minute do I hear Richard Dawkins complaining that God is evil I do but if there's no good and no evil that is a meaningless statement now this is enormous ly important I know it's theoretical but it is important the logical consequence of Dawkins attitude is to abolish the categories of good and evil but if you do that ladies and gentlemen its idle to talk about God being evil or the world being evil because there isn't any good or evil the reason of course the Dawkins still talks about evil is that he discovers as you and I discover all of us that we are moral beings whether we build even God or not we've got a sensitivity to right and wrong to good and bad to justice and injustice and therefore whether we are an atheist or not we look at Auschwitz and we say it's evil yes but that's beginning to make a hole in naturalism because if the logical consequence of believing there is no God is to abolish the categories of good and evil then the logical consequence of admitting that these categories exist is to reintroduce the possibility that there is a God with all the problems that that brings with it we've had some awful shootings in recent days if the shooters were just dancing to the music of their DNA can you blame them of course not 9/11 just dancing to the music of their DNA were they how could you possibly blame them we know in our hearts that that cannot be true but there's the problem ladies and gentlemen if Epicurus is right if naturalism is right then ultimately good and evil or non categories or at best their categories we have simply invented and they're subject to relativistic win there's no absolute character to the Charles Taylor it is brilliant booklet secular age rights this the modern age more or less repudiating the idea of a divine lawgiver has nevertheless tried to retain the ideas of moral right and wrong not noticing that in casting God aside they have also abolished the conditions of meaningfulness for moral right and wrong as well and that is a supreme irony to my mind and so although atheism seems in immediately to offer a solution this is just how it is it's brute fact we have to accept it actually it doesn't offer a solution at all it makes the situation even more difficult Friedrich Nietzsche saw this of course very clearly more clearly than many other people that the consequence of abandoning the traditional biblical morality that is at the heart of Western civilization would lead essentially to the philosophy of the strong eliminating the weak and he puts it very powerfully he says the biblical prohibition thou shalt not murder is a piece of naivety life itself recognizes no solidarity no equal rights between the healthy and the degenerate parts of an organism one must excise the latter cut it out or the whole will perish why morality ask nature at all would life nature and history are non moral but are they and again I come back to the fact that we discover in ourselves that moral compass we're moral beings now from a biblical perspective that makes perfect sense because the mandate that lies at the heart of Western civilization upon which all our human rights are founded is the statement in the Bible that we are as human beings uniquely made in the image of God now if that is true of course it makes this question of evil even more acute if we're made in the image of God couldn't he as a friend of mine said couldn't he have made a far better job of it but let's just paint another background question ladies and gentlemen when we look at evil especially massive and overwhelming evil one of the big questions that rises is justice No dokin says there is no justice and of atheism is true ladies and gentlemen the vast majority of people will never get justice the vast majority of people on earth today do not get justice in this life and if there is no life after this life there's no life to get justice in so they will never get justice and yet our human hearts they cry out for justice they sense that we live in a moral universe that there must be something somewhere otherwise our notion of justice is a sheer illusion and it mocks us so we have to face that as well what can a theism say in the context of massive injustice Hitler murdered 6 million Jews and then he takes a gun and he blows his head off and he's got away with it because he will never have to face any ultimate question of responsibility is that true I think there's something in every human being that says that cannot be true now of course our feeling in our hearts that something cannot be true doesn't mean it isn't true but as CS Lewis pointed out it would be very strange if in a world where we find ourselves with an appetite for food there was no food in a world where we find an appetite for sex there was no sex if it in a world where we find we have an appetite for friendship and justice and morality that was done he said to be very strange world and Richard Dawkins said to me once yes the picture I paint is bleak but that doesn't mean it's false I said Richard it doesn't mean true either we've got to investigate the evidence ladies and gentlemen as we find our way into this very difficult problem you see according to the Christian worldview the Veritas forum exists to inject into the general discussion a Christian perspective according to the Christian worldview there is to be a final judgment that's a big thing to say in contemporary society isn't it is an even bigger thing to claim that the final judge has already been appointed his name is Yeshua Jesus Christ you say you don't seriously believe that as an Oxford professor yes I do I don't know what the Oxford professor has got to do with it and I'm not the only one ladies and gentlemen whatever you make of it one of the most marvelous things it seems to me is the concept that there will be a judgement because it means that our conscience that tells us about right and wrong is not ultimately an illusion people do not like these days to talk about judgment because they haven't really thought about it would you like to live in the United States without police and law courts very few of you would be old enough to remember what happened with the lights went out in New York in the early 20th century and people went completely wild and looting it was one of the most amazing things once the eye of the Lord gone there are many books written on this particular topic it's fascinating we do one judgment but not me please that's the problem and we can look at that a little bit later on if you want me to look at it with you but let me just stake out the claim the Christian claim ladies and gentlemen is this ultimately this world is going to be judged totally fairly and justice will be done do you know what that does for me it gives me something that atheism by definition cannot give me a nuts hope I remember saying to my Israeli friends I said you know you imagine you've solved the problem I'll tell you one thing you have not removed and they said what are we not removed you haven't removed the suffering is still there but I said