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Acknowledging the Paradox of God’s Control

Ethan’s Dad: Those who read the last post know that I now want to embark on a deeper exploration of what we Christians really mean when we say “God is in control.” I have had much of what follows written for a while, but I have hesitated in committing it to this space because, frankly, this whole area just isn’t easy, and the last thing I want to do is make any Christian feel stupid for holding to a different understanding of it. But Andrew Peterson says in his book Adorning the Dark that in the creative process intention matters more than execution, by which I think he means you should not let the fear of expressing your thoughts imperfectly keep you from expressing them at all. With that in mind, I am going to press forward, in the full knowledge that the waters into which I am about to wade are much more vast than my mind is capable of navigating with any degree of precision. I do so anyway because, for me, what happened to Ethan demands that I confront it.

I mentioned in the last post that the callousness of the statement “God is in control” is one reason you should not repeat it to a person who has just suffered a tragic loss. Another reason is that it isn’t true — at least not in the sense that many Christians mean it when they say it. Rather than be pejorative, I will illustrate the viewpoint to which I am referring by quoting from a book I read called You Can Trust God to Write Your Story by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Robert Wolgemuth. I use this book not because it is unique in its view; on the contrary, there are many works that express the same notion. This just happens to be the latest I read which espouses this view.

The authors begin one chapter in which they discuss their view of what “God’s providence,” i.e., control, means by quoting with approval from someone else:

“‘How unspeakably precious and sweet it is when we can believe that God our Father in heaven is absolutely directing the most minute circumstances of our short sojourn in this wilderness world. That nothing, however trivial, takes place, whether it relates to the body or the soul, but is under His control, that is ordered by Himself.'” Mary Winslow

Later, they pick up this theme with the following explanation:

“The word [providence] also speaks to His wise, sovereign rule over every detail of His creation. Now, this is admittedly a subject that can stir up animated arguments. But there are basically two options. Either 1. God sovereignly causes, and or permits, everything to happen that happens in our lives and in this world, or 2. God stands by and watches passively and powerlessly unwilling or unable to do anything about what happens. … Where would we be without the certain knowledge that He’s got the whole world in His hands and that every detail of our lives and days is ordered by our all-wise, all-knowing, loving God? … To be helpless victims of chance, tossed about on the storms of life; that would be forever disconcerting and tragic. Thank God, it is not the case.”

As this excerpt shows, when some Christians say “God is in control,” they mean to be precisely that black-and-white about it: that literally EVERYTHING in our lives is absolutely controlled by God. To these people, when Jesus said, “There isn’t a sparrow that falls to the ground apart from God’s will” (Matthew 10:29), Jesus was actually saying that God caused the sparrow to fall.

What is entirely left out of that explanation (and essentially makes no express appearance in You Can Trust God to Write Your Story) is the existence of evil. “When the enemy comes like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.” (Isaiah 59:19). “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the Devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8). Evil is real; Satan has genuine power; the whole world has an unnatural aspect to it. To minimize, ignore or even deny this is to contradict a clear message from the Bible.

To me, you cannot have an honest discussion about God’s providence unless you frankly face the existence of evil in this world. Glossing over evil shortchanges God’s justice, Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, and people’s pain.

If what I have just said is true, then why would some Christians hold to what I would call the robotic view of God’s providence? I believe it is born from a good intention: to acknowledge God as all-powerful. But the view is driven by a false dichotomy. As the passage from the Wolgemuths’ book above indicates, such Christians think you must pick between a God who stages every minute of life like a marionette player controls puppets or a God who lacks the ability to do anything in the face of natural chaos. If that is really the choice, then it’s no wonder they pick the first option.

But the logical conclusion of this view of providence, to put it in stark personal terms, is that God killed Ethan. I reject that notion as an outrageous and unnecessary slander of God. Ethan died because we live in a sinful world in which life is sometimes senselessly cut short. However, if God controls absolutely everything, then the presence of sin in this world cannot be explained.

