Mark Clark [00:00:00]:
Hey, everyone. Mark here. Hopefully you were doing well. Welcome to the Mark Clark podcast. This is a podcast, actually, that's part of a whole network called the Thrive Podcast Network. Go over there. We have eight awesome pods over there. Thrivepodcastnetwork.com.
Mark Clark [00:00:13]:
There's actually one over there called better.
Mark Clark [00:00:15]:
Days that delves really deep into the.
Mark Clark [00:00:17]:
Topic we're talking about today, which is one of the deepest and most challenging questions of all, the problem of evil and suffering. Why does a loving, all powerful God allow such pain and hardship in our world? This is a question that has troubled humanity for ages. And we're going to explore it from a personal perspective, a philosophical one and a biblical one. And I'm going to share some of my own struggles and how these experiences can actually strengthen our faith and understanding of God and us as human beings. But what is this question? There's a lot of people go, I don't want to believe in God or believe in the Bible or follow Jesus because there's way too much evil and suffering in the world. How do we answer this question? It's a really difficult one. So we're going to jump into it. Let's unpack this tough topic together and find hope in the midst of our challenges.
Mark Clark [00:01:01]:
We are jumping into this last sermon in this series in the problem of God, called the problem of evil and suffering. This is one of the biggest issues that we as human beings face, and we as a culture face. And the basic question is this, we got a lot of work to do in this regard. And some of the heaviest waters that humankind has ever waded into are this question, because obviously we have things that happen in our life. We turn on the television, we see terrorism, we see genocide, we see murder, we see violence, we see awful things happen. We get cancer, diagnoses ourselves and our family and our friends, we lose loved ones. And this question kind of bubbles in us. Why, if there was a good, loving, all powerful God, would he allow all of the awfulness that we see happen around us? Why would he actually allow it? What's he doing? Isn't he paying attention to what's going on? And so this is a legitimate question.
Mark Clark [00:01:54]:
David Hume, who was a 18th century scottish skeptic years ago, he put it this way, and this is kind of a famous way of putting it. Epicurus back in the day, also put it in very similar vein. Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he's impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he's malevolent. Is he both able and willing. Why then is there evil? Ronald Nash, who's a philosopher, says, every philosopher believes that the most serious challenge to theism, the belief in God, was and is and will continue to be the problem of evil. A recent national poll asked the question, if you could ask God only one question, and you knew he would give you an answer, what would you ask him? And the most common response was, why is there pain and suffering in the world? And so here's the question, the nub of it. Is there a connection between evil and suffering and the awfulness of our experience and the non existence of God? Because obviously, this has been called, philosophically, the rock of atheism.
Mark Clark [00:02:52]:
It's the one thing that people go back to over and over again and say there's no way that God could exist. And so is this legitimate? And so we gotta give an answer to this, a biblical answer, a philosophical, theological answer, if we're gonna be people who really believe fundamentally in God. And as someone who grew up outside the church, this was one of the main issues. There's two or three major issues that I had. This was one of them. And it continues to be. If we're honest, it's difficult to watch the pain and the agony of the world and to say, don't worry, I still believe God's in total control and that he's good. How is it possible that we actually hold these things together? Here's the first thing I have to say.
Mark Clark [00:03:28]:
The first thing is that we have to understand this is a personal question. And what I mean by that is that can sometimes work against us. The fact that we're not just coming at this hypothetically, and we're not just coming at this kind of as a data point. We all come at this with personal experiences of awfulness that has happened to us. And, I mean, I grew up in a home with a deadbeat dad, didn't know what to do with me and my brother, he was an alcoholic. My parents divorced when I was eight years old. And then I acquired something called Tourette's syndrome, where I have all these tics. And I grew up in junior high and in high school doing a bunch of crazy habits and ticks and different things, and you can still see that I have them up here.
Mark Clark [00:04:10]:
God has healed me of 95% of it, but he leaves 5% of it to say and so. And so, you know, and that's biblical. That's what the apostle Paul said. He said, God, heal me, heal me, heal me. And he says, I got this thorn in my flesh. And God has left it there so that I continue to be dependent on him. That's what the apostle Paul says. And so maybe that's what's going on.
Mark Clark [00:04:33]:
I don't know. But I have this thing. My aunt committed suicide. My upbringing is outside the church and drugs and the whole thing. Like, all of us have these things in our life where I didn't have the best upbringing, I don't have the easiest life all the time, and you don't either. Cause I'm your pastor, and I know it. I know you go through things. You get that diagnosis.
Mark Clark [00:04:56]:
You lose children. You go through awfulness. Your marriages go south, your kids go off the rails. You are experiencing pain and suffering in your life. You experience evil. You see it. You feel it in your life. And what that does, as we approach this question, we have to be very careful, because what that can do is skew the data where we're not just looking at something objectively, but it's almost like one of those scenarios where you're too close to it, and when you're too close to it, it skews your ability to think clearly on the issue objectively.
