The Apologetics Advertisement for Christianity
By Nathaniel Ashcroft
5 Claims
Now, many very strong arguments have been made here, some of the ones I find most compelling. They are supplied with ample evidence, but mostly I hope this gets you thinking. We have gone over meaning, creation, Pascal’s Wager, the fallacy of subjective truth when applied to religion, Atheism, the fallacy of a works-salvation religion, Biblical reliability, Jesus’s claims to divinity, and resurrection evidence. Next, I’m going to help shed some light on some common reasons non-believers do not believe in the Christian God.
Claim 1: Suffering Makes the Existence of the Christian God Unlikely
The existence of suffering, and the potential problems it poses for the existence of a good God, is probably the most famous and widespread objection to Christianity. To any unbeliever who is reading this, I completely understand that this is a hard topic to wrestle with; it’s awesome that you’re taking the time to even learn about the Christian side of this debate. Just hang with me through these 11 pages.
The Infiniteness of God
Before I even start answering this, I want to make this clear: To know why God does what He does is an impossible question, unless He has made the motive known to us. God reveals His motives many times throughout scripture. A famous example is in Genesis 50:20, where we see that God’s intention with Joseph’s journey and suffering was used for a good purpose according to God’s motives. God does not tell us why He didn’t make a world where sin was impossible. As I stated before, it’s a foolish mission to attempt to understand why God makes every one of His decisions expecting a concrete answer, as He has an infinite mind, and we have a finite one. The mysterious nature of God is part of the Christian faith; nobody has ever fully understood Him, and nobody ever will. If He doesn’t tell us, we don’t need to know.
Common Fallacy
A fallacy that often occurs when this topic is debated, is that the non-believer finds problems reconciling suffering’s existence with a good God while arguing from the secular point of view. In other words, they use their idea of God, not ours. The nonbeliever isn’t taking into account what Christians believe God has done, but just the suffering observed. There’s a large difference between arguing about the implications of suffering with ‘god’ in mind, or doing the same with the Christian God in mind. Nonbelievers also must take into account everything Christians believe about God’s character and actions. Otherwise each side of the conversation is talking about a different deity. The basis for a Christian idea of God is not fully found in observing the world, so we require specific revelation to figure out who this God really is and not just that He exists. Anyone can see God exists through creation. Without this specific (special) revelation, we can only guess what God’s character is, and could make Him out to be anybody. For the Christian and the non-beliver to have this conversation about suffering, the nonbeliever must at least temporarily adopt what Christians believe about God.
When I hear objections such as “why did God command the judgment of the Canaanites, of their women and children all together? Isn’t that unjust, I thought God was love?”, the person levying the objection is using their idea of God to argue against the actions of my God. I understand this question, and I think we all find God’s judgment to be difficult to understand because of the society we live in. In the unbeliever’s view, God is not just, and because of this His judgment of the Canaanites is unfounded and unjust. The same person would likely be fine with the judgment of the Nazis. If God judged the Hutu today, they wouldn’t have a second thought. “They deserve it,” is often what we hear. Under the Christian worldview, we all deserve it. The Canaanites were sacrificing children and committing heinous sexual acts (Leviticus 18). The Canaanites were stained with sin, practically bathing in it. The Canaanites were given four hundred years to repent (Genesis 15:13-16). Even amidst possibly the most complete judgment of a people recorded in the Bible, there was mercy present. However, God would be just in eliminating every single person who walks the face of the earth who is not covered with the blood of the Lamb. In fact, when Jesus returns this very thing will happen, and those who are the objects of His judgment will be condemned to hell. All of this to say, if you actually take into account who the Christian God is, the objections raised about God being unjust are realized to be unfounded. This is the biggest problem with the problem of pain objection; the accusation is levied against the wrong God. They condemn and accuse a God of their own making, a God who is not just, and is not allowed to condemn a sinner to hell. When anyone attempts to put this objection against the true God of the Bible, it falls apart.