By definition, sin is rebellion against God. It is the reason humanity is condemned by God and it is the reason Jesus had to come and be the perfect, sinless sacrifice to save us from eternal damnation. It is one thing to say that God planned Jesus’ redemption of our sin from the foundation of the world; it is entirely another thing to say that God wills us to sin. The former is true because God knows everything that will happen before it occurs and so He planned a way to rescue us from ourselves. The latter is not possible because God cannot desire or will us to do that which is against His will, i.e, to do evil. The reason we can be condemned for our sinful actions is because we bear responsibility for our own choices. But that is not possible if there is no real choice, if God actually plans and controls every minute detail of our lives. The only way Jesus’ sacrifice has eternal meaning is if there is real choice: choice for humanity to follow or reject God, and choice for Jesus to lay down His life or not. Otherwise, the Garden of Gesthemene is a joke: what kind of struggle is Jesus having in the Garden if He has no choice in the matter? Jesus prays: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42). Luke goes on to obverse that “being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” (v. 44). Isn’t this what true obedience to the Lord involves: foregoing our own desires and submitting to His will? That type of obedience isn’t possible if the only will in existence is God’s.

I completely understand why people have a difficult time comprehending how it is possible for God to be all-powerful, but that He allows things to happen that are not what He desires, or to put it another way, God’s sovereignty and our liberty coexist. One verse that well-illustrates this paradox quotes Peter in his speech at Pentecost to a large crowd of Jews saying: “This man [Jesus] was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men [the Romans], put Him to death by nailing Him to a cross.” (Acts 2:23). There is no doubt that the crucifixion of Christ was a wicked act perpetuated by those who willingly succumbed to evil desires, and therefore deserved condemnation for for their deeds. But of course it had been God’s plan for forever that the Messiah must suffer and die. The one does not negate the other. This is why Jesus would say on the Cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34). Those people were in need of forgiveness because what they had done was wrong, outside of God’s will for them, even though the crucifixion was part of His plan, and, in fact, was the very reason Christ could seek forgiveness for them.

As head-scratching as this paradox may be, if faith teaches us anything, it is that the truth is not limited by our understanding. Indeed, throughout the story of God’s redemption of humanity, simplicity and incomprehensibility co-exist. We know that humanity was given a choice, but we do not fully know why God offered one. We know that God came into our world as a human baby, but we don’t completely understand how God could be fully human. We know that Jesus came to save us, but we cannot fully comprehend why He would be willing to do such a thing given who we are in comparison to Him and our repeated rejections of God. We know that Jesus died on a cross, yet we cannot fully grasp how the eternal God could cease to live. We know that in His death Jesus was separated from God the Father, but given that Jesus is fully God we cannot conceive of what this separation could entail. We know that Jesus rose from the dead, but in our own experience we have never known or seen anyone come back from death. At a certain point, we have to accept these things on faith even though we cannot fully understand or explain them.

So, is it really asking too much to believe that it is possible for God to know all and to be able to orchestrate the grand design of His will without His controlling every single thing that occurs in this world? In other words, I am simply saying that God allows things to happen that are not within His immediate will. If this wasn’t the case, why would Jesus command us to pray “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”? (Matthew 6:10).  When we pray this, we are asking that this present evil age would pass away and that all creation would come into conformance with His will (and that we would be His instruments for ushering this new creation into existence).

Those things outside of His will do not catch God off guard; they do not throw Him for a loop and force Him to drastically alter His ultimate plan for humanity. But those things do grieve Him. God certainly desires that people would not make the wrong choices He knows are coming. It hurts Him to watch us experience the tragedies that are inflicted by the cruelties that mar this fallen world. Such hurt and pain, and the desire to see us make better choices — to follow His will more closely — would not be possible for God if all of what occurred was controlled and purposed by Him.

To be a Christian is to believe that there is immense evil in this world and in us which requires a Savior beyond ourselves to rectify, and that Jesus is that Savior because He is is God in the flesh, who bore our sins on the Cross unto death, and then overcame death by rising again, thereby confirming that He is greater than the evil in this world. Thus, God is, indeed, sovereign over evil, but He is not a party to it.

There is no perfect way to explain how this could be, but one way to think of it is the idea of relinquishment of control. Jesus repeatedly called Satan the “prince of this world” (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11). In one of those passages, Jesus says “the prince of this world is coming. He has no power over me.” (John 14:30). In Job 1:12, God tells Satan: “Everything [Job] has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.” God didn’t tell Satan what to do, but only the limit of what he could not do. Thus, although God’s Power is clearly greater, and the power Satan has is dictated by what God allows, Satan has real power and control in this world. I believe that the same is true for people. God has granted us a certain amount of control over our own lives; it obviously is not ultimate control because we are subject to so many other forces: natural, satanic, and heavenly, but there is control.