Mark Clark [00:05:28]:
It's almost like your kids, like my kids. If someone anything to do with my kids, I'm skewed. I'm already not objectively filtering data because people will look, hey, your daughter stabbed that girl. It's like, well, she must have been asking to get stabbed, I'm pretty sure. Cause my girl is pure, all right? Because I'm too close to my kids. You can't tell me my kids did something bad, all right? I'm gonna skew it. And so this is the problem. When we're too close to this issue, it skews the data where it becomes emotionally charged, right? And when something becomes emotionally charged, we actually start to lose the ability to process objectively what's right and what's wrong.
Mark Clark [00:06:09]:
So we have to be very careful when we come to this question, because, of course, of course it's emotionally charged, and that's legitimate. But as David Bentley Hart says, who's a philosopher, he says, evil and suffering as a reason to not to deny God is an effective but not strictly logical position to hold with a certain sublime moral purity to it. Why would he say it's not strictly a logical. It's not a strictly logical position to hold? We're going to find that out. The second thing I'll say before I attempt to give somewhat of an answer to this question in this problem is that we have to understand that for a lot of people, the evil and suffering that we experience in life causes them to not believe in God. But that's not always the case. There is oftentimes the case that evil and suffering happens in our life and it causes us to actually believe in God. Philosophers call it the boomerang effect.
Mark Clark [00:06:58]:
I was reading the testimony of a young girl who was a daughter of missionaries in Kenya, and she'd seen all the awfulness of the world. She'd seen terrible things. And she kind of raised up and said, you know what? I don't want to believe in God anymore. And then as she began to talk with philosophers and talk with different people, one guy raised this issue, which we're going to hit in a little bit, that don't worry, because all truth is subjective. There's no moral stance, there's no moral categories. And she realized in that conversation, wait a minute, if there's no moral categories, then Hitler didn't do anything bad. And if I can't say Hitler did anything bad, then what am I actually doing? And so she began to actually come back around to belief in God as she experienced evil and suffering in the world. I remember doing a funeral a few years ago for a guy who would come to village church.
Mark Clark [00:07:44]:
He'd experienced God in the context of Easter services and so on. And I remember looking down at his young. He was young, he was in his thirties. And he had these two young kids. And I remember doing the funeral and sitting up there and looking down at his kids as they cried. And I'm trying to offer them hope and talk about the idea. And I'm looking. And I remember the way I ever met him was that he was an atheist, he was an agnostic.
Mark Clark [00:08:05]:
He didn't care about anything like that. Then he came and experienced some church services. Something stirred in him. And so the first time I ever met him was on his deathbed as he was sitting there. He said, listen, I got brain cancer. He was a cyclist. He was healthy. He got brain cancer a few months before I met him.
Mark Clark [00:08:20]:
And I sat by his bedside and he said, what does all of this mean? I'm now blind. I can't see anything. My whole life was all about seeing and being healthy. And now I got brain cancer and I've gone totally blind. And I shared Jesus with him. And he talked about a vision that he had, and he wanted me to explain it to him. And I read him the Bible. I sat at his bedside, told him about Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:08:40]:
He came to know Christ in the midst of his suffering. And the question there is, well, why would someone in the middle of suffering, when they've never had it, move toward God? Not as a crutch, because this guy was a thinker. He was never saying, why did God do this to me? He was just saying, this whole experience has caused me to not become a crutch and say, I'm scared. He never was. He said it philosophically, started to raise the question to me whether there's something deeper. And so not everybody experiences evil and then therefore moves away from God. Some people actually move toward him. And this is what the Bible talks about, is actually one of the purposes.
Mark Clark [00:09:16]:
See, here's the beautiful thing. The Bible, if you read one, Peter, chapter one, he says that suffering becomes a fire that refines us, not destroys us. And this is one of the things that, it's a secular worldview, a purely secular worldview that we live in in the modern world, can't give an answer to evil and suffering at all, because suffering has no meaning in a secular worldview. The only thing that matters in a purely secular, atheistic worldview is having pleasure and joy and doing things for yourself and that. And so any kind of pain and suffering is against the whole point of life. And so what begins to happen is secularism can't answer this question. So what does it do when it faces it? We are the worst generation of being able to deal with tragedy in life. You know that every generation through history, the ancients have always wrestled with how.
Mark Clark [00:10:06]:
What are the resources we can deal with? But secularism has just said, hey, we don't even have a category. So when 911 happens, shootings happen, awfulness happens. What do pure secularists have to do? They have to borrow from religious ideas. So my friends news feeds, when Las Vegas shooting happened, my friends news feeds are praying for Vegas want see good things. You know, all of a sudden, everyone's religious thinking of you, happy thoughts. What is that? What do you mean, though? You're an atheist, you're an agnostic. All of a sudden, your worldview doesn't give you the resources anymore. So you have to borrow ideas from religious people in order to get through life.