may I suggest you've made it ten thousand times more difficult because you've removed all hope by banishing God from the equation you have by definition banished all hope so that atheism is a hopeless in a technical sense of hopeless philosophy by definition but you say that's a probably you see you believe in God and but look let's face it you talk to me about a God who created the atom that's right who opposed the universe who invented light who painted every color who invented the human mind why couldn't he then have made a universe that didn't get itself into such a mess couldn't God have made beings that didn't sin that didn't destroy each other my answer may shock you of course he could of course he could we make them you know in laboratories we call them robots of course you can make beings that are non moral but now I have a wife and I've been married to the same one for 44 years which isn't bad is it now you imagine if I had a robotic wife a very sophisticated one with the equipped with a proper screen and you know all the kind of sophisticated iPad technology so I go back from Rice University and my wife comes to the door there's a screen old glowing and I see a word bar kiss so I go kiss and I get a beautiful robotic kiss well why are you laughing but you say would that be a real kiss well they're making robots that are very similar to human beings these days but you know that it wouldn't be real because there's no choice in the matter she's programmed to do what she does now let me explain it carefully of course God could make a universe with creatures in it and in that sense cannot sin there are loads of them animals when the lion eats your head off of the zoo because you put it between the bars we do put him in the High Court my ladies and gentlemen I think cielos helped me a great deal here I don't think it's the final answer but it's a way in to see that in order to make beings that have the capacity to love they boast of the capacity to hate if you're going to the capacity to say yes you must have the capacity to say no and you say well why did God do that why do you have children never forget holding my first child in my arms and realizing that I have brought this little girl into the world she could grow up to say no to me why take the risk do you ever think about it why do we do it ladies and gentlemen because we realize that granted the risk the benefits outweigh the risk to live in a world where love is possible we all crave for a world in which love is actualized and you hope one day maybe you've already got there few students at Rice that you meet somebody and fall in love with them and they'll fall in love with you and they'll value you and they'll choose you and the value of that and you know that it's got an inherent risk God took a risk to make a universe with people in it made it his image capable of choosing capable of saying yes to God and equally capable of saying no moral beings that is so granted that it's like that there's another question we can ask and that is this granted that there's a risk did God make any provision if things went wrong now here ladies and gentlemen I go to speak to you frankly as a Christian because other religions must defend their own reactions to this we started by talking about the problem of suffering and now I want to tell you about a God who suffered that conversation with my Jewish friends didn't finish where I mentioned I said to them you know I want to say something to you that's going to be very difficult they said that's okay I said you've gathered by now that I believe that Yeshua HaMashiach Jesus is the Messiah yes they said I said I believe something even more that's going to be well very difficult for you he said go on tell me what is it you believe I said I believe he's God incarnate he was God now I said you know he was crucified yes I said try and come with me just for a moment I know it's going to be very difficult but try and come with me if that is God on a cross what is it telling you I said at the very least that's telling you this it's telling you that God has not remained distant from the problem of human suffering but has become part of it and I'll never forget his answer he says why has no one ever told me that before now ladies and gentlemen this is a very deep thing I've made a dozen massive claims that go against the grain of the naturalism in the Academy of the 21st century but the longer I live the more I study these things the more I find them making sense after sense I'm not solving the problem but giving me a way in you say why would you believe that story you a scientist why would you believe that story well I believe it ladies and gentlemen because Jesus gave evidence of being God incarnate by rising from the dead and I say that I believe that as a scientist there is evidence for it I can't go into the detail tonight but in my most recent book gunning for God I spend a couple of chapters going through this through the eyes of the skeptic David Hume in order to try and get across the idea that there is evidence that Jesus rose from the dead therefore death is not the end and that opens up a whole world of possibilities that atheism knows nothing about and you say but I'm hurting it doesn't take the hurt away well what should I say to that when I see the suffering of some people I just say well I have no experience like that how can I comment how can I say anything but what I've noticed ladies and gentlemen is this that this message does something at a very deep level let me turn it around as they come to a stop in this section we can argue from no to kingdom come what a good god should might possibly surely he might've he could have he would have if he had and so on we can argue it it's been argued for thousands of years and we will remain dissatisfied with the answers all of us including me so perhaps that's not the answer the question to ask here's the question I asked and I want to leave you with it tonight granted that our experience of life is full of ragged raw edges arrived in Christchurch New Zealand 48 hours after the earthquake had to meet women who lost their husbands within just a few hours of touching down this was brought home to me and I remember saying to them and if you want more by the way you can google my name in New Zealand and see what I said to those people we find ourselves raw and hurting now granted that that's true is there anywhere in the entire universe evidence that we could trust God with the dark places the ragged places the hurting places is there anywhere and I want to suggest to you ladies and gentlemen that there is one place above all and that's the cross on which the king of glory died you may never have heard an Oxford professor said before but you're going to hear it tonight the biggest thing in my life by far is that God so loved me that He gave His only Son for me to bring me forgiveness and peace and everlasting life and hope not a simplistic hope but a hope that will endure when planet Earth has gone thank you ladies and