Theology in the Raw - BONUS Q&A: Does God Allow Evil For His Glory?

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

BONUS Q&A: Does God Allow Evil For His Glory?  0:00 Introduction 0:27 How should I respond to someone who says "Bad things happen for God's glory?" It feels irksome. 11:54 Thoughts and impressions on this year's Exiles conference? 20:06 How should we practice communion? Every week? Young people? Nonbelievers? 32:28 How does assurance of salvation actually work? 37:36 Should Christians do yoga? 41:33 Why respond to Christopher Yuan on 'X'?  46:27 My previous charismatic church claimed that 1 Peter 2:24 meant that Jesus literally carried our diseases as well as sins. Thoughts? 50:26 Can you steelman the argument against DEI, CRT, BLM, and then address its flaws? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do bad things happen for God's glory? How did I feel about the recent Exiles conference? Why did I respond to Christopher Yuan on X? How should we practice communion every week? Can non-Christians take it? Can young kids take it? And can I steelman the argument against DEI, CRT, Black Lives Matter, and then can I address some of its flaws? These are just some of the questions I'm going to address on this bonus Q&A episode. If you would also like to participate in these Q&A sessions and ask questions, then you need to become a Patreon member through patreon.com forward slash theology and raw become a member of the theology community for as little as five bucks a month and get access to all kinds of premium content. Okay. Let's dive into some of these really, really good questions.

Okay, the first question, this is a tough one, okay? How should I respond to someone who says that bad things happen for God's glory? The questioner goes on to say, it is irksome to hear, but is it biblical? First of all, I resonate so much with the spirit of this question. It feels irksome to me too. Like, it just doesn't, it feels a little like, ugh, that's, it doesn't feel right, you know? But as always, my main question, as is, sounds like yours is too, is it biblical? Like, there's things in the Bible that might feel irksome to you. Certainly some things that feel irksome to me, but, you know, that doesn't mean just because, that doesn't mean that my irksome feelings are inspired or the thing by which we should measure whether something is true or not. We need to look at what the Bible says, okay? I'm still old school in that way. So, let me just begin by

saying, look, theologians have thought through this way, way, way more than I have, okay? So, yeah, I'm going to give you some of my own thoughts, but I just want to readily admit that there's, you know, many theological questions that I am not an expert at answering. That's not something I've read a lot on or really thought too deeply about. There's other things I have thought, you know, deeply on and have read a lot on, and I'll feel more confident in my response to some of those other questions. This one's tough. I mean, this is something people have spent their whole lives wrestling with this question,

and I just simply have not. Back in my early days of my Christian walk, my early 20s, mid-20s, I probably would have said, yes, absolutely, bad things happen for God's glory. Especially in my heavy John Piper days, when basically I believed every single word I read from John Piper for several years, and I still very much value many things that Piper says, some things I would maybe say it differently or hold to some different things, but still have, you know, mad respect for him and his God-centeredness approach to kind of everything. I still very much resonate with that general perspective. So you know, someone could say, well, you know, everything is designed

to bring God glory and since bad things are part of everything, then they are part of what brings God glory. I want to break that down a little bit in a second, but, you know, we first have to define what is meant by God's glory. If you look at any kind of theological dictionary, you'll see that the idea of, you know, the concept of God's glory, it can mean many different things in Scripture. I don't know if you've thought about it. I mean, if you look at various verses, you see different kind of nuances of what glory means. I mean, in its most basic sense, the glory of God refers often in Scripture to His visible radiance. Exodus 24-17, now the appearance of the glory

of the Lord was like a devouring fire on top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. You can also check out Exodus 33-18. You know, this is a visible, bright light that represents the presence of God. That's one sense of the glory of God. Another sense is, you know, like God's honor or reputation. So, this isn't so much the visible presence, but more of, yeah, when God is glorified, it means that He, you know, He receives honor. His reputation as holy and just and good should elicit a high reputation for being God. Another sense is kind of similar to the first one, but more specifically, something like the splendor or evidence of God's majesty? I'm thinking of Isaiah 6-3, where the angels call

