Is
Love?

A.E.,Wilder Smith

Is This a God
Of Love?
A. E. Wilder-Smith
TWFT. Publishers
Costa Mesa, California

Is This a God Of Love?
Translated from the original German by
Petra Wilder-Smith
© 1991 A. E. Wilder-Smith
Published in Collaboration with Pro Universitate
e. V., Roggern, CH-3646, Einigen, Switzerland
and TWFT. Publishers, P.O. Box 8000, Costa
Mesa, CA 92628
ISBN 0-936728-39-6
Published in German by Hänssler, Neuhausen-
Stuttgart, 6th. edition, 1988. (ISBN3-7751-0076-8).
Portionsprevious^iintedtoEnglishas'TheParadox
of Pain," Harold Shaw Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois,
1971
All Rights Reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means — electronic,
mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise
— without the prior permission of TWFT.
Publishers, with the exception of brief excerpts
in magazine articles and/or reviews.

Contents
The Fink Prof essor	1
The Spokesman Of Many Thinking People	12
The Problem Is Not New	15
Another Approach	19
Thought and Action: Today and Yesterday	27
Equating Fact To Non-Fact	31
How Faith Is Gained	34
The Exasperated Student	36
The Age Of Reason	37
Picasso In Chicago	39
Atheistic Gergymen	40
Consequences..	42
Man Cannot Live Without Rationality	46
Is There A Place For "Blind Faith"?	48
The Atheistic & Agnostic Positions	51
The Gothic Cathedral	56
Complicating The Issue	58
Inefficient Architects?	62
Summary	65

The Origin of Evil	67
Nature Of Love And Virtue	70
Rebekah	75
The Amnon And Tamar Affair	76
Free Choice	78
The Case Of The Robot	80
The Grand Risk	82
Almsgiving And The Socialist State	83
George Muller's Orphanages	87
The Creation, Seen And Unseen	91
The Dignity Of Man	95
The Degree Of Man's Freedom	97
The Problem of Rebuilding	103
The Problem Of The Consequences	105
The Problem Of God's Answer	108
How To Restore Love	110
Thwarting God's Will	112
King George VI Of England	113
The Final Refusal	117
Suffering: Is There Any Reasonable Interpretation? ..125
Resentment Against Purposeless Suffering	125
If God Is Good, Will He Hurt Us?	127

Was Christ Ever In Man's Position?	128
The Cross And God's Love	130
Hurting In Order To Heal	132
The Scriptural Position	134
Accurate Surgery Or Wholesale Butchery?	136
The Exact Therapy Of The Cross	137
A Less Ugly Way?	140
Made Perfect	142
Suffering — Not Senseless	146
Promised Tribulation	149
The Reason Why	150
Perfection	154
Rejoicing In Suffering	157
A Possible Misunderstanding	158
Gentling Process	160
Again, Why All The Barbarism And Cruelty? ...162
Importance Of The Stakes	165
The Joy Of Relief	166
Predestination & Free Will	175
Passages Teaching Free Will	176

"The tortures occur. If they are
unnecessary, then there is no God or a
bad one. If there is a good God, then these
tortures are necessary."
C. S. Lewis

Chapter I
The Pink Professor
When I was a student of natural
sciences in England, some of our lectures
were givenby a professor who had marked
leftist tendencies. His lectures at the uni-
versity were the poorest we ever endured.
He'd bring a load of scientific journals into
the lecture hall, open them, apparently at
random, and then just talk. But he was a
gentleman and was kind, in his reserved
way, to all of us.
Acomplete transformation took place
in the evenings when he went into town
and stood on a soapbox to harangue the
masses with the verve and skill of the

Is This a God of Love?
convinced revolutionary. He was nobly
rewarded by his leftist political friends
when they gained control of the country,
for he soon became a peer, with the title of
"lord," and was appointed an important
administrator of a big university.
This professor was, in common with
many Marxist theorists, a convinced and
militant atheist One day he came into the
laboratory, unnoticed by me, as I was
talking to another student about things
other than purely materialistic science. I
remarked that, not surprisingly, the study
of matter would probably yield informa-
tion only about matter. Trans-material
matters migjit exist, but they would be
overlooked by such methods. One could
not expect to pick up ultraviolet light with
a film sensitive only to infrared light. But
even if infrared paper showed nothing
that would not prove that no ultraviolet
wave-lengths existed. I saw no reason not
to believe in God merely because our
instruments had not detected him. Per-
haps they were not on the same wave-
length.

Hie Pink Professor
Overhearing these remarks, our pro-
fessor exploded. "It really is a mystery to
me," he said, "how otherwise intelligent
people can say they believe in any god, let
alone in a good and wise one, whom they
call a person. We can explain the whole
universe and all of life without resorting to
the outdated and unnecessary postulate
of a god behind it all. Chance and long
time spans will do all that your theolo-
gians imagine he did without ever appeal-
ing to such nonsense as the 'Old Man in
the Skies."
He continued: "It really is beyond my
comprehension that intelligent people to-
day could still be taken in by the same old
drivel. I can understand cannibals in the
jungle talking as you do. But not a student
of the natural sciences in the twentieth
century. It is bad enough to have people
believing theoretically in a god behind
things. But you people are much worse.
You believe you have a personal sort of
friendship with this god of yours and
think you will therefore get preferential
treatment from him. I can understand,

Is This a God of Love?
perhaps, some old people saying they
believe in some sort of mysterious spirit
when they see a sunrise, a beautiful face,
a rose or an orchid. But it is proof of
positive lack in intelligence on the part of
those same people when they do not take
the time to see the other side of the coin.
They have not the courage to see the other
side and boldly throw out their mythical
gods — the cowards!"
Having switched into his soapbox
mood, our professor was in dead earnest
— and angry! "People must be lacking in
I.Q. if they do not see the other side of the
picture which wipes out all the sunset and
beauty stuff.** He continued by talking
about the cat stalking the mouse and
playing with it letting it totter away half
dead and then grabbing it again at the last
minute in its horrible claws. Then, when
the poor mouse did not have the strength
to provide any more fun for the cat, it
would squeeze the life out of its tattered
body, biting its head off with a juicy
crunch, and purring with delight at the
evening's entertainment. "It is marvellous

The Pink Professor
that your intelligent almighty, all-loving
and kind god prepared both the mouse in
its helplessness and the cat with its talon
strength and cruel mentality. This is a
beautiful proof of the goodness of your
god," he said, with a look of profound
scorn in my direction.
I shrank into my corner of the labora-
tory, but he had not finished with me.
"What about the young mother dying of
cancer, her body stinking of decay before
they take the baby from her and putherin
her coffin? Is that your proof of the great
Creator who made all things well — all
things brightandbeautiful?TheLord God
made them all," he hissed. "And what
about your capitalists who have worn
down the working masses for centuries
and built your churches to help you do it?
We are going to alter all that — and
quickly, believe me!"
"What disgusts me," he said, "is the
rank hypocrisy of it all." After a pause to
regain his poise, he added, "What about
all the agony—the agony of the father and
children left behind when they bury the

Is Tliis a God of Love?
mother? What about the lifetimes of hun-
ger suffered by the poor in India and
Russia? Did your good god create all that
as well as the sunrises and the laughing
faces?" Looking grimly at me, he leaned
across the table and said slowly, "Be-
cause, if he did — if he did make the
disgusting, the cruel and the nauseating,
as well as the beautiful — then I, for one,
would believe him to be a devil and not a
god. Only a devil could make the appar-
ently beautiful and then mock us all with
the anguish of the disgusting. But, as I am
not so medieval as to believe either in
devils or gods, for that matter, I regard the
whole argument as a pure wanton waste
of time, not worthy of mention in a scien-
tific laboratory."
Having unburdened his soul, he re-
gained some of his professorial aplomb
and smilingly looked around for any an-
swers that might be forthcoming. I
mumbled something to the effect that his
was only one side of the question. Other
great people had no difficulty in maintain-
ing an entirely opposite view.

The Pink Professor
"Let us leave out the question of wars
and suffering caused by man himself," he
said. "We might explain problems caused
by man directly as due to his not being
evolved far enough away from his animal
ancestors. If we wait long enough, he will
evolve higher and get better. Let us leave
that and look at another field to which no
one has ever honestly turned with a reply
that was satisfactory to me. What about
the refinement of torture we see all around
us which has nothing whatever to do with
man's nature? Take the designed torture
we can all see in the transmission of the
malarial parasite. It shows signs of what
looks like careful, thoughtful planning
with the single purpose of plaguing and
torturing the host animal, or man. To me
the whole system looks like a remarkable
sort of planning, if a good god worked it all
out. As I said before, if you want a plan
behind the universe and life, this sort of
setup and planning seems to show a good
and a bad, a kindly and a vindictive
planner all in one—a god who is a devil."

8	Is This a God of Love?
Musing, he continued, "No, I just
cannot believe this religious stuff myself.
It really is just too ridiculous. My intelli-
gence and my common sense force me to
reject the whole bag of nonsense. I am
near enough to being a nihilist you tell
me. But I should become an absolute
nihilist if I were to force myself to believe in
a god who is a devil. An almighty god, such
as you believe in, and a good god, just
could not show so many evidences of what
appear to be thoughtful, planned good-
ness, such as sunrises and other beau-
ties, and at the same time so many signs
of cold, calculated, intelligent, sadism. If
you were able to develop sufficient logic,"
he said, scornfully addressing himself
directly to me, "you would have recog-
nized long ago that your views lead di-
rectly to nihilism. Can you imagine any
supreme, almigjity, personal being, who
was at the same time all-wise and all-good
and yet frightfully vindictive and bad,
planning all sorts of plagues and diseases
as well as the beauty of the rising sun and

The Pink Professor
the healthy body? It just does not make
sense. It is plain bunk." He turned from
me in contempt.
There was quiet for a short while.
Then he began once more: "Of course, you
people always try to get around the diffi-
culty by actually assuming a devil, who
surprised the all-knowing and all-power-
ful, almighty one by upsetting his apple
cart when he was not looking. I suppose
you attribute the disease, cancer, war,
exploitation of the workers, and all the
rest of this world's woes to a devil, do you
not? But do you not realize that if god were
almigfity and good, wishing us — the so-
called creatures of his hand — well, he
must have neutralized the machinations
of your devil before he got to work with his
hosts of wicked angels in which you, no
doubt, believe? Then the devil could not
have been a source of devilry, could he? Of
course, if your god is not almighty with
respect to the devil, then there is only one
thing to say about him: he is not god at all
any more. So you destroy him this way if
you do not destroy him the other way. If

10	Is This a God of Love?
god cannot get even with the devil, then
the devil must be god too; and we are once
more reduced to the primitive ideas of
warring gods and devils in heaven and
hell. You are not suggesting that we revert
to ideas like that, are you? They held up
intellectual progress and emancipation
for centuries. I shall consider you an
enemy of all true progress if you have the
effrontery to inform me in a scientific
laboratory that you believe in that sort of
trash," he said, looking hard at me.
I am afraid most of us were rather like
the proverbial rabbit when confronted by
the snake — transfixed. No answers
seemed to be able to formulate themselves
in our brains. After all, our professor was
a learned man. He was not just repeating
slogans learned in Marxist circles. Obvi-
ously he was thoroughly convinced of his
views. His extreme seriousness made him
willing to stand up on a soapbox and
confront the mob — an act which must
have been rather humiliating for a profes-
sor of his standing. Although he was
almost useless as a professor and lecturer

The Pink Professor	11
in the classroom and experimental labo-
ratory, we respected him as a man, even
thougji not all of us liked his convictions
on political or religious matters.
While we were thinking about these
things, he quietly started again. "I used to
say,** he continued, "that I was an agnostic
and therefore could say nothing for cer-
tain about religious matters. Butnowthat
I am getting more mature and experi-
enced, I have come to the conclusion that
I am in reality a total atheist. I have been
forced to the point where I do not believe
in any god, either good or bad. That is, I
believe neither in a good god nor in a bad
devil. Such beliefs raise more difficulties
than they remove. They just complicate
matters. So, today, I just leave religious
matters outside my realm of thought —
like alchemy. And I do not like people
raising them in the classroom either. They
only confuse, being highly unscientific
and subjective. I do not need to blur my
intellectual horizon with such primitive
methods of thought any longer. The Marx-
ists are not altogether wrong when they

12	Is This a God of Love?
call religion "opium for the people." It is
just that; it muddles their thoughts, blurs
their vision and, because they can see
clearly no more, renders them an easy
prey for the capitalists who are just wait-
ing to exploit them for their own benefit."
The Spokesman Of Many Thinking
People
I have never forgotten that afternoon
in the laboratory. Certainly our professor
had thought more about these matters
than we students had. Moreover, he un-
derstood the problems of the ordinary
thinking men and, when he wished, could
be an excellent spokesman for them. Be-
cause he understood them, he could sway
them when he spoke. He never spoke with
such conviction on cold, matter-of-fact
chemical matters, but no one could get
across ideas like he when revolution and
Marxism came up. His attitudes are still
typical of many university professors all
over the West. Since the total collapse of
Marxism behind the former iron curtain
there are many professors in the East who

The Pink Professor	13
have abandoned the views of our pink
professor for the simple reason that they
work neither economically nor socially.
Tlie subject raised that afternoon in
the laboratory is the very question occu-
pying the minds of many thinking people
in the West today. It looms large in the life
of the person who, though satiated with
life's material goods and apparently con-
cerned only with pleasure and prosperity,
is brought face to face with life's cruelties
and suffering every day in his newspaper
and on radio and television news, and is
jolted by what is happening around him in
his own life. If God is almighty—and if he
is God, he must be almighty — why
doesn't he stop all this chaos, all these
wars, all the unrighteousness, injustice,
misery and suffering in this world? Why
did he ever let them start? Mere men
everywhere are bending all their efforts to
do what they can to stop it all. But,
fortunately or unfortunately, men are not
almighty and therefore cannot reach their
goal.

14	Is Ulis a God of Love?
Years ago, a student friend crippled
with polio told me, "If you want me to
believe in your God, I shall expect him first
of all to make a better job of the world we
live in—and of me.** I spent a good deal of
time with him and he was apparently glad
to listen to me. In my student enthusiasm
I explained not only the Christian way of
salvation by Christ's works, but also the
intricacies of prophecy and the end of the
age. Afterward he turned to me and said
that now that he knew the way, he didn't
need to do anything about it. For, when he
saw the end coining, he would quickly
accept God's way and be all right forever!
A year or two later he was stricken with a
stroke one Sunday morning while shav-
ing. He died in seconds, without a sound.
His wife found him an hour or so later.
If God loves us men and women, as
the Bible assumes he does, why doesn't
he end all misery and immediately set up
a workable, orderly system such as most
people of good will would like and for
which they are striving? Doesn't he care
for us any longer? If he doesn't care and

Tlie Pink Professor	15
has forgotten us, why should we care
about him? Because he has allowed evil to
exist along with good, thus apparently
compromising himself in his omnipotence,
many thinking people despair of an an-
swer, or become atheists, just as my
professor had done.
The Problem Is Not New
Before further consideration of this
question, we must remind ourselves that
it is by no means new. Some have the
mistaken idea that they are very modem
if they handle the question as my profes-
sor did. They think that it stamps them as
being advanced thinkers in having recog-
nized that mankind is facing a new prob-
lem — and that they have solved it in a
particularly new way.
Of course, this is not the case. When
thistles and thorns sprang up after
mankind's first couple had fallen from the
paradise of God by disobedience, they
probably asked the same sort of question.
Why indeed did God allow all this? Does
he no longer love us and care for us? It

16	Is Ulis a God of Love?
looks as if he does not for the very ground
we cultivate does not bring forth its har-
vest any more. The birth of Cain was
probably accomplished by pain, which
was capped whenhe became his brother's
murderer. How can that grisly history
coincide with God's goodness and om-
nipotence?
Job could have asked the same kind
of questions when the messengers came
to him, one after another, each reporting
a worse catastrophe to his family. It got so
bad that Job cursed the day he had been
born. He lost everything, including his
health. Even his wife deserted him, telling
him to curse God and die. How could Job
believe in a holy, perfect and omnipotent
God, concerned about him and his family,
when all the catastrophes about him
pointed in the opposite direction? He is
God. He could have stopped it if he had
wanted to. Did he want to find a way out
for Job? And, if not, was he a sadist? Did
he still care about Job in allowing all this
to happen to the poor innocent man? The
testimony of God and man was that Job

The Pink Professor	17
was perfect — and innocent Yet it all
happened, and no explanation was forth-
coming — except that good Job praised
God for having given and then taken away
again. No real answer was forthcoming
until rightattheend of thebook. If God did
not care about poor, innocent perfect
Job, why should Job love God? Of course
God cared for Job in a way which had
never occurred to Job. God justified Job
before all heaven by demonstrating Job's
steadfastness under duress.
It is true, of course, that there was still
a great deal in Job and Adam's worlds
which pointed to God's care in spite of
thorns and thistles and catastrophes. But
it is also true that there is just as much in
our world. At the beginning of Adam's
career the picture pointing to God's care
and love was clear. In that earlier world,
everything indicated only God's care and
omnipotence. Many things now pointed
away from this direction, and the area of
God's order had retreated into quite a
minute spot on the stage of life. So the
same sort of contradictions arose in Adam

18	Is Ulis a God of Love?
and Job's times as they do now. Thus, the
problem is by no means new. It is as old as
mankind.
Accordingly, the question presents
itself as follows: "Why should we be asked
to believe and trust in a good God, thereby
flying in the face of all—or at least a good
deal of — the contemporary evidence?"
One physicist put it as follows: "Why does
God value faith in him so much as to make
it the very condition, according to the
Christian way of life, of entry into his
kingdom? It seems most unfair to me. For
faith means believing right in the face of
contradictory evidence. Faith, to me, is
merely the result of forcing myself to
believe and trust in Godfs goodness and
care when a goodly part of the evidence on
hand leads me to reject such a trust. Most
preachers seem to preach faith as though
it were the faculty of believing something
which is not true — forcing oneself to
believe and act in spite of evidence to the
contrary. Why should God value a faith
which acts against all common sense and
evidence? Such action short-circuits one

The Pink Professor	19
of our highest faculties: the ability to
weigh evidence and then act on it. Faith
believes what it cannot see; it accepts
evidence it cannot weigh. Why should
God make as a condition for entering his
presence and kingdom our ability to short
circuit, abuse and render null and void
the very logic and evidence-weigjiing fac-
ulty with which the Bible says he endowed
us? God gave us logical ability. Why does
he demand that we act and think illogi-
cally in faith as a condition of entering his
kingdom?"
To return to our first line of approach
to this problem, then, the question is: if
the same Being planned both the good
and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly,
the sadistic and the loving, then all seri-
ous, logical, reasoning thought about him
becomes impossible with our thinking
faculties.
Another Approach
What does the Bible teach about this
apparent state of illogic? Remarkably
enough, neither the New nor the Old

20	Is Tliis a God of Love?
Testament sees any illogic in the situa-
tion! For example, in Romans 1, which
deals with this question in detail, Paul the
apostle teaches in a clear and uncompro-
mising manner that creation doesn't show
the slightest sign of contradiction in these
matters. It gives only one plain line of
thought: that the whole creation reveals
that God is a glorious, omnipotent Creator
— and nothing else. Paul says, "Because
that which maybe known of God is mani-
fest in them; for God has shown it unto
them. For the invisible things of him from
the creation of the world are clearly seen,
being understood by the things that are
made (nature), even his eternal power and
Godhead; so that they are without ex-
cuse."1
Thus, the Bible teaches, as do many
ancient sources, that when a man regards
nature, he is seeing, as in a mirror, the
Creator. The Bible doesn't ignore the ap-
parent problems of war, disease, poverty,
pain and chaos. It says quite a lot about
these subjects and even suggests cures
for some of them. But it does not see them