gentlemen so first of all we're gonna have a small conversation here but while we speak you should have one ear listening to us or maybe both and also though spend a little bit of time thinking of some other good questions to keep the conversation going so we'll speak for 20 or 30 minutes and then and then open the floor up to to all of your questions so I think that talk certainly should have provoked some with speaking to one of my colleagues this morning with the background in humanities and said to mathematicians are going to be talking about suffering tonight and she didn't understand how that was different from what we do and all of our lectures to begin with so I must say I sympathize indeed indeed indeed so I have a few questions that some of our students have posed and I thought maybe we'd begin with those there's a departure rice students perhaps like Oxford students don't have a burden of humility in some instances and so they they don't they don't trouble themselves and in thinking them that they might be God and so in playing God once says if I were God you know I would have created a universe in which suffering didn't happen and I think this next part is is is key can you convince me that an infinitely higher order than me did think that a world with suffering was was better and this is by far my biggest unresolved conflict with accepting his presence not to raise the stakes for you yeah well I of course as I think you've realized from what I said I sympathize with that student and the difficulty is we could easily bring words in an infinitely higher power what does these words mean in mathematics we do know what infinity means and it does cause people to suffer when we explain it but it's my final point that this kind of issue the theoretical could God not have created and couldn't do this and so on and working out a definition of God then deducing all the possibility strong but insane but the world's not like this and therefore there isn't a God you see I commanded the other way for the simple reason that I find that the Atheist alternative though plausible at the start runs into the sand and so I begin to re-examine what is claimed in the biblical tradition about God and I come back to this is there enough evidence to trust God with those ragged edges now the proof of the pudding is in the eating and it seems to me that I have met so many people in life who's done that and one of the things that it has done for them is very markedly noticeable it is driven them to help alleviate the suffering of others in my college at Oxford green templeton college we're quite famous for our medicine and many of my colleagues have a passionate concern some of them are Christian some of the Bur atheist some of them are of every religion under the Sun but they've a concern for alleviating suffering but often they say to me after a field trip why is it when I go to this remote country that the people I discover there who are doing the hard work or Christians now they raise the question with me in other words they've seen that whatever the answer to the philosophical question there's something about the God who suffers that can drive people not to be impractical but to be very practical and to get on with the practical help of our fellow man to alleviate whatever suffering we can because there's hope that there's some sort of ultimate objective but I cannot face it and I haven't met anybody they can answer those theoretical questions we just can't we've tried that for centuries so this next question is in similar vein but maybe just ratchets it up one one more level in it so God should be capable of anything and from the human any human mind which he gave it is a more loving path to take in creating a world without suffering and the Bible God repeatedly kills people many times children who have not even had a chance to understand him and the least he would create a world where everyone could at least hear the gospel of Jesus before dying but that's not the case how could this be the case if God is truly all-powerful all-knowing it all good God if he exists is not all good he might even be no good at all right well this dive introduces as you write it does ratcheted up another degree because it introduces the question of innocent suffering and children and so on and so forth and the word loving God well I want to argue in principle that you cannot have a universe in which love is possible without choice and CS Lewis puts it very well he says you know if you live in a world where a stick will remain firm when it's used to prop up a building but it will immediately banned if I use it to hit you in the head in the end you will reduce all choice and you end up in a world with no love and robots and all the rest of it but to the specific questions it is a separate question I'd really welcome a whole evening on it indeed it's that question of the so-called genocide in the Old Testament and so on that motivated me to write my most recent book gunning for God because the book you mentioned at the beginning just to explain to people because I'll not be able to give a detailed answer but I'm going to say something is that God's Undertaker's about the science thing but what I've noticed recently is that the new atheist particularly Christopher Hitchens the late Christopher Hitchens have gone for people like myself not so much in the science but on the morality you see now let me say two or three things this you've opened a major question I take it enormously seriously the first thing I notice is that these reports were joshiya entered canaan and the reports are that all in a particular village were slaughtered for example that type of thing they occur in a very strange part of the Bible the book of Deuteronomy for the very morality is stated that is used to condemn those events now that I find immensely striking if the so called genocide accounts were in an obscure book of the Bible very different from a booklets full of morality I would say are well but they're not because the very morality that Hitchens and Dawkins used to condemn these events they get from the very book that describes them now that I suppose it's a mathematician in me that alerts my attention to a number of very interesting things our Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks for whom I have a lot of time he's written some very interesting stuff he points out that that book has some of the fairest rules of war you read anywhere it's one of the earliest books in history that tells people in warfare not to destroy the trees etc etc always sue for peace and all this kind of thing and it reads amazingly contemporarily in terms of human rights and so on and then you have this curious thing makes it even stranger so then I begin to investigate further and forgive me I mean this is a big question and you cut it off would you want to then I notice that there's a history to this that Abram centuries before was told that he would go down to Egypt for 400 years before the Hebrews would come up out of Egypt