Saturday, August 02, 2008

Motyer on Pain

Human intuition says, "If this is God's world, and he is good, surely things should not be so." Some even proceed to use the adversities of life as an argument against the existence of God. The intuition is correct, the deduction is false. For if there is no good God, no one would feel pain and suffering to be a problem. If the world is simply chance, then pain, too, is one of the changes and chances of life and our intuition would tell us so. If the world belongs to humankind, then suffering is one aspect of our mismanagement and we should say, "It stands to reason." Pain is a problem only if our intuition is correct that the world is directly in the hands of a good, loving, all-wise, all-powerful God.

J. Alec Motyer, "Haggai," in The Minor Prophets, ed. Thomas F. McComiskey (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), pp. 978-79.

1 comment:

Mark said...

Absolutely true and outstanding insight. Thanks for this.