To say that the suffering of the world makes God’s existence unlikely is an example of a rhetorical fallacy called non sequitur, which I defined previously. It basically means that the premise (suffering) doesn’t logically correlate with the conclusion (God doesn’t exist). It’s a logical fallacy to say that the actions of God would make His existence unlikely. Actions require a mind to conceive them, and a being to perform them. What is really being said, is that the nonbeliever does not enjoy suffering, and therefore God isn’t real because He allows it to go on. This problem presented by skeptics can be reworded to say, “If God is good, why does He allow suffering?”, while preserving its meaning.
Purpose of Suffering
God is not to blame for suffering in the world. It’s clear to us that it is our own sin that brought suffering into the world. God has given us free will, and we chose to abuse it (Genesis 3). In going against God’s will for our life, we have become the vessels for sin to enter into the world, skewing its perfect beauty (Romans 5:12-21). We have become tainted in our sin nature. A common roadblock notion non-believers have, is to blame God for the suffering of the world, even whenever He has offered freedom from it (John 3:16). Sin is a human problem, and God is not the author of evil (1 John 1:5). He made the universe “good” when setting our world into motion in Genesis, we just messed it up. Non-believers do not usually get held up on this part, but instead on why God doesn’t stop suffering.
The Bible is clear: suffering has purpose for our lives, and brings us closer to God. Scripture strongly emphasizes these two ideas: human responsibility and God’s sovereignty. We believe that God is sovereign over everything that goes on. So while we are the ones who have gone against God and are in slavery to our sin nature, God is sovereign over that fact. Suffering has a purpose: suffering allows us to more intimately know God, and to rely on Him on an entirely different level.
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (NIV James 1:2-4).
I will attest, and hopefully most Christians also will, that we would not be who we are today without suffering and trials, and we are thankful for the hardships and what they produced. The hardships have gotten us closer to our sole reason for living, that is the living God. Our suffering has produced an amazing relationship with Him, which matters far more to us than this world and its circumstances. When working out, suffering is required to produce a good result. In the same way, suffering is used to produce a good result in our lives. This brings me to my next point, that suffering is not nearly as big a problem for the Christian than it is to the non-believer.
John Courtney Murray, S.J., states in his book The Problem of God,
“At the bottom of an atheism whose matrix is the problem of evil, there lies a moral absolute. It asserts not only that evil has no right to exist but that its existence is intolerable. This is a principle of such absoluteness that the God of the Bible does not admit it as an imperative on his governance of the world. He judges evil to be evil, but [H]e does not regard it as intolerable. He shows toward it the ‘forbearance’ of which Paul speaks (Romans 3:25). This now becomes the charge against [H]im. He who is God–so runs the indictment–ought not to tolerate evil. Since the God of the Bible does tolerate it, [H]e is not God. God is rejected in the name of God [H]imself. This is the purest and most passionate form of atheism, when man rejects God in the name of his own more God-like morality” (Murray 108; brackets mine).
This view of the problem of evil that Murray is referencing is a little different than the one that is prominent today. Under this objection, God is too merciful to be the true God. He should regard evil as “intolerable”, but instead He offers grace. However, even being slightly different, this is actually very similar to the modern objection. The action the skeptic wants God to take is different; under this objection God should destroy evil, under the modern one, He shouldn’t care about it. If God regarded evil as intolerable, there would be no people. Evil comes from humans and is used against other humans. The best way to rid the world of evil is to get rid of all the people. I do not think anyone really knows what they want when they say God should eliminate suffering. This different angle to the problem of evil should show us our reaction to it is, in part, a product of the society we live in. Others have looked at the same problem and decided they wanted God to take a very different action.
This casts quite the different lens onto the problem of evil than we are used to. Not that God is void of grace, but that the God of the Bible offers far too much of it! This is where we see the non sequitur fallacy (refer back to Atheism) quite adamantly. Based on an individual’s world view and the culture they live in, they make a judgment unto God. The pride in that view! From the Christian perspective I don’t deserve to draw breath, as I have sinned against a perfect and holy God, who has every right to judge me and strike me down where I stand. Who am I to complain about what God let me do? He gave us free will, and we messed up. Why am I complaining to Him? He helps me through each and every day, He sustains me and guides me, He is my portion and my God. He does not treat me in the slightest as my sins deserves. Instead He treats me with grace and love. Even whenever I went the exact opposite way, He still delivered me, and still offered me eternity through His one and only Son. He has never forsaken me. He has freed my will from bondage.