and come into Canaan the reason for the delay was according to the Bible the iniquity the sin the violence of the AMA rights is not yet full so that as I understand it these are the facts how we interpret them as another matter that the coming of Joshua into the land of Canaan coincided with the judgment of God and some of the most evil practices the world has ever seen a nation in particular that ritualized and institutionalized child sacrifice and God judged it through the Israelites now we might have problems with your other human being is being used to exact judgment that's the first thing the second thing was everybody sorted now I raise that because they're leading academics like Nicholas Walter store here the United States has just been a big conference on this in the u.s. a very interesting one that points out that there are technical phrases in the Old Testament like all Israel came to the coronation of so-and-so it's a bit like we say the whole world came to the funeral of Princess Diana what weren't there some people in bed with flu it's hyperbole of course not everybody came a Nicholas voltar's door for what it's worth says that there's one chapter Deuteronomy that repeats this kind of thing that all should be destroyed so many times that he regards it as a phrase that means secure a decisive victory now his reason for that is this is from the subsequent history it's clear that everybody wasn't killed the cities were still occupied and so on so scholarly work it seems to me has made the thing a little bit easier to understand now it's not genocide of course Israel was warned that if they got involved in the same practices they'd be carried away to Babylon and they where it's much more sophisticated morally now having said all of that whether you agree with all of that or not we still have a problem since we started talking thousands of innocent children have died it's very hard to believe ladies and gentlemen isn't it at this moment there are children dying now if you say therefore there's no God then that's it just how it is and we're back with the old problem I'm going to risk saying something I don't often say but as I look at this question ladies and gentlemen whatever the rights and wrongs and ends a night's their innocent children that suffer and perish and die often because of the horrors of moral evil because a lot of the famine and the defoliation and the deforestation of the world is at the end down to human greed let me risk saying this and please don't misunderstand me if we could see right now what God has done with those children have suffered innocently we didn't no more questions maybe we can stay in the Old Testament for for a moment longer and think maybe we see how God exacts justice yes but perhaps also we might think how we are tempted sometimes to exact justice to suffering when we can attribute a human source to our problems and so we might draw on that infamous Psalm 109 which says you know may God strike out at his enemy and let you know let his days be few his children be fatherless his wife a widow and so forth where do we draw the line do we turn the other cheek or do we have some some ability to act in justice against those who cause us to suffer I come from northern island yes perhaps I shouldn't have told you that and I bring that in because it's relevant to this isn't it because it is the fact that my country has suffered terrorism but terrorism in the name of God on both sides now I know that if you're a sophisticated historical commentator you will say that their social injustice and it's complicated but just leave it for above it the fact is that the world has got the impression that my tiny little country and I'll never forget this because it was one of the first big issues that I faced at Cambridge wait one student said to me do you believe in God he said oh sorry I forgot you're Irish you all believe in God and you fight about it and I'd heard it before but I do that this was a serious point is is is is that what it's all about so I asked myself how do I respond to this and I'll tell you how I respond I'm utterly ashamed of it utterly ashamed of it my brother was blown up in a terrorist bomb nearly lost his life my father was Christian without being sectarian and he went so far as employing as equally as he could Protestant Effects of the small story rhyme that was utterly exceptional that's my background but I'm ashamed of it ladies and gentlemen I'm utterly ashamed that the name of Christ has ever been associated with an ak-47 or a bomb and want to explain why because people who take up weapons to protect either Christ or further his message you're not following him they're disobeying him one of the most interesting things relevant to this debate and Christopher Hitchens put this up to me this was his big objection you know the war is caused by Christianity terrible the Crusades and all that I said Christopher I agree with you this is totally unacceptable but please notice that Christ was put on trial for what for stirring up political revolution you know we don't put it into modern language and we don't realize what's going on in the New Testament the very thing that Hitchens accuses Christianity of Christ was accused of put on trial for and the trial was so sensitive that he was tried by the leading Roman procurator palapas Pontius Pilatus and Pilate put the question to it because it was such a sensitive thing you're claiming hurricane what kind of a king are you my kingdoms of Jesus is not of this world otherwise my servants would have been fighting that I should not be delivered to the Jews and I my kingdom is not from here and Pilate realized instantly that Jesus was no threat to this end I was born to this end I came into the world said Jesus that I should bear witness to the truth and Pilate said what is truth perhaps not cynically and went out to declare Jesus to be innocent that to by bite is immensely important because it stamps in the middle of history what it is that Jesus stood for but there's a fine there's the reason why Jesus message is nonviolent it's because of his message the one thing you cannot do is impose truth by power especially of its truth about God's love and forgiveness and salvation and peace with God so that's the way I would begin to approach that thank you shift gears a little bit we'll find ourselves in the final days of the papacy of Pope Benedict and I thought maybe a quote of his on the topic of love that you mentioned earlier might be might be relevant anyone who really wanted to get rid of suffering would have to get rid of love before anything else because there can be no love without suffering because it is always it always demands an element of self-sacrifice because given temperamental differences in the drama situations it will always bring with it renunciation and pain so I think perhaps one approach to the question of why is suffering in our world in some sense we're different human beings and we have different temperaments and it's this our attempts to get along