out—or the cherubim—I think it's cherubim—call out, you know, Holy, Holy—no, Seraphim. The Seraphim are calling out, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts, and the whole earth is full of His glory. What does that mean? What does it mean that the earth is filled with God's glory? That's not so much as visible radiance. That seems to be a particular manifestation of His presence, 2 Exodus 24-17. But here, you know, I think here it's something like evidence of God's majesty, evidence of God's wisdom, that the intricacies and beauty of creation show off God's majesty. I guess this kind of overlaps a little bit with the whole like honor reputation thing, too. So, and there's other nuances of glory that we can give. So, we do have to be specific about what we mean when we even ask the question, do bad things happen for God's glory?

I think it here has this, you know, when people frame it this way, I think it has to do more with His honor, reputation. Does it make God look good? Does it bring God honor? Is He sitting back and thinking, this is right, this is good, this is what I'm here for. So, you know, does evil and suffering or sin, does this bring God's glory? Does this honor God? Does this enhance or reflect His reputation? Honestly, it's kind of a complicated question. I mean, Ezekiel 33, 11, famous verse, you know, where God says, As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death

of the wicked, but that the wicked would turn from his way and live. So here, you know, the death of the wicked would be a just judgment. God wants the wicked to turn from their ways, but if they don't, He will judge them. But even here, God says, I don't take pleasure in this. Or you can think about it from another angle, you know, and this would be maybe some of the more the reasoning that people might give who argue that evil and suffering and sin does bring God glory. So, think about it this way. If God is glorified when He saves sinners, doesn't this require sin in the first place? You know, if God is ultimately glorified when there's sin, or somebody could say, God is ultimately glorified when there's sin because this is what makes Him a Savior. If there's no sin, He can't be a Savior.

If He's not a Savior, that doesn't bring Him glory. Or, you know, if God is glorified in healing people who are suffering, doesn't this require suffering in the first place? So, therefore, someone could argue that the glory of God requires suffering. I mean, this isn't—when you think about it this way, it's—yeah, this gets a little complicated. I actually looked around. I kind of searched around at different articles and websites and what are people saying about this question? You know, you got to be careful when you search on the internet, you know, you get just all kinds of weird stuff, you know, but I just kind of want to see what other people are

saying. Like, how am I thinking through what other people are saying about this? And in my quick internet search to see what people were saying, I came across, I think, a really good thought by, oh, I didn't write down the guy's name, but it's at Bible.org. Bible.org is a good website to go if you just want some quick and usually pretty thought out responses to all of these kinds of questions. Some of the times I agree with Bible.org, sometimes I don't. Some of the times I don't 100% agree, but they have some good thoughts. You know, I think the people that run it are graduates of Dallas Theological Seminary, so they'd be, you know, more theologically conservative,

but they usually have like thoughtful scholarly types that are giving short responses to some of these complicated questions. So, you know, it's a good go-to if you just want to kind of prime your thinking to see how other people are thinking through things. And in this article, it is, I think it's titled, Does God Require Evil to Display His Glory? Something like that, Bible.org. And the writer says this, Scripture clearly teaches that God displayed His glory in the person and saving work of Christ. In fact, nowhere is God's glory more clearly seen than in Christ.

Does it then follow that evil is necessary for God to display His glory? After all, Christ displayed His glory by saving sinners. Okay, so he raises kind of the same questions I was raising earlier. And then he says this, and I thought this was helpful, to answer this important question, we need to distinguish between two entirely different things, namely, God bringing good from evil and God doing evil that good may result. The former is true—God bringing good from evil—while the latter is blasphemy. Of course, God doesn't cause evil. So, I thought that was a helpful distinction, and I guess I kind of lean toward this way of thinking that, you know, God can use suffering and bad things to bring glory to His name. It just does not mean God is causing or delighting in

the bad things that happen, you know, to people. So, I think it would be way too simplistic. It's just probably flat out wrong. The child dies in a car accident and you say, oh, well, you lost your kid. Okay, but take comfort. God is glorified in this. I just think that kind of cheapens the complexity the complexity of what's going on there. I think God is grieved, absolutely grieved, when there's suffering and evil and injustice and bad things happening to innocent people on earth. If He doesn't delight in the death of the wicked, then He certainly doesn't delight in the suffering of the innocent. Now, some of you may say, nobody's innocent, we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, we're all sinners. I get that. On a theological level, I get that. But the Bible still does distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, even though we are all sinful people.

