BSA Ep. 1 -What Do You Do When Answers to Suffering and Evil Aren’t Enough?
⭐ In this first episode of Beyond Simple Answers we explore the question, Why does God create a world where evil and suffering exist? Why answers to this question don't fully satisfy, and how can we continue to explore God, faith, evil, suffering in a theological vision (engaging the Bible and more) together?
Explore the profound question of why God created the world, considering theological answers, human experiences of suffering, and the implications for faith and understanding. Join us as we unpack different perspectives and wrestle with the big questions of existence.
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Description
Is there a better response? For a person of faith, is there a better answer to why God allows such suffering? (A theodicy question.) In this 1st episode of Beyond Simple Answers we explore the question, Why does God create a world where evil and suffering exist? Why some answers (at least, when not unpacked) to this question don't fully satisfy, and how can we continue to explore God, faith, evil, suffering through a theological vision that explore the Bible, theological views, and honors our questions -- together? Explore the profound question of why God created the world, considering theological answers, human experiences of suffering, and the implications for faith and understanding. Join us as we unpack different perspectives and wrestle with the big questions of existence.
Resources
📚 Check out Kristin’s book, We Mend With Gold!
Find a local bookseller: https://tinyurl.com/MendwithgoldLocal
Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/MendWithGold
Generated Transcript
Scott Rice (00:00)
Kristen, Greg, welcome back to our second episode for Beyond Simple Answers.
⁓ It's been a week for listeners. It's been 30 minutes for us and We are gonna we're look at a couple things
we'll touch on some things from our first episode some of the things we talked about and then kind of set a path forward for For where our conversation is going
Would either of you want to speak into this conversation that we're having about God's creation and what's coming to light as we're talking it through?
Greg Fung (00:30)
I think as we've wrestled with some of the different approaches, it's the overflowing of God's glory, it is to create worshippers, is a form of God's lava. There's one which all of those answers are fine, except that, let's take God's glory to start with,
they all run into the same problem, which is, okay, if it is for say God's glory, then why is there evil? That seems to certainly take the shine off God's glory quite a bit.
makes it much less glorious. Or God's love is like this is a form of God's love. Like wow how come God's love includes suffering or eternal damnation? Like things that seem antithetical to God's love or God's glory or the worship of God. Like all these things are running up against why is there evil, sin, death? Like why is that necessary? So it feels like we very quickly end up with the problem of evil as it were with
they're being a good and powerful God, wise or evil, we end up there. So I don't know if we can really get too much further without maybe addressing that head on at some level.
Kristin T. Lee (01:40)
I agree. think that suffering pain and evil is such a fundamental thing that shakes people's faith. was just talking with a new friend last night who survived the earthquake in Haiti, but lost several family members and friends. And he was telling me about how that was such a reckoning point for him with his belief in God, ⁓ which I think we can all understand.
On one hand, he was like, I am very grateful that I survived. so
some Christians would probably counsel him like that's a gift from God. You survived. You live your life in thanks to God. Right. But that, unfortunately, papers over the tremendous loss and grief of losing the others. And also, why didn't God save the others? Right. So I think we have to dig into that ⁓ in order to really meet people who want to believe in God. But.
Scott Rice (02:27)
Mm.
Kristin T. Lee (02:36)
you know, face these really tremendous losses and pains in life.
Scott Rice (02:42)
I wanna build on something I'm both hearing and your answers and that I guess I think, I already think, and that is that we've been brought to these conversations around evil and suffering. we just like, even when we get there, even if we're talking about creation and we go there, we quickly find that like, they're always raising almost unanswerable questions, if not unanswerable questions.
And the reason I said it kind of something I already do think is
From what I understand, Christian faith, kind of Christian theologians over time, you know, that's super general.
will admit that
a robust full explanation for why evil is. Now that doesn't mean you can't say anything about it. And I think a lot of our conversation is gonna move in that direction to say like, is there still a response even if there's not a complete explanation for why evil is.
I myself, I want us to be able to say that at the beginning ⁓ because it will help I think like qualify everything we say going forward.
in that like, we want to be able to say something, ⁓ feel compelled to say something, but knowing that like, all of these things only get us so far. This is like the great testing ground of Christian faith and theology. I wonder what you think about that.
