In 1980, I decided to investigate the historical evidence for Jesus.
After 21 months of research, I came to the conclusion
that Jesus is the unique son of God,
and that Christianity is true.
Nearly 20 years later, I began another investigation
that really put my faith to the test.
After I became a Christian in 1981,
I realized pretty quickly that
even though this was the most important decision I’d ever made,
it was only the first step in a long spiritual journey.
I mean, I was excited about my new faith,
and I had this picture of it just growing progressively stronger and stronger.
But I discovered that the Christian life isn't always a smooth road.
In fact, at times, it can be more like a minefield,
loaded with many of the same objections
and doubts that I had when I was a skeptic.
And these doubts are inevitable.
I mean, to some degree,
we're all gonna have them.
The question is how will they affect us when they hit?
Are WE drawn closer to God through the experience,
or are we pushed away by uncertainty and confusion?
Many years ago, I came across a story of a prominent Christian leader
Whose confrontation with doubt dramatically changed his life.
His name was Charles Templeton.
[Narrator] On March 18, 1946,
Charles Templeton,
a pastor from Toronto, Canada,
and his close friend,
William Franklin Billy Graham,
boarded a plane for London, England,
and a historic series of Christian meetings.
Decades later,
Templeton reflected on their friendship and ministry together.
[Templeton] Billy and I met in the Spring of 1945,
ft was backstage at a Youth For Christ fatty
in Chicago.
The stadium was packed,
and as Billy was being introduced to preach,
he leaned over to me and he said,
"Pray for me, Chuck, I'm scared to death."
We//, that started a friendship that has lasted for over 50 years.
[Narrator] Templeton and Graham were soon preaching
at Youth For Christ rallies throughout North America.
Both shared a passion for the same message.
Personal salvation through Jesus Christ.
[ Templeton ] In the 19403,
Youth for Christ was a North American phenomenon.
The atmosphere was informal and upbeat.
Thousands of young people flocked to the meetings.
The movement soon attracted Worldwide attention.
So a team was selected
to take our message to Europe.
[Narrator] For five weeks,
Templeton and Graham traveled
throughout the United Kingdom,
France, and Scandinavia.
They shared the pulpit,
preaching on alternate nights
to large enthusiastic crowds.
When they returned home,
many believed that Templeton
would go on to become
the most successful evangelist of his generation.
Yet despite the effectiveness of his ministry,
he found himself facing what he described
as a growing dilemma.
In the months following our return from Europe,
I began to fight a losing battle
with my faith.
I’d been so busy
that there was little time to take stock of my life,
but in those occasional quiet moments,
the doubt started to surface.
You see,
I had converted
to Christianity as a teenager,
and I-- I lacked
the theological training
necessary to support my beliefs,
when those inevitable questions hit me.
I Wanted very much to believe,
I had an intense longing
for a relationship with God,
but slowly, against my WIN,
my mind and reason
began to challenge
and sometimes refute
the things which were most important to me:
the central beliefs of the Christian faith.
[Narrator] Templeton's doubts attacked the core
of his deepest convictions.
Gradually eroding his belief in the validity of the Bible,
the deity of Jesus,
and the existence of a loving God.
My faith was disintegrating
I didn't have the theological training
to deal with the questions that were troubling me.
So, in a desperate attempt to find the answers,
I decided to return to school.
[Narrator] In the Fall of 1948,
Templeton enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary.
After three years of study,
he accepted a position with the National Council of Churches.
In the next few years,
I moved across the United States and Canada,
conducting 15-day preaching missions.
Everywhere we went, we set record attendance.
My days were filled with excitement,
but I dreaded the nights,
for at night, that was the time
when the fears would set in.
I would often times break out into sweats,
and my heart was pounding.
I thought ff was going to shake the bed.
/ had to ask myself
what right do I have
to stand before thousands of people,
and try to convince them
of something that I no longer believe?
It was a reprehensible thing to do.
So I had to stop.
I had no possessions
except a car and $600 in cash.
And I would be cutting myself off
from all of the Wonderful friends
that I had made in those years in the ministry.
I felt like I was betraying all of them.
But, in the end...
there was no real choice.
So I packed
everything that I owned
into a rented trailer,
and I started back on the road to Toronto.
[Narrator] Templeton remained in Canada for the rest of his life,
working as a writer and news commentator.
In 1996, he published his final book, Farewell to God:
My Reasons For Rejecting the Christian Faith.
What happened to Charles Templeton?
Why did he abandon the faith
that had once been the cornerstone of his life?
I was fascinated by his story,
so in 1999 I called him at his home in Toronto.
I remember that he answered the phone
with his very rich, deliberate voice.
I told him that I was a writer
and I wanted to interview him
about the reasons he had for rejecting God.
He said, "Well, I'm not doing very Well physically,
"but yes, if you'd like to come up to Canada,
I'd be glad to talk with you."
So I was on my way the very next morning.
When I met him at his apartment,
he looked weak and frail.
At first I didn’t think he’d have the strength
to talk for more than a few minutes,
but he insisted that I stay.
He was very cordial, very kind,
and I liked him immediately.
I could sense that his mind was sharp,
and he really Wanted to tell me his story.
He reminisced for a while
about his years in the ministry
and his friendship with Billy Graham.
It was obvious to me that the relationship
was SUN very important to him.
Then, after a few minutes, he turned the conversation
to his reasons for rejecting Christianity.
He described several common objections,
and he had a long list,
but a couple of things really stood out.
He looked me right in the eye
and asked two rhetorical questions.
'7n a World with thousands of religions and gods,
"why is Jesus the only way to salvation?
“Are we actually supposed to believe
that only the Christians have it right? "
Then with even more intensity, he asked,
"How could a loving God, the God of the Bible,
create a World filled with evil and suffering?"
He W3Sf7'f looking for a response.
He just Wanted me to understand these issues
that had troubled him for almost 50 years.
We talked for another hour and then I said good-bye.
As I drove back to Chicago,
I thought about his story all the way home.
He was on his way to becoming
one of the greatest evangelists of the 20th century,
but his faith was destroyed
by doubts that /U struggled with myself
I wish I could have given him some satisfying answers,
I really Wanted to help him.
I also wanted to Know that my own faith
could stand up to the tough questions that had ruined his.