with one another and to approach each others and love elsewhere he says we it is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt when we try to spare ourselves the effort in pain of pursuing truth love and goodness that we drift into a life of emptiness and to which there may be almost no pain but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater and I think that's something that students know very well there's a lot of hurt out there in the world a lot of suffering on our campus I think I think that's important that you raise that and I've noticed in this country you play a game called football it's a very strange game to someone from Britain I once sat watching a major league game with a man whose name was up in the Hall of Fame so he knew what the game was all about you see and after an hour or so watching this he said have you figured tonight oh I said I figured tonight I can tell you exactly what American football is said what is it I said it's a series of prayer meetings interrupted by war now you say what's that got to do with Pope Benedict the big men that form a football team do they put up a paid you sports people and I hear rice say somebody told me you've got a terrific basketball team baseball team the point that's being made here is that an ordinary life we will calculate sometimes extreme physical pain into going for a high-performance sport and we know the two things belong together we don't see anything strange about that and what Pope Benedict has been saying was said by Dostoyevsky long before him I cannot imagine wrote Dostoevsky a truly great person that hasn't suffered because suffering does something to you the trouble with this question is that it always leads to another question and the other question I appreciate is I can understand big fellas you know and and I'm getting toughen and under pain they go through but they're suffering in the world that's utterly disproportionate and that's my problem now that brings me back to the other kinds of arguments but I think it is very important to recognize and of course the scripture the Bible is a great deal to say about suffering at all kinds of levels Paul the man who brought the message of the gospel to Europe and because of that I'm sitting here he got an eye disease and God didn't heal it he suffered beatings all kinds of stuff they didn't earn him salvation but because he loved God so much he was prepared to endure the baiting the misrepresentation the suffering in order to witness not as I go into Oxford so often and go along Broad Street and on my bicycle even though I often stopped at the cross in the middle of Broad Street you know Atwells opposite your old college of Bailey OD where Latimer Ridley and Cranmer were burned at the stake for their faith in God see ladies and gentlemen it's all meaningless if death as the end and that's why the resurrection of Jesus is so central to all of us because it blows open the whole closed world old that naturalism is given to us but sorry I'm starting to go I need to get back to the questions well well I think we might also look at job as a great indie gathering and suffering in some sense certainly tolerated by God for as a test of job in a way I'm reminded also of the Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila who said God if you treat your friends this way no wonder you have so few of them right so what do we learn from job's lesson as we suffer is there a way that we can elevate our suffering and take it to the cross that we can join in Christ's suffering oh I'm sure there is because trusting God is a dynamic thing it's like friendship and there comes points I find it life where God will actually test us not to destroy us but to strengthen us to make it more real and the important thing is to realize and I'm speaking as a Christian now of course but Paul talks about this and Peter talks about this and so on they they talk about that that that suffering refines faith it builds it up it doesn't destroy it it does the exact opposite it makes you a stronger character and we know we instinctively go to people whether the Christians are not who've suffered and learn to overcome it there's something about that we live in a broken world and if everything just goes easy and life is swimming then we never learn any resistance I mean if you don't exercise your muscles they will atrophy the other be useless so it seems to me there are all kinds of levels lower levels where we can learn through suffering learn to be patient learn to face it and learn that we're mortal that this world is not the only world it is that there is but at the same time there will always be those ragged edges where the suffering appears so disproportionate that our mind simply blows a fuse and we can't cope with it and in the end part of that learning is can I trust God with it well if I can't trust God with it can I trust atheism with it well atheism has no hope no solution no nothing yeah well I think now is a good time for us to transition to some some audience questions okay let me remind you of the the format here you're going to head back to the podium yes very good well our ladies and gentlemen those who know me will be used to the fact that I'm always interested in the spectrum of questions because I know that in this audience everybody's interested in everybody else's question so what we're going to do is just collect a few questions so that I can estimate the range of questions and then say one or two things about it and then we're done all right so just put up your hand and make your question brief because the time you take for your question will be time taken away from the next person's question and I collect them there's a hand up there so have you got a microphone to bring to that person please keep the questions on the topic of the knife hey dr. Lennox hey you you talked about how people were inspired by Christianity to do good things and it made me actually think of something my professor had noted which was a lot of the really big international projects that were nonprofit and for general well-being those happen in the 20th century many centuries after we kind of after you know they're that secularism enters the West and I'm not sure if Christianity is is such I guess I'm trying to say is what empirical evidence would you bring to the statement that Christianity Foster's kindness over ok other beliefs question ok that's a good question too and we alternate the sides to be fair professor Lenox so you talked about how you believe that Jesus is able to empathize and through Jesus we can better understand suffering but speaking from personal experience I know many Muslims many Jews many of other religions who are also able to deal with suffering often better than many Christians I know so what would you have to say to this ok three all right so if God the Father knew that Jesus was going to come back to heaven after dying and suffering on the cross why is Jesus's death so significant for God are you talking about the relationship of God's