“Is the death penalty [for sin] unjust? By no means. Remember that God voluntarily created us. He gave us the highest privilege of being His image bearers. He made us a little lower than the angels. He freely gave us dominion over all the earth. We are not turtles. We are not fireflies. We are not caterpillars or coyotes. We are people. We are the image bearers of the holy and majestic King of the cosmos…The slightest sin is an act of defiance against cosmic authority. It is a revolutionary act, a rebellious act in which we are setting ourselves in opposition to the One to whom we own everything. It is an insult to His holiness. We become false witnesses to God. When we sin as the image bearers of God, we are saying to the whole creation, to all of nature under our dominion, to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field: ‘This is how God is. This is how your creator behaves. Look in this mirror; look at us, and you will see the character of the Almighty.’ We say to the world, ‘God is covetous; God is ruthless; God is bitter; God is a murderer, a thief, a slanderer, an adulterer. God is all of these things that we are doing’” (Sproul 85; brackets mine).
With all of this in mind, is not God’s grace far more surprising than His justice? Isn’t it a more fitting objection to say God is too gracious, than that He is too just? Of course, God has every right to be merciful and that objection is also an unfounded one, but it is definitely a better objection than to say God is too just. Even in God’s mercy, He is still just; Jesus bore our sin and took on the penalty for it. We do not deserve grace. R.C. Sproul later states,
“God is never obligated to be merciful. Mercy and grace must be voluntary or they are no longer mercy and grace” (Sproul 94).
Why do we levy these accusations against God, as if it is contrary to His character? Is not His grace a far more surprising reality? What did Canaan do to deserve 400 years of grace before they were judged? What did Peter do to be reinstated? More fittingly, what have I done to be offered such undeserved grace? Absolutely nothing. In the light of a holy, good God, why are we surprised by His judgement and not His grace? I find it harder to understand why God would save a wretch such as me. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound!
Going back to my earlier point, if a person gives the problem of suffering accusation against the God of the Bible, and refuses to take into account that we are made in His image, they are arguing against a God that is not my God. You can only look upon the actions of God by taking into account the being who executed them and the mind who conceived them.
“‘Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He hath done me no wrong. How can I speak evil of my King who saved me?’ –Polycarp just before being burned alive for his faith at age eighty-six” (quoted from Evidence That Demands a Verdict, by Josh and Sean Mcdowell 78).
Why should we think we ‘deserve’ to have easy lives? Why should we think we deserve perfect comfort? Why should we prioritize ease and comfort over God and our relationship with Him? Why should I complain about events that God turns for good (Genesis 50:20)? Why should I complain about hardship that allows me to know God better? There is nothing better than to engage in a relationship with the sovereign, loving, merciful, holy, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God of our universe. Nothing. What right do I have to complain? In my fallenness, I still complain, still sin, and all the rest; I’m merely saying that I, and the rest of humanity to ever live save Christ, do not deserve grace, not even a little bit.
“Let me live that I may praise you, and may your laws sustain me” (NIV Psalm 119:175).
This section of this Psalm (and honestly the whole thing), accurately portrays a Christian’s ideal mindset. Life is a gift from God. We live to praise Him. We delight in His law. We are even “sustained” by His law. The purpose of our lives is to glorify Him with our every action.
Jonathan Edwards states in his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,
“The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose. It is true, that judgment against your evil works has not been executed hitherto; the floods of God’s vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the mean time is constantly increasing, and you are every day treasuring up more wrath; the waters are constantly rising, and waxing more and more mighty; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, that holds the waters back, that are unwilling to be stopped, and press hard to go forward. If God should only withdraw [H]is hand from the floodgate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power…And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has flung the door of mercy wide open, and stands in the door calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners; a day wherein many are flocking to [H]im, and pressing into the kingdom of God” (Edwards 6 and 9; brackets mine).