The Pink Professor	21
in the light in which my professor saw
them. The Bible does not think that these
things cloud the issue about the Creator,
as do many thinking people. Rather, it
teaches that the person who regards na-
ture as it is today and does not see the
power of a glorious, invisible Godhead in
nature—with no clouding of the issue by
the mixture of good and evil we all see —
that person is "without excuse* for not
believing! TTiis is surely a rather strong pill
to the modem intellectual who pleads
intellectual difficulties for his disbelief in
God.
Adding insult to injury, the Bible goes
one step further in teaching that not only
should a person see the Godhead, the
glorious Creator, when he sees mixed
nature, but seeing it he should be filled
with thanks to God, glorifying him for
revealing his wisdom and power in the
creation. So, apparently I should have told
my professor that he was not only "with-
out excuse" but also a "thankless" person
—if I had been ready to give him a biblical
view of himself. Somehow, I don't think he

22	Is This a God of Love?
would have appreciated that! Certainty, at
that time I did not have the necessary
maturity to say such a thing without
causing a major incident and a lot of
misunderstanding.
Paul continues the argument by
maintaining that a sense of wonder and
reverence should fill every observer of the
present confused creation. Offsetting this
wonder should be a sense of our own
vanity and foolishness, pervading us and
all who do not see the creation in this light.
Finally, all these feelings on observing
God's handiwork should make the ob-
server a Worshipper." If I had told my
professor that he had all the evidence
necessary to make him fell on his knees
and worship God, undoubtedly he would
have thougjit me a lunatic.
But Paul insists that if those reac-
tions to the creation don't take place in us,
we are abusing our reasoning powers. As
a consequence of this abuse we shall
become totally unable, in the course of
time, to use our higher reasoning faculties
and logical powers. Paul expresses this

The Pink Professor	23
thought by saying our "heart" will become
"darkened** and our "imagination** will
become "vain.** Also, he maintains that,
under such circumstances, even sexual
morality will die in us. Men will begin to
sexually abuse their own bodies—homo-
sexuality will arise, and normal sex rela-
tions will be stifled. Certainly my profes-
sor would not have appreciated this step
of the argument in the least for he ap-
peared to be a moral man.
In summary, at least parts of Holy
Scripture do not appear to sympathize
greatly with the intellectual difficulties
discussed here. The Bible says a look at
nature should be enough to make a per-
son a convinced, thankful, worshiping
believer. The question remains: why does
the Bible take this stand, seeing that at
least some thoughtful modern people in
the western world today have found that
the observation of the universe has by no
means made them worshippers or believ-
ers. (Here I am not thinking of Taoists,
etc.). On the contrary, those who have
studied the universe in the natural sei-

24	Is This a God of Love?
ences and other disciplines have often
experienced the most difficulties with re-
spect to worshipping and believing. In-
deed, quite a majority have simply turned
away from any thought of God.
Investigation of "that which is seen"
has not revealed to them the "unseen" but
has often turned them from believing in
anything divine and invisible. In no way
has it made them worshippers of some
unseen Being. For what they have per-
ceived shows so many paradoxes and
apparent contradictions that, judging the
unseen by their perception, it becomes
either ridiculous or superfluous for fur-
ther serious thought.
Some intellectuals conclude that if
the seen can give no credible picture of the
unseen, being a Christian is synonymous
with being a third-rate intellectual. They
assume that the Christianis intellectually
incapable of comprehending the contra-
dictions and paradoxes inherent in the
allegedly rather naive and intellectually
impossible Christian faith.

The Pink Professor	25
Clearly, the basic difficulty confront-
ing both the Christian and the intellectual
in aligning matters of belief with matters
of the intellect is intimately tied up with
the question of the origin of evil. If we could
account for the origin of evil without im-
pugning God's omnipotence, love and
holiness, then we would be able to go a
long way toward solving these difficulties.
A future chapter deals with this basic
problem of the origin of evil.

27
Chapter n
Thought and Action: Today
and Yesterday
Few realize how differently people
today use the process of thinking as com-
pared to individuals of a hundred years
ago. We live in an age of unprecedented
technology and, therefore, of technologi-
cal thought, so of necessity technological
subject matter must color today's thought
processes more than in the past. How-
ever, beyond a mere change of shades of
thought, entirely new thought processes

28	Is This a God of Love?
or modes have been adopted. Radical
changes in the very mechanism of thought
have occurred.
A century ago the average thinking
person considered life and the universe to
be orderly and contain meaning. He will-
ingly admitted that it was often difficult to
discover the meaning and order behind
things. But this fact did not disturb him in
his basis of thought namely, that order
and meaning were there if he could only
find them. Thougji human stupidity or
weakness might distort and slow down
the unraveling of meaning, the meaning
was still there. The book of the universe
and of life was hard to decode or read. But
the average thinker was still convinced
that it was a code capable of being deci-
phered if sufficient insight and intelli-
gence could be brought to bear on it
Based on such premises, huge efforts
were easily justified in the quest to deci-
pher the mysteries of the meaning and
mechanisms of life and the universe. The
overrun from this conviction can be seen
today in the momentum still present in

Thought and Action:	29
Today and Yesterday
such efforts as molecular biology and
space exploration, where laws, interpre-
tation and meaning are being sought.
However, it is not generally recognized
thatlarge areas of today's philosophy, art,
music, general culture and even theology
have abandoned the very premises which
launched the huge scientific effort which
has utterly changed the whole world of
technology and science. Most practicing
research scientists still workonthepremise
that nature is a code, and that life is a
meaningful system governed by law and
yielding its meaning to those who try hard
and with enough intelligence. But other
branches of knowledge such as those
mentioned above have more or less ar-
rived at the conclusion that life and the
universe are, in the last analysis, absurd
and devoid of meaning. Camus is an
example of this, for he received the Nobel
Prize for sayingjust this in his own elegant
way.
Thus, where our forefathers based
their thought processes on the premise
that life and the universe were meaning-

30	Is This a God of Love?
ful, thought processes today are governed
by exactly the opposite premise. Sartre,
Camus and other modern thinkers have
obtained the highest praise from today's
intelligentsia for elegantly and cleverly
conveying the premise that life, man and
the universe are meaningless. It naturally
follows, therefore, that suffering is mean-
ingless too.
Only in such a cultural atmosphere
were scientific theories as those of Darwin
able to take root and flourish both in
scientific and popular circles. For Darwin,
aided by Huxley, propagated the view,
using mountains of scientific detail as
evidence, that all life processes arose
spontaneously, without motivation or ra-
tionale, from randomness. In the last
analysis, randomness is congruent with
lack of order and, therefore, with lack of
meaning. According to this view, the mix-
tures of amino acids which are supposed
to have given spontaneous birth to life
showed no meaning or motivation behind
them. No volition guided these and other
building blocks into the codes of meaning

Thought and Action:	31
Today and Yesterday
which make up DNA as we know it today.
Tlie first nucleic adds and proteins alleg-
edly arose spontaneously from meaning-
lessness. This boils down to saying that if
there is any meaning in life or its origin at
all, that meaning must be based on sheer
meaninglessness. The same applies to
life's destiny — it must be meaningless
too.
Equating Fact To Non-Fact
Thus biological sciences are also
mixed up in the changes in thought pro-
cesses which have so radically altered the
modern world. Consider the lengths to
which scientific philosophers such as Sir
Julian Huxley have gone. He teaches all
who will listen that human and social
order flourish better if humans believe in
a god or support some sort of religion, for
their belief helps them respect each other.
Therefore, he advocates the propagation
of some sort of belief in a god external to
nature, even though he says that we, the
enlightened ones, well know that such a
belief does not correspond to the actual

32	Is This a God of Love?
facts of nature, but is thoroughly false and
deceptive. "Religion today is imprisoned
in a theistic frame of ideas," he claims,
"compelled to operate in the unrealities of
the dualistic world. In the unitary hu-
manistic frame it acquires a new look and
new freedoms. With the aid of our new
vision it has the opportunity of escaping
from the theistic impasse and of playing
its proper role in the real world of unitary
existence."1
Schaeffer rightiy observes: "Now it
may be true that it can be shown by
observation that society copes better with
life through believing that there is a god.
But in that case, surely optimistic hu-
manism is being essentially
unreasonable... if, in order to be optimis-
tic, it rests upon the necessity of mankind
believing and functioning upon a lie."
In other words, human society de-
monstrably needs to believe in a god to
function optimally. "All right" says today's
scientific philosopher, "let them cany on
with that belief if it helps them function,
even though, strictly speaking, it is a lie."

Thought and Action:	33
Today and Yesterday
Huxley has no objection to believing in
"anti-facts" if that allows man to continue
being optimistically humanist
Consider the chaos implicit in this
kind of thought pattern. Huxleyis ascien-
tific humanist who believes in "unitary
existence** — no divine existence outside
human existence. This means that there
is no thought (Descartes* proof of exist-
ence) besides human (or possibly animal)
thought. Yet the human thought he uses
is calmly allowed to be non-thought for
there is no objection to holding a non-god
to be a real godl
Surely everyone, including the ratio-
nalist believes that man is a rational
being, and that rationality is a part — an
integral part—of every man. To postulate
that man, in order to function, must be
non-rational, will divide and destroy his
very being. This is the position to which
scientific philosophy in some quarters —
and they are influential quarters — has
led us. Not only is this the main line in
present-day intellectual thought postu-
lated by gifted intellectuals like Huxley,

34	Is This a God of Love?
Camus and Sartre, but Fellini and
Antonioni of Italy, Slessinger of England
and Bergman of Sweden all actively pro-
claim the same "irrational rationalism" in
their films. Thus, the view that life is
meaningless is not merely the property of
the highbrows but is being claimed by so-
called lowbrows too. Popular mass educa-
tion is seeing to this. Nobel prizes are
doled out to those who are responsible for
teachings that are destroyingrational man!
How Faith Is Gained
How can one get a man to believe in a
non-fact in the same way that our fathers
believed in demonstrable facts? That is
the grand feat which modem thought has
nowaccomplished with Kierkegaard's aid.
A new methodology was developed espe-
cially for this one purpose — how to
believe in and be convinced of non-facts
and make them the basis of our faith.
The pattern is quite simple. If a man
can see no rational rhyme, sense nor
reason in life and its problems, if he
cannot find any way of decoding life's

Thought and Action:	35
Today and Yesterday
mysteries, then he must no longer seek
solutions by rational thought He must
close his eyes, throw life's textbook into
the comer, and take a "leap of faith" based
on non-facts. Thus non-facts are serving
the purpose formerly monopolized by facts
as a foundation for thought and faith.
Theology professors have faith in faith
rather than faith in a fact or a person.
It is vitally important to realize how
different this method of thought is, as
compared to that employed by the proph-
ets throughout Holy Scripture. In the Acts
of the Apostles,2 Paul is reported to have
reasoned with the elders with tears day
and night about matters of faith. He was
ready to throw his faith overboard if it did
not comply with the known facts. If the
body of the Lord Jesus Christ could have
been found after his death and resurrec-
tion, that one fact would have abolished at
one stroke all Christian faith and doctrine
forever. For the whole Christian position
(faith) turned (and turns) on this one
outstanding fact—the Lord rose from the
dead as he had promised before his death.

36	Is Tills a God of Love?
His body was transmuted from material
mortality to the supramortal—to immor-
tality. The disproving of this one central
fact — the pillar of faith which was at-
tested to by more than five hundred living
people at the time Paul wrote of the resur-
rection — would have destroyed Christi-
anity.
In those days Christians did not ar-
rive at their faith by a leap in the dark, but
by basing their thought processes — and
therefore their faith — on the fact of
Christ's resurrection. Any other way of
arriving at a real Christian faith stands
forever outside the testimony of Scripture
as well as that of living Christians.
The Exasperated Student
I once knew a student who disliked
higher mathematics, yet needed this
knowledge to pass examinations. After
many futile attempts to master a chapter
of a rather abstruse aspect of the subject
he threw the book into the corner of his
room, muttering that it was all bunk and
nonsense — to him. But it was not non-

Thought and Action:	37
Today and Yesterday
sense to everyone. For others had mas-
tered the same contents and extracted
meaning from them. Hie difficulty was
that the student, being unable to compre-
hend the message of the abstruse chap-
ter, concluded that it was absurd non-
sense. His conclusion was, unfortunately
for him, wrong.
Camus and others are saying, in
effect the same thing—life is absurd and
meaningless—to them. But other serious
people, although usually the first to admit
thatlife'sbookishardtodecipher, confess
to having found satisfying solutions to at
least some of life's problems. And their
conclusions are based on the facts given
by events of history such as the resurrec-
tion of Christ. And more and more prob-
lems and seeming paradoxes may be re-
solved into order by the careful and logical
application of thought
The Age Of Reason
Our much-prized age of reason has
regressed into an age of non-reason. The
age of scientific philosophy has reverted to

38	Is Tliis a God of Love?
an age of non or anti-philosophy. What
else can we conclude if leaders of modern
thought say that they're willing to believe
in the existence of a god who they really
don't think exists, in order to hold onto
their optimistic humanism? Learning and
philosophy are dependent upon the com-
munication of meaning and message. Is it
any wonder that communication between
man and man, generation and genera-
tion, is breaking down because the mes-
sage of the communication allegedly has
been found to be meaningless? In this way
philosophy today has become, in fact, an
anti-philosophy, just as the age of reason
has become an age of unreasonable blind
leaps of faith in a pitch black, unreason-
able and absurd world — of the kind
described by Camus.
The whole situation as seen by our
present world philosophy can be well
summed up in these lines by Hans Arp,
one of the original members of the Dada
group:

Thought and Action:	39
Today and Yesterday
The head downward
the legs upward
he tumbles into the bottomless
from whence he came
like a dish covered with hair
like a four-legged sucking chair
like a deaf echo trunk
half full half empty
the head downward
the legs upward
he tumbles into the bottomless
from whence he came
Francis Schaeffer comments: "On the
basis of modem man's methodology,
whether expressed in philosophy, art,
literature or theology, there can be no
other ending than this — man tumbles
into the bottomless. **
Picasso In Chicago
Several years ago I was standing in
front of the Civic Center in Chicago, where
stands a huge abstract sculpture by

40	Is This a God of Love?
Picasso, for which the mayor of Chicago
paid a large sum of money. While I was
determining from which angles it would
be best to photograph this piece of art, a
well-mannered Chicagoan quietly asked
why I was going to all this trouble. I said I
wanted to get the effect and meaning in
real life faithfully reproduced on film. His
answer was quite interesting. He said that
since in his opinion the work carried and
expressed no communicable meaning in
real life, it was a waste of time and good
film to try and reproduce it in a photo!
Atheistic Clergymen
Picasso again demonstrates the ten-
dency of modern art to detach itself from
the realities and facts of modem life and,
in doing so, to lose meaning for many
people. Theology, the proverbial laggard
in modem intellectual activity, has fol-
lowed philosophy, art and music, albeit at
a distance of some years.
I spoke to a young German clergyman
recently, just before he was to conduct a
confirmation service. In all earnestness

Thought and Action:	41
Today and Yesterday
he informed me that he, as a pastor,
believed that there was no God behind the
universe, although he would not yet dare
to say so openly in his church. He believed
in an atheistic theology. Theology being
the science of the study of divinity or God,
we have arrived at the position of a pastor
studying the science of no-God, which we
may equate to nothingness, for a god that
does not exist is nothing. So the conclu-
sion was that he had spent seven years
studying nothingness! I pointed out this
rather elementary fact to him. He re-
treated in some confusion, saying that I
had misunderstood him. He did not say,
he explained, that he believed in an athe-
istic theology, but rather in an a-theistic
theology. This was quite different he said,
for it meant that he could continue in his
theology without God—that is, a-theisti-
cally rather than atheistically! One won-
ders what sort of a shepherd of his flock
such a young man will make when he has
to comfort the dying and lay hands on the
sick and those wracked with pain.

42	Is Tliis a God of Love?
Consequences
But why bother to go into all this
theory and philosophy? If there is no
meaning behind the universe and life,
why try to find any?
The reason is simple. Man is a ratio-
nal being. To ask him to live in and for
meaninglessness or non-rationality is to
ask him to destroy himself. He goes into
despair and will not rest, if he is honest
with himself, until he is able to replace
meaninglessness with meaning and or-
der.
If contemporary rational thinkers —
being rational creatures — see injustice,
suffering, wars, violence and apparent
meaningjessness on every side, they can-
not rest until they have found a rationale
of some sort for it all. Huxley admits that
he is prepared to be an optimistic human-
ist on the basis of believing in a non-
existent god — one he knows not to be
there, but whose presence and existence
wemustpostulatetokeepourselveshappy.

Thought and Action:	43
Today and Yesterday
But the use of a non-rationality, a lie, to
keep a man rational and happy will surety
destroy the very basis of rationality!
No, if rational man is to remain ratio-
nal, he must use "reaT fact to find some
meaning for all the apparent chaos and
meaninglessness which surround him.
How can he rationally explain a beautiful
young mother dying of cancer while her
child is being bom? How can he avoid
despair on seeing men, women and chil-
dren mutilated by war, hunger and pesti-
lence?'Iriese are realities. Camus shrugged
his shoulders at such sights, sensitive as
he was, and said thatthe world and life are
meaningless jokes — absurd.
Jesus Christ saw similar suffering
and spoke of the beggar Lazarus covered
with sores and tying at the rich man's gate.
He had mercy and compassion on the
beggar. But he did not leave it at that and
shrug it all off, just as if life and Lazarus
were meaningless victims of a harsh, ab-
surd and cruel world. He interpreted
Lazarus' apparently meaningless suffer-

44	Is This a God of Love?
ing—and the rich man's riches too—and
told us in no uncertain terms in Luke
16:20-25 what they meant
But today's teachers of Christianity
have not given convincing answers to the
modern "meaningless" theorists, even
though Christ's interpretation of the
problem is on hand if they care to read and
digestitThefactis, of course, that Christ's
interpretation of Lazarus' suffering and of
other problems involving suffering is not
generally accepted today. The real reason
for the unwillingness to accept his inter-
pretation is coupled with an unwilling-
ness to accept the full fact and impact of
resurrection as evidenced in Christ's own
body. If we really believed in Christ's and
our own resurrection as unshakable facts,
we wouldn'thave the slightest difficulty in
accepting Christ's interpretation of the
"mystery" or the apparent "meaningless-
ness" of Lazarus' suffering. We have be-
come so used to equating non-fact with
fact that we find it difficult to follow rigidly
the logical consequences of believing in a
real fact! For, in Lazarus' case, the intro-

Thought and Action:	45
Today and Yesterday
duction of one overlooked fact, namely,
personal resurrection, reduced the hope-
lessness and meaninglessness of his suf-
ferings to meaningfulness.
Christ, as he explained Lazarus* case,
kept steadily before him the fact of per-
sonal resurrection. To the humanist by-
stander, tied up in Huxley's idea about
"unitary existence,** Lazarus as he lay
there full of sores was a senseless cruelty,
an example of callous torture of innocent
humanity. But if the promise of recom-
pense and correction — actually, the
migjity recompense of resurrection—is a
fact, then, of course, meaninglessness
resolves itself to meaning. For surely, if a
short term of suffering is the method by
which eternal non-suffering or bliss is to
be attained, then Lazarus was in for a
bargain—to put it mildly—and reason-
ableness is restored to apparent unrea-
sonableness.
Whatmodern philosophers have been
busy doing — indeed philosophers of all
time have practiced the same art — is
removing by unbelief certain facts from

46	Is Ttüs a God of Love?
the sad case of this suffering world, facts
given us by God himself to enable us to
handle the problem intellectually. Just as
the addition of an overlooked fact (resur-
rection) brought meaning into the mean-
inglessness in the case of Lazarus' suffer-
ing, so the removal of some fact will reduce
it from rationality and meaning to irratio-
nality and meaninglessness. We interpret
and diagnose on the basis of all the facts
of a case, that is, we appoint meaning in
the light of all relevant facts. But, remove
the facts, even the revealed facts of the
Bible, and meaninglessness and inability
to diagnose the case must result because
the resulting picture is incomplete.
Man Cannot live Without Rationality
It is obviously useless to argue rea-
sonably with anyone who does not believe
in meaning, and, therefore, in reason.
Many modem theologians and philoso-
phers are in just this position. But this is
not the case with a majority of the younger
generation. Young people, perhaps firm
believers in Camus and Sartre, are finding