You know, I think that's the moment
I decided to launch another investigation.
[No audible dialogue]
During the next six months,
I traveled thousands of miles to interview scholars
and theologians and ministry leaders
who had confronted two of Templeton's
major objections to Christianity.
Why is Jesus the only way to God?
How can a loving God allow evil and suffering?
When I left for my first interview,
I remember feeling a little bit apprehensive.
These were questions almost everyone faces
at some point in life.
The answers aren't only difficult and controversial,
they’re also crucial to our perception of God.
[Templeton] Are we to believe only Christians are right?
After all,
Christians have the audacity
to say that there is only one God.
Theirs.
And that the gods of every other people on Earth are spurious.
The Apostle Paul stated bluntly,
"There is no other name under heaven, given among men,
"by which you may be saved,
for there is salvation in no other."
Such an insufferable presumption.
Charles Templeton wasn't the only one
who felt that Christians were narrow-minded
and wrong to believe Jesus is a son of God.
When I was an atheist, I’d often get angry
about what seemed to me to be blatant arrogance.
Who do Christians think they are?
Why can they judge everyone else?
Well, today my perspective has changed.
This idea of there being only one way to God,
is still one of the biggest obstacles to Christianity.
[tribal singing]
[Narrator] More than two billion people,
about one third of the world’s total population
identify themselves as followers of Jesus Christ.
At the center of their faith,
is the controversial and remarkable claim
Jesus made the week be fore His crucifixion
"I am the way, the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father but through Me. "
"I am the way, the truth, and the life. "
What was He saying?
He really was saying there’s only one way to the Father
“No man comes to the Father but through Me.”
Now He doesn't say this in a vacuum.
It isn't like this is something
He just dreamt up there at the Last Supper.
This is something that He has been saying
in many different ways, all the way through His ministry.
The truth of the matter is that before Jesus came along,
no one was claiming to be
the exclusive--
exclusive manifestation of God on Earth.
This was not only a shocking claim,
it was a scandalous claim,
and early Jews were not expecting it.
It’s not a surprise to me that Jesus got Himself crucified.
Whats a surprise to me is that He lasted for three years
in public ministry before that happened,
making the kind of claims that He was making.
It's certainly a difficult thing
to bring up in polite society,
that Jesus might be the only way to God.
It can bring up rancor,
and it can bring up bad feelings.
But at the end of the day, the question is,
"ls that true?"
[Narrator] Today, Jesus' claim to be the exclusive path to God,
is often challenged by the assumption
that all religions teach basically the same thing,
and as a result,
there are actually many ways to salvation.
The World religions do agree
about some of their surface teachings,
but when you get to the core of those religions,
they are radically contradictory.
Buddha was an agnostic about Whether there was a God.
In fact, a major strain of Buddhism
does not believe that anything exists,
much less God.
Hinduism says that there are 330 million gods.
Islam says that there’s one God,
and the greatest evil that can be conducted
is to believe that God is a trinity
and Jesus was the son of God.
For Christians, that is the most important claim,
now they can't all be right.
They could all be Wrong,
but they can't all be right,
because they contradict one another.
Think about it.
Christians say that Jesus is the Messiah.
Jews say that he's not.
Either Jesus was the Messiah,
or He wasn't the Messiah.
If He W3Sf7'f the Messiah,
the Jews are right and the Christians are Wrong.
If He was the Messiah,
the Christians are right and the Jews are Wrong.
But under no circumstance can they both be right.
As one person put it,
"All religions are basically the same,
"except for the area of God and salvation
and the problem with man and the afterlife,"
and that kind of stuff.
It turns out, on the big issues,
they’re very, very different.
They can't all be true.
[Narrator] While the theological differences
between the world’s major religions are glaring,
individual believers,
be they Muslim, Christian,
Hindu, Buddhist, or Jew,
share a universal need.
They have each experienced
what the philosopher Pascal called
'B God-shaped vacuum in the heart,
which cannot be N//ed by any created thing. "
In dealing with religious studies at the graduate level,
one thing we were pretty certain of--
scholars across the board--
that maybe human beings
ought not to be called homo sapiens,
you know, the Wise man,
but rather homo religious,
the religious man.
Oh, why is that?
Because no matter where you go,
no matter where you go,
there is this religious upwelling.
Human beings have a sense,
deep down and across the board,
that they are, in some way,
not right with the universe.
What they’re really sensing is they’re not right with God.
They sense their guilt,
alienation, separation from God.
We hunger for a purpose and a meaning in life
that goes beyond us.
We need empowerment
to live the kind of life we know we should,
but we can't on our own.
Jesus' identification of these problems,
and His solution to them,
is more profound than any other religion.
This is why Christianity makes so much sense,
because it offers a solution to the genuine problem.
If doesn't sugarcoat it, doesn't candy-coat it.
It doesn’t look past the real problem.
It identifies it for what it is.
[Female Narrator] It is Written,
there is no one righteous,
not even one.
AU have turned away.
They have together become worthless,
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Throughout my research, I was struck by how clearly the Bible
identifies humanity’s most fundamental spiritual need.
We're all separated from God by our sin,
because he’s perfect and pure and holy and we’re not.
None of us has lived up to our own standard of morality,
much less to God's, which is infinitely higher.
Because the justice of God is also perfect.
This separation should have lasted for eternity.
But there’s hope.
God didn't just leave it at that,
though He might have, out of love,
He reached down with a rescue effort.
The rescue effort wasn't just to toss some teaching our way,
in hope that we would five better lives,
but the effort entailed--
this is Where Christianity is absolutely unique--
the effort entailed God becoming a man Himself
to communicate in the most clear form possible,
His intentions and desires,
and to make a sacrificial provision,
for a pardon for man's crimes against God.
Jesus is the one mediator
between God and human beings.
That can be man standing in the presence of God,
and can be God standing in the presence of human beings.
He's the only God-man.
He's the only God-man
who can fulfill that role
of bringing rapprochement, reconciliation,
healing to the relation--
the broken and severed relationship between God and human beings.
What Jesus did then was to take the penalty
for the crimes of men upon Himself,
so that human beings could be free.
He took the rap for their crimes against God.
Not only does God come down to reach out to man,
but He gives him a free pardon of His crimes.
The solution to the problem is not in making man better.