Mark Clark [00:10:46]:
See, this is what secularism does. And so here's the major point. The question of evil and suffering is not purely a christian question. It's not a christian problem. Every worldview has to deal with it. So if you're a skeptic here, the question is, how do you not, how does a christian deal with evil and suffering? Of course we're gonna talk about that. But how do you deal with it? How do you logically think through this question yourself? Because there's a whole marketplace of ideas that you have to choose from. What's the most coherent? What's the most legitimate? Let's go through a couple of them.
Mark Clark [00:11:21]:
If you look to eastern philosophy, new age philosophy. New age philosophy. Here's how it deals with the question of evil and suffering. Atheism denies, looks at evil and suffering and says, it exists, but God does not exist. Right? New age philosophy does the opposite. It says, the only way to answer this question is to deny not that God exists, but the evil and suffering itself exists. And so what they talk about is the idea that evil and suffering is Maya or an illusion. And you're not supposed to ever admit to yourself that it's happening.
Mark Clark [00:11:54]:
And that's the way you get through it. Because the ultimate point in an eastern philosophy is to establish enlightenment, moksha, nirvana, get to that state. And the only way to get to that state is to actually deny the reality of evil and suffering. So I walked into a coffee shop a few years ago. I'll never forget, this guy was sitting in the coffee shop, and he was reading a very famous new age book called I am that. And he was talking to the people in the coffee shop, and they were like little disciples around him. And I sat there waiting for my coffee, and I just wanted to hear this guy out, what he was saying. And they sat kind of taking in every comment, and he said, he's reading from I am that.
Mark Clark [00:12:28]:
And they're all like, oh, my goodness. And then he's like, hey, listen, my wife divorced me recently, and but. And I could really deal with that pain, and I could address that tragedy in my life, or I can do what I'm supposed to do, which is deny that it ever happened. And then he said, because here's the reality. I am everything, and I am nothing. And they're all like, oh, my goodness, this is gold.
Mark Clark [00:12:54]:
I can't believe it. I am everything. I am nothing. And they all walked around like, oh, this is the greatest thing.
Mark Clark [00:12:59]:
And the reality is, this whole worldview has to deny the reality of evil and suffering, that it even exists, because if you admit that it's there, then it's working against your movement toward the state of moksha or nirvana, enlightenment. So you have to deny that it's there. Evil. So in an atheistic view, evil's real, but God's not. In a new age view, the evil and suffering itself is not real. So here's what Eckhart Tolle, who is a very famous new age thinker, says. He says if evil has any reality, it has a relative, not an absolute reality, but it's simply to deny our intrinsic oneness with all others. And here's what begins to happen.
Mark Clark [00:13:41]:
This starts to filter into christian thinking very quickly. I know people who are christians, and they run in this stream where you can control reality with your words. And when you start to control reality with your words, it's called the word faith movement. When you can control reality with your words, what you need to then do is deny the reality of evil and how it impacts you. And so I remember talking to someone who had been totally duped with this kind of christian nonsense, and actually her friend, I said, hey, how's your husband doing? Because her husband was in the hospital with cancer. And she said, well, he's doing okay, and I want to go visit him, and I want my best friend to come visit him with me, but she won't come with me. And I said, why not? And she said, because she told me that to go to the hospital and visit my husband is to admit that cancer is real. And so we shouldn't admit that the cancer is real.
Mark Clark [00:14:33]:
We should deny that reality. Because the minute you go visit him, you affirm the sickness in his life. And the minute you say cancer, and I walked into someone's house, I said, hey, I heard so and so has got cancer. They said, that word is not welcome here. And what you begin to realize is this is an abomination in the eyes of God. This is like witchcraft. This is not Christianity, all right? This is, you can say, incantations to create realities or deny realities. This is not Christianity.
Mark Clark [00:15:03]:
It's a new age movement that baptizes itself and tries to look and sound like Christianity. And it's not because the reality is the Bible. Over and over read. It says, there is evil, there is suffering, there is disease. And knowing that is the foundation for Jesus actually coming and doing something about it. Relieving disease, dying on a cross, taking on sin and suffering on himself. So that's issue number one. So new age movement says you should deny evil even exists.
Mark Clark [00:15:37]:
It's not real. We should just move on. A karma movement, the karma philosophy of Hinduism, parts of Buddhism talk about the idea that, of course, karma is this kind of impersonal force that brings justice and injustice to people on a cycle of their life. And what it begins to say is, you are living out right now evil and suffering based on what you've done in a previous life. And here's what that worldview does. It creates a burden on people's lives that says, you are to blame for the evil and suffering that happens to you. Now think about how that plays out in regard to an abuse victim. I sat with a.