Kristin T. Lee (04:02)
I just wanted to say that that's so refreshing because I think actually what does it disservice to people's faith is when we give simple answers to the problem of evil instead of saying maybe there is no explanation we can arrive at. think that it's harmful and it can really
like brush away people's pain. And so I think naming that even, know, centuries of theologians maybe haven't solved this problem.
is actually more comforting in some ways than saying, God is good and you just need to trust in that.
Greg Fung (04:34)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. it also makes me think it helps clarify what problems you will have to choose to live with, as it were. So I'll give you an example. One of my kids is really into Greek mythology. And in Greek mythology, the problem of evil is not hard. It's very simple. Gods are bad. They're terrible. And so why is there evil? Because the gods. That's easy. so there's a way in which in Christian theology,
There are approaches, but each approach has problems. so
it's helpful to kind of lay out different approaches, because then you sort of understand which set of problems are you buying into. One of which, Kristen, I think you've named really well, which is there are versions of Christian approaches to evil, which essentially dismiss evil as like, that's not really so bad. Like, stop complaining. It's fine. And you think, am I willing to live with that? I don't know. What are the trade-offs?
And so sometimes it's helpful to understand what you're trading off.
Scott Rice (05:36)
Can we stay with this for a moment? Because I think we've kind of named, right? We named in the introduction episode, we want to be doing theological conversations, like casting kind of a theological vision for when simple answers fall short. And I think we're like, we're really close to that right now, which is, know, Kristen, your comment, which is like, this is refreshing. Like, wonder if there's something that we might say about that.
you say a little bit more about what makes it refreshing? If you're coming from a place where you're still interested in belief, but you have those, you have things that have left you unsettled around this question.
Kristin T. Lee (06:16)
Yeah, I think ⁓ it's refreshing because for me and I think for other Christians who wrestle with this,
We're told that all the bad things in the world work for God's goodness, that everything comes together in the end and just to trust that. And I think that, you know, as we explore these questions together, maybe we'll land there in the end. Maybe we'll land there in the sense that, okay, yes, we don't know. And a life of faith does include some measure of trust in a God that we can't fully understand.
But I think that jumping straight there without letting us explore these really troubling questions means that our faith isn't truly tested, or at least for me, it means that I can't fully rely on that faith if I haven't explored those troubling questions.
Scott Rice (07:07)
I love that response, that we cannot just, we cannot jump there. That seems to be so much of what the issue is here. Some of the things you mentioned, like, I know that those things have a place, right? That God can bring good out of hard, evil, bad things. ⁓ But when we go there so fast, something is missed that feels like it is not, I don't know, overlooks kind of just who we are as humans. Okay, I'm gonna actually try to take this in a much different direction. We'll see where this episode ends up.
This is a super important question is if you've admitted in episode one, you're on the record for this, that there are answers you find at least somewhat unsettling, you're still interested in the question itself. Like
you continue to care about this question and not simply just say, like the simple answers don't work, I'm done.
Greg Fung (07:59)
It's a big question.
Scott Rice (08:01)
Take your take your time with it. But let's let's try to answer it.
Kristin T. Lee (08:05)
I think that for many years I was scared to engage with these big questions. And so I wasn't really flourishing or growing or trusting or walking alongside God and in a close way.
And it was only after I started allowing myself to engage with the questions again that I felt like I was truly alive in the spirit and in God. And so
I think for me, even knowing that these questions are thorny, that they raise difficult conundrums, I have to engage with them or else my faith kind of withers. ⁓ Like it suffocates without this. So this is like the air that gives oxygen to my faith.
Scott Rice (08:55)
having the space, the freedom to be able to explore them. Yeah.
Kristin T. Lee (08:59)
Exactly.
Scott Rice (09:01)
Greg, how about you?
Greg Fung (09:01)
Yeah, it's fair. ⁓ I took her questions slightly differently.
I took it more like, why even bother with Christianity if these questions seem so unfathomable, like just like what I just say, forget it. And that's probably a longer discussion. the short version, feels a little bit like at this point in my life, it's sort of, know, to whom shall we go a little bit? Because when I look around,
It's not like I see like an obvious answer somewhere else. like, that's clearly the way we should think. Well.