So, yeah, I think God is grieved by the evil and bad things that have invaded His good creation and His fighting to reconcile all things to Himself. So I hope that is somewhat helpful. Again, this is, yeah, lots of theological complexity here, but I resonate with you when you say it feels kind of irksome to me as a biblical. Well, I don't think it's really quite that biblical. I think it's theologically a little more complex than it is when some people say, you know, well, just all bad things happen for God's glory. I think that just doesn't recognize some of the theological

complexity here. Next question, Andrew wants to know, you say, you're not sure if I'm doing an Exiles debrief video, but what was your impression of the weekend, favorite sessions, moments, etc. Would you have changed anything? Okay. Yeah, every year after Exiles, I always sit down with my buddy Eddie Zinske and we record a debrief video. We did not do that this year. We just simply didn't have time. And I was, I don't know if people know, but I actually preached at the church the next morning on Sunday morning after the Exiles Conference. So I was getting pretty sick on Saturday.

I apologize to those of you who I might have passed on my cold to you. I didn't realize, I could kind of feel it coming on Saturday and then by Saturday night between my emotional and physical exhaustion, I started to get more and more sick. I woke up Sunday morning with almost no voice, a horrible sore throat. And I was like, am I going to be able to preach? I'm like, I must preach. I don't know. My preaching professor in seminary, you know, he would raise the question, you know, if your wife is, you know, pregnant and about to give birth on Sunday morning and can't make the service, well, that's her excuse. What's yours? I don't sign off on that logic, okay? I'm not advocating for that. For preachers who might say, I might not be able to preach because my wife is giving birth on Sunday. In fact, it could be profoundly misogynistic and problematic on so many levels.

But anyway, he was joking, okay? He was joking, but I was kind of nurtured in kind of a, you know, preach at all costs, even if it kills you kind of thing. So I still have a bit of that in me. So no, I was like, no, I'm not, I'm going to preach on Sunday. I'm not going to not preach. So I preached and I almost collapsed over afterwards. Anyway, all that said, didn't have the energy, time, space to record a debrief video. And then I was busy all last week.

So, no, I'm not doing one this year, which is a bummer because I really enjoy doing those. So yeah, let me just debrief briefly here with you. I mean, I'm kind of a perfectionist with these things. So I'm constantly looking for, ah, that could have changed that, that could have been better, that could have been a little shorter, that could have been a little longer. I should have asked this question, shouldn't have asked that question.

So in spite of all that, I thought it went incredibly well. I thought every session had a good balance of intensity, challenge, clarity, power. The frustrating thing is we're dealing with all of these really complex topics and two to three hours is just not enough, right? I mean, so there's always that sense of,

oh, we could have done so much more, but there's also a sense of three hours. That's a long time for a session to be, you know, engaging and wrestling and speaking and listening and thinking. And so there's always that sense of there could have been more, but I was very satisfied with how every session went. If you were there, you remember there was some last minute hic to health issues. And I think that was the most stressful thing for me. I mean, I was in the middle of a whole bunch of stuff.

I was in the middle of a whole bunch of stuff. And I was in the middle of a whole bunch of stuff. And I was in the middle of a whole bunch of stuff. And I was in the middle of a whole bunch of stuff. And I was in the middle of a whole bunch of stuff. And I was in the middle of a whole bunch of stuff. And I was in the middle of a whole bunch of stuff. managing stuff that was coming up. I mean, we had two speakers that had to bail at the last minute due to health issues. We had other things that were happening

that almost caused an entire session to be dropped. I mean, we would have done something, but it would have been just off the cuff. We found a speaker, for those of you who don't know, okay, quick story. We were going to have this dialogue between Sean McDowell and Adam Davidson. Adam is a Jewish atheist. Sean is a Christian, conservative Christian, and they built up a friendship over the years and they're going to have just a dialogue, a good faith dialogue over the, you know, whether even the evangelical church is good for this country. I was so excited about that. And man, Adam was so bummed out, but for some unforeseen