Thought and Action:	47
Today and Yesterday
that they cannot help falling in love with
one another, just as their forefathers did.
Girls are still pretty and boys still at-
tracted to their beauty ofbody and psyche.
Tliey become aware that the remarkable
fact of falling in love with each other, in
spite of what they have learned about the
absurdity of everything, is not so absurd.
Love is a new, hitherto neglected fact and
it transforms their lives, giving them pur-
pose where they had imagined there was
none. The addition of one fact — human
love is a fact and not a non-fact—to their
lives has resolved some of life's meaning-
lessness to meaning.
The fact of love had been overlooked,
but now it must be taken into account in
the formula for life, just as in the case of
Lazarus the resurrection completely al-
tered the equation. The fact of love brings
new rationality and new meaning, just as
other facts — beauty in nature, order in
the biological cell, chemical laws in bio-
chemistry and electromagnetic laws in

48	Is This a God of Love?
valency help us to see order where previ-
ously, without knowledge of these facts,
meaninglessness reigned.
Is There A Place For "Blind Faith**?
Someone will be sure to object to this
kind of presentation, saying that after all,
the heavy emphasis on reason and ratio-
nality excludes the exercise of real faith as
the evidence of things not seen but hoped
for.
This kind of objection would be valid
if one believed that reason is faith. But we
have not said that. We have said that
evidence and facts should lead to faith
and that non-facts should not. To build
faith on a sound basis we must have
sound facts and not flabby non-facts or
meaninglessness. When the facts of a
case have been established beyond doubt,
for example, that Christ did, as an histori-
cal fact rise from the dead on the third
day, then we can start building faith on
that fact. For, by being resurrected after
death, as he had promised before dying,
he proved that he had knowledge which

Thought and Action:	49
Today and Yesterday
ordinary mortals do not possess about the
after-death state. In feet the predicted
and fulfilled resurrection proves that he
had divine foreknowledge, and his words
bore the weight attributable to divinity. If
his words on resurrection have thus been
proved to be divine, then surety what he
says about me, my death and my resur-
rection by his power will be divine. These
divine facts and words allow me sufficient
basis on which to build my faith by trust-
ing in and acting on them. This kind of
building on divine evidence and facts, this
trusting of them and their author, is
nothing less and nothing more than bib-
lical faith.
All that this really means is that we
are objecting to "blind" faith—leaps in the
dark. I am well aware that at times I have
no facts or evidence to build upon —
probably as Lazarus had no evidence as
he lay in misery. I am completely at sea in
regard to faith and belief in those difficult
situations when I do not know where I am
nor what I should do or think. And I am
often in that anguished position.

50	Is This a God of Love?
But it is when I am in such deep
waters that I take a new look at the facts
of divine illumination, help and guidance
which I have previously experienced.
Looking back, I see how God has kept his
good hand over me, even in allowing
apparent catastrophes. Recallingpast facts
and evidence, Ibasemyfaithforthefuture
on them and so reestablish trust for the
present where I cannot yet see the needed
evidence. But I cannot base trust on
nothing, meaninglessness or nothingness.
I cannot leap in the dark. I trusted him in
the past; he helped. Is that not fact and
evidence that the same will be true of the
present and the future, even in ultimate
catastrophe? These facts strengthen me
to trust him, the great personal Fact, now,
where I see no evidence. Such faith is by
no means blind. It is based on a hindsight
experience of him, on facts and on reason.
On this basis we treat the problem of
suffering.

51
Chapter m
The Atheistic & Agnostic
Positions
Are there any really irreconcilable
intellectual difficulties involved in believ-
ing in God, or are they only imaginary
when carefully examined? I don't believe
the ancients were on a lower intellectual
plane than we modems. Even though we
have excelled them in technology, we see
no evidence of intellectual lethargy on
their part Yet perhaps a considerable
percentage of them believed that the uni-
verse showed God's handiwork, whereas
most modems do not.

52	Is Ulis a God of Love?
This difference in approach is not in
any way a reflection on the total intellec-
tual capacity of either the modems or the
ancients. Rather, it is a reflection of the
increasing mass of knowledge with which
every human being in every succeeding
generation has to contend. An ancient
could have been a master of all that was
then known in the combined fields of
physics, chemistry, mathematics, geom-
etry, medicine, biology and algebra. Today
the mass of knowledge is so great that no
human brain can possibly cope with even
a fraction of it. Therefore, a fragmentation
of knowledge has occurred. But this mas-
sive increase has tended to take place in
the watertight compartments of the vari-
ous disciplines into which knowledge has
become divided in order to fit the capacity
of single brains. The result is that a syn-
thesis of all modem knowledge is rapidly
becoming less and less possible. This
perfectly natural tendency has had some
far-reaching consequences which must

The Atheistic and Agnostic Positions      53
be examined before we consider the ques-
tion of the origin of evil, since the two
problems belong together.
Just over a century ago, Darwin,
Wallace and Huxley propounded the view
that long time spans and chance reac-
tions, coupled with natural selection,
would account for all visible living nature
without the necessity of involving the
volition of any divinity. Huxley thought he
could prove this with his appeal to prob-
ability laws and his famous six monkeys
typing at random for millions of years on
six typewriters. The mathematical for-
mulae for the possibility of this view were
bandied around and the principle was
accepted as true. The natural and logical
consequence of the view was that the
postulate of divinity behind nature was
rendered superfluous from a mathematical
point of view. Immense time spans plus
chance and natural selection would do all
the work hitherto attributed to God. Thus
the world of science became a realm de-
pending on chance as a direct result of the
views of these men who believed their

54	Is This a God of Love?
conclusions were mathematically well
founded. Thus so called science was be-
lieved to have shown that there was no
place for the God-postulate. As we shall
see there is no scientifically founded reason
for accepting this view.
The patient work of scientists simul-
taneously competent in several disciplines
has been necessary to show that Darwin's
and Huxley's basic assumptions were
chemically, mathematically and biologi-
cally untenable.1 The vastness of today's
scientific knowledge makes it obvious that
it is a rare scientist who is able to do
original work in all these fields simulta-
neously. As a result, until recently no
synthesis between the various fields had
been achieved. Instead, water tight com-
partmentalization had developed. Biolo-
gists were unable to test the mathematics
of the problem in hand and chemists
could not critically assess the biologists'
work.
The biologists announced with all
due thunder that they could replace God
with chance and long time spans plus

The Atheistic and Agnostic Positions     55
natural selection. But no mathematicians
sufficiently versed in chemistry and biol-
ogy were forthcoming to assess what the
biologists were shouting about As a re-
sult one discipline, in this case biology,
has been building on false chemical, ther-
modynamic and mathematical premises.
The author has written elsewhere of the
catastrophic development of this kind of
compartmentalization of science.2
Because, in ancient times, learned
men possessed a good overall view on life
they could believe what the apostle Paul
said about the universe demonstrating
the nature of the Godhead. It agreed with
what they knew about mathematics and
biology.
What is generally not realized is that
modem man could believe, as did the
ancients, that the universe shows God's
nature — and still remain within the
bounds of modem scientific knowledge—
if his knowledge had not become so great
that it had to be wrongly compartmental-
ized. For when the various compartments
are carefully examined, the fact emerges

56	Is Ulis a God of Love?
that each still speaks one language today,
as it did thousands of years ago: that "the
heavens declare the glory of God," in spite
of the mixture of good and bad.3
So we can believe in a good, loving,
personal, holy and compassionate God
behinditall.Butwhataboutevil?Ishethe
author ofthat too?Tlie Koran teaches that
God made "the mischief of creation,** too.4
Is God the author of the mixed picture?
The Gothic Cathedral
Before the Second World War, I often
visited the huge and beautiful Gothic
cathedral at Cologne on the Rhine in
Germany. I used to admire this fine ex-
ample of the architecture of many hundred
years ago, with its graceful flying but-
tresses, a superb high-domed roof, its
famous two towers and the medieval
stained glass windows.
The more I admired the cathedral, the
more I found myself admiring the archi-
tects and masons who had originated the
whole structure. Over the centuries they
had patiently planned and built. All the

The Atheistic and Agjnostic Positions      57
graceful lines and sturdy foundations had
obviously been carefully planned by ex-
perts possessing sound knowledge of
building mathematics and mechanics as
well as à keen appreciation of how to
combine both to produce a beautiful total
edifice.
That it had so well withstood the
ravages of the centuries showed that the
workmen and designers not only under-
stood the principles behind beauty, but
also those of ensuring endurance. Their
craftsmanship was first class in every
way. Thus I found myself admiring our
forefathers as I admired their workman-
ship. Considering that they had few of the
mechanical devices a modem archi-
tect would consider essential for con-
structing such a masterpiece, the masons
and architects of that day certainly did
work wonders.
The structure ofthat cathedral, cen-
turies after it had been built showed
without the slightest doubt something of
the mind or minds behind it Its very
compact and organized design made one

58	Is Tliis a God of Love?
wonder what sort of drawing offices the
builders had at their disposal and how
they made their blueprints. To imagine
that such a well-conceived edifice simply
arose without enormous planning effort
would be to invite the just derision of
anyone remotely familiar with the con-
struction industry. Even calculations of
the various strengths of the construction
materials had to be made with old-fash-
ioned arithmetic and not just handed over
to a computer. Thus, an almost flawless
work showed sharply the minds and hands
of its creators. But the picture did not
always remain as clear.
Complicating The Issue
During the war, Cologne suffered
perhaps the most intensive air bombard-
ment of any city in Western Europe. Re-
portedly, bombs fell on approximately
every two square yards of the entire inner
city. Now the cathedral stands almost
directly in the railway station yard. Co-
logne is an important rail center, where
many lines meet, particularly those con-

The Atheistic and Agnostic Positions      59
nected with the huge and concentrated
Ruhr industrial area. Naturally, the allies
bombed the railroad yards on many occa-
sions and, not surprisingly, many bombs
missed their mark and destroyed nearby
housing and property. A number of heavy
bombs hit the cathedral, causing im-
mense damage.
In the fell of 1946 when I returned to
Germany for the first time after the war, I
was greatly dismayed at the sigjit of the
cathedral. It seemed symbolic of the rest
of Europe and her spirit. Almost irrepa-
rable damage had been done in five years
of combat. However, as I approached, the
two famous towers were still visible through
the morning mist
Practically every building in the vicin-
ity was razed to the ground; the cathedral
alone stood majestically in the midst of
the carnage. Coming nearer, however, I
could see huge, gaping holes in the sides
of the two towers. The holes revealed the
massiveness of the masonry, for any other
building receiving glancing blows from
such high-explosive bombs would have

60	Is This a God of Love?
collapsed entirely. But the cathedral,
though badly damaged, was not destroyed.
Hundreds of tons of concrete and bricks
had been used to plug a huge hole high up
in one tower, partially replacing the an-
cient masonry which had been blasted
away by an aerial bomb.
The ancient roof was indescribably
damaged. Huge rafters and beams, once
the cathedral's glory, hungperilouslydown
over the bomb-pocked floor. As the wind
blew through the wreckage, small bits
and pieces fell to the ground, building up
the piles of rubble. A hole marked the
place where the organ had once pealed
out its accompaniment to worship.
This miserable piece of chaos made a
deep impression on me as I stood in the
same place where I had once admired the
order and beauty of the original edifice. As
those memories of former beauty passed
through my mind, one idea never even
occurred to me. Never did I connect the
chaos of the formerly beautiful cathedral
with any inefficiency or designed purpose

The Atheistic and Agnostic Positions     61
on the part of the constructing architects
or masons! They had not built it for such
maltreatment
Similarly, I never began to doubt the
existence of the men who designed and
constructed the cathedral simply because
I could now see so many contradictions in
their handiwork. The place was a ruin.
But in its ruination it still bore the marks
of design. In fact its design and original
beauty were even more emphasized in
some respects. For the huge gaping holes
in the walls revealed the excellent con-
struction even better than did the remain-
ing undamaged walls. There was no fill or
rubbish behind false walls; it was all solid
handiwork built to last for centuries. The
migjity flying buttresses were still there;
the graceful Gothic arches were still
standing. But the solid design which was
built into the parts of the construction
normally hidden from view, was now laid
bare for all to see how well these craftsmen
had done their job.
In summary, even the general ruin
and chaos showed (1) the existence and

62	Is This a God of Love?
(2) the excellent work of both architects
and craftsmen. Furthermore, the ruined
structure itself showed in some ways even
better than the intact one the existence
and skill of the originators. In fact, the
whole picture reminded me of the purpose
of dissection in learning the anatomy of
animals, men and plants. In order to see
the order—and beauty—of some aspects
of biology, the destroyed or dissected ani-
mal or plant serves better than the intact
one. The cathedral had certainly been
dissected, and its entrails laid bare.
Inefficient Architects?
Obviously no one was going to accuse
the architects and craftsmen of designing
and building a ruin. The cathedral had
been constructed to last—almost forever.
Something had happened to it which had
not been planned or even conceived of.
And yet, even in its ruination, it was
generally quite easy to distinguish be-
tween the unplanned ruin and the actual
architecture. The cathedral at the same
time displayed both perfection and ruin-

The Atheistic and Agnostic Positions     63
ation—chaos and order mixed up inextri-
cably with one another, just as the world
around us presents a picture full of good
and evil, beauty and ugliness, order and
chaos, love and hate. No one in his right
mind ought to deny that life as we see it is
ahopeless hodgepodge of such ingredients.
However, we should remember that it
would be just as illogical to say that the
mixed picture of the cathedral proves
there was no architect behind it as to say
that the ruined, mixed picture of life we
see round about us proves that there is no
God behind it. My professor, rightly seeing
the hodgepodge before him, concluded
that therefore,
 1.	The edifice of creation has neither
mind or architect behind it. The atheist
maintains that because he sees nothing
but contradictions in nature, therefore
there is no God or mind behind it The
Germans call this a TDenkfehler1, a short-
circuit in the logic of thinking. And so it is.
But it is one seldom seen through today.
 2.	No characteristics of a mind be-
hind nature can be distinguished be-

64	Is This a God of Love?
cause the picture is so mixed. This again
is a Denkfehler, because, as we have
already pointed out in the case of the
ruined cathedral, as long as any signs of
order have escaped complete destruction
in the general ruin, these "broken bits and
pieces remaining of the flying buttresses
and Gothic arches" will still show what
sort of men planned them. Thus, even
widely separated little pools of beauty,
love, joy, order, healthy bodies and virtue
which remain in the general hate, war,
destruction, chaos and ugliness of the
world of nature in which we live, still point
unflinchingjy to the architect who de-
signed and produced it before ruination
set in.
In fact, as seen in the cathedral, when
chaos replaces order, it can often lay bare
and dissect the original order better than
could the intact orderliness of an organ-
ism, or unruined nature itself. The study
of cancer cells — a good example of the
"ruination" to which living entities can
easily come—has laid bare many secrets
of the healthy intact cell which would

The Atheistic and Agnostic Positions     65
never have been suspected had we had
only normal healthy cells under our mi-
croscopes.
Summary
Therefore, we can maintain that even
though the creation around us is certainly
a hodgepodge of good and bad, even though
life certainty presents a badly mixed pic-
ture, it is still untenable to conclude with
my professor that this means there is no
architect behind it that everything arose
due to chance and long time spans. Any
little pool of love or order in the general
rubble heap of nature must lead us to a
mind or designer behind that pool, no
matter how small and smothered in rubble
it may be. Thus, a synthesis is possible,
and the teaching of Romans 1 that the
universe reveals enough of its Maker to
bring any logical person to his knees in
thankfulness and worship is confirmed.

67
Chapter IV
The Origin of Evû
Difficulties of the type discussed in
Chapter II led Baudelaire, the French art
historian and poet, to exclaim, "If there is
a God, he is the devil!" Such a statement
is the direct result of believing that man
has always been as he is, good and bad,
and was so designed originally.1 This is
the Muslim position.
Theistic evolutionists cannot avoid
the same difficulty when they maintain
that God used evolutionary processes to
produce the world of nature as we see it
today. If he did, then his methods made
the bad with the good, as Baudelaire

68	Is This a God of Love?
maintains, and he therefore must be the
devil as well as God. Everything pivots on
whetherwe believe nature was once "good"
and then subsequently ruined, whether
we believe in the fall of man as laid down
in Genesis. By tampering with the struc-
tural details of Genesis, we are likely to
garble the whole reason for the present
state of man — and the whole plan of his
salvation which will take him out of the
present disastrous mess. Genesis pre-
sents an integral whole on which the total
plan of Scripture is firmly founded.
Let us return to the cathedral illus-
tration of Chapter in. It is superfluous to
point out that all illustrations and analo-
gies are imperfect and have their weak-
nesses if pressed too far. Our illustration
of the cathedral is no exception. One of its
imperfections lies in the fact that the
architects who designed and built the
cathedral are long-since dead and there-
fore could not prevent the bombing of
their masterpiece. Then is God dead, too?
Was he dead when his masterpiece, na-
ture, was "bombed** into ruin?

Hie Origin of Evil	69
Today many assume God to be, in
fact, dead and resolve the question that
way. But this is a doubtful escape exit for
several reasons. Although it might explain
God's creative work in the past and its
subsequent ruination, it would never ex-
plain the present maintenance of nature
and creation. No dead God could take care
of that. Christians rightly believe that he
is not only the living creator, but also the
living maintainer of nature — and of us.
Byvery definition, the "God is dead" theory
will not fit in here, for maintenance im-
plies activity and life.
Trius the question nowbecomes: Why
didn't an almighty God who made, main-
tains and presumably loves his master-
piece, creation, prevent its "bombing?"
Here the parable of the cathedral can do
us no more service.
People who continually ask the ques-
tion, "Why doesn't God stop it?" are often
those who don't bother to ask what
"stopping it" would entail. Some specific
details must be examined before attempt-
ing to solve the greaterprinciples involved.