Okay, let's make up for past deeds gone bad.
No, that isn't going to Work.
The solution is grace.
[Female Narrator] You were dead in your trespasses and sins,
but God, who is rich in mercy,
made us alive with Christ.
For it by grace you have been saved through faith.
And this, not from yourselves,
it is the gift of God,
not by Works,
so that no one can boast.
Among the world’s religions,
the Christian doctrine of grace is absolutely unique.
You see, grace means that there’s nothing we can do ourselves,
that qualifies us for salvation.
Outstanding moral behavior,
or a lifetime of good Works,
the;/'re not going to get the job done.
That's because God's forgiveness is a gift
that we can never deserve and we can never earn.
The grace of God is a way of referring to the fact
that when God loves us,
when God does good things to us,
when God sends Jesus Christ into the World,
when God gives us His spirit,
this isn't as a reward for something that We have earned.
It isn't because WE have twisted God's arm.
It is simply because God loves us
and He loves us lavishly,
and He Wants to make that lavish love
a present reality in our lives.
God is not looking down at the World
at different religious clubs.
The Mus//rn club, the Christian club,
the Jewish club, the Hindu club,
and you're not saying,
“You know, I like the Christian club better,
to hell with the rest of you, " quite literally.
No, he’s looking down at humanity,
who is desperately Wicked
compared to His standards,
who desperately needs to be rescued.
He offers a pardon.
He gives people an opportunity
to either accept it or reject it.
This is why Jesus is the only way.
Because He’s the only one who solved the problem.
Suppose God knew
that there was only one necessary and sufficient means,
to take care of the human dilemma.
That would be sending His only begotten son.
Well, if there’s only one sufficient means,
please don't send me the pretenders
If there's only one necessary means,
we don? need any other ones.
Why would God want to send
1,500 avatars, or savior figures,
none of which can completely do the job.
What’s the point of that?
When He can send His son
and HS accomplished in one person
at one time,
through one set of events,
once for a//_
That's the essence of why Jesus is the only way.
He's the only sufficient and necessary means
by which We may be saved.
[Narrator] The uniqueness of Jesus is magnified
when His specific claims and teachings
ere compared with those of hf story's other religious feeders.
There is no other great religious leader
who ever claimed to be the direct way to God
in the way Jesus claimed it.
The Buddha certainly didn’t.
Most Hindu gurus and leaders don't do that kind of thing.
Mohammed certainly didn't do that.
He would have thought that to be blasphemy.
You could take Buddha out of Buddhism
and you still have the teachings of the Buddha,
or you could take the prophet out of Islam,
and you’d still have the Koran and the teachings there,
and the supremacy of Allah.
But if you take Jesus out of Christianity,
you don't have Christianity any more,
because Christianity is not based on the teachings of Jesus.
It was rather the person of Jesus that is critical.
If you boil Him down to a bunch of “Thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots”,
you’ve trivialized Jesus.
You’ve trivialized the essence of His claim,
because His claims are not just,
"You need to behave better."
His claims are that God
is breaking into human history through Himself...
and coming to change us.
The Gospel, the good news,
is that the kingdom of God,
the divine saving activity of God,
is at hand
in the person of Jesus.
You'd better pay attention,
because if you don't,
all of the ethical teaching of Jesus
is not going to do you a whit of good.
You have to respond to the good news about Jesus
who's come into this World.
[Narrator] In his classic book, Mere Christianity,
C. S. Lewis explored the identity of Jesus,
and the popular opinion that while He was a great moral teacher,
We cannot accept his claim to be God.
"A man who was merely a man,
'End said the sort of things Jesus said,
"Would not be a great moral teacher.
"He would either be a lunatic,
“or else he would be the devil of hell.
“Either this man was, and is, the son of God,
'br else a madman or something Worse.
"You can shut him up for a fool,
'you can kill him as a demon,
"or you can fall at his feet
"and calf him Lord and God,
“but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense
'about his being a great human teacher.
"He has not left that open to us.
He did not intend to. "
When someone says,
"Jesus was just a great moral teacher,"
that's rather like saying,
"You know Mozart Wrote some rather pretty tunes."
Just say, "\/\/ell, yes, he did Write some pretty tunes,
"but if that's all you can hear in his music,
"then you need to sit down and learn
what those symphonies are really all about."
Saying Jesus is just a great moral teacher,
is a way of disinfecting Him,
of saying We can have Him on our terms,
rather than on His terms.
Actually, Jesus is not easy to grasp if you do it like that.
That’s like saying, “The only bit of the Mozart symphony
"that I'm actually gonna think about,
"is the bit that I can Whistle
on my way home from the pub."
Well, best of luck.
[Narrator] Strobel's investigation also drew him back
to the historical evidence
he had first examined as an atheist:
ancient documents and biographies
that confirm the events of Jesus' life,
and the claims he made to deity.
The four New Testament Gospels leave no doubt
that Jesus believed he was the only way to God.
So the issue is, can WE believe Jesus?
This is Where His credentials become so important.
There’s a wealth of historical evidence
that I've studied for almost 30 years.
We've got older documentation
and earlier eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life
than we have for any other religious leader of antiquity
In addition, we have hundreds of years of scholarship,
that upholds the validity of the Gospels.
Unlike anyone else in history,
Jesus fulfilled dozens of prophesies,
including the location of His birth,
key events of His ministry,
and the details of His execution.
And each of these prophesies was first written
in the Hebrew scriptures
centuries before he was born.
Jesus also performed miracles,
often in front of his enemies and skeptics,
that demonstrated his supernatural
power over nature, disease, and death.
And if all that W3Sf7'f enough,
he was resurrected from the dead
in a historical event
that was confirmed by more than 500 witnesses.
You have to remember
that the early followers of Jesus
gave their lives,
they Went to martyr's deaths,
not because of sincere belief they held,
and about which they could be sincerely Wrong.
No, they went to martyr’s deaths
because something they actually saw with their own eyes,
and touched with their own hands.
They sew Jesus risen from the deed,
after He was executed on the cross.
[Female narrator] If Christ has not been raised,
then all our preaching is useless,
and your faith is useless.
And we apostles would all be lying about God,
for We have said that God raised Christ from the grave.