Mark Clark [00:16:17]:
Someone who was sexually assaulted a little bit ago, and they sat weeping and crying and saying, I think I was. I think I was. Even though I was sexually assaulted, I just think I was culpable. I think I had a part to play in it. I think it's partly my fault. And I'm sitting there with them, just preaching the gospel over them, because Jesus doesn't want you to think that the awfulness that happens in your life is your fault. It's not your fault. And the beauty of the gospel comes and says, wait a minute.
Mark Clark [00:16:46]:
The stuff that happens to you, here's the depth of the cross. It's a theological doctrine called expiation, where Jesus, when he dies for sin, he not only dies for the sin that you do, but he dies for the sins that have been done to you. He washes you totally clean. But think about a worldview that blames you for the awfulness. See, we say it glibly. We sit around our little, you know, the modern view of this is we sit around and we just take eastern ideas and we just put them into modern vernacular. What goes around comes around. You know, you work really hard, and then good things are gonna happen to you.
Mark Clark [00:17:22]:
You don't work. And we think in karma terms, but here's the beauty of the gospel. Karma says that you always get what you deserve. The gospel says you get what you don't deserve, that Jesus took on what you deserve, which is the wrath of God. And here's the reality. The Bible actually, and Jesus in his life came against karmic ideas and worldviews. There's a story in John nine. He passes by a blind guy.
Mark Clark [00:17:50]:
John nine one, as he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked the rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind. Jesus answered, it was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. And then Jesus heals him. See, the beautiful thing is, the Bible.
Mark Clark [00:18:12]:
Doesn'T deny evil and suffering.
Mark Clark [00:18:14]:
It actually comes along and deals with it.
Mark Clark [00:18:16]:
Right.
Mark Clark [00:18:16]:
Now, what about. So you got new age philosophy, hindu karmic philosophy, and then atheism, which we'll.
Mark Clark [00:18:23]:
Spend the rest of our time responding to.
Mark Clark [00:18:24]:
What do we deal with the question of atheism? The rock of atheism, the idea that if a loving God exists, there's no way there should be evil and suffering. And because there's evil and suffering, a.
Mark Clark [00:18:35]:
Loving God can exist.
Mark Clark [00:18:36]:
Here's what Alvin Plantiga says in the next few minutes are about to get a little heavy. So if you haven't woken up yet, wake up and then you can listen to this again later. Okay, here's what Alvin Plantige says. He says, christianity affirms five things. Five things, five premises in regard to God and evil. First, that God exists. Secondly, that God is omnipotent, meaning all powerful. Thirdly, that God is omniscient, meaning all knowing.
Mark Clark [00:19:00]:
Fourthly, that God is wholly good. And fifthly, that evil exists. Now, of course, atheism comes at that and says there's no way all five of those can be true all at the same time. That's the fundamental problem that atheism raises. But of course, Alvin Plantigo, the greatest living philosopher, says, an atheist. You're not allowed to just say that. You actually have to prove something. You have to prove why those five things can't be true.
Mark Clark [00:19:24]:
You can't just assume it. You can't just say, well, not all that. You can't just say evil and suffering exists. Ergo, a good, perfect God, all powerful, all perfect God, can't exist. Planting a breakthrough goes, wait a minute, there's all kinds of assumptions here. You have to prove more than that. You can't just say that and assume it. So what are you actually trying to say? And so atheists have tried their best to answer what they're kind of feeling is their gut.
Mark Clark [00:19:48]:
So one of the famous ones is a guy named Jl Mackey, and he tries to explain, and he says this. And so we'll look at his argument and try to push back a couple points. He says a good thing. That is, God always eliminates evil as far as it can, and there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do. Ergo, God should eliminate all evil because he's all good and all powerful. So there's, if you're holy good, you should eliminate all evil. So what do we say to that? Well, first, the idea that a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it could go. Why would we assume that every case of evil is one that God would eliminate? Here's what Planticus says without eliminating a greater good.
Mark Clark [00:20:34]:
And so the reality is, what if God, of course, Mackie wouldn't want God to stop an evil thing from happening. If that evil thing from happening actually created a greater good or violated a human free will. And so we have to understand, okay, fine, fair. So God doesn't have to stop that particular moment of evil. And so Plantigus says we are reduced from the initial charge down to an omnipotent person is all good only if he eliminates an evil state of affairs, which is not a logical, logically necessary condition of a good state of affairs that outweighs it. And then he says, we must admit then, when an omnipotent being could permit as much evil as he pleased, so long as for every evil state of affairs he permits, there is a greater good. So the reality is, what if God, we say, you should stop all evil, but what if stopping evil stops a great scientist from being born that's going to cure diseases, that billions of people are going to get saved? Then we say, okay, he doesn't have to stop that particular evil. So then at what point what does God have to stop and not stop? So we're willing to at least say, okay, fine, he doesn't have to stop the stuff where there's a greater good that's going to happen.