knowledge I don't quite grasp the question by the death of Jesus was so significant for God yeah yeah can you unpack that a bit I can give the guy a call right I want your questions not questions on the Internet okay number four I will say something about that though number four yes there's one over here I'm just taking to account freewill I guess how do you reconcile the concept of Hell as in like most human parents when if a child didn't choose them send them to a place like hell so how do you think that God handles I sorry you'll have to speak a little bit more slowly well I didn't get the question at all the gist is how would you reconcile the concept of Hell with God being a loving God Oh okay five there's one down here you can see ladies and gentlemen all I have to do is keep collecting them and then the time's up and I go if you understand oh if truth cannot be imposed by power and I'm not saying that it can what need is there for power would there be a vacuum without power is there a need for a military okay six is there something up there in the left again and then one more and with that's it yes German theologian and mortar Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes not to speak is to speak not to act is to act so from that and from these claims what should be our motivations as Christians to to go after this suffering and and what kind of service should we should we strive for okay seven dr. Linux and as a part of your argument you cited a human desire for morality as a part of as a part of your evidence and we also see a sinful inclination um both in humanity so you have a moral desire and simple inclination how do you reconcile this difference from a theoretical point of view annum is there a conflict in it okay okay that'll probably do for the moment oh there's a one desperate person there right okay hi dr. Lennox you stated that morality is derived from the Bible where do you believe that atheists get their morality and do you even think that they have morality okay that'll do and indeed without question first because it's extremely important I didn't say morality is derived from the Bible and Christopher Hitchens used to say that that you know was theft wrong when God only when God thundered from Sinai I what I said was that every human being whether they believe in God or not is a moral being made in the image of God and so therefore atheists like Christians and anybody else and people of any faith or none all have moral concepts and this is enormous ly important because the research that's been done and Lewis in a book that everybody ought to read was written in 1940 called the abolition of man in the appendix to it he points out that all around the world if you look at different tribes and nations and philosophies pagan religion all sorts you find a common core of morality respect for the elderly truth don't murder and so on you'll find variations how many you can have etcetera but there's a core of morality round the place now that's exactly what I'd expect to find that this is the point that Lewis makes if there is a God who has given each of us a moral compass now the bible refines that and sharpens it but it doesn't first appear there and it's very important that nobody goes away with the impression that I'm saying that atheists cannot behave indeed you will discover even reading the Bible that sometimes pagans put to shame people who claim to know God that's because we've got this moral compass so that's enormous ly important we've got that moral ability to judge and indeed Jesus when he made his appeal to the world he asked people to use their moral judgment and what he did was it good or was it not in other words his whole attitude to them presupposed that they had got moral concepts that they could use and I had another thing to that because this is a big topic actually Dostoevsky famously said yes Lee Bogart yet to Eve suppose William which means if God does not exist everything is permissible he did not mean that atheists were incapable of behaving morally what he did mean though was this that there's no rationale there's no rational justification for morality if God does not exist now that's such a big statement I have hinted at it through this evening and I've written about it in gunning for God but it's a very important thing because what I was arguing with Dawkins is precisely this that if you follow naturalism to its logical consequences you end up without the concepts of morality and one of the big questions in our civilization and it's so obvious is that if you dismiss a transcendent God you've got to find an alternative source for morality so where are you going to find it you're going to find it down here in here so to speak so you're going to either find it and raw biology and genetics or in the social dimension and I might just make a very provocative statement right now and say that has led to massive moral confusion because depending on what animal species you choose you can base any morality on it you like and that's the problem Darwin was a kindly old man with a beard he saw ants cooperating and he said there's a basis for altruism Spencer saw nature red in tooth and claw and talked about the survival of the fittest and people have applied both of those systems in morality as you know so ladies and gentlemen here's a challenge coming out of this question what is the base for your ethical standards where does morality come from this is a major question that I would address of course by referring back to my Christian faith that gives the rational justification it doesn't give the pure source of morality because morality is built-in to us at that basic level by God himself know that relates to the previous question that I'd said that there's a human desire for morality I didn't actually talk about a human desire for morality what I use the word desire I talked of a desire for justice on a moral basis but you asked me to reconcile that concern for morality with the awareness that we go wrong and we face our own sinfulness now that raises of course a question that every religion has got to face because if there is a God who is holy and just and true then one sure thing is I certainly not even kept my own standards let alone his so what's going to happen to me when the judgement comes that is a very real question that proceeds out of of that you don't have to reconcile the difference we've got this more compass but it judges me that's the problem it judges me and therefore we've got to raise the question seriously raise it where does that leave me in relationship with God I'll come back to that in a little moment now um the first question was about I talked about people inspired by Christianity to do good things and what did pinnacle evidence would I offer that Christianity furthers kindness well I'm grateful for hospitals for nursing for hospices they're all Christian institutions I'm grateful for University's Christian institutions and indeed one of the world's leading atheists is Jurgen Habermas he's well