These are hard questions and
can't prove, I should say, I can't prove that Christianity is the way, but I sure hope it is. And I have some evidence that it might be. And so it's a bet. It's risk because there's a way in which investing energy and time into these questions.
presupposes that it's worth the squeeze. And so I don't know if it is, but I have some evidence that is, and so I'm willing to take that risk. And then to Kristen's point, it is fun. It is life-giving for sure. It helps me go deeper. But yeah, at the end of the day, yeah, there's some level of risk.
Scott Rice (10:16)
Can you say a little bit about what is it that makes the risk worthwhile? Like what makes it enough
to continue to explore, to ask these questions, to hold faith?
What gives you enough to go on?
Greg Fung (10:30)
probably a longer discussion for that question. I'd say high level. is
fundamental tenets like love your enemy, care for those who are defenseless. Like those are deeply Christian ideas. They're not Roman ideas, right? They're not, I would name other, you Confucian ideas. These are
These are like uniquely distinctly Christian ideas on which the West was built, rightly or wrongly. But I think, yeah, those are intuitive to me. Those seem right. Maybe it's because I've been formed by the West. But by the way, it's kind of what I'm aligned to for whatever reason, rightly or wrongly. So I think that's there. And I also think,
I do think the person of Jesus is pretty different, again, sort of unique and different and compelling as this
Middle Eastern Jewish man from 2000 years ago still holds something that I haven't seen across other philosophical traditions. So like that's interesting. So that's kind of high level. And then I'd say in the micro level, like why do it? I think even the act itself of digging in somehow and not just alone, not like
me in my study alone with the book, but kind of doing this together with other people and talking about it and wrestling with it. There is a life giving.
illuminating aspect that I would be sad to lose. It's helpful, it helps me go deeper, it helps me understand myself, and I thank God better. at ⁓ the very least, I learn a ton and it's certainly way more
So at a micro level, ⁓ it's way better to do it with you all.
Scott Rice (12:15)
My like bottom line answer to this question, I'd love to get your responses to
I am after this question because of like a deep concern with God's goodness. Let me kind of like just put that.
Personally, I'll add a small anecdote with it. I remember I was once at a conference and they shared this thing about what generation you were from and what your main question was. Are you concerned with truth? Are you concerned with wisdom? And I remember the one that came out of the time I was born was like, your big question is, is God good? And I just remember being so mad because I was like, can't stand these things that say, just because I come out of this generation, I asked this question, but it happened to be right. And I thought about
to me, it's when the simple answers ⁓ cause me to distrust the idea, right? Or that like, whether or not God could actually be good. And when I look around the world as it is,
I there's a good case to be made that if there is a God, maybe, like there could be a God, but if there is a God, that God is not good.
And ⁓ faith leads me to believe otherwise in light of a lot of evidence to the contrary. But that is like a huge thing that
continues to drive me in these conversations. It's a desire to say, like, can I genuinely believe that God is
Even if I don't have total certainty in that, do I have enough to go on to hold to the idea that God is good? Because otherwise, like, it's hard for me to do the kind of things that Christians are supposed to do if I don't believe that, on the other side of all that is a good God.
Kristin T. Lee (13:50)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think I've said to you guys before, ⁓ God's goodness matters to me, especially in the sense that is God good for the person with the least privilege in this world or in God's kingdom? ⁓ Or like the person who I think Christians might say is excluded even from God's kingdom? Because maybe I don't know if it's because I'm an immigrant daughter or
pessimist or an empath like I've said to you, but it's so easy for me to imagine myself being born in different circumstances
a family that is not a believing family, to a family that was poor, to a family that lives under government oppression, right? And so does the gospel and God's goodness ring true even for that person
yeah, so I really want to believe in a good God that is good for all people.
Scott Rice (14:50)
Well, I'm really glad that we've been able to name why this is like a personal question for us. There's like these things that are at stake. And our next episode, ⁓ we'll look, we'll do the things we said we were gonna do at the beginning of this episode, but I think this is a great direction for where this episode has went. And we'll come back to some of the things we talked about in the first episode and some other proposals to kind of ask like, theoretically, how did those connect with what we've talked about here and why this question matters? ⁓
So Kristen and Greg, thanks so much for what you've shared. I think this was a very worthwhile detour for us to have.
Kristin T. Lee (15:27)
Thanks, Scott.
Greg Fung (15:28)
was great.