As human beings we cannot help but ask: but why would God allow such horrendous evil? Why must some children die so young? Why are there viruses that wreak havoc without warning?

I cannot give a truly satisfying answer to that perpetual question. But one possibly helpful analogy, though not a perfect one by any means (no analogy related to God can be), is democratic government. In that theory of government, the people have ultimate political power to govern how they live their lives, but they cede some of that power to a central governing authority so that certain tasks, like security for society, can be better accomplished. Well, it just might be that the reason God relinquishes some of His authority to Satan and to human beings is because it is the best way to achieve some of what He seeks to accomplish with His creation. If we return to that passage in John that I quoted earlier, after Jesus observes that Satan has no power over Him, He continues: “But [Satan] comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me.” (John 14:31). So, Satan had a role in testing and torturing Christ, and those actions would illustrate Jesus’ love for God the Father and for us. What if God’s willingness to cede control, which allows for the existence of evil, helps manifest His love for us and our love for Him?

In fact, at least in this existence, there cannot be love without choice. God chose to create us; He did not need us to sustain His existence. He desired our existence: creating us was a labor of love. Love, by its nature must be freely given, and freely received. And if love is a choice, then there must be an alternative. So, there can be no choice if there is no evil.

Because God loves us, we must trust that there is a purpose behind this evil. I don’t mean a purpose to the evil thing itself, but a purpose to the experience of suffering. As in, there must be something we are meant to gain from this painful life that will make the next one more meaningful than it otherwise would be. After all, surely you have wondered why God doesn’t just skip this part and take us all to Glory so that we can avoid this whole mess. This chaos causes us immeasurable pain, and seeing us suffer grieves Him more than we can know, so that seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through given that He is all-powerful and could just hit the fast-forward button, if you will, and take us to our true home. But think about what else we would miss if He did that — if he removed any experience of evil from our lives. We would miss the full extent of His love demonstrated through Christ, and we would miss countless opportunities to display love to those who are suffering (I miss too many as it is) and so to experience love at a level that is otherwise not possible.

And I think there must be even more that we would miss without experiencing evil that we cannot comprehend on this side of Heaven. The Apostle Paul hints at this in 2 Corinthians 4:6-7 when he says:

“God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in my heart to give me the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But I have this treasure in an earthen vessel to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from me.”

Would we truly understand that we need God, and how much we need Him, if there was no evil? God knows that our greatest joy comes in being with Him because we were made for Him and in His likeness. But in order for us to come to that understanding, perhaps it takes really strong medicine, a cure that from our perspective feels far worse than the disease. It is a little like a parent telling his or her child what the wise choice in a situation would be, but the parent knows he or she has to let the child make his or her own decision, so that he or she can truly learn why the wise choice was the best one — even if it means watching the child choose poorly. Maybe God has to allow evil to unfold so that we learn what life without God really means.

As I said at the beginning of this post, these reasons absolutely should not, dare not, cause us to minimize evil and suffering in our own lives and in the lives of others. But in the long term, we have to trust that even this pervasive evil and suffering is ultimately, eternally for our good because God is all good and all creation was first good before it was marred by evil.

So, is God in control? Yes, but at the same time He allows us to decide whether He should be in control of our lives. What we do, because of sin, is do things our own way. In His grace, hopefully at some point we notice that we are not really in control of a lot (hello coronavirus) and that even in the things we do control we tend to screw up. That way, it becomes painfully obvious that we are in need of a Savior. If we accept Him by understanding that He is able to accept us, even with all of our flaws, because of Jesus’ perfect sacrifice, and we truly desire to live for Him, then the rest of our time on this earth is about continually relinquishing control of our lives to His Spirit’s leading. For our goal is to be “crucified with Christ, so that we no longer live, but Christ lives in us.” (Galatians 2:20). In a very real sense, then, God relinquishes some control to us in order for us to learn that it is best to relinquish control to Him.

Relinquishing that control does not mean you will have no more trouble. Jesus makes no such promise; instead, His promise is that “in this world you will have trouble, but fear not because I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33). In other words, do not believe the lie that because bad things happen, He will not make it right in the end. He will because He has defeated sin and death. We have to have the faith to wait, to persevere, to see what He already knows.