Mark Clark [00:21:46]:
And so plantica's point is we get reduced down to, okay, fine, he only needs to stop the things that don't result in a greater good that outweighs that thing that he stopped. Now, secondly, Mackie says that there's this idea that there's this logical. So a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can go. And there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do. There's a fundamental flaw. There are limits to what an omnipotent thing can do. Philosophers call them non logical limits. God cannot do something that is not logical.
Mark Clark [00:22:23]:
Right? He can't make a square circle. He can't make two plus two equals five. That's just the reality. He can't sin. So, you know, in your first year philosophy class, can God sin if he can't sin? Ergo, he's not powerful. He's not all powerful. No, he can't do something that's against his actual character. And so the reality is there are limits to what God can do and what God can't do.
Mark Clark [00:22:44]:
So Mackey's wrong about that. Thirdly, there's a hidden premise in the atheist's assumption that God does not have any good reason to allow evil to exist. And so you might look at it and say, okay, there's no good reason to allow that particular event. We look at an event, we say, there's no good reason why God would allow that. A believer might come and say there might be a lot of good reasons God allowed that situation to happen. And then the skeptic would say, well, no, there isn't. But the problem is they can't prove that. You can't go through every historical moment throughout a time and say there's no good that actually came of that.
Mark Clark [00:23:21]:
This is why philosopher William Alston says this. The idea that evil disproves the existence of God is now acknowledged on almost all sides to be completely bankrupt, because the reality is, is all of the assumptions can't be proven. Now let's move away from that to a second big point, which is this, evil and suffering, not only philosophically can't be linked to the non existence of God. It's actually the opposite. More and more philosophers have pointed out that suffering in and of itself is actually evidence for the existence of goddess, not the opposite. And what I mean by that is this. Cs Lewis put it this way. When I was an atheist, my argument against God was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust.
Mark Clark [00:24:04]:
But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? What was I comparing the universe with when I called it unjust? Of course, I could have just given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too. For the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not just simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. And so the reality is, the minute somebody says the world is full of evil and suffering, they've admitted that there's a category called evil. But if God does not exist, there is no category called evil. There is just what your subjective mind says doesn't feel good today. But that's not a category on which to put God on trial. In order to put God on trial for evil and suffering, you need God to exist to tell you that a terrorist attack is awful, because evolution is not going to wire that in your brain.
Mark Clark [00:25:07]:
If all we are is animals, then naturalism would never give you the moralistic category to say shooting a bunch of people is wrong. It would. What is if naturalism is the way we deduce reality, what is more natural in the animal kingdom than violence? Violence would never bother you. You need God. And this is what Martin Luther King Junior, writing from letters from the Birmingham jail, was writing people. He's saying, listen, if we're going to say me being in jail is unjust, we actually need God to give us that foundation. I remember a few years ago when there was that shooting in Colorado, my atheist friend put on his facebook page. He's like, where was God during this shooting? He was where he's always been.
Mark Clark [00:25:53]:
He doesn't exist. And I wrote back to him and said, well, where did you get the category that shooting a bunch of people in a theater was objectively wrong? Who told you that? Maybe it's a good thing. We need to see. This is the idea. The acid begins to bite back. The minute you want to say, there is no such thing as evil, you begin to say, okay, well, I have to have a category. And then the minute you say, okay, fine, I want to put God on trial for all the evil and suffering in the world. You need God in order to create that category for you.
Mark Clark [00:26:24]:
When I stood over my father's casket at 15 years old and he passed away, I didn't know much about God at all. But when I stood over his casket, what I knew is I sat there and I went, something feels wrong about this. Like, something feels disjointed. And where was I getting that idea to compare my experience with? In order to look at the universe and say something feels wrong with it, you need something to compare it to. You need a standard that the Bible says God put inside of your soul. He stitched it into you. The book of ecclesiastes says into your heart, so that you, when you look around the world, romans two talks about the idea you have a consciousness inside of you, that when your father dies, you not only go, man, I'm sad. You go, this kind of feels wrong, but what are you comparing it to if this is the only universe you know? And so even the question itself philosophically raises the issue, where is God now? Or the fact that you have an evil and suffering category defines the fact that there is a God.
Mark Clark [00:27:32]:
That's Lewis's point.
Mark Clark [00:27:34]:
The other thing is we got to understand that when people push back and they say all evil is pointless, philosophically.
Mark Clark [00:27:41]:
Historically, experientially, we all know that that's.