worth reading he's written a book called transitions in which he says something like this there is an atheist and he says if you look at our great institutions are Rho human rights or legislations or universities and all the rest of it the foundations of the morality and all its good at Western society they all trace back to the judeo-christian tradition what is more he says we have no other source everything else and I was astonished when I read this last bit everything else is postmodern chatter now that's an atheist and increasingly ladies and gentlemen as our reaction to the new atheist saying Christianity and religion do no good there's an increasing number of very much brighter intellectual voices on the Atheist side reminding us that the freedoms we've got o greatly to Christianity and there's the irony of it that some of the people use those freedoms and they want to cut out any debate on the god question in the Academy and they're using the very freedoms that were guaranteed to them virtually every University in this country and in my country was a Christian institution founded by people that saw no contradiction between fought rationality and belief in God and I would say that the evidence is absolutely overwhelming we forget that care for abandoned children and hospices and all of this thing was introduced through Christianity I'll never forget going to Rwanda just before the genocide and I was at a camp and the cook I discovered was a brilliant physician and I said to what are you doing here well he said I like cooking I said yes come on what are you doing in this country he said I went to Seattle Washington University he said I was a top student in medicine and he said I had a brilliant career cut out for me and then he said I was coming up to my final examinations and I thought you know medicine is about alleviating pain and I don't know much about pain so I better go to the book shop but he walked to the bookshop and there in the center of the window was the problem of pain by CS Lewis he thought it was a medical textbook he bought it that he said you know John I set night after night without book I had my career mapped wonderful opportunities they couldn't let it go and he said I'd been now all of my life operating in central Africa trying to relieve the pain of my fellow men and women I see not not only once but many times so that's the sort of evidence but I hope you who asked the question have at least some evidence that Christianity can motivate people no please ladies and gentlemen I'm not suggesting there aren't atheist doctors who do these things but what I am suggesting is that historically the legacy that you and I have that's enabling you to sit in this university and me to speak here that legacy is intricately bound up with the Bible it would be ashamed to throw it away wouldn't it ok well let's go down to the next one um if truth cannot be imposed by power what need is there for power that's a very interesting question sir and Pilate was a military man and I suspect when he said what is truth he was sort of faking you know truth is the kind of thing that philosophers bother about but not military been like me now of course the Lord Jesus talking in that way I qualified what I said very carefully especially when it's the truth about forgiveness and grace and salvation but there is another side that you rightly remind us off if I steal your car and I take a push modern view that it's my truth that it's okay to do that you will be very glad there is the power of the federal police to deal with they want you and Christ was not against that his apostles taught in Scripture that the powers that be are ordained by God we need power and authority and you helped me really to refine the point and it is a very important one I would put it this way it's a little bit more abstract and philosophical if in the end you give up believing in absolute truth you will end up having to believe what power dictates you might want to think about that and there's massive pressure in society today in the Academy as well to say that naturalism is the default position for all intelligent people and the pressure to conform to that is enormous that is an attempt to impose a truth which I believe to be false by power and we need to be aware of it and we need to celebrate the freedoms that we do have so let's be thankful that there are powers that exist because we need them because I'm a sinful person I need the police as much as you sir no not to speak is to speak not to act is to act that quotation I think I've partly answered that question in my story about the physician in Rwanda we have to do both of course speak and act if I do not speak to you and explain what my faith in God means you'll never understand it but if I do not act consistently with my faith in God you'll not find me credible and so in the end it is massively important you see ladies and gentlemen how shall I put this to you God to me is not a theory as a person my wife isn't a theory she's a person that changes everything because the business about God is not simply acceptance of a set of abstract propositions it is at the end commitment to a person based of course on evidence I don't trust my wife for no reason do I you don't trust your friends for no reason but it's trusting a person and developing a relationship with the person now if God is the God who invented the universe and there's no evidence in my life of his lovers truth why should anybody believe me they have no reason to believe me faith in God without it being expressed in our deeds is valueless of course as the New Testament rightly says and so we all have to allow ourselves to be checked for credibility in these things there was a question about free will the question of a God of love and hell it brings me back of course to the topic of judgment now let's try and think about this very briefly there's a lot that could be said about it I think what we find very difficult once we purged our minds of all these med of medieval notions no one ever taught us more about the love of God than Jesus and one of the Magisterial statements of the love of God as this for God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not what should not perish so there at the heart of the deepest statement about the love of God you can conceive there is the possibility that a person can perish you say how could you reconcile up ladies and gentlemen it seems to me again CS Lewis is very helpful this is another hard question but if I say no to God what is God to do with me is he to force me to believe and insult by humanity of course not that is to destroy me and reduce me to the level of the amoral and when God Himself came into the world and showed his care for people and his love and did the supernatural things that cured people's diseases restored them to sanity and they saw that they said go we don't want you he went he went you and I are so dependent on God where did you get your cornflakes from this morning oh you said I got it through some dollars