The Apostle Paul, who was an eyewitness of the resurrected Jesus,
felt very secure to say, "Guess What, guys.
"If Jesus did not actually come back from the dead,
"in real time and space,
our faith is Worthless."
You see, that sets Christianity up to be testable.
You can actually investigate it, at that point,
to End out whether iris true or not.
You can offer evidence.
You can offer reason.
I've studied the resurrection,
as you know, very intensively.
And I've written about it.
And the more I look at the resurrection of Jesus
the more, A: I'm absolutely convinced it happened,
as a reality within our own space/time world,
and B: it is utterly unique.
Nobody else has led the way through death,
and out the other side.
Christianity is based, from the beginning,
on the fact of the resurrection.
And that’s what I’ve staked my life on.
After considering the historical evidence
for Jesus' life and resurrection,
along with insights
of New Testament theology,
I was convinced that Jesus is the only way to God.
But what people like my friend Charles Templeton?
Those who feel that Christians are arrogant
to believe that this is true?
What could I say to them?
Now of course, some people will always say it's arrogant,
because that is an easy charge, especially because
some Christians behave arrogantly
They really do.
The thing about arrogance, though,
it's so silly,
because if, as Paul says,
everything WE have is a gift of grace,
we haven’t got anything to be arrogant about,
It isn’t that we’ve got it all together.
It’s somewhere that God’s got it all together,
and we are privileged to be called to be a little part of that.
And as long as WE keep that perspective,
we will out the root of arrogance,
and be able to bear humble but clear Witness to the truth.
[Strobel] Christianity has been defined as
one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.
And I think that’s a wonderful illustration.
We were sinners, living in rebellion against God
And WE found forgiveness and grace through Jesus Christ.
And we just want to pass this truth on to the rest of the world.
The way to any truth is often narrow, and specific.
And because of His sinless life, and divine nature,
Jesus is the only one qualified to pay the penalty for our sin.
He alone can reconcile us to God.
And that's why, when Jesus said,
"I'm the way, the truth, and the life.
“No one comes to the Father but through Me,”
we can trust Him with confidence,
and with humble and grateful hearts.
[airplane passing overhead]
[Templeton] What has been called “the problem of evil”
has puzzled men and women of every generation.
Why, in a world created
by a loving and omnipotent God,
are suffering, disease, and death inevitable facts?
You see, a loving God
could not possibly be the author of the horrors
that continue every day,
and will continue as long as life exists.
It’s an inconceivable tale of suffering and death.
And because HS a fact,
it is obvious.
There cannot be a loving God.
Cannot be.
Early in my career as a journalist,
I covered a lot of stories involving people
who were living in extreme poverty and horrible conditions,
or who'd been the victims of crime or terrible accidents.
So I saw a for of pain and suffering, first-hand.
And this became an issue that really resonated with me.
Later, during my investigation,
I commissioned a study
that asked a cross-section of Americans,
"if you could ask God any one question,
"and you knew He'd give you an answer,
what would you ask?"
By far, the most common response was,
"How could there be a loving God,
with so much pain and suffering in the World?"
So I Knew that this was the number-one objection
to the Christian faith.
What a lot of people don’t realize
when the problem of evil comes up,
is that everyone has to deal with it.
This isn't just a problem for me, as a theist.
Every human being walking the face of this Earth
is aware of evil in the World.
And everybody has to, from their perspective,
from their Worldview, offer a solution to it.
The real question is, who's got the best answer,
in the context of their Worldview?
Which Worldview has the best resources
to help deal with this problem?
And here, I think, the biblical Worldview excels.
[Narrator] To understand the biblical view of evil and suffering,
we must first consider I an apparent contradiction
in five core beliefs of Judea-Christian theology.
God exists.
God is all good.
God is all-knowing.
God is all-powerful.
And there is evil in the World.
[Koukl] It appears that there’s a conflict between
Goo"s goodness and Goo"s power.
If He was good, He’d want to get rid of all evil in the world.
And if He was powerful, He'd be able to.
But evil exists, and therefore He's either not good, or He's not powerful.
That’s a pretty good argument.
And I think the only way of answering it
is to show that the terms are ambiguous.
We don’t fully understand
what God, or good,
or all-powerful, or all-wise, mean.
We partly understand them.
So We have to make some distinctions.
[Female narrator] Yours, O Lord,
is the greatness and the power
and the glory and the majesty
and the splendor.
For everything in heaven and Earth is yours.
You ere exalted es heed over eff.
[Moreland] There's a lot of confusion about what ff means
to say God is all-powerful.
Many people think that means God can do anything.
But the Bible is very clear
that there are a lot of things God can't do.
For example, the Bible teaches
that God cannot swear by a name greater than Himself
The Bible teaches that God cannot lie.
It isn't that God just chooses not to lie.
Iris that He can? He-
C.S. Lewis once said,
"Can a mortal ask questions
that God finds unanswerable?”
And he said, "Yeah Quite easily.
"Is yellow square or round?
And how many hours are there in a mile?"
And if you extend that a bit,
yes, God can't make a square circle.
So there are all sorts of things that God can't do,
because they’d be illogical or nonsensical.
So when We talk about God being omnipotent,
what we mean is, God can do anything power can do.
But We don't mean God can violate the laws of logic
and do something contradictory.
[Narrator] God’s power, and the existence of evil,
are prevailing themes in the opening chapters
of Genesis.
[Female narrator] /n the beginning,
God created the heavens and the Earth.
And God save all that He had made,
and it was very good.
[Narrator] According to the Bible,
after God created a universe,
and a planet perfectly designed to sustain life,
He crowned His work with human beings--
man and woman--
endowed with spirit and soul--
free will- -
and the capacity to make their own moral' choices.
[seagulls squawking]
[Koukl] God created a World
in which there were morally free creatures.
Human beings can be bad, and they can be good.
There's a possibility for great evil,
but there's a potential for great good,
when you have moral freedom.
And so our greatest blessing,
which is the free will we have,
the ability to make choices, moral choices,
also is our greatest curse,
because I often choose the Wrong thing.
And so does everybody else.
And people get hurt out of that,
both intentionally and unintentionally.
[More/and] If God creates human beings
with the power of free choice,
He may foreknow what they’re going to do,
but He can’t determine what they’re going to do.
Otherwise, they’re not really free.
