If God Exists, Why Does He Allow Evil? - Frank Turek

bird him in prayer he came out of the surgery fine then complications occurred 12 hours later he was dead 64 years old his wife buff who if there ever was a definition of a saint she is a 58 year old widow where was God and you in here can tell me of Christian couples parents of small children dying and children dying where is this good God aren't Christians supposed to not have to deal with such evils and suffering here's what we're gonna try and do in the time we have the first thing we're going to talk about is does evil disprove God because it's commonly thought that it does secondly does God promise to protect us Christians that is if we're Christians and if we have enough faith isn't God obligated to protect us and why doesn't God stop evil if he's so good and so powerful why doesn't he just stop it and then finally we're going to talk about what's the purpose of evil now how many thousands of books have been written on this topic there is no way I could even hardly summarize everything that's been written and cover all the bases on such a vast topic actually I probably could do it because I'm originally from New Jersey okay you see I speak it 150 words a minute with gusts to 350 okay so I'm going to go through this material extremely quickly if you can't keep up we have some resources on the book table out there first of all our book I don't have enough faith to be an atheist which builds the case for Christianity from the ground up and also talks about if God why evil in the very center is a two-hour DVD from our TV program that deals with this issue in a lot more detail and if you want the video version of I don't have enough faith to be an atheist that goes through the material from the book and is kind of a compliment to the book yet the video series I don't have enough faith to be an atheist it's all on the book table out there and I want to point out by the way that all the proceeds and the sale of the books and the DVDs will go to feed needy children mine okay just so you know I've got three sons we've already put two of them through college in fact the first two went to the University of South Carolina in fact the third one did as well that's right we have some Gamecocks in here and they went through Air Force ROTC so they're both Air Force officers now the oldest one is an intelligence officer serving in Las Vegas because he's working with the guys that fly the drones you know all the drones that are flown in the war zones are flown out of Las Vegas did you know that and you thought there was no real-world application for Xbox there is the second son is right now in flight training with the Air Force in fact he's down in Del Rio Texas and the third son is not in the Air Force but he's an engineer at the University of South Carolina he's a junior now so for about the past two years my wife and I have been empty nesters took us a while to get used to that about 10 minutes yeah that's how long it took to change the locks do we have any empty nesters in here can I see your hands please do you notice how how clean the house stays when they're gone it's amazing anyway there's a lot more resources on the website impact apologetics com and by the way we also have a TV program and a radio program the TV programs on every Wednesday nights on Direct TV 8 p.m. and midnight if you're an insomniac Direct TV channel 378 how many people here of Direct TV can I see your hands please Direct TV like six of us come on why not the rest of us friends don't let friends watch cable if you want to get out have enough faith to be an atheist you got to get DIRECTV actually that's not true if you go to our website cross examine or grate there click on TV show you can watch it live it's it's streamed it's not archived it's stream we do have radio every Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m. in the Dallas area it's low on the FM dial I don't know the exact station is anyone know low on the FM dial but if you if you don't listen to it live it is podcast and what we do is we present evidence for Christianity and we cross examine ideas against it one our apologetics program all right let's go back to our topic now does evil disprove God well let's put all this into context does God exist we're gonna have a two column chart here I'm gonna list a number of evidences that I think point to the existence of God now I can't go into detail here they're in our book and you can get other books as well that go through this I'm just going to list them to get some context on the question does God exist the beginning of the universe time space and matter had a beginning if time space and matter had a beginning the cause must transcend time space and matter in other words the cause must be spaceless timeless and immaterial that's exactly what we mean by God the fine-tuning of the universe and design of the universe from the very initial conditions of the universe the universe was fine-tuned for life there's only three possibilities for that it's either designed it's either physical necessity or its chance the best explanation is design the third line of evidence that there's some sort of designer which I think would God is the genetic code you have a genetic code three billion letters long who made that codes don't write themselves you need programmers to do that it's like believing that Microsoft Word came without a programmer and your genetic code is a lot more complicated than Microsoft Word life also where does life come from the same is true with consciousness and freewill not just any life but conscious life appears to be better explained by theism than certainly it does by non-theism intelligence and reason how did dead matter give rise to intelligence you can't give what you haven't got how does matter give us intelligence it appears that our minds are fashioned in the structure of the great mind and the laws of logic where did