Friday, February 7, 2014

Why did God create if he knew we would sin?

This question was posed to me.  And I am under obligation to explain so that a fifteen year old could understand it.  Hopefully that'll work.

First, we don't know exactly.

We should be honest in admitting this.  God can do whatever he wants to because of who he is.  Sometimes he will do things we cannot understand.  But we cannot forget how good God has been to us every day and how good he has been to us in the Cross when we run into a problem where it seems he has done something we wouldn't have done.  Surely this must be the case sometime - where we would disagree with God - because we are sinners and because we are weak and because we haven't been around nearly as long as God.

This question is a place for the exercise of faith, where we hold onto what God has shown us in the light as we step into the dark.  I believe God is good and gives us all we need, so for right now, if we don't have a good answer, we don't fully need one in order to live the life God wants us to.

Second, if you wrestle with this question, that is a good thing.  It means you are thinking about both sides of the equation and want to affirm both sides.  God is good.  God is all-knowing, even of the future.  God is all-powerful.  Sin is very real.  It is biblical and right to affirm each of those truths.  Though it may be difficult for us to reconcile those things into our brains, it is not difficult for God to reconcile them.  This problem is much like the problem of seeing how our prayers can be real, yet God knows them before we pray.  Or how God can choose us and we also choose him.  Both sides of the equation are real and true, and God knows how it works even when we don't.

Third, let's take an actual stab at what it might be like.  Others in the past have done this, and the Bible may point us in the right direction, even if we don't get a crystal clear answer.

God wanted to create people who are capable of loving him.  And robots might be able to say the words, "I love you," but in no real way could they mean it.  God created humans with the ability to fall and sin, otherwise they would not have the ability to have real love.  I think God's being totally in control and man being also free are two truths I want to affirm, and I have to confess I don't know how it works.  But all the directions - to love people, to do the Ten Commandments, to live out the Sermon on the Mount - are directed to me as if I had a choice, as if I should make the right choice.  God is making us into the image of Christ, so that we resemble him more and more, so that we look like him in the choices we make and in the character we have.  I don't know how any of that process would make sense if we do not have some form of real choice, with some possibility of making the wrong choice.  CS Lewis has made this kind of argument.  It is a philosophical argument.  Therefore, I wouldn't hold it in as high of regard as Scripture.  I would call it a free-will defense.

Another thought.  In Ephesians, Paul talks about God planning out our salvation from before the foundation of the world so that we would be the praise of God's glorious grace.  In other words, God's purposes before the world began are for his glory, displayed in his grace.  God's grace is one of his greatest attributes.  When we are fully aware of how much grace God has shown us, it changes our hearts and causes them to truly praise and worship him.  Grasping that we are recipients of grace is at the heart of the Gospel.  And this seems to suggest that our very existence, from before the world began, is all about grasping and displaying and knowing and treasuring God's glory displayed in his grace.  The greatest possible display of grace is the Cross of Jesus, where he chose to take all the wrath coming to sinners like me, in my place, though he was completely innocent.  There is no conceivable greater display of his grace.  This display is such a high good.  It is so good that a world with it is better than a world without it.  Grace is an attribute of God that doesn't make sense apart from the possibility and existence of sin.  Grace is goodness towards sinners.  The Cross is the highest goodness possible towards sinners.  And a world in which the Cross is not known is not as a good as a world in which it is known.  This is a hard truth indeed.  God created pain and suffering in order that Jesus might suffer on the cross and display God's glorious grace.  The cross is the reason sin exists.

Whew.  I think that this was the heart of one of John Piper's Passion messages, maybe from 2010 if anyone cares to go find it.

I hope this has been helpful.  This has kind of been off the cuff and a means of procrastinating on some law reading I need to be doing right now.  But it is my joy to talk about God and hopefully to help others to see him better.

Soli Deo gloria!