And evil entered the World
when people freely chose to withhold
doing the right thing,
and instead did the Wrong thing.
[man on radio] It appears an airplane crashed
into the World Trade Center.
The World Trade Center Tower Number One
is on Ere-
The whole outside of the building
The Union 'S closed--
- [sirens] - [screams]
The World Trade centers collapsed.
Building Two has collapsed.
[Strobel] The sheer magnitude of evil and suffering
in the World can be overwhelming.
And While searching for answers,
some have argued that because God created humane with free will,
then He's ultimately responsible for evil.
It's even been suggested that God created evil.
But from a Biblical perspective,
is that even possible?
No, because evil is not a thing.
Everything God creates is good.
God created the World good,
just as it was supposed to be-
But human freedom, then, was used
in such a way as to diminish goodness in the world,
and that diminution, that lack,
that missing goodness,
that is what we call evil.
So evil is a lack of goodness.
It is goodness spoiled.
You could have good without evil.
But you can't have evil without good.
And so evil was not a direct creation of God.
It was the result of humans exercising their freedom.
So if it was the free will of human beings
that actually caused evil,
then I think it's reasonable to ask,
why didn't God just create a World
Where moral freedom didn't exist in the first place?
That way, evil and suffering wouldn’t exist, either.
God could have made a World Without evil,
by just taking away our free will to do it.
It would have been very easy for Him
to just simply say,
“Well, I’m gonna make you all marionettes,
"and we'll pull the strings,
"and everyone prays five or six times a day,
and everybody does right. "
But God Wanted a race of tested individuals,
who choose to love Him.
And you cannot love someone unless
you have the choice to not love Him.
[Wright] The sort of love that humans can give
to one another, and to God,
is something which depends on them being ab/e to do it
from the bottom of their heart,
Without being forced.
As soon as it's forced, it's not love any more.
And so it was a good thing for God
to create creatures with freedom.
Because that opened up the possibility
that they could actually express genuine love
not only to Him, but to one another,
in intimate relationship.
[Narrator] 1,600 years ago,
St. Augustine wrote,
"Since God is the highest good,
“He would not allow any evil to exist
“in His works, unless His omnipotence
'End goodness were such as to bring good
even out of evil.”
Theologians and scholars
have long pondered and debated this question.
Does a loving God use evil and suffering
to accomplish a greater good?
[Koukl] I don’t know why suffering
can't be compatible with God's love.
People have this idea that real love rescues from all pain.
I ask people, when they raise that issue,
I say, "Are you a parent?
'Do you have children?
'Do you feel that your love for your children
"requires you to rescue them
"from every bit of pain?
“Have you never let them struggle through
“a difficult thing, on purpose,
for a good reason?"
Of course there's an impulse to rescue our kids.
We don't want them to suffer egregiously
But there ere times when we know
that IFS appropriate to fer them suffer
in the circumstances, for their own good,
because a greater good is in view.
And we have clues in our own lives-
I think almost all of us can look back
at some suffering in our past life,
and say, "While I was in this,
"I didn't understand why God allowed it.
"And it was a real threat to my faith.
"And now that I see
"that it made me stronger,
I do understand it."
[Narrator] For more than 40 years,
the lessons and struggle of growth through suffering
have played out daily in the life
of Joni Eareckson-Tada.
In 1967, Joni, a I 7-year-old high school senior,
severed her spinal chord in a diving accident,
paralyzing her body from the shoulders down.
[Eareckson-Tada] When I was first injured, I imagined myself
as a kind of a human guinea pig,
lying there on my Stryker frame.
/ was doing nothing but eating and breathing
and sleeping and really just existing,
and I thought in here, “You know, most people
“out beyond these hospital walls
"are going to college, getting married,
'having children, going to work.
“And I’m just lying here,
sleeping, breathing, eating. "
And I realized,
"Oh, my goodness. Upon my life,
"all the truths of the human race are going to be tested.
“Is there a God? Does He care? What’s the purpose in life?
“And if there is no God, then why not have my girlfriend slit my wrist?
“Why not take my mother’s sleeping pills?
"Why not end it all?
I mean, who can face a life of total paralysis?"
And somewhere in there, in my anger and frustration,
I realized life’s gotta be more
than just getting born and growing old and then dying.
There’s gotta be a God who cares.
We’re too significant.
There must be meaning in all of this.
I don't think I would have asked
those larger-than-life questions
were it not for my suffering.
[Narrator] In the decades following her accident,
Joni’s life has been marked by extraordinary accomplishment.
Through her artwork, music, books,
conferences, and radio and television programs,
she has inspired millions of people throughout the world.
In 1979, she founded Joni and Friends,
an international ministry
that has taken the love and hope of Jesus
to the disabled and their families.
Through it all, she has intimately known
both the pain of suffering and the presence of God.
There are a lot of people who think I’m a strong person.
And I'm not.
I am such a Weak person.
I wake up in the morning,
and honestly, I think,
"O, Lord, / don? have the strength for this.
'7 am so tired.
I am so tired of this paralysis.
But when I start to feel overwhelmed,
I’ll say, “O, God.
'7 have no strength for this day, but You do.
'7 have no resources, but You do.
"May I please have Your resources?
"May I please have Your strength?
"I can do all things through You, if You strengthen me.
Please let me borrow Your smile for the day."
And honestly,
before the morning has hardly begun,
I've already got a perspective on the day.
I've already got peace in my heart,
and a mission to accomplish.
And HS because
I've been pushed up against God.
And God has shown me some deep things about
His purpose, and Himself
that, for me,
um, are so satisfying, so pleasurable,
I wouldn’t trade the wheelchair for anything.
To ask why a good God would allow suffering
is to ask why a good doctor
would put a needle in the backside of an infant
to inoculate him.
The infant doesn't understand it.
All he knows is that it's horribly painful.
He can’t understand that, in a way,
this inoculation is going to prepare him for something
in the future that he's not even aware of.
In the same way, God is a god of intention.
He's got a purpose, a meaning,
and everything He puts His hand to
is brimming with intention and meaning.
So We can rest assured, that although the purposes
for suffering might be hidden from us in this present life,
His reasons are always wise,
they’re always specific, and they’re always good.
[Narrator] Perhaps the supreme demonstration
of God S use of suffering and evil for good
was revealed in the death of Jesus.
