To choose between a good and bad thing is easy. Our moral dilemma’s come when we either perceive that we must choose the lesser evil of two bad things, or the better between two good things. According to the holy and sacred scripture (and all of its moral context), we are to do all we do for the Glory of God. Since we cannot always judge best, we might safely assume that whatever helps us to better obey the commandments of God will just as much help us in glorifying God. Therefore, if we have a choice between two goods which are equally permissible, we must not choose by whim or presumptuous interpretations of providence, but we must sincerely seek to discern which of the two possible options is most likely to lead us into more obedience.

Specifically helpful is considering obedience to the first commandment, which encompasses all the others (that is, to love the LORD with all of our heart). Often, our dilemma between two goods can be relieved if only we thought this question through in every part of our life.

For example, not all secular music promotes sin (though most of it does—if not explicitly, subtlety). Thus, listening to secular music which does not promote sin is “permissible.” But this would be a poor reason to make it part of your musical diet. Many things are permissible which are not necessarily helpful with respect to our purpose of cultivating more love for God. What kind of music most effectively stirs my heart for the things of God? What friends of mine most consistently lead my thoughts toward God and help me to better love Him? What habits in my life are truly helping me to achieve a greater level of love for God?

When we become convinced that one option is more likely to lead us into a deeper love for Christ than another option, would we not be obligated to choose it? If so, this is the end of our moral dilemma. When choosing between two goods, however, we are not omniscient. We cannot foresee every factor which will help or hurt our cause. However, we must be honest and earnest in our seeking to discern what options are most likely (to the best of our limited knowledge) to help us love God more—for this will be the end of our uncertainty and the beginning of a life of confidence in our courses of action. We must avoid at all costs being superstitious, lazy, impressionistic, and carnal in our choices. We must avoid at all costs a minimalistic Christianity which merely asks “Is this permissible?” We must rather seek those things which most effectively stir our affections for God, help us to grow in our walk with Christ, and most glorify God.

Glorifying God is the ultimate pleasure. We were created for this very purpose, to glorify the worth and holiness of God. When we do not live consistently for this purpose, our joy falters. Asking whether or not something is “permissible” is so often the wrong question (though unavoidable at times). It’s a quick way to quench the Spirit and all of our passion for the things of God. Minimilistic Christianity in effect asks this question, “How can I have the least amount of pleasure in Christ?” What a miserable way to look at the Christian life. Instead, we should ask, “How can I maximize my pleasure in God?” This question is synonymous with “How can I maximize my love for God and obedience to His commandments?” or “How can I most Glorify God?” To ask these questions from a sincere heart is the first step to a more radical pleasure producing paradigm for the Christian life.

When sex is perverted, pleasure is watered down and the happiness of society in general is diluted.

Sexual immorality has so much to do with so many other problems in our society. For example, would there be as many people in our society who gangbang, rob people, sell drugs, do drive by’s, prostitute women, have psychological malfunctions, wrong people to get attention, disregard authority, etc. if everyone who grew up had both a mother AND a father who actually took responsibility for their sex? That’s why God’s design is marriage. God doesn’t want us having sex unless we have committed to provide the proper context for the natural consequences of sex (children). God commands that lovers be ready to raise a family together–it’s not JUST about the pleasure (although God created both outer beauty and the physical pleasure of sex), it’s about God’s design of reproduction. Marriage is the only context which is fitting to such a great responsibility as raising a child.

Has anyone checked the statistics about single parent homes? Has anyone had an inside track to the ghetto’s in America? The streets are raising many of our babies, and much of it is a result of sexual immorality. Gang members often talk of how they felt like they never had a family that cared, and that this is one of their motivations for joining the gang–the gang is attractive because it resembles a family.

Anyway…that’s just one example of how sexual immorality is effecting our culture–one baby at a time [not to mention the objectification of women, increase in sexual offenses, divorce rate (and all that kids have to go through in that kind of situation), violence and murder (angry husband’s / jealous boyfriends), broken hearts, depression, rampant homosexuality, pedophilia, molestation, bestiality (screw-any-thing-that-moves-ality), sexually transmitted diseases, abortion on demand (the murder of a beating heart), etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.] We belittle God’s great gift of sex when we live as though our genitiles were just toys that we can play with now and let someone else clean up the “mess” later. It’s not a very nice “thank you” to God when we run his gifts through the mud and leave a generation of lost souls in the wake.