70	Is This a God of Love?
Consider any virtue of which a person
is capable; love, kindness, honesty, faith-
fulness, chastity, or any of the traits named
in Galatians 5 will do. Select a virtue
which pleases us all—love—and ask the
following question: "What is the nature of
love in particular, and virtue in general?"
Nature Of Love And Virtue
This subject of the nature of love and
virtue is vitally important because the
Christian way of life maintains that God
himself is love. Christians in the Western
world often do not realize the tremendous
import of this statement I have given
other religions, including Islam, some
thought, and have studied Islam's Holy
Book, the Koran, which designates Allah
as the compassionate, forgiving one. As
far as I know, nowhere in the Koran does
Allah figure specifically as an embodi-
ment of love. He may threaten, may be
merciful, omnipotent compassionate and
omnipresent. He may offer the faithful a
place in the gardens of paradise with as
many dark-eyed houris as they wish.2 But

The Origin of Evil	71
love never figures in the Koranic "revela-
tions" of Allah's nature. A designation of
God as "love" stands unique in the Bible.
Right in the center, then, of the Chris-
tian position is this virtue we call love. It
must be of vital importance for that very
reason. Nevertheless, I find myself at an
extreme loss when I am asked to rationally
explain anything at all about God's love. I
know that "God so loved the world that he
gave his only Son, thatwhoeverbelieves in
him should not perish but have eternal
life."3 But God, even though loving, is also
infinite. Therefore, he exceeds anything
my thinking apparatus can handle. So I
do not pretend to be able to plumb the
depths of either his love or character. To
think rationally about that love is far
beyond me.
I suspect it is for this reason that
when the Scriptures speak of God and his
love, usually man's love to a woman and
vice versa is used to drive home the point
at an anthropomorphic level. It is like
using real-life illustrations to clarify ab-
stract and abstruse points of chemistry to

72	Is This a God of Love?
non-scientific people. Thus, God provides
information on himself and his love in a
human setting in order to really commu-
nicate with us. The information we thus
obtain by "cutting down the high voltage
of God's love" to the "low voltage of human
love,* we will then apply to our main
problem.
The first question in analyzing hu-
man love is: "How did this love between
bride and bridegroom originate?" The
historyofmostsuch relationships provides
the answer. The young man met the
young girl one day and sooner or later
began to feel attracted to her. The at-
traction is better experienced than de-
scribed. Very often the girl feels attracted
to him at the same time, although she
might at this stage be more hesitant to
display her feelings. Often, he begins the
action side of the relationship by looking
for suitable ways to court her. But until
wooing is begun, the whole affair is lop-
sided. A one-sided relationship in which

The Origin of Evil	73
attentions are not returned can be ex-
tremely painful. Certainly it is neither
happy nor satisfying to either party.
At this stage there is one burning
question which every prospective bride-
groom would like answered as soon as
possible: "Does she love me?" Is my attrac-
tion to her reciprocated?" One purpose of
courtship is to give the girl a chance to
settle the question in her own mind. For,
once she notices the man's attentions
and, therefore, attraction towards her,
she has to make a momentous decision:
"Can I return his affection?" If she thinks
that she may do so, then she must decide
if she can love him. Here she must rely on
her own heart as well as on her common
sense and the principles of life to which
she adheres. After due consideration, she
may decide she does. An understanding is
reached between the two. Aradiant couple
emerges, and great are the happiness and
joy of two hearts that have entrusted
themselves to one another in mutual love
and faithfulness.

74	Is This a God of Love?
In order to answer the question why
a God of love just doesn't "stop it* we must
analyze this process of falling in love more
closely in order to draw some reason out
of what often appears to be an entirely
unreasonable happening.
First the young man must court the
girl of his choice. She will be unhappy if he
doesn't and he will be unmanly if he
doesn't know howl Now, courtship is a
very fine art besides being a very neces-
sary one. Some of our finest poetry, music
and art have arisen as its by-products!
Most important perhaps, is that it is a so-
called gentle art, which brings us to a
cardinal point in our analysis.
Tlie moment force takes the place of
wooing, both love and the joy of love cease.
They are often replaced by hate, recrimi-
nations and misery. For the whole struc-
ture of love is built on absolute mutual
consent and respect for the character and
sovereignty of the loved one. In other
words, the structure on which human
love between a bride and a bridegroom is
squarely based is freedom to love.

The Origin of Evil	75
Most civilized societies recognize pre-
cisely this structure in their marriage
services. The two persons intending mar-
riage are both given the public opportu-
nity of making a free-will consent in say-
ing "I will" before the assembled congrega-
tion. Old Testament cultures stand for
exactly the same principle, as the follow-
ing well-known story emphasizes.
Rebekah
When Eliezer, Abraham's servant,
asked Rebekah to become Isaac's wife
(Gen. 24), he became so assured that he
had found God's choice for his master's
son that he was ready to cut comers in the
process of taking the bride home. The
evidence that Rebekah was God's choice
was so overwhelming that he wanted to
speed things up, intending to take off
immediately with the girl and forget about
all the formalities or ceremonies.
However, Rebekah's relatives saw
immediately that this was no basis for
marriage, even though the Lord might be
initWhatagood thing itwould be ifyoung

76	Is This a God of Love?
couples saw this point too, instead of just
starting to live together with no ado or
ceremonies. It is to emphasize the neces-
sity of mutual public consent before love
and lifelong married joy, the greatest rela-
tionship in our earthly life, that RebekarTs
relatives got together and said that even
though God might be in it all, Rebekah
must first be publicly questioned on the
matter. She had to give her own decision
and opinion before they would let her go to
Isaac. So they called her in before the
family and their friends to ask whether
she wanted Isaac. Only after she had
given public consent based on her own
free-will decision, did they agree to mar-
riage. They knew that no other basis was
good enough, even though it was obvi-
ously God's will even without such public
decision-making.
The Amnon And Taxnar Affair
Thus, the first point arising out of this
analysis of the basis of bride-bridegroom

Tlie Origin of Evil	77
relationships and love is that such a
partnership is based firmly on public
mutual consent or free will.
The second point deals with the con-
sequences of neglecting the above point.
The shocking ulove affair" between Amnon
and Tamar (2 Sam. 13) illustrates this
danger in a crass way. Amnon fell madly
in love with the king's beautiful daughter
Tamar. He was so infatuated with the fair
girl that he just could not wait to woo her
and win her consent. By guile, Amnon
arranged to be alone with the girl. Feign-
ing sickness, he received the king's per-
mission for Tamar to come and cook for
him in his apartment Having got rid of
everyone else, he proceeded to force the
poor girl because hewas so madly "in love"
with her. "Love" that cannot wait to woo is
abnormal. It often metamorphoses before
our eyes into lust**
The consequence of this haste and
trickery was that Amnon*s "love** turned in
a twinkling into hate for her. The eventual
result was murder, for her relatives had
Amnon murdered later for his brutality

78	Is TTiis a God of Love?
and treachery. Tamar suffered heartbreak
and "remained desolate in her father's
house" (2 Sam. 13:20).
Free Choice
In order to love in this sense — not
merely physical union, which can result
from lust—we must experience the mu-
tual attraction and union of body, soul
and spirit in an exclusive personal rela-
tionship.
If the basis of mutual consent in the
love relationship is removed, if there is no
freedom to love, if freedom is replaced by
force, then all possibility of loving is re-
moved. Love can be replaced then by its
opposite — hate. This implies, of course,
the further step of logic: Where there is
true freedom to love, there is also freedom
not to love. If this freedom to say "no" were
not really present, there would ipso facto
be no freedom to say "yes" and to love. The
ability to say "no" must be just as genuine
as the ability to say "yes" if true mutual
consent is to be achieved as a basis for
love.

Hie Origin of Evil	79
As we have seen, the Bible teaches
that God himself is love, and his love is
often likened to the bride-bridegroom re-
lationship. Our third conclusion is that, if
his love to us is to be compared in some
way with our human nuptial love, then
the principles governing the two loves can
be expected to be comparable in some
ways. We should expect God, on this
basis, to be the grand wooer. That being
the case, we should expect him to be
awaiting our response to his wooing. To
receive and experience his love we should
expect the mutual-consent basis to de-
cide everything — my consent to him in
answer to his "attraction to and love for"
me.
Thus, we conclude that if God is love
in this sense of the word, he will be looking
for answering love from me. Love is only
satisfied if it is returned. He woos us by
many means, mainly by having sent his
Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, to
justify us by dying and being resurrected
for us.

80	Is This a God of Love?
Being love, we would not expect him
to demand or attempt to force love. That
would be a contradiction. The very at-
tempt to do so would destroy the basis of
all love. As our true lover he does every-
thing to show the true nature of his love—
even to becoming a fellow man, heir to our
lot as well as bearing our sin. Jesus was
serious about his love — serious even to
death.
The Case Of The Robot
Consider one more vital point What
would have happened if God had so con-
structed man that he could not make a
true free-will decision himself, but was
only capable of automatically doing God's
will, just as a lock opens when one turns
the correct key in it? If man had been so
constructed that, when a certain "button"
in his mind was depressed he delivered
"love" automatically, would real love be in
fact delivered? Of course the answer is
negative. Such a person would be "con-

Hie Origin of Evil	81
genitally* devoid of free will and therefore
incapable of love and virtues in any real
sense of the word.
None of us would be interested in
"loving" the outward form of a partner
who, every time we touched a certain
"button," put chocolate in its mouth or
stroked its hair or automatically intoned
the sentence "I love you." If such a system
were conceived or constructed, it would
have to be subhuman or machine by
nature. For to try to construct it so that it
delivered "virtue" or love" on command
would of necessity mean that it be devoid
of humanity, and therefore personality,
and as a result it could deliver nothing of
the kind. Assume that God, in order to be
sure of our love and to make sure that we
were "virtuous" in everyway, made us like
marionettes. He would have taken from
us the possibility of really exercising our
free will in order that we might not exer-
cise it wrongly. Wanting to be so sure that
we loved him and ourfellowmen, he would
have made us so that we could not do
otherwise. Whenever he pressed abutton,

82	Is This a God of Love?
we would "deliver the goods," just like a
vendingmachine. Howcould suchasetup
involve real love in any way?
The Grand Risk
This brings us right up to the great
principle. If God wanted creatures that
realty loved him and their fellow-beings,
then he was, by the very intrinsic nature
oflove, obliged to recognize the fact (though
it sounds strange to us to use such
phraseology and maintain that God was
forced to do anything — his own moral
nature brings with it the consequence
that he will or must act according to that
nature) that love and virtue demand ab-
solute freedom to love and exercise free-
dom. Such a necessity lies in the very
structure oflove and, indeed, of any other
true virtue. Thus, to create the possibility
oflove, God had to create free personali-
ties just like himself, for he is love and he
made us to love.
For God to plan at all for true love
involved the built-in risk of the proposed
free partner-in-love not loving at all. To

The Origin of Evil	83
have built the love-partner so that he
would be congenitally obliged to respond
would have been to destroy the whole
purpose of designing a creation where love
could reign. God wished—and still wishes
—to set up a kingdom of love on earth and
in heaven. But to do so involves the above-
outlined risk of the free partners choosing
not to love, but to do the opposite of their
own free will — or even to hate. The
practical result of being indifferent to or
hatingis the same from the divine partner's
point of view. For there is no positive
response to his love in either case. And
love aims at a response of love. Thus,
either love grows by responding, or it dies.
Almsgiving And The Socialist State
Exactly the same risk is involved in
planning any and every virtue. Take, for
example, the virtue of almsgiving. In Tur-
key one sees hundreds of needy beggars.
There are the blind holding certified pho-
tographs of their suffering wives and chil-
dren needing support. There are those
lying in the gutters, with their misshapen

84	Is Tliis a God of Love?
bodies uncovered so that all who pass by
can see they are not counterfeiting. There
is the poor man who has his feet where his
shoulder should be, loudly and slowly
repeating selected passages from the Ko-
ran. There is the old man suffering from
Parkinson's Disease, whose saliva con-
tinually runs over his poor old dirty face as
he holds out an empty trembling hand all
day long. Seeing this misery causes one to
exercise compassion and give a coin so
that they can eat a slice of good Turkish
bread. Naturally one is convinced that
something much more fundamental
should be done for these thousands of
people so representative of suffering hu-
manity. But a coin will at least guarantee
that the immediate plague of gnawing
hunger will be assuaged.
So one gives something to the poor
mother sitting in rags underneath the
mailbox at the post office, with her week-
old, unwashed baby on her ragged lap. In
so doing one exercises a virtue — that of
almsgiving. The immediate reward is an
extra-fervent prayer to Allah for the giver's

Tlie Origin of Evil	85
salvation. The joy on the recipient's face
would be reward enough. To exercise any
virtue is afree-will operation which brings
joy to the giver and to the receiver.
If, however, beggars are cared for by
taxes, and the city authorities send me a
tax bill to help support the poor and
needy, then I must pay. It may be a good
thing to organize matters in this way.
Many maintain that this method is less
degrading for the poor and that the bur-
den is more equally distributed. I agree
with them in this respect But let us be
clear about one of the overlooked conse-
quences.
In paying my taxes which are used to
support the poor and the needy, I no
longer exercise the virtue I did when I gave
the alms to the pooryoung mother. I might
have paid about 10 dollars in taxes for the
poor, or I might have given the young
woman 10 dollars to buy her baby some-
thing better than dirty rags. The sum of
money involved is irrelevant. In one case
I exercise the virtue of almsgiving (and
reap a blessing) while in the other case I

86	IsThisaGodofLove?
must pay my taxes, grumbling perhaps
about the waste perpetrated by the bu-
reaucracy of the tax office, with no con-
sequent blessing, even though I may be
perfectly right.
In one case I exercise no virtue. In the
other case, where I give of my own free will
in almsgiving I exercise a virtue—simply
because I do not have to act Therein lies
the difference: forced charity" is no char-
ity—and "forced love" is no love. Love and
virtue melt in the grip of force just as ice
melts under the pressure of a vice.
If I force my children to be "good"
when we are out visiting, they may be
outwardly exemplary — sometimes they
are! I am thankful for this, but I recognize
the feet that most parents will be familiar
with — that this "goodness" may not be
even skin deep! Force itself, unaided, can
make no one good and virtues tend to fade
away in its presence.
These considerations disclose one of
the fatal weaknesses of our increasingly
socialized world. All "charity" and "works
of love" tend to become organized by the

The Origin of Evil	87
state, which rightly wishes to eliminate
the humiliation to which the poor are
subjected in accepting certain kinds of
"charity.** Thejoy and virtue of true charity
and love disappear immediately when the
forced tax replaces the free-will offering.
The Lord Jesus Christ himself remarked
that it was more blessed to give than to
receive, thus emphasizing the "blessed-
ness** or happiness accompanying the
free act of giving.
The exercise of any real virtue en-
nobles and enriches the character, giving
real joy and radiance to those practicingit.
Thus the socialized state often robs its
citizens of the flights of exuberance to
which free exercisers of love and charity
are heir.
George Mutter's Orphanages
Over a century ago in Bristol, En-
gland, George Müller set up his orphan
homes which were run and staffed en-
tirely by the free-will offerings and services
of Christians in sympathy with his aims.
Witnesses of Muller*s work said that these

88	Is This a God of Love?
homes full of the victims of suffering were
real havens of love, joy and rest to thou-
sands of orphans. Today many such or-
phanages (not Muller's) have been taken
over by the state. The state institute is
often merely a matter of rates and taxes,
and the person in charge is sometimes a
career person who makes no attempt to be
a "mother" or a "father" to the children.
Often the atmosphere of such an institu-
tion is as cold and devoid of love as the
concrete bricks of which it was con-
structed. Scientists have shown that chil-
dren in such institutions die from lack of
love as often as they die from disease.4
The welfare state, in taking over ev-
erything to remove a few real abuses, too
often kills love and the other virtues which
make up the atmosphere of a home. Re-
moving the freedom of service, the volun-
tary basis, causes love to evaporate. Not
only do the children or inmates of these
institutions suffer. The ennobling of
character which the voluntary staff mem-
bers would themselves receive by free-will
service is lost by their becoming merely

Tlie Origin of Evil	89
career people. The more the world loses
this rigjit to freely exercise true charity,
the harder, colder and more bitter it must
become.
This disastrous effect is seen in the
character of most socialized nations. In
fact, it is producing just what Hitler pro-
duced in Germany by the same means:
de-personalization—people who may do
their duty, but who will not raise a longer
to help close a concentration camp if it
involves personal risk. Their characters
have not experienced the ennobling,
strengthening effect which results from
the exercise of freedom. Hitler was a living
example of a man naive enough to attempt
to demand and command the love and
affection of his people. He may have real-
ized at the end that love evaporates under
just such pressure. The strength of
character necessary to withstand any ty-
rant is not likely to be built in any gen-
eration without the ennoblement of
character resulting from long exercise of
the various human virtues we have dis-
cussed. Such strength will also overcome

90	Is This a God of Love?
the various vicissitudes of life which often
complicate the career of anyone strong
enough in will to be ready to suffer for his
own conscience's sake.
The tendency today is to push every-
thing onto the community, resulting in
private character impoverishment. We all
know the person who "doesn't want to get
involved." The second tendency, contin-
gent partly on the first, is tobringup every
child to conformity, so that only the will of
the community and majority counts. Thus
the steel of a private conscience, indepen-
dent of conformity to the mass, does not
develop. In Hitler's Germany, this was
seen at its extreme development People
saw corpses dropping out of vans coining
from a concentration camps as they passed
through a big city. But fear had so eroded
characters that no one did anything — it
was too dangerous to get involved!
In Chicago a few years ago I was
walking from the Chicago and Northwest-
em Railway Station as I saw a man in a car
literally plow his way through a group of
old ladies as they crossed the street on a

TTie Origin of Evil	91
pedestrian crossing with a green ligfit. He
knocked one old lady down, injuring her.
I took the license number of the car, which
did not stop, and asked for witnesses.
Many young women and men going to
work in a neighboring shoe factory had
seen the incident But all backed away,
muttering something about not getting
involved. I didn't get a single witness.
The idea of the community providing
for everyone's need "from the cradle to the
grave" may be excellent from a purely
humanitarian point of view. But, insofar
as it takes away personal initiative, the
realization of the scheme will never pro-
vide sterling characters ready and willing
to suffer for conscience's sake and to
stand alone, if necessary.
The Creation« Seen And Unseen
The Bible reports that when God
contemplated the creation of the worlds
seen and unseen he wished to construct
them so that they reflected his very own
nature and character. To do this, he had
to build on freedom of action. He is free, so

92	Is This a God of Love?
he had to make man and angels free too.
Man was made ttin his image"—that is, as
a free personality, just as God himself is.
For even "his service is perfect freedom**
and therefore founded and maintained in
love. Accordingly, the angels who serve
him, including their chief Lucifer, the
light-bearer, were given natures capable
of genuine love to their Creator and to-
ward their fellows. They were capable of
wooinghis love and being wooed by him so
that the perfect joy of love could reign in
that kingdom. But this very possibility
had to include the option of rejection.
They were no puppets.
The Bible reports, quite as a matter of
fact, that a large proportion of the unseen
host showed that it really was capable of
the joy ofthat kingdom of love and—by a
very real proof— of rejection! Therefore,
Lucifer did, in fact, show that he could
love, in that he began, for reasons of pride,
to reject the one perfect lover, his Creator.
Turning his back on Him, who is the sole
good, Lucifer became the epitome of the
bad. So arose the cursed, loveless and

The Origin of Evil	93
hateful ones who, in the exercise of their
characters now turned away from the
good toward the bad and proceeded to
destroy the good creation. Men become
"devils" by exactly the same process. Ob-
viously God, his nature being love, did not
immediately take away all freedom of
action and choice from his creatures, thus
removing the possibility of aretum to love.
He allowed them still further freedom of
choice, which meant in their case, still
further destructive activities being per-
mitted. If he had taken away this possibil-
ity of freedom of choice at the first sign of
rejection of love, he would have destroyed
any further possibility of a return to love.
So he has given us all a long time of
freedom of action, that is, freedom to love,
so that the kingdom of love can still begin
again to rule, if man and angels want it. To
have "stopped it all" at once by the strong
hand of "dictatorship" would automati-
cally have destroyed the very purpose for
which the Creator had created his uni-
verse — in order to set up a kingdom of
love in the seen and the unseen.