[Moreland] Crucifixion was invented a few centuries before Jesus.
It is Widely recognized
as one of the most horrendous forms of death
that any state could sanction against an individual.
It was so horrific that Roman citizens were not permitted to be crucified.
So, HS no surprise
that there is a build-up of the forces of evil,
if you like, shrieking at Jesus, attacking Him
criticizing Him,
until finally they nail Him to a cross.
[Female narrator] They came to a place called Golgotha,
which means "the place of the skull. "
There, two robbers were crucified with Him.
One on His right, and one on His left.
Those who pass by hurled insults at Him,
shaking their heads and saying,
"Save yourself Come down from the cross if you are the son of God. "
[thunder crashing]
At noon, darkness fell across the whole land.
Jesus cried out in a loud voice,
"My God, My God,
why have you forsaken Me? “
[Moreland] And He suffered, the Bible tells us,
great emotional and spiritual agony,
because He experienced separation with His father,
and He experienced the actual sin of the World
in His own conscious life
and what it was like to feel and experience that evil and hurt.
[Kreeft] It's the worst thing that ever happened.
Three hours of darkness.
God, Himself dies.
Inconceivable.
Did God allow that? Sure.
He allowed the devil to creep
into .Judas Iscariot
and Pontius Pilate
and Herod and the cruel Romans,
and allowed the worst event in the history of the World.
Why? For the greatest thing that happened:
our salvation.
[Koukl] That injustice was redeemed
by an all-wise,
all-knowing, all-loving,
all-powerful God.
He could take those kinds of things
and He could turn them into
the greatest goodness imaginable.
The salvation, it would be available only through Him.
[stone rumbling]
[Wright] And only when We see that,
in the fight of the entire longer story,
do we say somehow this was how God, as ff were,
drew those forces of evil onto one place,
in order to defeat and deal with them there,
in order to make a new creation,
beginning with Jesus' resurrection,
and that’s why ultimately we have hope.
So, an unspeakable evil was transformed
into an unspeakable good
through God 'S wisdom.
[Female Narrator] Jesus said, '7 am the Resurrection and the Life.
"He who believes in me will live even though he dies,
and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.
[Kreeft] If it can happen
on such a magnificent scale like that.
If you can see in that one case
how great evil can produce great good.
If God lifts the curtain just a little bit,
so you can see behind the scenes there,
it's at least possible to believe that
that principle is at Work everywhere.
[Moreland] This is so spectacularly wonderful,
that it gives us the hope
that evil will never be able
to be the last Word about us,
that there will always be
a way of finding something good,
that while the evil was still evil,
it can redeem it
and keep it from triumphing over us.
[Female narrator] And Jesus answered,
'7 have to/d you these things,
'So that in Me you may have peace.
“in this world, you will have trouble,
'but take heart,
I have overcome the world. "
That's a powerful statement.
Jesus is acknowledging that,
because of the acts of humanity,
that opened the door to evil in this World,
We have pain, We have suffering.
He doesn't try to cover it up.
It's an inevitable part of life.
And yet He tells us something else in that passage
that's even more important.
He says, "I have overcome the World."
You see, we have real hope--
hope that’s based on the central doctrine of Christianity.
God became e men end entered directly
into the suffering of the World.
When God became incarnate in Jesus,
WE are told that Jesus experienced
the very same kind of heartache and suffering,
Without sin, I admit.
But Jesus was finite
and He was subjected to thirst and hunger,
to aggression,
to hostility, to tragedy.
When Jesus stretched his hands out on the cross,
he was saying, "I love you this much.
"I love you so much, it hurts.
"I love you so much, I'd rather die
than live Without you."
Those hails that Went through the palms of Jesus,
Went straight into the heart of God.
[organ]
[Wright] There’s a wonderful hymn which we sometimes sing
which has a fine, "And when human hearts
'Ere breaking
“under sorrow’s iron rod,
“then they find that self same aching,
deep Within the heart of God. "
That's a Wonderful sense.
God in Christ has been here.
He has taken it.
He knows what it's like.
He is not unable to sympathize.
He is on all fours with us.
[Eareckson-Tada] Jesus was the most
God-forsaken man who ever lived,
so that He might in turn tell us,
I'll never leave you.
“I'll never forsake you. “
That tells me God feels,
He empathizes, He cares about my pains.
He felt the sting in His chest first.
And that encourages me when I hurt.
[Narrator] In 1944, Corrie ten Boom,
a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp,
considered the full measure of God’s participation
in the suffering of humanity.
While clinging to life
in the shadow of ultimate evil,
she concluded,
"There is no pit so deep,
that the love of God is not deeper stiff. "
There’s a famous passage in Elie Wiesel's book, Night,
Where he recalls being in a concentration camp
and seeing a line of people being hanged.
A little boy is one of the people being hanged,
and he's so light that he doesn't die immediately,
because his neck doesn't break.
He's dangling there, half dead and half alive.
The crowd are being forced to Watch this.
Somebody suddenly says, "Where is God? Where is God?"
Somebody else says, "There He is,
He's hanging from that moose."
That's the answer to the question that's often asked,
Where was God at Auschwitz?"
Where was God in Darfur?"
He was there-
He was in the gas chambers.
Yes, the incarnation means that He descends
into the whole of the human condition.
[Wright] God is there at the heart of the mess,
and taking the Worst onto Himself
That’s what we believe, when we think about Jest
That’s why ultimately we have hope.
It makes me feel there's a certain kind of kinship
that God gets it, that God understands.
He has been there.
He doesn't just have the facts straight,
that's omniscience
He has entered into the experience of it.
That's something entirely different.
He knows exactly how I feel.
There is no pain that I'm going through--
Paralyzed, He was even paralyzed on the cross.
That tells me that he identifies.
That, for me, is enough.
[Narrator] The Christian response
to the problem of evil and suffering,
was perhaps best summarized by the Apostle Paul.
Two decades after Jesus' death and resurrection,
Paul described the persecution Christians endured
and the hope that sustained them,
as they preached the Gospel throughout the First-century Roman world.
[Female narrator] "We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed,
“perplexed but not despairing,
'persecuted but not forsaken,
'Struck down but not destroyed.
"Therefore, we do not lose heart.