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Three Years

Ethan’s Dad: What does three years mean? It means never getting to see Ethan run around with a foam light saber and talk about using “the forest” (the Force). There will never be any catching him as he tries to run out of the kitchen to avoid having his mouth and hands wiped off. We will not be playing hide and seek where he thinks he’s being sneaky but he is really hiding in plain sight. I won’t be jumping on the trampoline with him while his brothers and sister fall down laughing because the bounces are too high for them to keep up. We do not hear his cry when he wakes up from a nightmare or a bad cough and get up to come console him. There are no walks in the sunshine where we end up having to carry him. There is no constant companion by N’s side, dressed in identical clothes, copying each other as they drive toy cars around the playroom.

This is what irretrievable loss means. It occurs every day, for three years and counting, as we walk on without our little caboose. Our lives are more “normal” now because the more you keep living beyond the day of loss, the more you develop rhythms of life that consist of a family with just four children. It isn’t that you forget — Never That — but that it becomes achingly familiar to go about the activities of life in his absence. I suppose it is that way with all loss.

Except that, in this case, N always provides a physical reminder of what we are missing with Ethan not here. Through no fault of his own, every joy we experience with N comes with a catch, a prick of that wound which will not altogether heal this side of heaven. Of course N is his own person, but they are twins, so there is a very real sense in which they are always bound together. Overall, it is a tremendous blessing that N serves as both a comfort for, and a reminder of, losing Ethan, but it is a blessing forever touched with sadness.

But then there is also the aspect of Ethan’s uniqueness, and this is the part that is perhaps the hardest of all. It is the reality that because Ethan died so young, there are so many traits we never had the privilege of discovering about him that make him different than his twin and everyone else. Would his eyes have stayed that deep blue? (I like to think so). Would he have been stubborn or easy-going? Would he have been the rambunctious sort or a quiet thinker? Would he have been interested in a variety of foods (like his mom) or extremely picky (like his dad)? Would he have loved art or science or history or math or sports? The list seems endless, and with it so does the depth of the loss. Like all parents, we thought that we would have decades to watch Ethan grow (along with his siblings), not two months, and then suddenly there was . . . nothing. So yes, it has been three years, but what comes to mind is a few thousand little things that will not happen, that will never be revealed here, because he is gone.

There is a perspective in this world that would compare all of the foregoing as being akin to crying over spilled milk. This view tells us that life is about results, it is about what you accomplish or produce, that what matters is what “moves the needle” to make people take action, and that you should only invest your life in what you can control. Some call this view “realism.” The premise of realism is a material one, and if you accept that premise — what is real is what you see — this view is entirely correct: Not one moment thinking about Ethan, not all the tears shed for his loss, no matter how many words are written to help express the rending of our hearts . . . none of it will change the reality that Ethan is gone; none of it will bring him back to us. By the realist’s standard then, none of these expressions matter. Why should we grieve at all if everything is transient and immediate material effects are all we value?

But the Bible — and I think our hearts -– tell us that ultimate reality is marked by the things that are unchanging, unseen, and not even done by us. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says “God has made everything beautiful in its time; He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what He has done from beginning to end.” Yes, there is beauty in this world, but our hearts tell us there is more, that there are things which are enduring and defy concrete understanding. Second Corinthians 4:18 tells us that we should “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Revelation 21:4 relates that there will come a time when “there will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, for these former things have passed away.” First Corinthians 13:8 proclaims that “where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away,” but that “Love never fails.”

Our grief, our longing, and our continued remembrance of Ethan does not change the material reality of his absence, but it matters because it reflects our steadfast love for him. That love is real and enduring. It expresses God’s truth that Ethan is a gift to our family, he is unique, and he is eternal. Two months was far too short; these last three years have felt far too long; and this melancholy ache will be with us for the remainder of our time on this earth. But our love, and more importantly, God’s love, transcends all of that, so that we do not “grieve without hope” because “Jesus died and was raised to life again, and when Jesus returns, God will bring back with Him the believers who have died.” 1 Thessalonians 4:14. Thus, the years after his loss may continue to mount, but we will still grieve — albeit sometimes in different ways than we did at first — because we will always love him and know that God loves him, and that Love will one day “turn our weeping into dancing, remove our sadness and cover us with joy.” Psalm 30:11 (as rendered by Ellie Holcomb in The Broken Beautiful).