GOD CREATED SEX. Yeah, that’s what I said. God created sex and therefore, He knows best how sex is supposed to work. He intends for us to get much pleasure out of it. In fact, if we have any faith in God (or any experience of real love in the context of marriage) we should trust that sex is more enjoyable when it is stewarded according to God’s standards. God’s not a kill-joy—He just knows what’s best for our everlasting joy and pleasure. If we put God first and handle our sexuality the way God intended, we would not only have a better society, but we would get more pleasure out of sex, and more joy and long-term fulfillment out of our relationships. We settle for such cheap, temporary, destructive, weak pleasures that we miss the intense, eternal, all-satisfying and ultimate pleasure which comes from the hand of God.

“And the Lord God said to the snake, Because you have done this you are cursed more than all cattle and every beast of the field; you will go flat on the earth, and dust will be your food all the days of your life: And there will be war between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed: by him will your head be crushed and by you his foot will be wounded. To the woman he said, Great will be your pain in childbirth; in sorrow will your children come to birth; still your desire will be for your husband, but he will be your master. And to Adam he said, Because you gave ear to the voice of your wife and took of the fruit of the tree which I said you were not to take, the earth is cursed on your account; in pain you will get your food from it all your life. Thorns and waste plants will come up, and the plants of the field will be your food; With the hard work of your hands you will get your bread till you go back to the earth from which you were taken: for dust you are and to the dust you will go back.”
Gen 3:14-19 (BBE)
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The Big Question: Why? – In times of great suffering like the flooding of New Orleans, the terrorist disasters of 9-11 or the recent Tsunami, ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ are called to give an account of their belief in a God who is in control of all things. How can God let this happen? So often the answers given seem to be insufficient to our reason, especially to those who themselves endure the suffering. Moreover, even when Christian theologians give answers which are perhaps intellectually cogent, these explanations somehow still seem empty—unable to comfort those in great pain. The question of how a loving God could let so many people suffer is arguably the most important question of our time. Never have we seen such widespread suffering in the world than at the close of the 20th Century and the opening of the 21st.

Take, for Example, Natural Disasters. Tornadoes twist their way through neighborhoods destroying homes and taking lives, Hurricanes demolish the coastlands and claim countless victims. Earthquakes split the earth open and swallow the people and take out the foundations of massive man-made structures. Sea Storms sink ships. Floods drown entire communities under a violent current. Volcanoes spew brimstone as if the earth ready to spew out hell itself.  Blizzards bury people alive and suffocate homes. Forest fires burn up the earth, natural habitats, and homes.

Or what about sickness and death? Massive famines in Africa leave people starving to death and born deformed from malnutrition. The AIDS epidemic spreads like wildfire taking millions of lives in China, America, Africa, Europe, and all over the world—and there is no cure.  The terror of cancer is indiscriminate and without a cure.  Babies are born with countless deformities; some are born addicted to crack cocaine and must receive special weaning treatments from birth to survive (not to mention those babies which are aborted before birth). Others are born with Cystic Fibrosis (another incurable disease) and told they should not expect to live very long. Heart attacks and strokes await every man and woman with time. Not even doctors can keep up with the full extent of known malfunctions of the human body.  The Young boast of their youth and inwardly take for granted that death is far away. Yet even perfectly healthy children die in their sleep or have brain aneurisms without warning.  A-timer’s disease wipes out the fond memories of yesterday along with self identity, leaving an aged wife to ask her husband on their 67th year anniversary “Who are you?  What are you doing in my home?!”  This is just as heart breaking for the husband as it is for the wife.  Unexpected fatal accidents leave loved one’s wishing they had a last chance to say “I love you.”  So many are paralyzed and cannot walk, others who cannot move anything but their head. Others are blind having never seen the light of day, still others who are deaf and have never heard the sound of music; or worse, there are those who can neither hear nor see, and death awaits the best of people.  All human beings are on death row. The graveyard is inescapable; inevitable; everyone’s permanent retirement plan.  All are born with a hyphen by their name on their tombstone awaiting death which ruins the best of friends and invites the human race to morn day and night.

Yet our bodies begin to decay long before death, making it slow and painful. Organs stop functioning, skin looses its life and shrivels up, bones become soft and break under the slightest pressure. Our souls cry for long life, yet our bodies demand that we decay and die off: lungs collapse, hearts explode, arteries clog the veins, eye sight fails, hearing is lost, and strength is drained with age. Death stares even the strong youth in the face, reigning like a King over all the earth with absolute authority over all lives, making them temporary vapors in the large schema of our universe.  No one chooses the day of her death, yet death finds his victims unsuspecting, like a sudden jolt of electricity or a midnight ambush. Life is but a vapor, a blade of grass, a fading flower, a shot of wind, a burning match, and the reality of death deeply disturbs the human mind and awakens us to our vulnerability, so we bury it in the grave of our conscience for a sense of peace.