This accurately portrays this relationship with us and God. Don’t think for a second we deserve the flood to be held back. He has every reason to wash us into Hell. But He doesn’t. Not yet. The view that God would not allow suffering if He was good, is essentially just saying, “I don’t like the way God did this, so He’s not real.” So it’s groundless in a debate about God’s existence. Asking “why did God…” does not deal with existence. To argue this point, you have to operate under the presumption, even if it is temporarily, that there is a God. Otherwise, every time the non-believer would make any claim about God’s allowance of suffering, the believer would simply say, “Well that’s not a problem if you don’t believe in Him.”
So What Has God Done?
Now that we know this argument needs to operate under the condition that God exists, we can talk about all His actions. From the Christian perspective, God did not just watch us sin, leave us out to dry, and let us rot (as deists believe).
The suffering argument harps on all the bad, and ignores the good. It’s pretty clear to me that this argument is very ignorant of a few things; that sin is our fault, that God still helps Christians extensively through this life with peace, joy, love, guidance, etc. (any Christian will attest), that God sent his Son into the suffering of this world to save us from it, and that He has offered us eternity in paradise, without suffering.
He sent His own son to experience suffering with us. Jesus has felt every bit of suffering you and I have. He felt persecution, betrayal, beatings, crucifixion, and more. In more mundane terms, He’s had bad days, He’s been left out, and He’s been called names.
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet [H]e did not sin” (NIV Hebrews 4:15).
That’s what sets Christianity apart: Jesus knows what you are feeling and He offers redemption from it. Jesus does experience one aspect of suffering that believers will never have to experience: the judgement and suffering of the wrath of our Holy God. That’s real suffering.
Another truth that is ignored by skeptics is that God offers His children eternal paradise. Our lives are but a raindrop compared to the sea of eternity. So did God allow a lifetime of suffering, or a bad day in a sea of blessing? Think about that question. Anyone who says that history is dominated by suffering is again arguing about the Christian God from an atheistic worldview. According to Christianity, suffering is hard but necessary and use is made of it. History is dominated by hope. Again, history is dominated by hope.
“He has also set eternity in the human heart” (NIV Ecclesiastes 3:11b).
Hope that we would one day be free from bondage, hope that one day Christ shall return, hope that we will have redemption from the suffering of the world, hope that we would one day be glorified, hope that one day every tear would be wiped away, and hope that one day we would be with God in the truest sense.
History is also dominated by hope for nonbelievers, but it is misplaced. Everyone has a hope for a better life. Even if an individual does not believe in heaven, they still hope for it. Even if an individual does not believe in redemption, they still wish to be washed clean. We all hope for something better, something that we know we need and were made for. We were made for perfection, to fully reflect the radiance of God’s character. The non-beliver who hopes for heaven would deny that it is that place that they hope for, maybe they would insist that all they want is for an easier life here on earth. This is true, but only in part. If the person who hopes for the easier life achieves it, would they cease to hope? I do not think so. This life cannot fully satisfy our needs, not truly, and not eternally. Even the individual at the top of society, with all the money, houses, and cars they could ever want is still not satisfied. They still hope for more success, and yet it will never complete them. We were created to hope for heaven, and for a God who gives significance to our every action.
From the atheistic standpoint, it’s meaningless after meaningless suffering, random after random, with no overarching plan. From the Christian point of view, we live in a fallen world in which we have been offered abundant grace. History is dominated by a wonderful, overarching plan, that we see work itself out time and time again.
“He has made everything beautiful in its time” (NIV Ecclesiastes 3:11a).
Horrible evils are still committed, but not without hope of redemption from their grasp. Christians across history have been living according to this hope, with the council of the Holy Spirit and the eternal hope of Jesus Christ.
So, taking into account the Christian view, it’s not an existence dominated by suffering, it’s an existence dominated by blessed hope. If God does not exist, our life is only the continuation of that suffering, and not a living according to the mold of creation that has been laid out for us. Without God we are another suffering accident in a sea of suffering accidents.