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Visiting with a Shadow

Ethan’s Dad: I still visit regularly, usually three days a week. For the first full year, I visited nearly every single day. I know some people think it is strange that I would go to Ethan’s grave so often. I suppose in their minds it seems like it would be too painful to visit such a place over and over again. But it is extremely important to remember, when supporting friends, neighbors, or loved ones who have sustained losses, that people grieve in different ways and they need to be given the space to do so. What I do is no better or worse, no more normal or weirder than how my wife seeks to survive in the midst of her grief. She visits his grave as well, though not as often, but she journals, for instance, much more frequently than I have. We are each dealing with an unexpected absence, a weight that may tug on our hearts more heavily at some times than others, but that always remains with us wherever we go. Yet we are different people and so our methods of carrying the weight correspond with our own personalities. And so it is with all who carry burdens of loss.

At first when I visited, I mostly talked to Ethan. I should clarify in mentioning this that it isn’t that I believe Ethan is there — at least not the part of him that matters most. My wife recently wrote a post about some of the awful day that was Ethan’s funeral. And while there was much that was unspeakably difficult about that particular day, one revelation for me occurred when we saw his little body in the tiny casket. We cried rivers of tears. We read letters to him that we placed in the casket. We hugged a lot. But one thing that was very apparent to me was that Ethan was not really there. His precious, frail body was there . . . but it was cold and impassive. . . the light of life was gone from it.

This is a difficult idea to put into words because it honestly can only be experienced, not exactly described, and yet it is not an experience I would wish for anyone. But in that tragic moment when you see your still baby who was so vibrant only a few days before, there comes this clear sense that something is truly amiss: You come face to face with the truth that a person is much more than just flesh and blood. People have spirits which make them who they truly are. The contrast between our real Ethan and what was left of him in that casket was so stark that this spiritual reality was undeniable. Our Ethan — the curious, quiet, lovable, strong, immaculately precious boy — is with the Lord. He is laughing now, rather than hurting, and waiting for us (though the wait will seem like nothing to him because time is nonexistent in heaven).

Alas, time is all too real to us, and to me it seems to go by much more slowly now than before Ethan’s passing. And so I choose to pass some of that time by sitting next to his grave. It is not the most vital part of him, but it is all we have left here in this in-between place we call the Shadowlands. It is my tangible connection to him. It is a place-holder until the joyous reunion.

Over time, my conversations with Ethan morphed into talking to God more often than talking to Ethan because He is my spiritual connection to Ethan. God is the reason a reunion will happen, made possible by Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. Jesus said He is “the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” — of all things. (Revelation 22:13). This means He is also the God of this off-kilter in-between time in which we find ourselves.

At times, walking in these shadows, it can seem as if He has abandoned us, left us to our own devices.

“I cried out to God for help;
I cried out to God to hear me.

“When I was in distress, I sought the Lord;
at night I stretched out untiring hands,
and I would not be comforted.

“I remembered you, God, and I groaned;
I meditated, and my spirit grew faint.”

(Psalm 77:1-3). In fact, that is one reason that at first I only talked to Ethan: Because I did not feel God there, all I felt was a black hole, a yawning abyss from which no light could emanate or escape.

But in the end, faith is not about feelings, it is about will, submission of the will really, but will nonetheless. And when you press on through the shadows you discover that there is light there after all.  (And how could it be otherwise?  For shadows are only seen because of the light that illuminates reality). The light is not a bolt that thunders, at least not for me, but a flicker that whispers your name and tells you to keep listening. And so the conversations become less and less audible and more and more reflections pouring over the Bible, His words that come alive because of His Spirit communing with our own when we seek Him.

I don’t mean for it to sound like magic. It is not. There is no trick and this is not fantasy land. I do not live in a state of Zen or blessedness or higher consciousness or whatever else some beliefs choose to call their willful blindness toward the tragedies of life. Nor do I mean to sound super-spiritual, for the contemplation is born from desperation, not holiness. I am weak. I am hurt. I still feel out of sorts. I still cry because of this inexplicable loss that neither Ethan nor we deserved to experience.