they come from they're immaterial laws that we're using right now to communicate it's not explained by materialism these laws aren't material they're immaterial the laws of nature I remember John Lennox debated Richard Dawkins and there is a question from the audience and the audience said dr. Dawkins where did the laws of physics come from and he said well I have no idea but then he went on to say but bring a God into it doesn't help will actually bring a God into it does help you ever ask the question why is the world so orderly why can't we take a spaceship and put it on Mars because we can depend on the laws of nature to be precise that's the product of a mind it's certainly not the product of randomness in fact think about this you wouldn't even know what randomness was unless you knew what order was order is the product of a mind it's not the product of nothingness or randomness how about objective morality which we'll talk about again here in a minute where did that come from it's not explained by atheism it's best explained by theism we could talk about Old Testament prophecy and of course we could talk about the evidence for the resurrection now on the other side of the equation here is evil the best argument against God is evil but is evil real an argument against God turns out that no evil is not an argument against God you say how so because objective evil presupposes objective good an objective good presupposes a standard outside of ourselves that establishes what good is in that standard we would call God's very nature so evil is actually an argument for God not an argument against God now you can ask why is there so much evil which we'll get into but you can't say that if evil exists God doesn't exist not I think reasonably anyway because there'd be no such thing as evil unless there was a standard of good and there must be a standard of good out there outside of ourselves that establishes what goodness is so we would even know what evil is in fact you could put it this way the shadows proved the sunshine in order to have shadows evil you have to have sunshine good oh you can have good you can have sunshine without shadows but you can't have shadows without sunshine you can't have evil without good in fact this is what brought CS Lewis ultimately defeat ISM and then finally I should say finally initially to theism and then finally to Christianity is he thought being an atheist the reason he was an atheist is because there was too much evil in the world and as you know you wrote mere christianity this he said that as an atheist my argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust but how would I got this idea of just and unjust a man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line what was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust you see if there's unjustice there must be justice if something is not right there must be something that is right so the very idea that there's evil out there presupposes a standard of objective good so let's go back to our chart here and you might be able to add a few more items on the left but at the end of the day we're going to take evil and actually put it on the yes side of the ledger now this doesn't mean that we've answered all the questions regarding evil but if evil does exist it points back to God it doesn't necessarily point to atheism and by the way it's not just Christians that have to answer the question if God why evil atheists have to answer it too and as soon as they open their mouth to complain about something they're presupposing a standard of good if in effect they're borrowing from God in order to argue against him so does evil disprove God no second question does God promise to protect us I mean does God promised to protect Christians from evil and suffering there's a very common kind of theology out there are called the Word of Faith theology you've heard of this right that God wants you to be healthy and wealthy and all you need to do is if you have enough faith you will be healthy and wealthy this theology is easily refuted by pointing out one thing I guess Jesus and the Apostles never got the memo don't tell me Jesus and the Apostles didn't have enough faith they suffered horribly I mean here is a painting of Peter being crucified upside down but it wasn't just Peter look at the heroes of the faith Abraham Joseph Moses David Isaiah Jeremiah Daniel Joel John the Baptist Steve and James the brother of John James the brother of Jesus John himself exiled Peter Paul Jesus many of these men have been crucified executed perhaps sawn in two don't tell me they didn't have enough faith God does not promise to protect us he tells us to pray for protection protect us from the evil one protect us from evil but that doesn't mean in this life were going to be immune from evil and suffering in fact he even tells us that we won't be even the Old Testament says so in Psalm 44 awake O Lord why do you sleep rouse yourself do not reject us forever why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression these were these weren't people who thought they were in sin at the time they thought they hadn't forgotten God and yet God had forgotten them why Jesus himself says if they persecuted me they will also persecute you he went on in the next chapter to say in this world you will have trouble but take heart if you have enough faith you won't know he didn't say that at all Paul said everyone who wants to live a godly life in Jesus Christ will be persecuted have you been persecuted yet for what you believe if you haven't maybe they don't know what you believe if you suffer as a Christian said Peter do not be ashamed but praise God that you bear that name do you really praise God when you suffer that you bear his name the writer of Hebrews of course

Channel: Watermark Community Church

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Length: 13min 7sec (787 seconds)

Published: Thu May 23 2013