Mark Clark [00:27:44]:
Not true, that evil and pain and suffering, the Bible talks about it can actually improve your life. Right? For an atheist to come and say all evil and suffering is pointless, ergo, we shouldn't have any of it. We know Malcolm Muggridge, who is an agnostic and became one of the best journalists of the last generation, he said this, indeed, I can say with all truthfulness that everything I have learned in my 75 years in this world that has truly enhanced and enlightened. My existence has been through affliction and not through happiness. In other words, if it were possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence through some drug, the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal and trivial to be endurable. The reality is this. You and I, we go through pain and suffering, and we know that it strengthens us. And sometimes when we have a larger scope than the next 15 minutes of our life.
Mark Clark [00:28:45]:
I told you the story that when Aaron and I got married, we never prayed together. We never really pushed into Jesus. Everything was fine in our life until we moved to Vancouver and we moved out here. We moved away from everybody we ever knew, everyone we ever loved. We knew nobody. And the guy underneath us was smoking weed every night, and we were getting high, all right, just sitting in our house, all right, and hungry all the time. We were dealing with the loneliness of life out here in Vancouver. We didn't know where our life was going to go.
Mark Clark [00:29:16]:
We were here for two years, and it rained all the time. And we were gonna then move to England where it was gonna continue to rain, all right? And things were getting depressing. But the reality was, is when we moved out here and we knew nobody and guys were doing drugs all around us, we hated our house, the place we moved into, they're like, oh, yeah, people used to od in there all the time. They used to throw raves, and they odd in your tub. And we looked in as little blood spots. And my wife's like, I'm never touching this place again. Get me out of here. Bring me back home to my mama, all right? And I'm just like, oh, my God.
Mark Clark [00:29:50]:
And in that moment, never did we pray more together. Never did we push into Jesus more in our life. Never did we push into one another more in our life. That going through the fire strengthened us as people strengthened who we were, gave us resolve, gave us character. Our relationship with Jesus and one another grew because of that. You know, that that's the way it is. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book David and Goliath talks about it. He calls it the advantage of disadvantage.
Mark Clark [00:30:21]:
I remember I was sharing with my buddy. My buddy brought this up to me one day because I was like, man, I hate the fact, you know, last week I sat down in the service and watched the sermon, and I'm sitting there watching me on this screen, and.
Mark Clark [00:30:36]:
I'm trying to figure out my logic and where things were going.
Mark Clark [00:30:40]:
And the whole time I'm watching my body and it's all tweaking around and twitching.
Mark Clark [00:30:44]:
And I'm bending over, I'm doing stuff.
Mark Clark [00:30:45]:
With my face, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, I hate you. All right, stop twitching around up there. Stop looking. And I began realizing, man, like, I hate the fact that this is my reality. And I went home, I talked to my buddy, and he said, but listen, so this tourette's that you got as a kid, this obsessive compulsive disorder you got as a kid, you realize you hate it, but it's defined your whole life to the point where, because in an obsessive compulsive brain, what happens is the counselor I met with told me that for normal people, you have stuff that comes in and out of your brain. It just goes through. But for an obsessive compulsive brain, it collapses around it, it shuts it, and it just can't think of anything else. And it's just.
Mark Clark [00:31:30]:
So if you talk to my wife, she's like, uh huh. All right. Yes, that's exactly what happens. It can be the smallest thing. And I'm like, have you done this yet? Yeah, I'm getting to it. Have you done it? Have you done it?
Mark Clark [00:31:39]:
Have you done it?
Mark Clark [00:31:39]:
Is it done yet? Is it done yet? Which, I mean, this is what happens. I become obsessive, and so I hate it. And my buddy looked at me and he said, but here's the thing. Who obsesses more about information, about sermon prep, about making sure the church is going well, about trying to figure out the mission. Yes, it can have these awful things, but you've tried to take it and project it toward things, that there's a reason God actually gave this to you, because now you're trying to. And so here's what Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his book. Talks about that one third of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic. And he tells the story of a woman in a university donors meeting with a bunch of successful people, and she asked how many of them had been diagnosed with a learning disorder, and half.
Mark Clark [00:32:27]:
Of the hands went up.
Mark Clark [00:32:29]:
And then Gladwell says this. There are two possible interpretations for this fact. One is that this remarkable group of people triumphed in spite of their disability. They're so smart and so creative that nothing, not even a lifetime of struggling with reading, could stop them. The second, more intriguing possibility is that they succeeded in part because of their disorder, that they learned something in their struggle that proved to be of enormous advantage.
Mark Clark [00:32:58]:
See, here's what begins to happen in Christianity.