And so I sit next to the place where Ethan’s little body resides. I sit still in the quiet (there are few places quieter than a large cemetery).  And in that stillness I know that God is there (Psalm 46:10), and I dare to trust that Ethan is with Him, waiting. My heart yearns: Come quickly, Lord Jesus, Come. (Revelation 22:20).

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Taking the Path of Paradox

Ethan’s Dad: Karl Marx famously said: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” This remark says more about Marx than it does about religion. That is, it shows that Marx knew very little about true religion and only focused on what he wanted to believe about religion.  Marx told himself that people believed in religion because it provided them with a delusion that masked the truth of their sterile lives. In other words, religion supposedly made the lives of ordinary people easier for them at the expense of facing reality.

Any true practitioner of the major religions can tell you that Marx’s framework is nonsense.  It is anything but easy to take religion seriously.  Most religions, to one degree or other, require a person to do at least one thing that is directly contrary to our basic nature: pay homage to something higher than ourselves.  In this sense, religion is not natural at all.  It is not an easy way to escape reality; it requires a certain transcendence of it.  The easier path does not acknowledge demands outside of ourselves.  The easier path treats survival as its own reward and lives accordingly, sacrificing anyone and anything that gets in the way of the self.

In a sense, Christianity raises the level of natural difficulty to a whole different level than other major religions.  How so?  A pivotal difference between Christianity and other religions is that Christianity says that we cannot save ourselves, only Jesus can do that. Thus, Christianity removes the control over our lives that other religions seek to bestow by making our actions play a consequential role in our ultimate destiny.  Because of this difference, Christians are not supposed to act out of obligation or to earn a reward, but out of love: a love for God and what He has done for us in Jesus, and a love for others that grows from that love for God.

But again, this love does not come naturally or easily.  We are born loving ourselves, first, foremost, and always, and second loving those who help us most. We must be shown by God (through His Spirit) that He does the most and cares the most for us, and that even strangers deserve our love because God loves them just the way He loves us.

The militant atheist Richard Dawkins has said that it would be much better for humanity if people just acknowledged that life is “empty, pointless, futile, a desert of meaninglessness and insignificance.” (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 360).  He argues that people create problems for themselves when they seek to attach meaning to a universe of “blind physical forces and genetic replication” where “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, nor any justice.”  (Dawkins, A River Out of Eden, pp. 132-33).  This view is nothing more than a post-modern rendition of Marx’s riff about religion. It is this notion that “reality” — by which people like Marx and Dawkins mean their belief that there is no spiritual reality and the only real existence is matter and physical energy (what I will call materialism) — is harder for people to accept than the fantasy of another world beyond this one.

Such contrasting thoughts can provide for an interesting, if esoteric, philosophical debate, but at this point you are probably wondering what any of this has to do with Ethan.  The answer is, actually quite a bit.  This debate takes on an entirely different dimension when you face the unexpected death of your child.  If Marx and Dawkins are right, then that death is just part of life and there is no greater significance or meaning to it.  If Christianity is right, then . . . .

I want you to stop for a second and ask yourself if Christianity is really the easier choice here? If life and death are accidents of nature, then why should another person’s death affect us at all? There is a sense in which the materialist view makes things very easy because then life is what it is and there is nothing to reconcile. There is no higher obligation, let alone a rational reason to love because that implies an attachment beyond the self with accompanying burdens that last after other people are gone forever.  And since you are an accident too, whatever befalls you is not evil or cruel or unfair, but rather it is just the reality of it all and it matters not because you will end permanently as well.

Now, if Christianity is true, it means that God loves us beyond all measure of our comprehension, and yet for some reason He allowed our Ethan to die — through no fault of his or ours — before he got to do (and we were privileged to witness) a thousand things in his life.  God knew Ethan’s death would cause us unfathomable pain, and yet He allowed it to happen.  As a Christian, I cannot say this happened because it caught God by surprise or He was unable to save Ethan, because the Bible tells us that God is all-knowing and all-powerful. (And indeed, why would God, if He is real, be less than that?) As a Christian, I cannot say (the way the Marx/Dawkins adherent can) that this was simply an accident of nature.  No, instead I have to hold onto a paradox: that there is an all-knowing, all-powerful, and ever loving God, and yet somehow there also exists a pervasive natural evil in this world that at times robs us of those we love.  It says God calls us His children and still somehow He allows this evil that inflicts unspeakable harm upon us.

