God promises end to evil, says Wright

Man may not fully understand the mystery of evil but can rejoice nonetheless in anticipation of its ultimate destruction through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, said the international director of Langham Partnership at the Christian Resources Exhibition on Wednesday.

In an address on the existence of suffering and evil in the world, Dr Chris Wright said that humans had to accept some of the responsibility where they were caused by man’s sin.

“A vast amount of the evil and suffering in the world actually is not in itself a mystery,” he said. “It can be explained in relation to our human sin, our folly, our stupidity, either directly or often indirectly, causing other people to suffer pain.”

He acknowledged, however, that Christians struggle to answer the question of where evil actually comes from.

“When you come to this point where you say ‘Where did evil come from?’ and you get silence, it seems to me that that’s a significant silence, that God has chosen not to answer that question in his wisdom and for his own reason,” he said.

Dr Wright contended that while it was instinctive to try to make sense of evil and suffering in the world, the Bible instead compelled humans to accept the “unanswerable nature” of evil.

“In other words we understand that we cannot understand. And I want to say I think that’s ok. And more than ok, I actually want to suggest to you that that’s a good thing,” he said.

“Evil is there to be resisted, not to be understood. God has withheld it from our understanding because it is not, like everything else we encounter, a part of his universe that has that sense of rational legitimacy and justification.

“And it is therefore an enemy to be destroyed, not simply a part of the universe to be understood and explained.”

Dr Wright went on to reject the idea, popular among some Christians, that natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 were God’s curse and judgement on man for sin.

While he acknowledged that the sinful destruction and pollution of God’s creation could prompt creation to “fight back”, he said it was a “curious kind of logic that sees direct divine action in such a situation”, pointing to Luke 13 in which Jesus said that Jews killed by Pilate and the victims of a collapsed tower did not perish because they were more sinful than others.

Instead, Dr Wright encouraged Christians to protest and lament to God about the presence of evil in the world.

“It seems to me that what we are missing here – especially as evangelical Christians – is familiarity with and a willingness to use the whole tradition within the Scriptures of lament and protest,” he said.

“The Bible allows and encourages us to protest, complain, lament, be angry, because evil is offensive, it is evil, and therefore we need to tell God so. And in telling God that we struggle with it, that we are angry about it, we are reflecting something of God’s own emotions.”

Drawing on the Old Testament story of Joseph who was sold by his brothers, Dr Wright said that Christians could rejoice in the ultimate defeat of evil through the cross and God’s ability to turn evil into good.

“At the cross what we see is the worst evil that humans can do under the sovereignty of God, becoming the ultimate good – which is the salvation and forgiveness of sin,” he said.

“It is the crucified Christ who governs history. Not just who saved us from sin so we can go to Heaven when we die, but it is the crucified Christ who is also the reigning Christ in history.”

Dr Wright concluded by assuring Christians that evil would be destroyed by God and a new creation achieved through the cross of Jesus Christ.

“That’s why when we pray the prayer in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Deliver us from evil’, that is a prayer that God will finally answer,” he said.

“The reality is that God will deliver us from evil when the other part of that prayer is finally fulfilled, when we pray ‘Your Kingdom come on earth as in heaven’.

“When the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our God and His Christ, and when the dwelling place of God is with humanity here in a redeemed creation, then God will have answered that prayer and evil and suffering and sin will be no more.

“That is the destiny to which we head and that is what leads us to rejoice in Christ.”