94	Is This a God of Love?
Therefore, this very existence of evil in
a world created by an almighty, but also a
loving God actually illustrates that the
good and the virtue in it are genuinely
good. Love in such a kingdom really is love
and not anything else. Sometimes it is
taught that love is a covert form of egoism,
etc. Hie state of our fallen world really
shows this to be impossible — the love of
God in a world ofblood is genuine enough!
Destroyers and haters usually want
company in their activities. So when the
chief, Lucifer, the ligjit-bearer, had be-
come the destroyer and the hater, he
immediately approached Eve to make her
and her husband become a part of his
company of destroyers. The pair was also
capable of true love. They possessed true
freedom of choice, as is shown by the
actual choice they made. They, too, turned
their backs on the good, automatically
becomingpolarized to the chronically bad.
So the whole seen and unseen creation of
love became a creation of the wrong choice
—the choice which turned its back on the
source of all ultimate good. In leaving

Hie Origin of Evil	95
open a chance for seen and unseen cre-
ation to return to the ultimate good, God
did not "stop thebad.wThe free choice was
still left open, leaving ruination and its
cause still intact. That is the reason why
God allows it — to provide a genuine
chance for the return of love in general.
The Dignity Of Man
But does not all this lead to one main
conclusion? Does it not all go to show the
truly high esteem in which God holds his
creatures, man included? It means that
God really takes our decisions, our
thoughts and our selves seriously. He
even goes to the lengths of wooing us to
make our decisions ourselves. He does
not so construct us that we are puppets
who have all decisions programmed —
even though many physical processes
within the body are pre-programmed.5
True love is, in this respect always the
same—it always esteems and respects its
partner. It takes the partner seriously.
The same thoughtalso expresses why
God bothers to woo men by the foolish-

96	Is This a God of Love?
ness of preaching"6 and not by sending, as
he could, mighty angels with his message.
Perhaps they would only succeed in terri-
fying poor humanity if they appeared in
their supernal splendor. God's purpose is
to win man's simple trust and confidence,
to win our devotion and genuine love.
Therefore, he uses the natural methods
available to win our decision for him. If he
overawed us in any way, that might make
craven slaves of us rather than whole-
hearted sons. If he were to browbeat us
into submission, he would only gain what
Hitler did — the abject, groveling fear (if
not secret hatred) of his would-be part-
ners.
Thus a God of love avoids like the
plague the dictator's methods in dealing
with man, the object of his love, and uses
the lover's better method. It is very funda-
mental to see that one cannot terrorize
people into love. Consider the miracles
Jesus performed in this light. He never
used a show of divine power in healing to
frighten people into belief. In most cases,
after doing some mighty healing deed, he

The Origin of Evil	97
admonished those who had seen the deed
or experienced it to keep veiy quiet about
it Jesus' warning "tell no man" is almost
proverbial in this respect Hie fact is, God
does not wish to force our intelligence or
our will to reduce us to the state of cring-
ing slaves. He wants redeemed sons, who,
of their own free will, love, respect and
gladly serve him.
The Degree Of Man's Freedom
Thus we conclude that man must be
free indeed if he is ever to be able to love
indeed. There is a consequence to all this
which the reader will have surely noted
already. It is this: Is man so free that God
has abrogated all authority overhim? Can
man do exactly and precisely as he likes as
long as he likes so that he can be said to
possess a totally unfettered freedom in all
directions as far as he himself chooses?
Need he never fear that his Creator will
intervene — all in the interests of man's
ability to love and exercise virtue?
Although the Bible teaches that man
has a bona-fide free will and can certainly

98	Is Tills a God of Love?
say no to his Creator's will and plan (the
very state of our poor world shows that
this is de facto the case), yet it teaches too
that there are limits to that freedom just
as there are limits to God's wooing activi-
ties of man. These wooing limits, it will be
remembered, were founded in God's
counsel from his side and, in time, from
man's side. In the first place, God in his
inscrutability sets a time limit for his
wooing of our free will. Thus it cannot be
said that we have perfect free will to accept
or reject his wooing at any time. Our free
will interacts with his free will to woo us
and if he chooses to stop the courting
process, our free will can do precisely
nothing about the newsituation. Hereitis
no longer unfettered. Second, repeated
rejection of the goodness of God's courting
sears the psyche of man, rendering it less
and less receptive. This, too, is a process
we cannot alten it is like the second law of
thermodynamics at work in our inward
man, and our free will cannot alter it.
Tlie same principle applies through-
out man's kingdom in its relationship to

TTie Origin of Evil	99
man's Creator. Man can say no to his
Creator for a certain time by expressing
free will. But this process of saying no of
our own free will to God interacts with
God's free will and may produce a no from
his side. For us dependent creatures this
is the same thing as judgement superven-
ing after grace. We all can turn our backs
on him and run away from him and his
goodness — until we reach what may be
looked upon as the end of our tether. The
tether represents the change in God from
grace to judgement. How long that may
take in each individual case of God's
dealings is unknown to his creatures.
This state of affairs is well seen in the case
of the apostle Paul on the Damascus road.
Paul had enjoyed perfect unfettered free
will to rebel against Christ and had done
so very successfully, until evenhe reached
the end of the tether God had allowed him.
Then God intervened severely, blinded
him and reduced him to the dependence
of a child in his helplessness. But even in
a drastic intervention of this type, the
judgment of God was mixed with great

100	Is Tliis a God of Love?
mercy and it led to Paul's seeing the grace
of God in restricting his field of unfettered
free will. But perhaps his free will in the
strictest sense of the term wasnottouched.
Perhaps his knowledge was increased.
If we do not recognize some definite
limits to our freedom, we risk abrogating
God's ultimate authority and, indeed,
sovereignty. Yet these limits in no way
alter the conclusions we have drawn about
the vital nature of freedom if we are to be
able to love — or to rebel. One reason for
this fact is that we ourselves do not know
where the limits we are talking about lie.
Therefore we are, to all intents and pur-
poses, unlimited in our freedom from our
own perspective. From our own point of
view we are free to act wander, rebel or
love as under-sovereigns within a small
area of God's sovereign kingdom. It is just
within this area of real unrestricted free-
dom that real love and virtue can and do
rule in us. Outside these unseen limits are
areas of judgment and no-freedom. But
since they are unknown to us, they are, for

The Origin of Evil	101
practical purposes, fictitious for us and
thus of no concern in our decisions to
rebel or to love.
The very fact that man has never
succeeded in devising a formal proof of
God's existence shows how completely
God can and does hide himself and his
limits from our eyes. This being the case,
most men act within the area of their own
lives as completely free agents as far as
their intelligence is concerned.This makes
their decisions in that frame of mind
completely free will and therefore valid
from the point of view of exercising true
virtue. We conclude, then, that the limits
God has set for all mankind do not alter
our decisive free will and its accompany-
ing power of love or rebellion. These very
limits maintain God's sovereignty while
allowing man free agency in the area ofhis
own consciousness.
One more thing deserves mention at
this point the "tether" we have referred to
as God's restricting hand on our free will
should not be regarded as something
fixed or static. It is not of a set permanent

102	Is Tliis a God of Love?
"length.** It is my belief that the more
devoted a man is to God's will for him, the
longer the tether" will become. That is,
the greater will be the radius of freedom of
action. To stick to our analogy of a tether,
we might say that its elasticity depends
upon our will being congruent with his
divine will. To use the words of the apostle
Paul, to "win Christ" and to attain to his
confidence in us is the same thing as
saying that the more we attain to the
width, depth and breadth of God's will, the
more we attain to his sovereign freedom
too. As one prayerbook has it "His service
is perfect freedom."

103
Chapter V
The Problem qfRebtdLding
Just what would we expect a God of
love to do after his creatures had chosen
the wrong road — turning their backs on
the only good?
The Scriptures say that even before
the wrong choice had been taken either by
man or angels, God, because he is omni-
scient knew all about it. He had even
drawn up careful plans in advance to cope
with the situation that would arise, even
though he was in no way responsible for
it nor did he cause it (cf Rev. 13:8, Eph.
1:4, Heb. 4:3, 1 Pet. 1:19-20).

104	Is This a God of Love?
Tills last met—that God, ifhe is God,
must obviously have been omniscient
with respect to the fall long before it
happened — has been a stumbling block
to many. Actually, few real intellectual
difficulties are involved in this matter if it
is considered carefully.
If I observe a person carefully over a
period of time, I may notice some of his
little idiosyncrasies. He may say "Ah,M for
example, as a prelude to every difficult
word he has to pronounce. Or he may
twitch his eyebrows (or his ears) before
relating a good joke. Gradually I learn to
predict just what he is going to do before
he actually does it. My previous observa-
tions allow me to do this with a fair
amount of accuracy.
However, my ability to foretell his
actions in no way makes me responsible
for them when he acts. Similarly, the met
that God was able to foresee what Adam
and Eve, the angels and mankind in
general, would do, does not necessarily
implicate him in the sense that it makes
him responsible for initiating their actions

The Problem of Rebuilding	105
and choices. The only implication is that
involved in his having given them a glori-
ously free choice of action in order to
create the possibility of their love.
The Problem Of The Consequences
At this point many will maintain that,
if God saw in advance the chaos, misery
and suffering which would certainly fol-
low the gift of the possibility of love, why
did he proceed with his plans to create.
Washenotrathersadistictohave persisted
in these plans, knowing the consequences
in advance?
In principle, the same type of ques-
tioning arises every day in our own lives,
but seemingly we don't recognize this fact.
Consider, for example, the decision we
must make on whether to marry. Even the
marriage ceremony emphasizes rather
drastically that the same question is in-
volved, for the clergyman says our mar-
riage vows are binding until death us do
part. Surely there is scarcely greater grief
than that experienced by a realty devoted
couple when separated bydeath. We could,

106	Is Ulis a God of Love?
of course, avoid this terrible grief by the
simple expédient of not creating a mar-
riage relationship at all! Avoid marriage
and its love relationship and no grief of
parting by death will ever overtake you.
Yet, we rightly go into marriage with
our eyes open. We know that in normal
circumstances, death and all its sorrows
will overtake us and will separate us. Most
of us fear this more than we could ever
say. In spite of all this we marry, because
we believe that the joy of love and the
ennoblement of giving ourselves to an-
other in the abandon of devotion even for
a day (and forty or fifty years pass like a
day) is better than no love at all. It is
written of Jesus Christ that he endured
the sorrows of death on the cross for the
sake of the joys which would result from
the sorrow.1 The same principle is involved
here. The joy of love, even "short" love,
because it stems from a God of love,
compensates for even the sorrows of a
cruel death such as that which Jesus
suffered for all mankind, and the death
which separates all lovers.

The Problem of Rebuilding	107
The enrichment and ennoblement of
the human character brought about by
the experience of even the brief joy of love,
as God intended it to be, compensate for
certain future death, separation and
present trials. It is a question of balance.
Those who know the love of God in Christ
and those who have experienced a feint
taste of that same quality of love in God-
given marriage will confess that it is worth
the certain severe sufferingwhich it brings
with it. The principle is that even a little,
short-lived love is better than none at all.
Thereasonis that evenmortallove changes
the eternal human psyche.
Evidently the Creator, being love per-
sonified, thinks this way too, for he did
indeed create us and the rest of the fallen
creation, in spite of the foreseen mess and
separation.
All the same, many people — includ-
ing ourselves sometimes — feel tempted
to say "God, forgive God"2 when contem-
plating the dire mess in which the world
finds itself. Yet if it is true as the Scrip-
tures assure us3 that temporal sufiferings

108	Is Ulis a God of Love?
can and do bring eternal recompense, if it
is true that suffering is not necessarily
punitive but canbe remedial as well, then,
relying on the Scriptures, we are able to
accept the anguish, just as God did when
he crucified God to remedy the fall of man.
The next question is: what would we
expect God to do to pull us out of the mire?
The Problem Of God's Answer
Now that the fall has taken place and
sin and anguish are in the world, what
would we expect God's answer to be? The
answer we give will depend entirely on our
conception of God's character.
If God is a God of love, then he is our
loved one. What would we expect a true
loved one to do who had been misunder-
stood and rejected? Perhaps the scrip-
tural answer is the best one here: Love
"suffereth long, and is kind...is not easily
provoked, thinketh no evil... beareth all
things... endureth all things... (love) never
faileth."4
Surely that is the reaction we would
expect of someone who truly loves us.

TTie Problem of Rebuilding	109
Love endures all these things in the hope
of ultimate success in the wooing process
of love. God saw man's wrong choice and
all of its consequences which would lead
to chaos and anguish, long before the
wrong choice was made. When it did
come, however, we would not expect a real
God of love to impatiently and disgustedly
dismiss and destroy the object of his love.
Many who have difficulties with these
points apparently expect God to act like a
hard-hearted unforgiving tyrant rather
than a forgiving father. Such an expecta-
tion probably arises from the feet that
such action is typical of short-fused people
like ourselves. But then, we are no real
examples of love in being short-fused.
In actual fact we would expect a God
of love to try to salvage what he could out
of the carnage. It takes the patience of
genuine love to set about this process. He
had warned in faithfulness and sternness
of the consequences of the wrong choice
—men would surely die of it—but neither
angel nor man heeded. One thing God
would not be expected to do, once the

110	Is This a God of Love?
wrong choice had been taken, would be to
block the way back to himself by attempt-
ing to threaten, cajole or force us back.
Force cannot restore anything in the way
of love. That would be to cut off all possi-
bility of a way back.
How To Restore Love
Thus, in order to restore love, there
remains only one way open—the exercise
of further patient love. Accordingly, God
exercises long-suffering and patience in
trying to win us back freely to love and
reason.
Therefore, we should expect the con-
sequences of the fall not to be "fire and
thunder," but rather the "still small voice"
in the attempt to realize the word said
about God by the apostle: **who desires all
men...to come to the knowledge of the
truth."5
But this attitude of quietness and
perseverance can be mistaken for passiv-
ity or even inactivity. A large part of the
Scriptures is devoted to just this point in
fact. God is not inactive; he is not indiffer-

Ttie Problem of Rebuilding	111
ent. He is certainly not dead: The Lord is
not slack concerning his promise, as some
men count slackness; but he is
longsufifering toward us, not willing that
any should perish, but that all should
cometorepentance.6Thismeansjustwhat
it says: not all men will repent and come
to a knowledge of the truth. But it con-
firms that God is a God of love and
patience who is ready and willing to receive
all who do turn to him.
The fact, then, that He has waited so
long before judging sinful man is, in real-
ity, another indication of God's true
character — loving-kindness, patience,
long-suffering, not being easily provoked.
Only by looking at the situation in this
way can I see any explanation of why God
has not long since exercised general
judgement on all of us and set up a
"puppet state" on earth and in heaven to
slavishly and immediately carry out his
every demand, just as any dictator would
do if he could, particularly if his will had
been thwarted as God's will certainly has
been.

112	IsThisaGodofLove?
Thwarting God's Win
Some will feel shocked. Can, then,
God's will be thwarted? The fatalistic
Muslims think not Is it possible that his
will may not be done on earth as it is in
heaven? Anyone unsure about this point
should ask himself whether God planned
any act of sadism that has taken place.
Was it his will to kill six or seven million
Jews in gas chambers simply because
they were Jews? Was this not rather,
thwarting God's perfect will? And does not
any other sin also thwart it?
Sinning is one way of thwarting his
will. Another way would be to set up a
dictatorship to "restore order to the cha-
otic creation." If this route to rebuilding
creation were adopted, it would just as
effectively thwart God's real purpose of
setting up a kingdom of love. Under the
present circumstances of freedom to do
good or bad, there are still a few people
who see the situation as it really is and
who turn to God to be refreshed by his
love, even in the midst of the general
anguish of creation. Even a little of such

The Problem of Rebuilding	113
love and refreshment is better than none
at all. If the Lord had judged immediately
after the fall or after any sin, how many
who have since drunk of the water of the
well of life and love would have been lost
to him and his kingdom of love for ever?
His patience has been rewarded with
responding love which would have been
impossible if immediate judgment had
supervened.
King George VI Of England
Astory is told about King George VI of
Great Britain and how he won Elizabeth.
As ayoung man the future king fell in love
with the charming young Scottish lady.
After a long time of reflection he plucked
up his courage and approached her on the
subject although he was rather shy, es-
pecially with the opposite sex. He had
never been much of a lady's man and was
neither very robust nor strongly mascu-
line in the film-star sense of the word.
Moreover, he had a slight speech defect,
which added to his difficulties. His pro-
posal was rejected.

114	Is This a God of Love?
The young prince, greatly upset over
this rebuff, asked his mother, Queen Mary,
for her advice. The Queen listened sympa-
thetically to her son's tale of woe. Then she
told him she just wanted to ask one
question before advising him. Did he re-
ally love Elizabeth only? Would he be able
to find a substitute if Elizabeth proved
reluctant? After a moment's consider-
ation, he replied that he would marry
Elizabeth or no one else. "Well then," said
his mother, there is only one way open to
you. Go and ask her again."
So the young prince put his pride in
his pocket, gathered up his remaining
courage, and arranged another interview
with Elizabeth. He probably stuttered as
he repeated his proposal, remembering
what had happened to him the first time
at her hands. She refused him again.
Not knowing what to do then, he
returned to his mother, Queen Mary, for
advice. Again she listened quietly—some
say, severely — to the whole story. She
showed him every sympathy, and, after
hearing all he had to say, indicated that

The Problem of Rebuilding	115
she had one question to ask before she
could advise him. The question was: "Do
you really want her after this rebuff?
There are plenty of other young ladies
around who would be delighted to have a
prince as a husband. I myself could show
you some.** But poor George was quite
clear about his feelings. It was Elizabeth
or no one at all. Then," said his mother,
"in that case there is only one way open to
you. Go and ask her again."
So, after a considerable period of
mental preparation, the young prince
approached the pretty young Scottish
lady the third time. In the meantime, she
had noticed how serious the prince was.
His love and determination to win her had
indeed been constant She saw that the
great effort he made in coming the third
time, putting his pride in his pocket dem-
onstrated his singleness of purpose. And
she began to recognize something new in
herself. His undoubted love toward her
was beginning to kindle an answering fire
in her own heart. His warmth of love, even
though he was awkward and not very

116	Is This a God of Love?
good at courting a young lady's affection,
was beginning to warm her affection to-
wards him. In short his love was begin-
ning to kindle her love, and she began to
transmit some of the love she received
from him. She began to feel she was able
to say that she loved and admired him in
his singleness of purpose and constancy.
Thus, the story goes, began one of the
really happy families in the annals of royal
households. This love lasted until the
king's death.
Love begets love. But it often has to be
very patient, longsuffering and kind until
the fire is kindled in the prospective
partner's heart The Scriptures say that
God woos in one way or another every
man and woman ever bom.7 Through the
circumstances of life, or through the
Scriptures, he quietly goes on as the years
pass, until we begin to return to him some
of the warmth of love which he has for us.
For we are told that God has his delight
among the sons of men.8 He loves us,9
indifferent or rejectors though we have
been of his overtures towards us. He is

The Problem of Rebuilding	117
working toward the day when we may
begin to return to him the same love, and
to delight in his friendship as he will
delight in ours.
Once kindled, this love must be regu-
larly tended in order to maintain the
warmth of the blaze which God intends
our love to be — warming and refreshing
to both partners, so that both can rejoice
in the happiness which love brings. God is
love and we were so constructed in his
image that we can only flourish when
bathed in such love—breathing it in and
giving it out.
But it would be one-sided to leave the
story here. All love stories do not end this
way. We must look at one other less
pleasant possibility.
The Final Refusal
There comes a time in every love affair
where a final answer toward the wooer
must be made. This final answer may be
either yes or no. One day the wooed one
maymake a rejection which, although she
perhaps did not know it was the final one.