Mark Clark [00:33:00]:
The struggle is what forms you. Because what is the will of God, according to the Bible, for your life? That you would be conformed to the image of my son. That's what Paul says in romans eight, that you would be conformed to the image of Jesus. And in what better moments? That when the pain and the suffering actually happens in our life, that we actually get conformed to the image of Christ? Go through the Bible over and over and over, Joseph goes into suffering, and the reason that he ends up helping his brothers is because he suffers in spite of it. It's because of it. So if you're in a moment away from all the philosophical stuff, because you and I need the resource of we're going through stuff right now, you've got that cancer diagnosis, you've got that marriage that's on the rails, you've got that kids. Whatever your situation is, or if it's not happening now, it will come.
Mark Clark [00:33:50]:
Here's the resource that Christianity offers you.
Mark Clark [00:33:52]:
It says that there's meaning, see, aside from secularism, it says that there's actual meaning in your suffering, that God is doing something through it. Just like job, just like Jesus, just like Joseph, just like all these guys, all through the Bible, their suffering is actually going somewhere. It means something. And here's the great resource that Christianity actually offers. One writer says this. Christianity teaches that contra fatalism, suffering is overwhelming. Contra Buddhism, suffering is real. Contra karma, suffering is often unfair.
Mark Clark [00:34:30]:
But contra secularism, suffering is meaningful. It actually has a place. And now here's what pushes back against the atheist who says, yeah, but you don't understand. There's no good reason that suffering happened. There's no good reason in the world. No, there's no apparent good reason. But that doesn't mean there is one. See, here's the ego of the modern mind.
Mark Clark [00:34:52]:
We think that we would know the reasons why everything would happen. But the reality is there's plenty of reasons God could allow something to happen that we have no idea. Alvin Plantigan points. He says, here's the reality. He says, he gives this image. He said, if you're camping and you go into a tent and you're looking for, there's these little bugs in the midwest called no see ums, all right? And they're so small that you can't see them. That's why they're called no see ums, all right? They crawl around, right? They get in your skin. You can't see them.
Mark Clark [00:35:20]:
And so some of you are like. So Alvin Pentacles says, you're camping and you open up a tent. If you're looking for a St. Bernard in a tent, and you opened it up and you looked inside and you said, is there a St. Bernard in here? You would be able to look and go, nope, no St. Bernard, moving on. But if you open up a tent and you went, is there any no see ums in here? Just because you couldn't see them doesn't mean they're not there. They could be all over the place.
Mark Clark [00:35:44]:
You just can't see them. They're too small.
Mark Clark [00:35:45]:
And so he says this. Why, when it comes to evil and suffering, do we think it that when we're looking for meaning, that would be more like a St. Bernard than a no, see him?
Mark Clark [00:35:55]:
The meaning and the purpose behind things.
Mark Clark [00:35:57]:
Just in your modern mind. This is why all the ancients, if you go through ancient philosophy, none of.
Mark Clark [00:36:01]:
Them deduce what modern minds have.
Mark Clark [00:36:03]:
They say, hey, we can't understand the.
Mark Clark [00:36:05]:
Mind of the gods.
Mark Clark [00:36:07]:
We can't understand what's going on in the universe. Modern people go, we should be able to understand it. And if it's not apparent to me right now, then there's no way there could be a reason.
Mark Clark [00:36:16]:
The reality is Christianity comes and read.
Mark Clark [00:36:18]:
Job 42 chapters of what's the meaning of suffering and what happens at the end. God doesn't come and say, here, let me give you four points about what.
Mark Clark [00:36:26]:
The meaning of all suffering is.
Mark Clark [00:36:28]:
He says this. Where were you when I made up the idea of polar bears? Where were you when I made up lightning? Do you know who you are, job? Do you know how small you are?
Mark Clark [00:36:41]:
You're never gonna figure this out. But here's the beautiful part about Christianity, and then I'll pray for us.
Mark Clark [00:36:47]:
It doesn't just say, hey, philosophically, you.
Mark Clark [00:36:49]:
Gotta figure this out. Here's what it says. God actually came and did something about it in the person and the work of Jesus. He entered in.
Mark Clark [00:36:57]:
See here, Christianity is so unique in.
Mark Clark [00:36:59]:
The marketplace of ideas.
Mark Clark [00:37:00]:
It doesn't say God is aloof.
Mark Clark [00:37:02]:
It doesn't say that he's off somewhere distant. It says that he entered into the pain and the suffering of our life.
Mark Clark [00:37:08]:
That's the great resource. It doesn't answer every single question of our suffering. It doesn't. You can go through the whole Bible.
Mark Clark [00:37:13]:
It's not going to do it. But here's what it does do.
Mark Clark [00:37:15]:
It says, it's not that God didn't care. He entered in, through Jesus, to the.
Mark Clark [00:37:20]:
Pain and the suffering and the awfulness.