circumstances he had to bail. So, which was a right move, a hundred percent. But I was like, all right, morning of I need to find some atheist to talk with Sean. We found one and he was awesome. Sean literally emailed the local atheist society in Minneapolis and said, Hey, you guys got any atheists over there that can, you know, we're doing this thing. And would you, would anybody over there want to come dialogue with me? And one guy said, sure, I'll be right over. And I was like, all right, this is theology to raw.

I have no clue how this is going to go. And it, I, for those of you who are there, like, it was awesome. Right. But I was like, given the circumstances, I don't think this could have gone any better than it did. August, the guy who spoke with Sean was fantastic. It was so cool. We have a speakers dinner after where all the speakers hang out on Friday night.

He came to it, he was talking to everybody. I think he stayed later than anybody else. I mean, yeah, it was a great session. I thought the transgender people and the church session could not have gone better. We had three testimonies from trans or formerly trans-identified people that had very different views on the trans conversation, and that was intentional. I wanted to show people that there's diversity within to show people that there's diversity within this community. And we span the spectrum of diversity and they showed where they were clearly different in their perspectives and yet they modeled how to talk to each other in a very gracious and humanizing way. I thought Mark Yarhouse

did a fantastic job. That guy's just a walking encyclopedia when it comes to this conversation. Actually, it was my first talk at an Exiles conference because I play host, but I've never given like a formal like talk in a specific session. So it was me and Mark giving kind of a theological and psychological overview and then we had three testimonies and then sat on the couch for 45 minutes and dialogue to answer the audience Q 45 minutes and dialogued, answered audience Q&A. And man, I thought that session was fantastic.

So, yeah, so much more I could say, but let me move on to some other questions. I will say this, this is the first year we had breakouts and I thought that went well. I think next year, I think we will do breakouts next time. I think I do wanna make those a little more dialogical just because listening to talks all day and then getting more talks from a breakout. There was some dialogue there. I think we just want those to be more audience participation.

Really wanna find ways to involve an audience more. We do the audience Q&A, it's text in, you know, but it's hard when you have like 800 people, like how do you involve the audience in a way it doesn't get, you know, chaotic, but yeah, I think the breakouts can be a good opportunity for that. So thank you for all of you who came out. I mean, I said, I met gosh, so many of you. It was so great. Even if you come up and say hi briefly, I said, I met, gosh, so many of you. It was so great. Even if you come up and say hi briefly, I just, I love, love, love talking to people

and hearing how the conferences affected you and just, yeah, so many great conversations. So yeah, I really don't think it could have gone much better. All right, next question. Okay. how should we practice communion every week? Can non-Christians take it? Can young kids take it? How can we make sure we follow Paul's call to be careful? Okay, so I'm not a communion expert, but I have read enough on it to know that, man, what was going on in the first century with communion or the Lord's Supper or the Eucharist? People call it by different things.

I do think it's quite different than what or how many churches practice it today. I don't think people practice it in a way that's anti-biblical. Okay, so please hear me. But just the first century context of how the church operated and how it went about the Lord's Supper, you know, I do think it was different. I do think it was either a meal or part of a meal, you know, maybe the Lord's Supper was a meal, and, you know, maybe they tipped their glasses and, you know, had a specific moment where they, as part of the meal, you know, broke a piece of bread and remembered the death and second coming of Jesus Christ and then drank the cup and remembered his death. And I do think the theological power of having a meal is significant for the original meaning of the Lord's Supper. I'll throw out scripture. Hey friends, I hope you enjoyed this portion of the Patreon Only Q&A podcast. If you would like to listen to the full length episode

and receive other bonus content like monthly podcasts, opportunities to ask questions, access to first drafts of my research and monthly Zoom chats and more, then please head over to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw to join theology in the raw's Patreon community. That's patreon.com forward slash theology in Iraq. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.