faith for faith

As long as there have been men on the earth, there have been fools who have believed in a simple god who acts more like a vending machine than he does a Great and Benevolent Judge. We find these scattered throughout the Scriptures in those like the friends of the afflicted, yet righteous Job who sought to discover Job’s sin so that they could validate his plight by their theology, and likewise in the question of the foolish disciples concerning the blind man at Siloam, asking, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (Jn. 9:2). And these men with simple theologies have not ceased since that time, seen more recently in the “elucidating” commentaries of the Jerry Falwells and the Pat Robertsons concerning 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and, most recently, the great earthquake in Haiti. These view God as a cosmic vending machine who dispenses wrath when evil is put in and dispenses blessing when righteousness is put in.

Yet despite such claims, these fools have no answers as to why the righteous must suffer in this age (cf. Rm. 8:17-39) and why the wicked prosper. They have no answers for the affliction of the martyrs (chief of whom being Jesus Christ), and they have no answers for the prosperity of the Las Vegases and the San Franciscos. Nevertheless, these idiots come out like clockwork after every great disaster giving “inspired” commentary upon those disasters.

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When the apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good” (v. 8:28), does he literally mean all things, or is the “all” limited in some way? To clarify his meaning, the apostles writes a few verses later, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or sword? … No, in all these we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (vv. 8:35, 37). In this, the apostle intimates that all things, no matter how terrible they seem to us in this age, work together for the good of God’s saints.

What is interesting about the apostle’s clarification is that he does not say, “What shall separate us from the love of Christ,” but he says, “Who shall separate us,” indicating that the tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, and sword are not things that Christians will endure, but persons. And the language that the apostle uses is not arbitrary, but he is referencing what he had written elsewhere. Earlier in the epistle, the apostle writes, “For those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury; there will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek” (vv. 2:8,9). Taking this tribulation and distress defined by Paul earlier in the letter and applying it to those whom Christians must endure, is then the apostle saying that these who incur tribulation and distress from God, namely the unrighteous, are not only unable to separate us from the love of Christ but are also in some way working to the good of the saints? In other words, is Paul saying that the damned in their damnation are working to the good of those who love God?

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There are some things that just make your jaw drop with disgust. Take for example the case of Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique who was recently found guilty of medical malpractice after giving “medical” responsibility to unlicensed personnel and after “failing to keep an accurate medical record.” “Failing to keep a medical record of what?” you ask. A cut-out ingrown toe nail? A mole removed from a patient’s back? A drained cyst? No, he failed to accurately document that he had his associate throw away a living baby as though it were a piece of rubbish. Upon further reading of the Associated Press article, it becomes quite clear that a living infant being tossed into a trash can is not what caused the uproar, but it was the improper disposal of the child. The medical board revoked the license of Dr. Renelique, essentially saying to him, “We do not know how you do murder children in Haiti, Doctor, but in Florida we murder our children humanely and without harming to the environment.”

In spite of this and in spite of the millions upon millions of “humane” abortions, we find that God is still true to his Word and he is still just and merciful. God’s Truth is in this way validated in his proclamations concerning the wickedness of men. For Paul writes in his letter to the Romans:

None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.¹

We find today that the state of men, despite public education, social programs, etc. is the same as it has ever been, it is simply more technologically sophisticated. We shed blood, but we do it “sterilely” and “humanely”, and in such a way that does not taint our beloved environment. We do it and explain it away with our naturalistic philosophies, suppressing the fact that the wrath of God is being stored up against such ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

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