Mark Clark [00:37:22]:
And if you look at the cross of Christ, the cross is the place where all the resources for you to wake up in the morning when you face awfulness, that's where it's going to come from. Listen, for those of you sitting there right now, and you're like, man, I've lost a loved one. I've lost a child. What does the cross say? The father gave up his child. That God knows what it's like to lose a child. For some of you going, yeah, but the sexual abuse that I've been through, I remember sitting talking with someone a.
Mark Clark [00:37:57]:
Few years ago who'd been through sexual abuse in his life, and he looked.
Mark Clark [00:38:00]:
At me and he pointed out something.
Mark Clark [00:38:01]:
I've never thought of before, and maybe you haven't.
Mark Clark [00:38:04]:
He said, when I wake up in.
Mark Clark [00:38:08]:
The morning, you know what? I draw strength from the fact that Jesus can identify with this. And I said, what do you mean? And he goes, Jesus Christ, publicly crucified, was stripped naked and publicly exposed to the world. It's not like those movies where Jesus is wearing a little garment so it can be, you know, PG 13 or whatever. He was naked up there. And this sexual abuse victim got resource from the fact that Jesus has been there.
Mark Clark [00:38:39]:
And then some of us, we're just saying, why, God? Why? Why? Why this? Why this diagnosis? Why this awfulness? Why this look to the cross?
Mark Clark [00:38:49]:
What does jesus do?
Mark Clark [00:38:52]:
Why?
Mark Clark [00:38:54]:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you doing this? Can't this cup pass from me? No other religion gives you a God that you can identify with. In the midst of evil and suffering more than Christianity. He came and he suffered for you so that we wouldn't have to. Ultimately, he came and actually dealt with it.
Mark Clark [00:39:16]:
And just because right now it hasn't.
Mark Clark [00:39:18]:
Been dealt with, here's what Christianity says. Don't just look at the now and deduce a whole bunch of things about the universe.
Mark Clark [00:39:23]:
Realize where it's all going. It's going to a place where, because.
Mark Clark [00:39:27]:
Of what Jesus did, there's going to.
Mark Clark [00:39:30]:
What does revelation 21 say?
Mark Clark [00:39:31]:
There's no more tears, mourning pain, crying death. Everything sad is going to come untrue. It's all going to be reversed. Romans eight says the idea that he uses all things for the good of those who love him.
Mark Clark [00:39:48]:
What do you mean, all things?
Mark Clark [00:39:50]:
All things what? All things like the death of my father when I was 15, my obsessive compulsive disorder, the suicide of my aunt, the awfulness that surrounded my life. He's going to use or just the good things he's going to use all things in the scope of reality. There's a story being written. I'll leave you with this image. We look to the garden of Eden and we see evil. Enter the story and we go, what's the purpose of this?
Mark Clark [00:40:29]:
The reality is some of the last.
Mark Clark [00:40:31]:
Verses of the book of Genesis are Joseph looking at his brothers and he's saying, what you meant for evil, God meant for good. That verse could be literally written over the Garden of Eden. What Satan came and he tempted Adam and Eve. Awfulness and evil and suffering entered the world. But what did God do with it? Immediately in Genesis three, God said, I'm going to kill the serpent and there's going to be this greatest moment of glory the universe has ever known. As the cross of Christ is where Jesus comes and defeat evil. But in order for that great moment to exist, you have to have the moment of sin enter the world for God to come and do the greatest moment.
Mark Clark [00:41:11]:
And so what God, what Satan meant.
Mark Clark [00:41:13]:
For evil, what human beings mean for evil, God is going to take through the story of the universe and mean it for good.
Mark Clark [00:41:22]:
And every tear will be dried up, death will be reversed, and then, and.
Mark Clark [00:41:27]:
Only then, will we understand. But we get a glimpse of it in the cross of Christ where he came and he actually took it on himself.
Mark Clark [00:41:34]:
Father, I pray as we wrestle through.
Mark Clark [00:41:38]:
This deepest question that we ever have.
Mark Clark [00:41:42]:
To really enter as people, that we would come to terms with the fact that you're not going to give us.
Mark Clark [00:41:48]:
Answers to every suffering moment that we have in life.
Mark Clark [00:41:54]:
You're not going to tell us explicitly what the meaning of it is.
Mark Clark [00:41:59]:
But what we see in Jesus is that we know you care. And not only do we know you care, but you came and did something about it, which means you resource us through the cross and the resurrection to be able to wake up and deal with it when we're in the midst of it. And most of us at some level are in the midst of it. And so I just pray pastorally for our people that they would feel you close in a moment like this. Whatever they're going through, they would feel you and know that you went through this. There's nothing they're experiencing that you didn't experience and take on yourself. Give us that great resource and that encouragement. In Jesus good name we pray.
Mark Clark [00:42:51]:
Amen.