“But though our outer man is decaying,
"'yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.
"For momentary, fight affliction
"is producing for us
“an eternal weight of glory
far beyond all comparison. "
He refers to these things
as "momentary,
"ugh:
affliction. "
What, Paul, are you crazy?
Momentary, light affliction?
But We understand when We read further,
because he goes on to explain that these are momentary, light afflictions
in comparison to something else,
because these afflictions-
He's very particular about his Words--
"are producing for us
"an eternal Weight
"of glory beyond
all comparison."
And you see there is this subtle theme
through the New Testament
that helps us understand this problem of evil,
as followers of Christ.
That God can cause all these things
to Work for good in our lives,
because we love Him, we’re called according to His purpose.
And these have a transforming
impact on us,
so that when WE get to heaven,
WE are actually different people...
than we would have been
if WE had not gone through these things.
"These momentary, light afflictions
"are producing for us
the eternal Weight of glory."
[Moreland] If you only live this life four score and ten,
and then you died and that was the end of it,
the kind of hostilities and hurts that we have in this life,
would be writ large.
Their significance would be stunning indeed,
but from the vantage point of life forever with God in heaven,
the harms and hurts that happen to us in this life,
though still real and still important,
are shown to be so insignificant
compared to the glories
and the joys WE are going to experience in the afterlife,
that from the vantage point of that perspective,
they are well, well, worth it.
[Strobel] In 1998, I was at a conference
and met a young man named Mark Harringer.
Mark was from Boston, and We became good friends.
One night, We were driving to the airport,
and he told me about a tragedy
that his family had suffered
five years earlier.
I'll never forget Mark's story,
because it demonstrated so powerfully the importance
of what the hope of heaven can really mean.
[Harrienger] It was January 16th of 1993.
In Boston, ff snows a lot.
And so you're shoveling your driveway constantly.
We had gone to the supermarket that morning,
and While We were at the supermarket
it was actually snowing.
So, I got home kind of irritated,
and said,
"Honey, why don't you park the car out in the street here,
I'll just clean off the driveway."
And our two kids were with us,
our son, 3 years old, and our daughter Lauren,
who was 18 months old.
I jumped out of the car, got a shovel.
The kids jumped out with me.
I asked my wife to move the oar
to an easier spot for us to clean out the driveway
and she did, and she said,
"Make sure you keep an eye on the kids."
My son immediately went with her into the car.
My daughter was with me for a few moments,
but what I hadn’t realized was that she actually wanted to be in the car also.
So, as my daughter was running to the can
she was trapped
under the front Wheel of the car.
There was a brief scream of pain,
and- and I immediately ran out,
and to any parent’s horror--
their-- see their 18-month-old daughter
under the front Wheel
of a 2,000-pound oar was overwhelming.
She died instantly, as We found out later.
I actually took the last breath
that she ever breathed on this earth out of her lungs.
We drove to the emergency room at the hospital,
hoping and praying that things might be different,
but they weren't.
And, uh, Within an hour or so,
they had pronounced her dead.
I was very angry at God.
I didn't? know why He would choose me.
My mind would race and think,
“What is this all about?
“Where am I going?
“What does this all mean?
"Do I take my life?
"Do I go through a divorce?
We had a 97 percent failure rate,
Within the first two years,
when there's a death of a child
and the parental involvement.
“What would that mean?
"Would that bring some closure to that?
What would be a life of anger and despair at God?”
Those options are not good ends.
The struggle during our pain here was,
I had to make a decision.
“Am I going to accept or reject
“this situation that I’m in,
"based on not knowing the end game,
or not Knowing all the answers."
I was given a Bible, my very first Bible,
on Christmas,
three Weeks before the accident.
That Bible was to become
the thing that kept me alive.
There were drugs
and various things that people gave us
to try and calm us down
during this difficult few weeks,
but it was actually holding the Bible,
and reading it was the thing that actually comforted me the most.
I actually slept with my Bible for about nine months every night.
What I was struggling for
was the reality of Jesus,
the reality of somebody who Knew suffering,
who was going to be there,
who had experienced this himself.
I spent a for of time, actually, in cemeteries,
just walking around.
I found some comfort there-
I could often times connect
more closely with pain there,
because I knew that everybody there had a story,
and that people had come and grieved there.
It gave me a clarity
that Jesus works powerfully
in places Where people are hurting.
So I found great comfort
to just be quiet and listen to Him there.
So, sometimes I would just go around
and read the stone markers,
and pray for the various families.
That actually turned from an internal thing,
where I was trying to get healing and hope,
to a place Where I would actually intercede for others.
That was a shift that occurred,
Where God began to do a Work
that my healing was going to be
more complete in helping others.
We had five neighbors
who lived next to us,
directly next to us,
when the accident happened.
Within five years,
three whole families of those households,
came to know Christ personally.
When I think back on where we were,
and how God used that, I said,
“That doesn’t make it all right.
“That doesn’t make it good.
“That doesn’t make my pain go away.
'But it does tel/ me that God is bringing some good out of this,
"that there will be some eternal good
that comes out of her life and death- "
Your answer at this tough time,
is you are naked,
you are stripped down raw,
you have to make a decision,
which road are you going to take?
Where are you going to go in your faith?
I think evil and suffering drive us to those points
Where WE have to make those naked decisions.
We have to make those raw decisions
that give us no Where out,
no-- nothing to hold onto.
We're just there before Him.
That's what real faith, I think, is.
Not knowing the future,
but understanding enough now to make a decision
that will change the future in our lives.
If I look at it through my own experience,
I think I would drive ff to the point
to sa y that God is in control of all things,
and nothing is beyond his reach,
nothing is beyond his ability to control.
The joy is knowing that this is just temporary,
that there’s something much more.
The eternal perspective changes things,
because ff takes the focus off of my experience now
and puts it in a different level, a different realm.
The Bible says heaven will be a place
Where there's no more tears or pain or crying or death.
Okay, so if that's true,
then the hope is that these things will be resolved
and that we'll understand,
or we'll have more clarity that we don't have now.
The greatest hope is that one day /7/ Walk with her in heaven.
She'll be perfect.
And I'll be full of joy.
And this life will have made a lot more sense...
because sometimes it doesn't,
but I have that hope.
Yeah.