where did you get the dollars well I did some work who gave you the work and ultimately as you trace it back the generosity of God to us if we ultimately say no to God God loves us so much he lonner our choice ladies and gentlemen I don't like thinking about what that means but we got to think about what it means you think of all the things that you get from God you may not acknowledge them they come pouring into your life and you never even bow your head at a table and say thank you God for my food imagine it's all taken away because you've said no God loves you so much he will honor your choice he'll never force you you can't force acceptance you can't create love by power like that and so that is my way in too up very difficult of questions but it doesn't make sense otherwise there is to be a judgement morality matters we know it matters you can't live like a Hitler and get permanently away with it otherwise the universe collapse and collapses and moral rooms well-nigh the final question our friend who mentions our Jewish friends or our Muslim friends and they say they cope was suffering better than some Christians I'm sure they do I'm sure they do I have many friends who are Jews of great wisdom and compassion who would run rings around many Christians when it comes to talking about suffering you don't lose all your relatives and Auschwitz without learning something about suffering and I learned from them and I know in my heart I've got no parallel experience and what I have to do is humbly listen from anybody whatever they believe whether they're a Jew a Muslim a Christian and atheist or anything let's be humble enough to learn from other people because their experience of suffering can teach us something so I simply agree with you that brings me back to the question I left unanswered one day I'm going to have to face God ladies and gentlemen and that's a problem every religion has got to face if God is good loving and holy how can he accept me I've said that religions and non religions all of common morality that I accept and we must recognize that but now it going to the other side of it there are differences the religions don't agree with each other and hence comes the major problem faced by a student in the 21st century how do you choose well I no other way of choosing but by basing it on evidence my Jewish friends claim that Jesus died and didn't rise my Muslim friends claimed he didn't die my Christian friends claimed he died rules again all three it cannot be true she got to decide let me finish by giving you one of the reasons I'm a Christian one of the major reasons religions often are like well a University course at Rice University mm-hmm you got an entrance exam did you have to do a tough exam to get in here some of you probably did so you get in and then you're met by wonderful professors who look after you but they can't guarantee that you're going to get a degree coming because whether you come out at the end of the course with a degree or not depends on your merit doesn't it so I've ever kind the professors are dido they're all very kind or they want to see you get through and they're cheering you on they cannot guarantee that you're going to get through because it's based on merit there are millions of people in the world to think that gods like that that I try the best I can and hope that one day God will accept main and most religions teach that quite explicitly Christianity does not and here is the uniqueness Christianity tells me that I will never again acceptance with God on the basis of my merit let me put it to you ladies and gentlemen I remember spying a girl all those years ago in my first State University I married her I suppose I went to her and I said no Sally I love you to be my wife but now of course I couldn't accept you now but here's a cookbook and it's full of laws if you want to cook an apple cake thou shalt take so much flour thou shalt and and so on so I said it's going to be like this I got to give you this cookbook it's very expensive it's the best we could get now if you keep those rules first let's say 30 or 40 years then I'll think about accepting you how would you feel about that as a proposition it's absurd and yet there are millions of people that think of God in exactly that way you wouldn't insult a fellow human being by thinking that isn't it interesting we would never base our relationship with another human being on saying if you this this and this then I'll think about accepting you and that is a wonder of the Christian message that God is prepared to accept me right now not at the end of the process at the beginning why because it's got nothing to do with my merit but what God has done in Christ on the cross and dying for me see this problem with suffering ladies and gentlemen has another side the sheer genius of the heart of Christianity which is the cross and resurrection of Jesus is not simply it gives us insight into the problem of suffering it shows us how salvation works and it shows us how we can be accepted with God you see I come here to give you this talk I'm not giving it to you in the hope that God will think you know well done the next I'll give you another brownie point for that and I'm nearer to accepting you ladies and gentlemen I come because God accepted me years ago and I come to express my gratitude to him for accepting me not to gain acceptance that it's true with my wife because I accept her independent of her cooking that's what sets our free to cook I'm glad you see the point I do hope you see it when it comes to your relationship with God it is absurd to think that God would accept us because of our performance over time I'll never forget with this I stopped speaking in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences about these things I've spent a lot of time at Eastern Europe because I'm interested in atheism in its effect on society and I was watching and there was a man a professor the very senior man and his mouth fell open as I told him this story and afterwards I said to my said I couldn't help noticing you he said look he said all my life I thought it was a Christian but he said you come along today and you told me exactly what I thought I was desperate to do enough for God to accept me and now you tell me that Christ has already done it and what you need to do is repent and trust him I said that's right he looked up at me and he said it was worth you coming to Bulgaria for that he said I've never heard that before ladies and gentlemen Christ doesn't compete with any other religion no other religion offers me this he doesn't compete he offers me something utterly unique but I have tired you long enough ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for being a wonderful for more information about the veritas forum including additional recordings and a calendar of upcoming events please visit our website at Veritas org

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Length: 91min 20sec (5480 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2013