118	Is This a God of Love?
It turns out to be permanent. In the one
case, she may, of course, die. That fin-
ishes the wooing of a mortal man—when
immortality lays hold of the prospective
bride.
Another possibility is that the wooer
may cease to woo. The *wooed** is not the
only one who has a free will to accept or
reject the wooer. God as the wooer has a
free will too — to stop or to continue
wooing according to his infinite wisdom.
He can decide how long to woo and be
rejected and also when to stop wooing
altogether. Even this final decision to stop
wooing, will, we are told, be made on a
basis of love. It will, accordingly, be put off
as long as possible.
There is a third and last possibility. If
the wooed marries another, then further
courtship by the first suitor would be
thorougjily out of order and outside the
confines of love. The Scriptures say quite
clearly that this state of affairs may be
reached in the spiritual sense. There comes
a time when a man umarries this world,**
and after that God no longer offers his

The Problem of Rebuilding	119
salvation, his "marriage relationship" to
him. His Spirit strives with him no longer.
A man's spirit and God's Spirit become
forever estranged, for man's spirit finally
"marries another," selling itself to this
world and its rebellion against the Most
High.
We humans can seldom clearly see
when such a final act takes place. We
cannot determine when God's Spirit gives
a man up forever. But that such does
occur is perfectly clear, even though it is
invisible to man's mortal eye. We can give
ourselves entirely over to material things
such as a career, money or social stand-
ing. It may be the love of things more
definitely sinful that cuts us off. In ex-
treme cases, we can "sell ourselves to the
devil'' quite consciously—as many Nazis
did when they knowingly cooperated with
Hitler in liquidating human beings in the
interests of their own promotion within
the party. Many do the same just as
effectively when they value promotion in
their jobs before promotion in the king-
dom of heaven. They do not seek "the

120	Is This a God of Love?
kingdom of heaven first"10 Some men re-
solve never to discuss spiritual matters
again because "they disturb." For them,
the courtship is over; they're married to
another.
The New Testament letter to the He-
brews speaks of that cessation. "Today
when you hear this voice, do not harden
your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day
of testing in the wilderness, where your
fathers put me to the test and saw my
works for forty years. Therefore, I was
provoked with that generation and said,
"They always go astray in their hearts;
they have notknown my ways." As I swore
in my wrath, "They shall never enter my
rest.""11
The context of this statement shows
that the Lord spoke and spoke again, and
wooed and wooed again, but the Hebrews
ofthat generation closed their hearts and
inward ears. In the end God gave them up,
and that generation, except for Joshua
and Caleb, never entered the promised
land but perished in the wilderness. This
serves as a parable for us, to whom God

Tlie Problem of Rebuilding	121
also speaks. We can be so occupied with
the joys and trials of this life that we, too,
do not hear. We, too, can miss the joy and
rest of his love by acting as did the He-
brews.
"For it is impossible to restore again to
repentance those who have once been
enlightened, who have tasted the heav-
enly gift, and have become partakers of
the Holy Spirit and have tasted the good-
ness of the Word of God and the powers of
the age to come, if they then commit
apostasy, since they crucify the Son of
God on their own account and hold him
up to contempt.**12
This warning is to those who have at
one time responded to God*s wooing, and
have therefore tasted his goodness, and
then cease to respond. Atime comes when
it is impossible to renew them, for the
striving of God*s Spirit with them ceases.
Another Scripture passage speaks in
exactly the same tenor: "For if we sin
deliberately after receiving the knowledge
of the truth, there no longer remains a
sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of

122	Is This a God of Love?
judgment, and a fieiy fire which will con-
sume the adversaries... How much worse
punishment do you think will be deserved
by the man who has spumed the Son of
God and profaned the blood of the covenant
by which he was sanctified, and outraged
the Spirit of grace?.. .It is a fearful thing to
fall into the hands of the living God."13
I take this warning for myself, believ-
ing that I can leam from all Scripture. The
point is, God can and does speak to men;
he does woo. If they respond, he allows
them to taste in this life the things of his
kingdom of love. But his wooing is dy-
namic, and it is dependent on our daily
response. Continual spurning may end in
our "marrying another forever." Then his
wooing stops. Rejecting Gkxfs grace in
Christ simply means declaring ourselves
as candidates for no grace, which is the
same thing as being ripe for judgment.
This raises the whole question of
judgment at the hands of a so-called
loving and gracious God. Can we accept

The Problem of Rebuilding	123
this? Is all suffering a judgment? Or must
suffering and judgment be kept apart in
our minds?

125
Chapter VI
Suffering: Is There Any
Reasonable Interpretation?
Resentment Against Purposeless
Suffering
Many people as they undergo suffer-
ing resent what is happening because
they can often see no constructive pur-
pose behind it "Senseless" suffering, such
as we see when innocent children are
destroyed or mutilated in war, sickness,
plague or famine, makes our anger and
impatience rise. The impatience increases
when we see pain which is not only

126	Is Ulis a God of Love?
"senseless** or "random** but apparently
designed and calculated, or even "refined,**
as is the pain at the root of malaria.
A good example of apparent sadism
arises in considering, as did C.S. Lewis,
the deafness of a musical genius such as
Beethoven.1
An absolute master of the art and
science of sound struck down with stone
deafness! Could a greater refinement of
apparent sadism be conceived? Hence the
impatience of many when they merely
begin to consider the problem of suffering.
Yet, on the other hand, anyone con-
sideringhimselftobe a Christian is warned
on every side to expect both joy and
suffering as normally as summer and
winter. Both are, according to the Scrip-
ture, integral parts of the Christian expe-
rience. Being a Christian does not provide
exemption from suffering with the rest of
mankind. Rather, there is the promise of
additional suffering for Christians. The
apostle Paul says explicitly that the
Christian must enter the Kingdom not
only in joy but through the gates of many

Suffering: Is There Any	127
Reasonable Interpretation?
trials, tribulations and sufferings, being
forsaken of man. and. apparently by God
too. before reaching the final gate of death.2
If God Is Good. Will He Hurt Us?
Lewis puts this very question in an-
other light when he writes: "If God's good-
ness is inconsistent with his hurting us.
then either God is not good or there is no
God; for, in the only life we know he hurts
us beyond our worst fears and beyond all
we can imagine."3 Plainly, this means that
if we believe in God at all. we must believe
that itis consistentwith his perfect nature,
kindness and love to hurt us and to leave
us wallowing in our own blood, as it were,
right up to the end.
Lewis adds a rider to this statement
which asks, in effect if we accept that in
this life God canhurt us beyond all thatwe
can imagine, and that this hurting is
consistentwith his goodness, have we any
valid reasons for believing that he should
not, if necessary, continue hurting us in
the same way after this mortal life is over?4
Obviously there is no moral reason why he

128	Is This a God of Love?
should not, if spirits can endure suffering
as mortal men do. Numerous passages of
Scripture need tobe examined carefiillyin
this connection. Neither Lewis nor we are
suggesting that the torments of hell are
universal after death! The real question is
whether suffering serves any purpose in
this life and in that to come.
We can, however, go one step further
and still remain on safe ground. If God has
good reasons for hurting us now in this
mortal life, he might conceivably, have
equally good reason for continuing the
same process afterward, in death. Clarity
will only come by first asking ourselves,
"What do the Scriptures say?" And sec-
ond, from our answer to why he hurts us
now, what he intends us to achieve by it in
this life and beyond.
Was Christ Ever In Man's Position?
It is often helpful in dealing with such
questions to find out whether Christ the
man was ever in the same position as we
in regard to suffering. If he was, then the

Suffering: Is There Any	129
Reasonable Interpretation?
investigation ofwhat suffering achieved in
him will, perhaps, provide the answer as
to what it is supposed to achieve in us.
Accordingly, looking at one of the
most obvious cases of Christ's suffering—
the cross—may help to solve the problem.
God the Father remained "passive" while
millions of Jews, his own people, were
gassed in brutal cynicism, just as he
"stood passively by," as it were, while men
crucified his own beloved Son.
To make matters worse, the Scrip-
tures say that this brutal act was the
culmination of the prophecy that Christ
was the Lamb of God slain from the
foundation of the world. Thus, the cruel
cross was an eternally foreseen event —
an event which God presided at eternally
in an apparently passive manner in that
he did not stop it. Therefore, the hurting of
the beloved one must have been consis-
tent with God's eternal character. In fact,
God himself suffered, for he was in Christ
as he suffered (2 Cor. 5:19), so God was
actually notjust passive during this event.
He actively suffered.

130	Is This a God of Love?
The Cross And God's Love
This means that if the central doc-
trine of the Christian faith, the cross, is
true, then it is obviously consistent with
God's eternal love to hurt those he loves
best including himself, even to the point
of what we would call barbarism, for the
cross is barbaric.
Whichever way we look we find the
same picture in principle. Christ on the
eternal cruel cross and a so-called God of
love behind him and, indeed, in him.
Humanity and biology for millennia "un-
der the harrow" too, and yet allegedly,
according to the Scriptures, a God of love
behind us, who is until now entirely pas-
sive at the spectacle. Confronted with this
situation, what Lewis feared was not so
much a loss of belief in God at all with its
concomitant victory of pure materialism
in him. That solution would have been too
easy, foritwould have meant that a simple
overdose of sleepingpills at any time could
have gotten him out from "under the
harrow" forever. Far too simple! What

Suffering: Is There Any	131
Reasonable Interpretation?
worried Lewis was that man and biology
might be trapped, as it were, in a labora-
tory in which God might be the eternal
vfvdsectorand we the rats!5 Lewis says that
the despair in which the Son of God died
when he cried out "My God, why hast
thou forsaken me?1* migjit have been the
result of Christ finding out that the cross
was, in reality, a carefully baited labora-
tory trap which sprang at death and from
which there was no escape after God had
lured him into it.
Looked at dispassionately, surely even
a fallen person like myself, possessing
scarcely a trace of the love I attribute to a
God oflove, could not have stood passively
by while they crucified him — or gassed
millions of Jews. But then, if we take that
view, God must be morally inferior—even
to me—which is completely nihilistic. We
shall have to scrap that thought too, for it
leads straight to the destruction of all
rational thought on the subject.
Of course God is more compassion-
ate than I. But then why was he so

132	Is Tliis a God of Love?
relentlessly passive at the cross? Why
doesn't he relent at the millennia of hu-
man and biological agony?
Hurting In Order To Heal
Might the key to the sore problem be
found in the following considerations: Can
we allow that to do good there are occa-
sions when we must do that which looks
as though it were bad? Put another way,
can we hurt to heal? Obviously we can
allow that, for every good surgeon and
dentist does so regularly and routinely. If,
every time I flinched, gripped the dentist's
chair, or drew back my head in pain at the
relentless drill, the dentist were to stop
and end the torture by filling up the still
dirty cavity with amalgam, he would be
less than a good dentist He would not be
being good, kind or loving to his patient if
he were anything but absolutely unre-
lenting in his thoroughness in inflicting
this therapeutic suffering. We would all be
in trouble again in no time if he did relent.
And then all the pain he had inflicted in
earlier drillings would have been in vain.

Suffering: Is There Any	133
Reasonable Interpretation?
He has to be apparently passive to the
pain he is causing. Does he seem devoid of
feeling? In reality, of course, his passive-
ness to suffering, his apparent lack of
feeling and his relentlessness are merely
motivated by common sense and consid-
eration for his patient, even though the
intolerable pain might persuade me oth-
erwise.
For anyone who has undergone a
molar root treatment two further points
will emerge or throw light on this problem.
The bacterial infection not only causes
excruciating pain, but the toxins released
into the blood will poison the patient to
such an extent that his very conscious-
ness maybecome clouded. He may scarcely
knowwhat he is doing because of the pain
and poison. Then the dentist begins work
with his awful drill. The pain becomes
more excruciating until the center of in-
fection is reached. Then the poison pres-
sure is released, and immediate relief is
felt though it is not yet complete. As soon

134	Is This a God of Love?
as no more poison is being released into
the blood, the head begins to clear and the
pain to subside.
First, then, in order to remove the
hurt of decay, sometimes more pain has to
be inflicted — worse than that of the
original sickness. But the worst pain acts
therapeuticaUy on the first pain and purges
it away. Second, only when the basic
trouble begins to be cured does clarity of
thought return.
The Scriptural Position
Scripture teaches, in essence, pre-
cisely this view on the meaning of suffer-
ing. The fall introduced the "decay" of
humanity and nature resulting in the
hurt which afflicts us. To cure this fester-
ing mess, the Bible says a good but re-
lentless surgeon is needed to drill and drill
until reality is too horrible to bear, until
flesh and blood can no longer take it —
until we believe we are forsaken by God
and man. The Bible describes in detail
both the setting in of the decay and its
radical, but painful cure. Our species has

Suffering: Is There Any	135
Reasonable Interpretation?
decayed from its original state and be-
come, as it were, a lower or decayed
species, as I have described elsewhere.7
The cure requires radical and drastic
treatmentinvorving, first of all, thereaching
of the "focal point of the infection,** and
then the "removal of the deformities caused
by decay. " Christ's death and resurrection
"reached the focal point" of the trouble, as
it were. But the "deformities of the decay"
have also to be corrected, and that takes
time and can be expected to be painful.
One of these "deformities" is con-
nected with the "clouding of the intellec-
tual and rational processes" which ac-
companies the fall. The apostle described
them in Romans 1 as a "darkening of the
mind" so that the normal logical thought
processes for which we were designed
become garbled. One of the by-products of
suffering is seen here. For although suf-
fering and toxins may "knock us silly," the
removal of the latter can bring clarity of
thought. It is a fact that sin darkens the
mind. The corollary that redemption and
holiness enlighten the mind is also true.

136	Is This a God of Love?
For salvation not only redeems us from a
lost eternity; it also redeems us from a
lost, clouded, befuddled consciousness at
present. By taking away our sin, we be-
come saved for eternity. But we must not
forget that this same saving process brings
light and radiance to the heart and the
intellect right now, the process being one
of growth — growth in this life.
Accurate Surgery Or Wholesale
Butchery?
Can the skilled, accurately aimed
work of the dentist on a tooth with its
concomitant pain and healing, be com-
pared with the wild, indisdplined, purely
destructive agony which afflicts much of
mankind today? Here again, for any sat-
isfactory answer, we must turn back to
the archetype of all barbarous suffering,
namely, the cruel cross.
Is it possible to believe that when
wicked men, inspired by hatred and jeal-
ousy, decided to take Jesus, hold a mock
trial, scourge him, display him all night for
the raucous amusement of the troops and

Suffering: Is There Any	137
Reasonable Interpretation?
then finally drive iron stakes through his
hands and feet raising him on a cross to
bleed and suffocate to death — can we
reasonably hold that such a performance
was the work of a skilled surgeon in his
efforts to cure the world of its disease?
The Exact Therapy Of The Cross
The Christian position is frankly that
this was the case: that God, with the
butchery of the cross, did cure the world
of its disease; that the cross was the work
of a skilled surgeon, even though it looked
from the human point of view like the
exclusively destructive and adventitious
work of the ribald Roman soldiers and
hateful Pharisees. It looks so very much
like this that the cross was considered by
the Greeks to be so unworthy of Divinity
that it was a sheer "scandal.'* But the feet
is, outward appearances may deceive.
The reasonfor this deception is simple.
Outwardly wicked men put him to death
and that was all that man ever saw of the
process. But behind the scenes the great
surgeon did an unseen work through

138	Is This a God of Love?
Christ's suffering. Christ took into his
own body the very **virus" which was at the
root of man's sickness — the turning of
man's back upon the only good one and
his perfect will. The Bible says that this
turning is "sin." It is as though Christ in
his death took the organism of decay (sin)
away from me, as well as the toxic prod-
ucts of decay (sins) and allowed the or-
ganism to be cultured in his body until it
killed him. A parasite may kill the host
organism, as when the influenza virus
kills the man it lives on as a parasite. But
in killing the host it also kills itself at the
same time. So Christ took on the causative
organism (sin) together with its toxins
(sins) so that mankind could be freed from
both by embracing his act
This was the secret surgery or therapy
which went on unseen to the human eye
when they crucified him. Thus, the sense-
lessness of the cross is only superficial —
superficial to the uninitiated. Its sense-
lessness becomes sense to those who

Suffering: Is There Any	139
Reasonable Interpretation?
probe to the bottom of the mystery and
find that he did, in fact, bear their sin and
sins in his own body on the tree.
Christ at Calvary reversed the pro-
cess of rejecting God's known will by
turning to, embracing and doing God's
known will, even though it meant his own
suffering and death. Man's act in turning
away from God was reversed by Christ
when he embraced God for us anew with
his will. However, he embraced not only
the basic cause of the ill — the turning
away — but he took on himself the con-
sequences, the "metabolic products," as it
were, of that fatal wrong choice. He took
my sickness and my sicknesses on him-
self. No one knows just how he accom-
plished this, just what mechanism he
used. All we know is that we could not do
it, for none of us could die in a valid way
before God for the sin of another. The
Father gave his permission and command
to Christ to lay down his life as a ransom
for many. And Christ obediently did just
that The man Christ reversed Man's
disobedience.

140	IsTTiisaGodofLove?
The Scriptures teach one other point
on the meaning of suffering. Hebrews 5:8
teaches that even the Son of God learned
obedience by the things he suffered. If the
suffering of the dreadful Cross produced
positive results in the Son of God in this
way, perhaps we are justified in thinking
that even dreadful butchery of this son
may not be entirely negative in its effects
even in our own case.
A Less Ugly Way?
This is, I suppose, the legal way of
lookingatthetherapyChristaccomplished
for me at the cross. As such, it is of vast
importance, providing, as it does, the
basis of salvation from the guilt of sin for
eternity. Some will say it is horrible. It is.
To think that God could find no other
method than a bloody cross, cruel iron
nails through his hands and feet, before
he could redeem me from Adam's fatal
mistake, fills me with dismay. Surely a
more genteel, aesthetically acceptable
method could have been found for such a
momentous piece of therapy.

Suffering: Is There Any	141
Reasonable Interpretation?
This brings us to the second point we
must make on this subject. It concerns
the blood, the sweat and the desolation of
the cross of Calvary, in short, the ugliness
and horror of such a piece of restorative
therapy. The utter cruelty of it shocks
even wicked men. Let us look, then, at this
second great problem of the cross — its
ugliness.
It is written of Christ: "In the days of
his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and
supplications, with loud cries and tears,
to him who was able to save him from
death, and he was heard for his godly fear.
Although he was a son, he learned obedi-
ence through what he suffered; and being
made perfect he became the source of
eternal salvation to all who obey him."7
This is an almost incredible state-
ment for the writer of the letter to the
Hebrews to have made. The Son of God
had always been perfect from eternity
until he came into time at the incarnation.
During the incarnation he was without
sin and therefore still perfect. What the

142	Is This a God of Love?
writer is teaching here will answer our
question as to why God chose suchacruel
method of redemptive therapy.
Made Perfect
The process of "being made perfecr
referred to here means, in this context
being "made mature." If a child is perfect
in mind and body, there is nothing we can
complain about. But his perfection as a
child needs to grow into the mature per-
fection of an adult This process is one of
growth in body, mind and experience.
There is no quick way around it To be
genuine, it must be gone through experi-
mentally.
This is exactly what Christ went
through as a man. He was perfect from a
child onward. But the Bible says he grew
in wisdom and stature — that is, he
matured by his experience as a man. Even
though he was the second Person of the
Trinity, he was perfected by growing up as
a man, for he gathered actual experience
of manhood which he lacked experimen-
tally before the incarnation. He certainly

Suffering: Is liiere Any	143
Reasonable Interpretation?
knew all about manhood before he be-
came a man, because he was omniscient.
But now he experienced manhood in the
body — and matured or became experi-
enced, and therefore perfected, in it.
Now notice what some of this man-
hood experience involved for Christ —
somethinghe, as God, had not experienced
as a man before: "In the days of his flesh,
Jesus offered up prayers and supplica-
tions, with loud cries and tears, to him
who was able to save him from death." It
was the fight between the will to be obe-
dient and the terrible reality of a bloody
death on the tree. Here we have anxiety,
anguish and suffering—rightup tobloody
sweat — in anticipation of the abyss of
such a death. He matured as a man by the
experience of anguished prayer in faith to
him who could deliver him. We are assured
that he was heard because of his godly
fear. But he was only saved from death by
going down through death and thus being
led out of it after tasting it.
The result, then, of this seemingjy
unreasonable and cruel death of the cross

144	Is This a God of Love?
and the death which preceded it was that
although he was a Son, yet he learned
obedience through what he suffered. Of
course, he had always been obedient to
the Father's will — the two wills were
always congruent and the Father loved
the Son and the Son the Father. But here
was a new experience of the anguish of
facing death such as all creatures, butnot
God, face. The God of life was to die for all
his creatures and share all their ugly
experiences.
This anguish and suffering of the
cross and the preceding events demon-
strated that Christ was perfectly obedient
to the Father in all things. The experience
of the unnameable pain, anguish and
despair of the cross did something to the
incarnate Son of God which would have
been impossible before the incarnation.
The discipline, the setting of his face as a
flint to go to Jerusalem to face it all, the
refusal of even the analgesic (the myrrh)
before the nails were driven through him,
all that perfected even him, the Son of God
— as Man. Thus, the fact of the cross laid