My youth group leader always says that this life is just the job interview for eternity. He had a rope with tape wrapped around the very end, all of an inch or so, and would put the slack of the rope so that it led out of the room where we could not see the end of it. He would then point to the miniscule length of tape and go, “this is your life,” and pause and sweep his hand across the rest of the rope for emphasis, “and that’s eternity.” The suffering we experience in this world is short lived, and God still walks alongside us through all of it. So much so that we are consistently told in the pages of scripture to lean not on our own understanding, to surrender to God, and to rely solely on Him. If that isn’t love and goodness, I don’t know what is.
I should clarify, God is not all-loving, as He hates sin. There’s a big difference between a God of love and an all loving God. An all loving God isn’t a good God, as He doesn’t hate or punish wrongdoing. Whenever non-believers say, “Well why doesn’t he just come down right now and save us from all this suffering,” my immediate response is, “Well he actually already did, through Jesus.” He already came down, as the suffering servant, to live in our world full of evil, to save us! Like how amazing is that? Praise the Lord!
I will concede, from the secular view, it looks pretty bleak, and it looks like God may not be such a good God. But if you take a second, and consider what God has actually offered to each and every person on the earth, then He’s not just a good God, He’s an amazing one, an incredible one, a God worthy of all praise. Praise the God who saved me from my iniquities! Again, from a Christian’s perspective, God has blessed us in incomprehensible ways, and we don’t even deserve to draw another breath.
This may sound contradictory, but the reason the problem of pain is such a big roadblock for unbelievers is because they don’t believe in God. The very existence of the Christian God solves the problem of evil. The problem of evil is only a problem if you don’t believe there is freedom from it. The Christian God makes use of pain, sin, and people, yes, but again, He doesn’t just leave us here. He experienced this suffering Himself, worse than any of us will ever have to. He has given us so much grace. Maybe Christians are on to something then, as the ideology where you see a lack of hopelessness is from the people who actually believe in the God that many have a problem with. The people that do actually believe He exists don’t have as big of a problem with suffering and how that relates to God’s existence. Consider that they have realized what life is truly about and enjoy it the way it was intended to be enjoyed, by the instruction of the Creator. Maybe those struggling with this roadblock are looking in the wrong places.
There is so much good that is glossed over, that it is forgotten about, and the focus switches to all of the bad. For instance, if a loved one dies, Christians, while sad, have a hope in eternity that can only be found through Jesus, who paid the bill into heaven. We have the hope to one day be reunited with that person. Some will say that, since heaven is way better than the world, why don’t we get happy when someone dies? Death is a product of sin, so it should have a strong effect on us. Being separated from a person is always difficult, even temporarily. We have knowledge of the Truth, and find solace in the fact that we will see them again one day, which makes the suffering in this situation less of a problem for christians and more of a problem for non-believers.
Animal Suffering
Some also make the claim that animal suffering points to a God that is not good. I’m not going to go in depth on this, as most people are not hung up on this sort of suffering.
God is good. The fall affected everything. He says that He will restore all of creation. I believe Him.
The Reverse Social Contract
The Social Contract was a philosophy produced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 1700s that basically says that the government only has the power that the people allow it to have, and it is the duty of the government to support the people with the power they have been provided with. This was popularized during the Enlightenment and is part of the ideals that influenced the way the United States government was ordered. This same sort of ideal can also be applied to God and Christianity when dealing with free will. This is, of course, an imperfect analogy; it was not our job to support God with the power we had been given, but it was our job to choose God with it. In a sort of “reverse” Social Contract, God had provided us with the power to choose Him in the garden and had given us the obligation to follow His will and accept a loving relationship with Him through the power He had given us. Alas, in Adam, all of mankind fell, and we freely chose to royally violate the Reverse Social Contract, all of us eating from the tree.
“For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (NIV 1 Corinthians 15:22; see also Romans 3:23, Romans 5:12, Psalm 51:5).
We violated moral law over our free will. Because of this, God has each and every right to condemn us. No one has the right to claim purity. No one has the innocence to justly declare themselves righteous. No single person (save Jesus) is exempt from the fall of Adam and mankind.