And this is far from the only paradox Christianity asks a believer to accept.  We must believe that God transcends time and yet that He stepped into time.  That He is infinite and yet He became finite. That He is Spirit and yet He became flesh.  That He is eternal and yet that He died. That by His death and resurrection He gave us life everlasting. That we are here, and yet this is not our home.  A real belief in Jesus means all of these things. And yet the likes of Marx and Dawkins want to say this is the easier path in life?

I will grant that there is a segment of Christianity for which it could be said that it is easier than the materialism of Marx and Dawkins. It is the segment that ignores the paradoxes — particularly the first one regarding the existence of evil — by claiming that absolutely everything happens for a particular reason, that God wills everything for His purposes, and so there is no room for questioning or wondering.  Instead, all is as it should be, you just have to have the faith to accept it.  This is not the post for me to explain all the ways I think such a brand of Christianity misunderstands Biblical truth.  It will have to suffice here to observe that such a Christianity leaves no room for actual evil or for authentic faith.  So I leave it aside and ask again: is Christianity the easier path in life?

The answer is “No,” but at bottom that isn’t even really the right question. We should not be surprised that Marx and Dawkins assume that people select religion over materialism because it is easier. They hold this view precisely because they are materialists: to them the material is all that motivates people, and so most people inevitably will select the easier road in life.  Of course, this view is self-contradictory because it fails to explain why there are people like Marx and Dawkins who do not select such a path.  When you drill down, the answer comes down to the fact that they believe that they are just smarter than the rest of us.  In the end, that is their real motivation for such a view: a demonstration of superiority.  And you do not have to read much of Marx or Dawkins for proof of this smugness (a natural trait that, at time, we all display).  I would also argue that a lack of belief in God fits nicely with this claim of superiority because it means that there is no being superior to them.

If you put aside the lens of materialism for a moment, however, and imagine that people sometimes make choices based on something other than comfort, then you might see the real reason why people would select Christianity over materialism. When you watch your baby dying before your eyes, you scream and shout in bitter anguish, and then you collapse in a pool of silent despondency, wondering where God is; you do not have the luxury of a comfortable Christianity.  You feel numb; cold; hopeless; alone.

You are left with this: Is it true? Is there a love that surrounds this? Is there a hope that transcends it? Is there ultimately a triumph of the good despite the harsh reality of such abject evil?

This place of haunting loss is where faith is not a a tingly feeling or a rote creed.  It is a conscious decision to persevere in spite of the deep wound in your heart. It is where, as Andrew Peterson says in one of his many honest songs,

“faith is a burden, it’s a weight to bear
It’s brave and bittersweet
And hope is hard to hold to
Lord I believe, only help my unbelief
Till there’s no more faith and no more hope
I’ll see your face and Lord I’ll know
That only love remains.”

My wife and I (and a host of other Christians that have experienced abominations of evil even worse than our own) do not believe in Christianity because it is easy.  We believe because, while you are drowning in the abyss of evil, you realize there is something else there, something beyond you, something above you — Someone who knows all about this because He suffered the loss of a child, experienced a separation unlike any we could comprehend, endured torture, embraced an ignominious death, and bore the sins of the world — all at the same time.  Does He understand what we endure?  How can He not?

Christianity does not deny the existence — and even the pervasiveness — of darkness in this world.  It simply insists that God ultimately has overcome the darkness.  The materialist views Christianity as delusional because of its insistence on a spiritual reality, but there is a a raw concreteness to Christianity that materialism cannot match because true Christianity not only recognizes suffering for what it is, it endures it, and it promises that God will ultimately overwhelm it because of what Jesus has done.

“Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

“If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.

“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,’
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.” (Psalm 139:7-12)

“[B]ecause of the tender mercy of our God, the Sunrise from on high came from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide their feet into the path of peace.” (Luke 1:78-79)

Jesus said: “I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.” (John 12:46)

Thus, by holding onto the paradoxes inherent in the Christian faith we are planted in a reality far more profound than the shallow materialist vision that seeks (and spectacularly fails) to maximize pleasure and avoid pain at all costs because it insists that the here-and-now is all that matters.  Instead, we are renewed by a Spirit that only a lasting hope could bring. “Therefore, though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” (2 Corinthians 4:16).  Another paradox — and thank God for that.