Suffering: Is There Any	145
Reasonable Interpretation?
down the legal basis for our salvation, but
the bloody cross showed what suffering
and anguish can do if accepted as Jesus
accepted them. His death was expiatory
for sin. But the manner ofhis death served
at the same time as a teacher of obedience
to God the Man; it was a maturer, a
perfecter of the perfect one. If the Son of
God as man was matured in his experi-
ence and learned obedience by it then we
find yet another secret, hidden element in
the mode of "therapy" God introduced by
his Son to cure the creation of its fatal
malady.
It will be obvious then, that, purely
legally, Christ's bare death — by any
method—would have secured our salva-
tion for eternity. However, itwas, perhaps,
not immediately obvious why such a
shocking and barbarous route to death
needed to be taken—a route which made
the cross a scandal to the Greeks and a
stumbling block to the Jews. No wonder
so few of the Greeks or Jews could under-

146	Is This a God of Love?
stand it without the extra information
given on the subject of suffering by the
New Testament—and by experience too.
Suffering — Not Senseless
Thus, the anguish and suflfering of
the cross are not senseless. They are
refined, even though drastic, therapy,
hidden to the eyes of the mortal man in
general. But their function teaches us
why the whole Bible is full of references to
pain, suflfering and anguish. Every person
who embraces the death of Christ (and his
resurrection) as his basis for eternal sal-
vation is warned to expect, as a matter of
routine, sufferings of some sort. Christ
having suffered in the flesh, he is told, is
warning us to arm ourselves with the
same mind—that is, to be on the lookout
for the squalls of suflfering which certainly
await the consistent Christian.8 In giving
us salvation, Christ suffered. In accepting
that salvation, suflfering will certainly find
us out
Further, we are told that the disciple
is not above his Master even in these

Suffering: Is There Any	147
Reasonable Interpretation?
matters.9This means that, in this context,
if the perfection or maturation of the
Master could not be effected without the
anguish of suffering, neither can the
maturation or perfection of the disciple be
accomplished by any other means. The
Christian who thinks he can get through
without this sort of perfecting is living in a
fool's paradise. The disciple is not above
his Master even in learning matters.
The NewTestament is full of teaching
of this kind, teaching which is seldom
even touched upon today, for by its very
nature it is unpopular to the natural
human. Paul the apostle, when writing to
the Philippians, informed them that "It
has been granted to you that for the sake
of Christ you should not only believe in
him but also suffer for his sake."10 Surely
it would have been unnecessary for Paul
to have told the Philippians that it had
been granted them not only to believe but
also to suffer if just believing without
suffering was an ideal state. Clearly, no
one wants suffering. But in the light of the
above it must be a special privilege. Christ

148	Is This a God of Love?
did not relish it. He sweated blood in
anticipation of it. Yet he endured it as a
privilege in viewof the glory ofthe maturity
gained by it
Hois means, again, that even for us
mortals "senseless* suffering need not be
pointless. It may be more than the mere
adventitious agony produced in a mortal
body of flesh and blood. It can be the
gateway to special results in our charac-
ters. In any case, it is poor policy to avoid
suffering by disobedience, for Christ em-
braced trials and suffered because of obe-
dience. It is the Christian path to try to
follow the same policy. For by doing so
Christ has been matured and exalted by
the Father to his right hand. The Father
has committed the entire government of
the world into Christ's capable hands —
hands rendered mature and fit for the job
by being obedient even to letting them be
pierced at the cross.
Is it because the fruit of suffering is so
little known in the Western churches that
we have so few "giants" in the land today?

Suffering: Is There Any	149
Reasonable Interpretation?
In the East the total number of Chris-
tians has been reduced greatly by suffer-
ing. But the proportion of "giants," mature
Christians, has certainly increased there.
Promised Tribulation
The Bible—both the Old and the New
Testament—is crammed with references
to suffering, anguish, tribulation, grief,
trial and affliction.l1 For example, there is
this rather neglected text by the apostle
Paul: "But whatever gain I had, I counted
a loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count
everything as loss because of the surpass-
ing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my
Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss
of all things, and count them as refuse, in
order that I may gain Christ and be found
in him, not having a righteousness of my
own, based on law, but that which is
through faith in Christ...that I may know
him and the power of his resurrection,
and may share his sufferings, becoming
like him in his death, that if possible I may
attain the resurrection (out) from (among)
the dead."12

150	Is Tliis a God of Love?
The Reason Why
It is clear from the letter to the Ro-
mans that Paul knew and experienced
salvation on the basis of a gift of God and
not on the basis of any works he had done.
Nothing he could do could save him from
the penalty of sin. On the Damascus road
he had learned that his own works could
not help him but that Christ's work could
and did. Why, then, does Paul now insist
so much on the value of the work of
suffering he had done in losing everything
for Christ's sake? "Those losses would
never save him.
As we read the cited passage carefully
it becomes obvious that Paul is referring
to the value of suffering and losses in
learning the surpassing worth of knowing
Christ He is referring to a process which
can only be described as one of Christian
maturity or perfection. He suffered the
loss of every privilege which he had pos-
sessed as a well-respected Pharisee in
order to be obedient to Christ. No doubt,
this caused anguish. But his losses were

Suflfering: Is There Any	151
Reasonable Interpretation?
not only abstract. He was whipped, im-
prisoned, mishandled, shipwrecked and
generally maltreated as he went off scour-
ing the world for Christ's sake. He couples
these experiences with the greater experi-
ence which resulted directly from know-
ing the surpassing worth of Christ. Most
of us Western Christians know little of
this. Is it because we have not sougjit out
the only maturing process known in
Scripture leading to this knowledge —
and to Christ? Paul's obedience, like
Christ's obedience, in suffering while do-
ing the will and Word of God is the key to
such depth of experience.
But more about the maturing pro-
cess is to be discovered in Philippians 3.
Christ was exalted to power because he
was fitted for it by the things he obediently
suffered. Paul says in effect precisely the
same of himself and his own exaltation.
For he couples his loss and his suffering
with a capacity to take part in what he
calls the "out-resurrection" (exanastasis)
which he regarded not as a matter of
course for every Christian but as that

152	Is This a God of Love?
which depends on Christian maturity. We
all know—as do the Muslims — that all
of us, small and great wicked and good,
rich and poor, will be resurrected at the
great day of final judgement to receive the
things done in our bodies. But before the
day of general "anastasis" there will be an
"exanastasis" of rising of the dead, not in
general, but in a special resurrection. This
will be at the time of the return of our Lord
in glory to set up his kingdom on earth and
reign. Christislookingformenandwomen
among his redeemed who have allowed
themselves to be matured for this high
office—by means of the same process by
which he was made fit for it—by anguish
and suffering.
Apparently Paul's aim was to accept
the same type of loss and suffering that
his Master had gone through in order to
become prepared himself for high office
with Christ All this is based on the free gift
of salvation by the blood of Christ. But in
building upon this sure basis of free sal-
vation, a maturing or a perfection process
occurs by means of suffering in the will of

Suffering: Is liiere Any	153
Reasonable Interpretation?
God, foreseen both by Christ and by Paul.
Paul's attitude ofheart is confirmed by his
instruction to Timothy: "If we have died
with him we shall also live with him; if we
endure, we shall also reign with him; if we
deny him, he also will deny us."13 This
surely clinches the matter. The Christian
owes his redemption to the free gift of God.
But he owes his degree of exaltation to
close knowledge of the surpassing worth
of Christ and close association with him
and his purposes in his kingdom, and to
the maturation processes which fitted
even the Son for his supreme office in the
kingdom. The experiences of suffering,
endurance and anguish in obedience to
the will of God, no matter how outwardly
senseless and adventitious they may ap-
pear, are the therapeutic instruments
God used on his Son and uses on all his
redeemed who declare themselves willing
for the process.
Tlie same process produces not only
the surpassing knowledge of his will, but
it also makes us useful to others. "For
because he has himselfbeen tempted and

154	IsTTiisaGodofLove?
has suffered, he is able to help those who
are tempted."14 On this basis, who could
be better fitted to help mankind than the
Son of Man who has been through the
same kind of temptation — though far
more acute? This establishes a bond of
confidence between us and him. He un-
derstands because he has experienced
the fire of anguish. Therefore he can help
us. Our lot and his as mortals were once
congruous. It gives me confidence to-
wards him. If I suffer, I can help those who
are suffering, even as Christ has helped
me.
Perfection
This leads us to the third point The
first point was that Christ died and rose
again to justify and redeem us, giving us
the basis for fellowship with the holy God.
The second point was that his sufferings
and endurance were the means of quali-
fication and maturation for his exaltation
to the right hand of God the Father. In a
parallel manner, the suffering$ of Chris-
tians are calculated to mature them for

Suffering: Is liiere Any	155
Reasonable Interpretation?
high office in his kingdom. The third point
is also directly concerned with suffering
and its consequences. Peter develops the
subject in saying: "Since therefore Christ
suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with
the same thought (mind or will), for who-
ever has suffered in the flesh has ceased
from sin, so as to live the rest of the time
in the flesh no longer by human passions
but by the will of God."15
Peter was referring to "suffering in the
flesh," which he says, leads to ceasing
from sin in the flesh. But the same prin-
ciple also applies to matters not directly
concerned with the flesh, as he also con-
firms: "For one is approved if, mindful of
God, he endures pain while suffering un-
justly."16
This simply means that any discom-
fort we have to endure because of our
faithfulness to God's will eventually lead
toourbeing"approved.wInfact, Peter says
that as Christ suffered the same kind of
discomfort for our sakes, so he left us "an

156	Is Tliis a God of Love?
example, that you should follow in his
steps."17 This, then, is the line of action to
which we "have been called."
Therefore, according to Peter, suffer-
ing leads to ceasing from sin and approval
from God. Is it then any wonder that after
his death and resurrection, Christ asked
the disciples questions that bring the
whole problem of suffering into focus:
"Was it not necessary that Christ should
suffer these things and enter into his
glory?**18 "The Christ should suffer and on
the third day arise from the dead.**19 The
same topic was the subject of Paul*s three-
week long argument with the Jews in
Thessalonica: "And Paul went in, as was
his custom, and for three weeks he argued
with them from the Scriptures, explaining
and proving that it was necessary for the
Christtosufferand to rise from the dead.**20
Among other things, suffering made
Christ "approved.**
It is generally conceded that Christ's
death is basic to the Christian's salvation.
But the suffering type of death is not
usually emphasized. Perhaps it is too

Suffering: Is There Any	157
Reasonable Interpretation?
barbaric for our cultured society to bear.
Regardless of our reactions to the awful-
ness of death on the cross, God chose it in
order to bring to mankind a full salvation
— not only from the guilt of sin but also
from its power, not only to save us from
eternal damnation but also to demon-
strate to us how to become approved in
the same way that Christ became ap-
proved. In fact it was to teach us how to
cease from sin.
Rejoicing In Suffering
Paul sums it all up: "So we do not lose
heart. Though our outer nature is wasting
away, our inner nature is being renewed
every day. For this slight momentary af-
fliction is preparing for us an eternal
weight of glory beyond all comparison."21
Clearly, Christ's death and resurrection
are the cornerstones of any salvation that
will take us to heaven. But Paul is talking
about something built on the foundation
of salvation as a superstructure. It is an
eternal, incomparable weight of glory
founded upon salvation, God's free gift.

158	Is This a God of Love?
And it is our suffering, borne in the will of
God, which makes us approved forincom-
parable glory, just as afflictions and suf-
fering brought approval to Christ after he
had patiently and triumphantly borne
them. Temporary afflictions exchanged
for an incomparable weight of glory! Paul
considered it a bargain. So he acted upon
it immediately!
A Possible
Of course, one might say that if suf-
feringis so useful and well rewarded in the
will of God, then let us afflict and scourge
our fellowmen all we can and seek suffer-
ing ourselves. We are doing them a favor
by hurting them or ourselves. This seems
to echo the old argument Let us sin
willfully so that grace may abound. Let us
seek and provoke suffering! God forbid!
The dentist does not willfully or wantonly
bore holes anywhere and everywhere in
our teeth to stop the future possibility of
decay. God is the surgeon, so let him
operate just where it is necessary. He may
and will use wicked men as his scalpel. He

Suffering: Is There Any	159
Reasonable Interpretation?
has promised to punish them for their evil
intentions because they afflict others just
for the sake ofhurting and killing. Though
he uses the same evil for his purposes,
that doesn't give us the right to sin so that
grace may abound by hurting others or
ourselves unnecessarily.
To indiscriminately inflict pain is
wanton. Jesus never regarded pain and
suffering as good things in themselves, for
he abolished them by healing on many
occasions. He also told us to do the same.
The Scripture speaks of death itself as the
last enemy. Pain falls into the same cat-
egory. Pain and death entered into the
world by the fall, when man turned his
back upon God. The point is that God
reverses the evils of pain and death to
produce a glorious result — to glorify his
Son and to glorify man when they both
withstand and endure pain and death in
doing his will. This is how God triumphs
over evil — not by "stopping" it, but by
using it to his greater glory.

160	Is This a God of Love?
Gentling Process
A minister wrote to me on the subject
of the meekness of Jesus, pointing out
that the word meek is often misunder-
stood. In the context used in the Sermon
on the Mount the word translated by
"meek" really means "gentled" or "broken
in" as those terms are applied to horses
trained to work in a harness. The minister
recounted how, as a boy, he had worked
on a farm and helped with "gentling"
horses, breaking them in for farm work.
Later the horses were often used for pull-
ing out tree stumps prior to preparing
wasteland for arable purposes.
The untamed wild horses were use-
less for doing the skilled work necessary
for removing tree stumps. They had to be
thoroughly "tamed" before they could work
constructively with other horses in teams.
The taming or "gentling" process was a
prerequisite for useful work. Once they
had been submitted to the sometimes
harsh process of breaking in, which in-
volved punishment as well as rewards,

Suffering: Is There Any	161
Reasonable Interpretation?
they worked productively for the rest of
their lives and obviously enjoyed it thor-
oughly. As their experience grew, the reins
could be left on their necks and they
would go by themselves from tree stump
to tree stump, assume the correct posi-
tion, wait for the chains to be hitched to
the trunk, and then with all their strength
—nipping and nudging one another in the
process — pull out the stump. If a stump
did not come up at the first pull they would
move to a more favorable angle and try
again.
Affliction and suffering can work as a
"gentling" process, fitting us for God's
work in the present world and the next.
Tnis is the true meaning of the word
"meek" as Jesus used it. What if the
abysmal suffering of mankind and of na-
ture is now being used in God's good
hands to "gentle" us all — even as it
"gentled" his Son? The stakes are high
indeed. Suffering makes us kind to others
who suflfer. Butwhatif abloody war, a rule
of tyranny is realty working out an incom-
parable weight of glory for all those who

Is This a God of Love?
allow themselves to be "gentled" and dis-
ciplined thereby? If this is so, it would be
a fatal blow for the despair and nihilism
into which our generation is so obviously
falling. If eternal glory were to result (and
the Bible says it will), then we could, with
the Christians of old, rejoice in suffering
and jubilate with the apostle Paul: "We
rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that
suffering produces endurance, and en-
durance produces character, and charac-
ter produces hope, and hope does not
disappoint us, because God's love has
been poured into our hearts."22
Again, Why All The Barbarism And
Cruelty?
Some time ago I had the pleasure of
discussing this and related questions with
a U.S. Air Force chaplain. We came to two
main conclusions, which, as we shall see,
throw light on the above problem:
1. We all have some sort of freedom to
choose among the paths in life which are
made available to us. But we never have
any freedom of choice as to the conse-

Suffering: Is There Any	163
Reasonable Interpretation?
quences of any path we choose. For these
consequences are the built-in properties
of the way which we may freely have
chosen. For example, though I choose the
way of cheating in examinations, I cannot
choose the consequences of cheating. They
are built into the way known as cheating.
Similarly, I may freely choose to abuse
drugs — it's entirely my own choice. But,
having chosen this way, I cannot choose
the consequences of drug abuse such as
drug dependence, liver necrosis, delirium
tremens or hallucinations. They may be
built into the path of drug abuse. The
choice of the way is free, but not its
consequences.
Man chose and still chooses to turn
his back on the only good — God. Before
doing this he was automatically part of
paradise, for paradise was everywhere
that God was. Having chosen good (God),
paradise could not be chosen — it was
part of the way with God, paradise was
"built in" it. Of course, paradise included
eternal and abundant life. However, later,
in turning his back on God, man refused

164	Is This a God of Love?
the way of paradise and chose the alterna-
tive way built into the choice of following
Satan.Thebuilt-in consequences included
such matters as pain, sorrow and death.
Thus man found that after making his
perfectly free choice for Satan, he auto-
matically began to reap the consequences
of this choice.
What can be done about the situa-
tion? To get man out from "under the
harrow," to "pull the tines* out of his flesh
now that they are there is painful too.
Piercing flesh hurts in the first place, but
so does pulling out the tines.
2. Suffering is not necessarily a judg-
ment. Christ has assured us on that
point.23 In a way, suffering was a judg-
ment — the judgment following a wrong
choice. But curing the consequences of
the fall is painful too. When we suffer, the
pain may be either punitive or curative. It
may also be a mixture of the two. Until we
get behind the scenes of the material life,
we shall probably never be able to sort out
the two. Nevertheless, both kinds of agony
can serve to heal us.