God did not at all have to provide us with the right to choose, He could have created us as automated, robotic, morally perfect beings. But God knew the absolute, incomparable beauty this world would produce (This idea will be more fleshed out in the Utopias are Kinda Ugly part of this section). The power that He allots to us comes with a responsibility: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.” This is applied to other areas of our lives by scripture as well, such as in John 14:15,
“‘If you love me, keep my commands’” (NIV John 14:15).
If God doesn’t give us free choice, and engage in this reverse Social Contract with us, then it makes a connection between us and God much less beautiful and good. It also doesn’t allow for the beauty of tested faith, fought-for love, or a good and true form of any virtue.
The reverse social contract in which we are under also puts onto us the obligation to follow the laws that God has set in place for us. This is impossible for us to do on our own (Psalm 14:3), so God came down into the suffering of the world to ensure we could have a bridge to salvation and love in its purest form (Acts 13:39). God had given us the power to choose Him, and He had given us the power to reject Him. Every single one of us rejected Him. It is only by the grace of God that we are turned towards his saving work in Christ. Our will is freed from the bondage it suffers in, and we can then freely choose Christ, in genuine love.
People often assume God’s main motive is to minimize suffering, maximize pleasure, and never allow us to mess up. If that was God’s motive, we would not be in the world we are in right now, and it would not function the way it does. It would be a ‘utopia’ without genuine, tried and tested, faith and perseverance (stay with me, keep reading). I will never claim to know God’s motive for creating the way that He did, but I have to say, if a loving relationship with His image bearers was anywhere in the cards, our world models it. We have been given the opportunity to love, we have been put under a moral law so as to live upright lives (which is more loving than a free-for-all of morals), and God has demonstrated His love for us through His Son, Jesus, “the Messiah, the son of the Living God” (NIV Matthew 16:16).
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (NIV Romans 5:8).
You and I, we are violators of the Reverse Social Contract.
Utopias are Kinda Ugly
A utopia, on its own, is not beautiful.
My grandpa recently told me about how he has started crying over athletes’ accomplishments. Specifically, he cried when Rory McIlroy won the Masters. Rory came so close to achieving the career Grand Slam a few years ago in 2022, and my grandpa knew all the work he had put in for his eventual victory in 2025. He finds Rory’s win far more moving because he knew of the hardship Rory went through to achieve his Masters win. My grandfather has worked with athletes his whole life, and he knows everything that goes into being an athlete and succeeding as one, so when he watches someone such as Rory, he sees the beauty in the final product. He knows the mental and physical struggle that goes into such a beautiful result. The struggle, the work, the failures, the outcome: it was all beautiful. Would he have seen it as beautiful if they declared Rory the winner without ever playing the tournament? Would he have seen the win as beautiful if there was no struggle, no nail-biter 2022 loss?
Creating us as beings who struggle, who work, and who have a potential ‘happily ever after’ is far more beautiful than an instant utopia ever could be. Life, as it has been made, is beautiful. Sin is not. Through those struggles beauty is produced, beauty that is unrivaled by any other. Genesis 50:20,
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (NIV Genesis 50:20).
This shows that God uses suffering and sin for good. Romans 8:28,
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love [H]im, who have been called according to [H]is purpose” (NIV Romans 8:28).
“All things” implies both good and bad. God knew we would struggle in this world. He knew that allowing free will also allowed for the possibility of rebellion against the morals that are reflected from His character. He knew we would rebel; He is sovereign over all things and is omniscient. He also knew the incomparable beauty that our lives would produce. This struggle is nothing more than a single heartbeat in the scope of eternity, and our struggle here makes eternity more beautiful. That doesn’t make the undeniably incomparable horrors on this earth fun, but it shows what happens in rebellion against God. While our sin is not His doing, He uses it for something beautiful.
God reached down an undeserved hand, and allowed Himself into that suffering, that we may spend eternity with Him. God’s will was never to allow us to fully reap the consequence of our sin; instead Jesus was the plan to save us from day one (Genesis 3:15). The sacrifice of Jesus is beautiful just as much as it is a tragedy. Again, the suffering allowed here is hard, but His plan is infinitely good. That infinite good would not be so good nor beautiful without the hardships. Jesus tells us,
“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (NIV John 16:33b).