Philosopher and atheist Bertrand Russell once said,
“No one can sit at the bedside of a dying child
“and still believe in God. “
Now, on the surface, that sounds like a pretty strong argument
against the existence of a loving God,
but as Christian philosopher
William Lane Craig has pointed out,
"\/\/hat is Russell going to say when he's kneeling
"at the bed of the dying child?
"Too bad? I'm sorry?
That's the way it goes?"
You see, as an atheist,
Russell has nothing else to offer.
Because if there is no God,
then we're all trapped in a world
filled with senseless and unredeemable suffering,
with absolutely no hope of deliverance from evil.
But for the Christian,
God does exist.
Evil and suffering can result in a greater good,
and there is hope and meaning for the future,
because life doesn’t end in the grave.
[Female Narrator] “No eye has seen
'ho ear has heard,
"and no mind has conceived
"What God has prepared for those who love Him.
"The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise,
"as some understand slowness.
"He is patient with you,
'hot Wanting anyone to perish,
but for everyone to come to repentance. "
[Eareckson-Tada] Suffering is in this World because sin is in this World.
If God were to get rid of sin,
he'd have to get rid of sinners.
I think he's delaying closing the curtain,
on suffering, sins, Satan,
until more people have time
to hear about the good news of Jesus,
and if my being in this Wheelchair a little bit longer
provides the time and opportunity for others to come into the kingdom,
then my wheelchair’s worth it.
My affliction is just fight and momentary.
I don't mind Waiting.
Now that offer of mercy
will not be extended forever.
There is going to come a time when He says, "Enough"
Then He's going to deal with it.
Then true justice will be done perfectly.
But this is not what we want really.
We don’t want justice.
We want mercy.
And for now, mercy is what’s being extended.
This is why you see the continuation of evil.
[Moreland] There is so much We don't know
about evil, pain, and suffering,
that many times, I think, we’re people groping in the dark,
trying to make sense out of it.
But God gives us enough to see,
to help us to keep on going,
and to redeem the pain and suffering WE have,
so it doesn't defeat us.
[Koukl] If all I was looking at for the evidence of God
was just the problem of evil,
sure I'd say, "Gee, that's a no-brainer,
"there is no God, He would never allow these kinds of things."
But when I see all the other evidence
in other areas for the existence of God,
and for a good God and a loving God,
a God that cares about His creations,
involved in His creations.
Well, that helps put this particular question
a little bit more into perspective.
But I'll be the first one to admit,
it's emotionally difficult.
[Wright] I think most Christians go through a sense
of deep puzzlement
which can come sometimes once in somebody's life,
sometimes a thousand times in somebody’s life of,
"I really thought God was going to enable such and such to happen,
and it hasn't happened. "
So, yes, WE can have huge disappointments,
but the God to whom we go back,
and on whose door we beat and we say,
"\/\/hat on earth is going on here?"
is the God who says,
'Remember what I have been through.
Remember the story of My son.
One of the Worst things that was ever done in the World,
was done to the best men that ever walked on the Earth-
So, again, when we put ff into the fight of Jesus
and what happened to Him--
Do bad things happen to good people? What’s it all about?
But somehow God holds that within His purpose
and will bring good out of it and through it.
Sometimes when We suffer,
we're just hoping somebody
will give us the formula, how to fix it.
What’s the step one, two, three, four, A, B, C, D?
Show me what to do, I'll do it.
God blows all that to smithereens
He lobe a hand grenade into the middle of it all and explodes it.
He won't let us approach suffering
with our own agenda.
We've got to come to Him empty-handed.
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
I don? have the answers, God.
When We come to Him like that,
completely defenseless,
and approaching Him without a technical fix-it,
mechanistic approach to life--
okay,
I've got the formula,
I know the answers--
then we End God to be the answer.
\/\/e can face anything if WE know God is there in the midst of it all.
I examined the Biblical' view
of evil and suffering for many months,
and honestly, I think I could spend the rest of my life
trying to understand it all.
The questions can be brutally difficult.
The answers are not quick and they’re not easy.
Is Christian theology a satisfying explanation
for the suffering in the World?
Yes, I believe it is.
Does it always offer immediate and total comfort when We hurt?
No, not always.
But if We come to God in faith,
I believe He gives us legitimate reasons for hope
that can carry us through
the most difficult circumstances of our lives.
[Narrator] How could a loving God allow evil and suffering?
And why would He offer only a single pathway to salvation?
They are demanding questions of undeniable significance.
And for many,
the answers are found in the life of a carpenter from Nazareth
who calmed the seas
and died to redeem the World from its sin.
But for some,
there are no satisfying explanations,
only doubts and objections to the Christian faith.
[Temple ton] There is a profound sense of loss when anyone abandons
a belief system they’ve held since childhood.
I was a teenager when I became a Christian,
and I wasn’t equipped to challenge the ideas
of my friends and mentors.
At first, I accepted the beliefs
of the people around me.
But, slowly, and against my will,
my doubts deepened
until my faith languished and died.
Those years of Indecision
were the most troubling and trying of my life.
I found myself rethinking
the story of Jesus of Nazareth,
and for all its intrinsic fascination,
it just wasn’t the same.
It was as if someone I loved had died-
You grieve the loss,
because no one in history
hes touched the hearts of men end women
the way Jesus did.
He had the highest moral standard
and the greatest compassion
of any person I've ever heard of
and His Wisdom was unsurpassed.
Everything good and decent and pure that I know,
I learned from Jesus.
And if I may put it this way...
I miss Him-
On June 7th of 2001,
Charles Templeton died in Toronto, Canada.
For me, the news brought beck strong memories of his life
and his struggle with Christianity,
especially his objections to the existence of evil,
and Jesus' claim to be God.
A year before his passing,
/ completed the manuscript of my book The Case For Faith.
I sent him a copy and included a letter wishing him well
and encouraging him to keep an open mind
towards the evidence for Jesus.
I knew his doubts were heart-felt and not easy to reconcile,
but I believe God could give him satisfying answers,
and that ultimately,
Christianity could stand up to his toughest objections.
Before I sealed the envelope, I added a postscript,
a promise from scripture that had helped me
when I’d struggle with doubts of my own.
I wrote, "Chuck, I hope you'll take to heart
the Words of Proverbs 2. "