Suffering: Is There Any	165
Reasonable Interpretation?
Importance Of The Stakes
There is just one more point to be
made in dealing with our problem. Prob-
ably few of us know what we really believe
until we are asked to suffer some inconve-
nience or even pain for it. How much are
we willing to suffer for what we really
believe? Tlie length we go along that road
shows the depth of our belief. The Bible
holds up Christ as an example — he
suffered unto death because he totally
believed in redeeming us. Some, like
Falstaff, run away to fight another day,
believing that discretion is the better part
of valor. Surely such persons have shal-
low faith in what they fight for!
Christ loved his own, right up to the
cruel death on the cross. This fact estab-
lishes forever his absolute faith in his
calling to redeem the world. Second, it
establishes the degree of his love toward
those whom he purposes to redeem.
Therefore, it is obvious that suffering
may act as a sieve or a filter to sift out the
lighter elements of love and faith and
separate them from the deeper ones. Suf-

166	Is Tills a God of Love?
fering may show us what we realty do
believe as compared to what are only
words and hot air. The little suffering that
I personally have experienced has cer-
tainty shown me the shallowness of my
faith in many directions. It produces a
clarity of thought in these matters which
is vital, for it leads me to repentance at the
sight of my own shallowness in eternal
matters. Therefore, suffering can act as
the filter I personally need to sort out the
wheat from the chaff in my own dealings
with God, the good one. Fire must sepa-
rate the dross from the gold in normal
refining processes. But after enduring the
fire, the gold is pure gold, though it maybe
less in volume than before the fiery refin-
ing process. Similarly, strong winds blow
away the chaff and leave the corn.
The Joy Of Relief
In C.S. Lewis* famous Screwtape Let-
ters the "Law of Undulation" is used to
describe the ups and downs to which all
humans are subject If we experience

Suffering: Is There Any	167
Reasonable Interpretation?
heights of joy, we shall also experience
depths of misery. This is a perfectly nor-
mal process to which all flesh is heir.
This idea maybe applied to our inter-
pretation of the suffering of mankind. The
person who has experienced the horrors
of great pain is the most thankful, posi-
tively grateful, for any periods in which he
experiences less or no pain. Such joy is
unknown to the man who has not experi-
enced pain.
The apostle John in the Revelation
speaks of this type of exultation when he
describes the arrival in heaven of those
"who came out of great tribulation."24 By
the very contrast that which they had
suffered made their joy the greater.
It may be legitimately asked why the
fall of man should have of necessity brought
the suffering and death of which the Bible
speaks. One can understand it having
brought suffering and death to Adam. But
why to the rest of the world? It does not
help much to maintain that Adam was the
head of visible creation which fell and that
it fell with him. The creation under Adam

168	Is This a God of Love?
was not rational as was Adam and there-
fore could not possibly bear the guilt that
he, being rational, had to bear.
Our answer to this question really
depends on our conception of the state of
nature before the fall of Adam. When the
Bible maintains that death and decay did
not exist before Adam's fall, it is really
introducing a concept entirety beyond the
power of mortal man today to conceive of.
For the idea of no death and decay cuts
clean across our total experience of the
laws of thermodynamics, particularly the
second law. It implies no ageing — no
entropy increase. The second law states
that although the total energy in the
cosmos remains constant the amount of
energy available to do useful work in the
cosmos is always getting smaller with the
passage of time. As I have pointed out
elsewhere, this again brings with it the
concept that chaos, disorder and decay
are always on the increase with the pas-
sage of time in our total cosmos.25
Illness, decay, suffering and death
can be regarded as accompanying symp-

Suffering: Is liiere Any	169
Reasonable Interpretation?
toms of entropy increase. In fact we mea-
sure the passage of time itself, in the last
analysis, by the rate of entropy increase—
how fast a dock, atomic or otherwise,
runs down. The corollary holds equally
well that without time there could be no
increase in entropy. The same meaning
conveyed by "timelessness" and "no en-
tropy increase" could be communicated
by saying that an "eternal*' or changeless
state had been reached.
The creation of Adam, as described in
Genesis, corresponds roughly to this ex-
ternal state of affairs. For we are intro-
duced to him in Genesis not as a growing
baby or as a maturing young man but as
an ageless person. Even Eve, produced
from Adam's flesh, was apparently ageless
too — she was, at least, no infant when
she appeared to Adam. In their innocent
state there is no record of their having
children, although Eve certainty had the
sexual organs of a woman and Adam had
those of a man. If they lived in a pre-fall
world where no decay, no death and no
second law of thennodynamics ruled, then

170	Is This a God of Love?
reproduction there was not necessary —
and, indeed, would probably have been an
anachronism.
A consequence of all this is that a
species living in a world in which the
second law did not exist must have been
vastly diflferent from what we would ex-
pect today where the second law reigns
supreme. For example, Adam before the
fall could walk and talk freely with the
Eternal, whose infinite dimensions he
experienced as a matter of course. Traces
of this ability are still seen in Moses and
some of the prophets who moved in the
eternal realm much more easily than we
do. Christ did, too.
If these considerations concerning
Adam's state before his fall are correct
then everything in that primeval state
must have been permanent or "eternal*—
without time, entropy increase or decay,
as they are in heaven or paradise. If the fall
took place in such conditions of eternity
and these eternal conditions had remained
after the fall, this would have meant that
the fall and its consequences are eternal

Suffering: Is There Any	171
Reasonable Interpretation?
too, and therefore irreversible. Adam would
have turned his back eternally upon God
and good, and his chances of returning
would have been ruined forever. This is
probably the state of the lost angels and
Satan, who, living in eternity where no
change in time can be, are lost forever.
Presumably, then, for this reason
God threw Adam and Eve, and the cre-
ation over which they had been set, out of
eternity — and its permanence in para-
dise — into time with its decay, sorrow
and death. God introduced the second
law, the law of impermanence and death,
as a measure to counteract the "freezing"
of Adam's fall. So he rendered Adam's
kingdom and its sin subject to time, the
passage of thus providing a way back into
the kingdom of love for which he had
created man.
Death and decay became fully devel-
oped as a means of return when Christ
used death to overcome the fall on the
cross. This made the second law, and its
accompanying culmination in death, the
grand highway back from the fall to the

172	Is This a God of Love?
kingdom, thus confirming what we have
saidaboveaboutitssignificance. Of course,
the introduction of death and decay to
biology introduced the necessity of re-
production, which did not exist in the
realm of the eternal —just as it does not
exist in the realms of angels, who are
neither married nor given in marriage.
Reproduction is a consequence, at least to
some extent of the introduction of suffer-
ing and death.
The undoing of the consequences of
the fall is best seen in Christ's deed on the
cross. On dealing with the cause of the fall,
in embracing God's will, Christ in the flesh
became Christ the immortal man (the last
Adam), rejoicing at the right hand of God.
The undoing of the causes of the fall undid
the consequences of the fall. Man, first of
all in Christ then took on the properties
and attributes of the original created spe-
cies known as man. He could again move
in time and eternity with equal facility, as
demonstrated by his meeting with the
disciples on the Emmaus road after his
resurrection. The same process (the re-

Suffering: Is There Any	173
Reasonable Interpretation?
opening of paradise) is open to all who
wish for it and seek it in the same way that
Christ did.
The conclusion we draw, then, as far
as our original question is concerned, is
that time and its concomitant decay, suf-
fering and death were introduced to the
whole of Adam's cosmos so as to permit a
way back for Adam's cosmos. If Adam and
his kingdom had remained in eternity,
then Adam's sin would have remained
forever "frozen." Seen in this light, the
tortures of our present time seem to be
necessary mercies consistent with a God
intent on restoring to man and his cosmos
a kingdom of love, and intent on restoring
to Adam his own image.
The undoing of creation was accom-
panied by the introduction of the second
law and its concomitant death and decay.
This is realty the opposite of a creation and
its concomitant decrease in entropy. The
abolition of the second law, suffering and
death, is, in reality the same thing as re-
creation and is spoken of as such in the
Revelation of John.26

175
Chapter VH
Predestination & Free Will
No discussion of the implications of
free will would ever be complete without
mentioning the problem of predestination
or "free will." The whole subject is a diffi-
cult one and ought to be treated by a
theologian rather than a mere scientist.
However, thisbookhas argued very heavily
from the stand point of free will, so it could
be deemed biased, perhaps even tenden-
tious, if we fail to mention that the so-
called opposite doctrine of predestination
or "no free will" does play an important
role too. This was emphasized by Calvin,
of course.

176	Is This a God of Love?
Can free will exist side by side with
predestination or "no free will** without the
two concepts mutually canceling one an-
other out or producing nonsense? The
Scriptures teach that they can and do
exist side by side without annihilating one
another. A comparison of a few texts, as
set out in Table 1, will serve to confirm the
above concept:
Passages Teaching Free Will
Thus it appears that the Scriptures
do teach that man is able to say no to God,
with all the temporal and eternal conse-
quences of such an action. But the same
comparison will also show that man is
exhorted to say yes to God and can do so.
Notice something new here. When a man
has said yes to God he finds that he was
predestined to do so. Man was not nec-
essarily predestined to say no, although
Judas was known prophetically as the
son of perdition (foreknowledge). The point
is, man is exhorted and wooed to say yes.
But when he accepts the invitation he
finds that he was predestined to do so and

Predestination and Free Will

177

TABLE 1
Biblical Predestination
and
Freewill

Passages Teaching
FreeWUl

Passages Teaching
Predestination

Tor God so loved the
world that he gave his
only begotten son, that
whosoever believeth in
him should not perish,
but have eternal life"
(John 3:16)
Also the following:
Mat. 7:24, 10:32-33,
11:28, 12:50
Luke 6:47, 12:8
John 4:13, 11:26,
12:46

"You did not choose me
but I chose vou....I
chose you out of the
world"
(John 15:16,19)
Also the following:
John 13:18
Acts 13:17
1 Cor. 1:27
Eph. 1:4
2Thes. 2:13

178	IsTîiisaGodofLove?
many more texts convey a similar mean-
ing that God'setemal counsel hadforeseen
(not determined) the affirmative decision.
In the case of Judas there was a foreknown
no, and in the case of all Christians a
predestined yes which emerges when they
look back on their free-will decision!
Such a position of free will existing
happily side by sidewith plain predestina-
tion obviously cannotbe handled by simple
logic. From the ordinary human point of
view one concept excludes the other. A
paradox results. Having recognized this
paradoxical situation, we must ask: "Is
reality (including the reality of free will or
*no free will') intrinsically paradoxical in
itself, or is it our description of reality
which is at fault?**
To decide this point the following
must be considered: Reality is multidi-
mensional and probably eternal, whereas
we are three dimensional and strictly
temporal in our present state. Being tem-
poral, we use means of communication
which are temporal and limited in scope.
We are thus trying to describe a vast

Predestination and Free Will	179
apparently limitless scheme of reality in
terms of a means of communication
(language) which is highly restricted, lim-
ited, and generally inadequate for the
great task demanded of it. To formulate
reality, including that of free will and "no
free will," in our strictly limited means of
description is like trying to describe a
probability formula solely in terms of the
Arabic digits 1=10 with no algebra.
To illustrate further, light, as we know
it is a reality, a fact Our eyes appreciate
it without any difficulty at all. However,
when we are asked to describe the reality
of light by means of communication, we
stumble upon untold difficulties. For we
can, and do, describe light equally well
either as corpuscular or as a wave func-
tion. It is, however, perfectly logical to say
that if light is a wave function then it is
certainly not corpuscular in nature. If it is
corpuscular, then it is not a wave func-
tion. The one description excludes the
other in terms of normal logic. Neverthe-
less, modem physics teaches that we

180	Is This a God of Love?
must regard light as correctly described
only in terms of both wave function and
corpuscular concepts.
The area of real difficulty is now delin-
eated: Our dilemma with light does not lie
in the reality and fact of light itself but in
our attempted description of the reality of
light in our means of communication. The
complexities of light overload our descrip-
tive possibilities, producing apparent
paradoxes in the process.
We can try to overcome the apparent
contradiction in our description of light by
maintaining that light is either a wave
function or a particle simply because it
cannot in our logic, be both at the same
time. But if we cut out one description at
the expense of the other apparently para-
doxical one, then we fall into overt error.
For this one side of our description is
inadequate in describing the reality known
as ligjit. The two antipodes are necessary
to describe the whole of light The real
paradox lies then in our inadequate lan-
guage rather than in the reality, light

Predestination and Free Will	181
Returning to free will and "no free
will," if we were to maintain that the fact of
free will cuts out the possibility of predes-
tination oruno free wilT simply because, in
our view, the two concepts are mutually
exclusive, then we commit the same type
of error as we would if we maintained that
light, being a wave function, cannot be
corpuscular. If we go on to insist that free
will is not capable of existing in the pres-
ence of predestination, we are committing
the same error we have noted in parallel
circumstances in light theory. The fact is
that both free will and predestination
express multidimensional reality. But we
in our highly restricted view of reality
cannot appreciate the fact that the two are
congruent and not exclusive. To effect
such a "simplification" is to introduce a
false picture of reality.
Thus, we maintain that free will is a
reality and so is predestination. It is our
limited means of description which makes
them appear to be mutually exclusive.
Reality contains both, and both describe
reality. But we must note one important

182	Is This a God of Love?
consequence of this. If free will is a reality,
in spite of predestination, then all the
consequences of free will described in this
book operate in full vigor — in spite of
predestination which exists alongside it.
Thus, I know that I, of my own free
will, when confronted with Christ chose
not to say no to him. But having said yes
to him, I learned afterwards that my yes
was, in the eternal counsel of God (ulti-
mate reality) a foreknown and predestined
yes. W is foreknown but as far as I
know, not predestined in the Bible. To
eliminate either free will or predestination
is to rob reality of one of its aspects which
needs to be described by these terms. It is
important to realize the difficulties of de-
scription with regard to infinity and eter-
nity — phenomena with which our lan-
guage and thinking apparatus both deal
inadequately. But, obviously, for the
purposes of this book the one aspect of the
truth, that of free will, had to be empha-
sized to clarify the message. But it would
be tendentious to try to eliminate the
other side of the coin. If bona-fide free will

Predestination and Free Will	183
exists, as the Scriptures and experience
maintain it does, then it exists in its full
force and with all its consequences as
outlined.
It will be obvious from the foregoing
that, if God courts man's free-will deci-
sions, he is aiming at influencing him for
good. This activity is entirely legitimate
and does not interfere with our freedom of
action.
The Scriptures teach that there is
more in this question than merely influ-
encing our wills for good. There is, work-
ing against God's Holy Spirit also a con-
trary activity striving to influence man for
evil. Just as a personal good one (God)
courts our will for good, so a personal evil
(Satan) courts us for ill. The Bible teaches
that men do not fight only against flesh
and blood in this life but also against
spiritual wickedness in "high places.wThe
stark reality of this fact in the struggle for
man's will and man's good is underesti-
mated in this day when the masses of
people really believe neither in God nor

184	Is Ulis a God of Love?
the devil. But a whole book would be
necessary to attempt to deal adequately
with this struggle.

Footnotes
Chapter I
1. Rom. 1:19-20
Chapter n
 1.	Julian Huxley, ed., The Humanist
 2.	Acts 17:2, 18:4, 19, 24:25
 3.	Cited by Francis Schaefler,
p. 34. Cf. Ps. 30:9-11
Chapter m
 1.	A.E. Wilder-Smith. Man's Origin-
Man's Destiny. Bethany Fellowship,
Minneapolis, Minn. 55438, U.S.A. and.
The Creation of Life. T.W.F.T. Publish-
ers, Costa Mesa, Ca., 92628
 2.	Ibid.
 3.	Ibid.
 4.	The Glorious Koran. Dawood transi..
Penguin Classics, New York, 1968. See
alsoProv. 16:6
Chapter IV
 1.	F. Schaeffer, (see above), p. 100
 2.	The Glorious Koran, (see above) p.
115. 167
 3.	John 3:16

 4.	R A. Spitz, The Psychoanalytic Study
of the Child. International Universities,
New York, 1945, 1:53; 2:113
 5.	A.E. Wilder-Smith, The Creation of
Life (see above)
 6.	1 Cor. 1:21
Chapter V
 1.	Heb. 12:2
 2.	C.S. Lewis. A Grief Observed.
Seabury, New York, 1961, p. 25
 3.	2 Cor. 4:17
 4.	1 Cor. 13:4-8
 5.	1 Tim. 2:4
 6.	2 Pet. 3:9
 7.	John 1:9; Rom. 1:19-21
 8.	Prov. 8:31
 9.	John 3:16

 10.	Mat. 6:33
 11.	Heb. 3:7-11
 12.	Heb. 6:4-6
 13.	Heb. 10:26-30
Chapter VI
 1.	C.S. Lewis (see above), p. 31
 2.	Acts 14:22
 3.	C.S. Lewis (see above), p. 25
 4.	Ibid., p. 25-26
 5.	Ibid.
 6.	Mat. 27:46; cf. Mark 15:34; Ps. 22:1

Footnotes
 7.	Heb. 5:7-9
 8.	1 Pet. 4:1
 9.	Mat. 10:24
 10.	Phil. 1:29
 11.	Mark 8:31; 9:12; Mat. 17:12; Luke
9:22; 17:25; 22:15; 24:26,46; Acts 3:18;
9:16; 17:3; 1 Cor. 12:26; 2 Cor. 1:6;
4:17; Acts 26:23; 2 Tim. 2:12; Mat. 24:9;
Col. 1:24; 1 Pet. 5:9; 2 Tim. 1:8; Heb.
11:25,35; Phil. 3:10; Acts 14:22; Rom.
5:3; 8:35; Gal. 3:4; Phil. 1:29; 2Thes.
1:5; Heb. 2:18; 5:8; 1 Pet. 2:19.21; 3:17-
18; 4:1,19.
 12.	Phil. 3:7-11
 13.	2 Tim. 2:11-12
 14.	Heb. 2:18

 15.	1 Pet. 4:1-2
 16.	1 Pet. 2:19
 17.	1 Pet. 2:21
 18.	Luke 24:26
 19.	Luke 24:26
 20.	Acts 17:2-3
 21.	2 Cor. 4: 16-17
 22.	Rom. 5:3-5
 23.	Luke 13:4
 24.	Rev. 7:14
 25.	A.E. Wilder-Smith, Man's Origin,
Man's Destiny (see above)
 26.	Rev. 21

Bibliography
Arp, Hans, Fur Theo can Doesburg. De Stljl,
1932.
Camus, Albert, Caligula and Cross Purpose.
Trans. Stuart Gilbert, Penguin Books, Lon-
don, 1947.
Cruikshank, John, Albert Camus and the
Literature of Revolt. Oxford U. Galaxy Books,
New York, 1960.
The Glorious Koran. Dawood trans. Day-
break, Penguin Classics, New York, 1968.
Huxley, Julian, The Humanist Frame.
Macmillan, New York, 1962.
Lewis, C.S., A Grief Observed. Seabury, New
York, 1961.

Sartre, J-P., Les Essais. Baudelaire Series,
Paris.
The Condemned of Altona. Knopf,
N.Y., 1964.
Iron in the Soul. Penguin Books,
London, 1950.
Nausea. Hamish Hamilton, Lon-
don, 1962.
The Reprieve. Penguin Books,
London, 1945.
Schaeffer, Francis, The God Who Is There.
Hodder and Stoughton. London, 1968.
Spitz, R.A., The Psychoanalytic Study of the
Child. International U., New York, 1945.
Wilder-Smith, A.E., The Creation of Life..
T.W.F.T. Publishers, Costa Mesa, Ca., USA,
92628
Man's Origin. Man's Destiny.
Bethany Fellowship, Minneapolis,
Minn., USA, 54413
The Drug Users. Harold Shaw
Publishers, Wheaton, m., USA,
60187

Other Titles Available
by
A. E. Wilder-Smith
TWFT Publishers
P.O. Box 8000
Costa Mesa, Ca. 92628
He Who Thinks Has To Believe
A delightful story of reasoning and
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The Creation of Life
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The Natural Sciences Enow Noth-
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AIDS: Fact without Fiction
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The Scientific Alternative to Neo-
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Dr. Wilder-Smith's latest scientific
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Presents an alternative. Introduces
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Why Does God Allow It?
If there is a God — why does He
permit all the violence and suffering
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The Day Nazi Germany Died
An autobiography by Beate Wilder-
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The Author
Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A. E. Wilder-Smith studied natural sciences at Oxford, England.
He received his first doctorate in Physical Organic Chemistry at
Reading University, England, in 1941. During World War 11, he
joined the Research department of ICI in England. After the war,
he became Countess of Lisburne Memorial Fellow at the
University of London. Subsequently, Dr. Wilder-Smith was
appointed Director of Research for a Swiss pharmaceutical
company. Later he was elected to teach Chemotherapy and
Pharmacology at the Medical School of the University of Geneva
for which position he received his "habilitation" (the senior
examination required for professorial appointments to European
continental universities). At Geneva, he earned his second
doctorate, followed by a third doctorate from the ETH (a senior
university in Switzerland) in Zuerich.
In 1957 - 1958 Wilder-Smith was Visiting Assistant Professor at
the Medical Centre of the University of Illinois, 1959 - 1961
Visiting Full Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Bergen
Medical School in Morway. After a further two years at the
University in Geneva, he was appointed Full Professor of
Pharmacology at the University of Illinois Medical Centre. Here he
received - in three succeeding years - three "Golden Apple"
awards for the best course of lectures, together with four senior
lecturer awards for the best series of senior year lectures.
Wilder-Smith is also a well known speaker on many other topics.
He is Author and Co-Author of over seventy scientific publications
and more that thirty books which have been published in some
seventeen languages. His "Man's Origin, Man's Destiny" and "The
Creation Of Life" are Christian classics. Other books authored by
him include "AIDS: Fact Without Fiction", "Why Does God Allow
It?", "He Who Thinks Has To Believe", and "The Natural Sciences
Know Nothing of Evolution. "
The film series "Origins", which enjoys great popularity in many
countries was produced by Dr. Wilder-Smith. He has also
produced two new films in the "Origins" series - one on
Thermodynamics, and another on Information Theory.
Dr. Wilder-Smith's last Golden Apple award was inscribed, "He
made us not only better scientists, but also better men."