Paul tells us,
“That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (NIV 2 Corinthians 12:10).
God has fixed the outcome in the most perfect comeback game ever played. He wrote the most perfect heroic act conceivable to the mind into the story of our lives so that we may live happily ever after alongside Him. He saved us from our hardship, and that saving was all the more beautiful because of our current struggle, our striving for our Lord who redeemed us. It’s simply beautiful. The hardships also produce good character and good choices and good morals and good thanksgiving and good reliance.
The depth of love that grows within us whenever the sin of this world pushes us into reliance on God is incomparable. Sanctification is a stunning sight indeed. God could have made a world where we never had to struggle, but then our relationship with Him would not be as genuine nor beautiful. Our love for Him would not be as deep if we did not constantly battle against the sin and hurt of this dark world for our adoration of Jesus, and that through the sin and hurt of this dark world the opportunity for Jesus to ever increase the depth and beauty of our relationship with Him is offered, that
“being found in appearance as a man, [H]e humbled [H]imself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross” (NIV Philippians 2:8),
drawing us closer to Him than is possible any other way. Without suffering, I would not have the opportunity to strive for my humble savior while being subjected to pain, I would not have the opportunity to strive to love my Lord more than myself and my sin, I would not have the opportunity to cry out to my Father for help in the midst of turmoil, I would not have the opportunity to continuously “see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living” (NIV Psalm 27:13), I would not have the opportunity to know Christ Jesus in the way that I do, and I would not have the opportunity to see my weakness and be taken up in the saving arms of God Almighty, the I Am, who is Jesus Christ. The suffering of this world does more than give us heaven; it makes us worthy of it. I do not mean our suffering, no, Jesus’s suffering is what has makes us worthy, and our suffering has increased our love for Him one hundred-fold; we learn to value eternal things over temporary things. We learn to achieve contentment in every circumstance because we receive it from the only possible source.
Philippians 4:11-13,
“I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through [H]im who gives me strength” (NIV Philippians 4:11-13).
We were not made to find full and final contentment in this world.
“They are not of the world, even as I am not of it” (NIV John 17:16).
We were made to rejoice in our Heavenly Father, and that is why Christians have such peace and joy amidst hardship. That is why, when it seems as if all of hell, Satan, and his angels are against us, we can still find rest in the Prince of Peace, knowing He has not left us without a weapon (Ephesians 6:17). It’s infinitely more beautiful for us to choose to love God and to die to self because He died to self, to give up sin because we love Him, to honor Him with our lives because He honored His father with His life, to bear up against unjust suffering because He did, to struggle and try and fight and strive and reach up and up because we love Him… That… that is good. That is beautiful. That is why David is called a man after God’s own heart. He was following what Christ would eventually do perfectly in a very imperfect way. He never gave up hope running from Saul, he would not kill the Lord’s anointed because of the reverence he had for God’s chosen king, even after he committed adultery with Bathsheba and killed Uriah he came back to solemn repentance. David’s life was beautiful, not because he sinned less than the next guy, but because his life was oriented to never ever cease striving to please God, and to never cease loving God (as reflected most strongly in the Psalms), no matter how crookedly he was in his genuine attempts to follow that path. Would David’s life be as beautiful without the struggle? Paul’s? Polycarp’s? Luther’s? Mine? Yours?
Instant gratification is not beautiful, to not have any hardships that pull us closer to Him. The relationship produced by the conditions in this world is stunningly wonderful. It makes heaven so much more real and genuine.
I await the day when the full majesty of His plan is revealed for my eyes, so that I may truly see the picture I am trying to convey to you.
Have you heard the gospel? If not, click here.
View next week’s section to read my response to claim two.
Works Cited
NIV Quest Study Bible. Zondervan, 2011.
McDowell, Josh & Sean. Evidence That Demands a Verdict. Thomas Nelson, 2017.
Edwards, Jonathan. *Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. International Outreach, Inc.
Murray, John. The Problem of God. Yale University, 1964.
Sproul, R.C.. Classic Teachings on the Nature of God: The Holiness of God; Chosen by God; Pleasing God (Three in One). Hendrickson Publishers, 2024.