Begging the Question: The Hollow Answers – Pure science has no answers to such questions as “Why do we suffer?” or “Why do all people die?” Science can only affirm the grim reality of suffering and death, but she is inadequate in answering all of life’s deepest questions. All too often ministers of the Gospel can say little more than “We trust that God has a plan,” or “Just as we suffer, we know Christ also suffered.” Seemingly even more inappropriate at such a time, ministers will say, “We know that God still loves us.” I do not deny that such answers are true. The problem is that all of these answers nonetheless seem to beg the question: But why do we suffer so terribly? Perhaps the worst thing a minister could say, however, is that God has nothing to do with our suffering and dying. Somehow, in the midst of controversy, ministers often become more interested in getting God “off-the-hook” than translating a sovereign God into the equation of purposeful suffering.

Suffering as a Proof of God’s Righteousness – Because I know that questions like these go through my own mind, I am guessing that in a time like this, they also are running through your mind.  Often Christians—having experienced a great work of grace and tasted of the new creation which is to come—begin to see the world with such new eyes that they are awakened afresh to the beauties and glories of life, the world, and the universe.  They begin to use the glory of creation as an empirical evidence for the love of the creator.  “How could there not be a God?  There is so much beauty in the world!” they might say.  And of course “God is love.”

Yet creation is, from another angle, probably a poor exhibit for proof of a benevolent creator God.  All the world is under an unavoidable curse of sin, suffering, and death. How do you tell a kid who has been abused, neglected, raped, beaten, whose brother is incarcerated and whose best friend just walked into fatal stray bullets in the midst of gang retaliation, etc., “God [the sovereign and omnipotent One] loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life”? These things beg for explanation.

Perhaps this is another reason why I find biblical Christianity to be philosophically responsible–the scriptures do not overlook the weight of the curse that everyone experiences to one degree or another in this life. This seems to be major reality check against unwarranted optimism. Suffering and death are either a just punishment for a humanity born in rebellion against that which is infinitely worthy of allegiance, or there is no God (at least no God who is all-powerful and all-loving). It reminds me of what C.S. Lewis said in his apologetical book Mere Christianity:

We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody. One is the universe He has made. If we used that as our only clue, then I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place). The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put into our minds.” – Lewis, Mere Christianity, New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers Inc. 1980, 29.

In the end, creation is a good proof for the glory and creative genius (if that’s the right word) of the creator, but not necessarily His love. That piece of the puzzle must be found at the cross, where that other doctrine of which creation is an exhibit is also to be met–the doctrine of sin. Instead of flooding the earth all over again, or sticking a planet-size dynamite stick into the earth, Christ was sent to bear the curse on our behalf—that’s why I can say as a Christian that the world speaks of the great glory of our Creator, and equally of the great rebellion of humanity.

God’s Purposes in Suffering – Ultimately the weight of the curse is a cosmic thunderclap of the righteous indignation of God Himself. It is a shocking exhibit of God’s hatred of sin. Once the existence of God is presupposed, this is the pressing question: Why has God allowed so much suffering? The answer will not be much welcomed in a world that already takes no delight in the things of God.  But God is not in the dock here; we are. Where was God in 9/11? He was behind it all, weaving a million glorious purposes of wrath mixed with grace; drawing straight with crooked lines; enslaving the sinful intents of those who were the instruments of so much destruction to fit his sovereign and pure purposes of judgment and mercy. Many people suffer and die in times of calamity, and this is His judgment, but many people (by God’s gracious plan) turn to such a worldview as Christianity in those terrifying times. The teachings of the scriptures about man’s being estranged from God and God’s being angry at evil in the world begin to make more sense in times of suffering. God uses death and suffering to spread the message of the gospel, because it is so often the bad news (that the world is cursed and estranged from God’s favor) that prepares the soil for the seed of the good news (God’s grace in Jesus Christ). Why does God allow suffering? For the display of His Glorious righteousness and grace, for the everlasting enjoyment of His people who are saved through the greatest display of righteousness and mercy: the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

The Fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge. . . The fear of the LORD is to hate evil (Prov 1:7, 8:13).
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