Do Tragedies Like 9/11 Disprove the Existence of the Christian God?
A (hopefully) respectful response to an important question.
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I spent the first 43 years of my life as a somewhat nosy agnostic. I found what people believed intriguing, but never read or heard anything that convinced me that any particular faith or philosophy, out of the multitude of options, was the right one.
I never came to accept that one religious or spiritual movement possessed the pathway to truth.
That is until 4am on 20 March 2015 when my life was changed forever. One minute I was questioning, the next I was sold out. You can read about that here.
Six years, a divorce, a new marriage and a tragic loss later, I remain convinced right to the depth of my being, that the message of Jesus is the only truth worth standing on.
I’m also constantly challenged, puzzled and at times downright disturbed at the behavior and beliefs of some people who identify as Christians.
A case in point
Today this story written by Kitty Williams came up on my feed. She asks an important question, one that if we are honest, challenges even the most devoted believer. In her case she asked if a tragedy like the 9/11 terrorist attack disproved the existence of a (the) Christian God.
I guess to answer this you need to be clear Who the Christian God is.
And who He isn’t.
I believe that He is the God revealed in scripture, the creator of the universe and of everything in it. I believe he is a wholly good, and holy God. I believe that humanity became separated from this holy God by our sin, and that Jesus, who is himself God, came to earth to usher in God’s Kingdom, to announce the opportunity for sinful people to be reconciled to their holy Creator through belief in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus.
I believe this because my life has been completely transformed over the last six years that I have been following Him. I am a completely different person to who I was. I believe what I read when I truly sit and contemplate the Bible. As I meditate on the scriptures God’s desire for reconciliation with humanity leaps from the pages.
He desires reconciliation from a separation that was caused by us, not Him.
Unfortunately, humanity is resistant to the concept of a God who is holy, just and also loving. We resist because we blame God, and not ourselves for the evil that takes place in our world. We humans like to minimize the consequences of our own sin, and the effect that has on ourselves, humanity and our planet, and instead project the blame for, and consequences of, that sin onto God.
Like an abusive spouse we minimize the consequences of our own behavior, and instead direct blame at the One that our conduct most hurts and offends. We take the consequences of evil such as terrorism, and project the blame away from the sinful humans that caused it and onto the only one who in our human thinking, has the power to do anything about it.
And by doing so, by claiming that it is God’s job to prevent evil, we create a brand new god. Why? Because the god we are blaming is not the God of the Bible. That God never said He would prevent evil things from happening. What He did say was that He would transform the hearts of those who put their faith in Him, and those people would have the capacity to turn from their sin and do good in this world.
If you believe that the God worshiped by Christians cannot exist because of the evil of this world, then you do not yet understand the God of the Bible.
Rather than get to know that God, you have created one in your own mind, and in your own image. That is the god that lets you down when bad things happen. That is the one who never existed in the first place.
A simple faith.
Despite my tertiary education and success as a lawyer, my faith is very simple. Jesus came to me in the depths of my brokenness, He healed my wounds and filled me with His Spirit.
When I was hopeless, He gave me hope.
What he didn’t do was fix my life and make it perfect. He didn’t stop terrible things happening to me once I started following Him.
That was no surprise to me, I never expected Him to.
Despite what some Christians claim, the promises of God are so much bigger than helping with the trials of life on earth. He doesn’t promise health, wealth or any easy life. He promises persecution, suffering and loss.
He promises us that as His followers, that we will be hated. And we are.
He also promises us that we are ‘temporary residents’ of earth, and that our time in here is merely a blink, a snapshot in the big eternal picture.
So where do people, believers and unbelievers alike, get the idea that God should stop evil things from happening?
Why is God resented for not doing things He never promised to do?
Humans refuse to take responsibility.
Back to Kitty’s story. She concludes, like Jon Steingard, that God cannot possibly be all powerful and all loving. Those who hold these views draw their evidence from all the evil things that happen in this world.
They ask, as Kitty does “if God is a loving father, who loves and cares for each and every one of us as a father loves and cares for his children, then why would he not step and protect us from horrific things happening to us?”
The simple answer is to conclude that either God can’t, or God won’t. The first seemingly disproving His power, the second allegedly disproving His love.
The next logical step, taking the wide and simple road, is that He doesn’t exist at all.
Kitty goes on to say:
For all of their talk and apologetics, Christians can’t answer the hard questions. In fact, Christianity leaves no room for doubts or asking questions and many people who do are ostracized if they even dare to express them.
Statements like this are tricky for me because I came to faith in my mid-forties with a stack of negative life experiences but also a high level of education. I fell into a wonderful Christian community where I never felt like I couldn’t ask hard questions or express doubt.
I asked plenty of questions that people couldn’t immediately answer.
One thing I never expected as a new convert, and still don’t expect now, is that God would make my life safe and easy. I don’t know how anyone who reads the Bible could get that idea.
Sadly some Christians, particularly those who follow the false ‘health and wealth’ gospel do say horrendous things. They fail to create safe places where people can investigate faith for themselves. They say ridiculous things like what Kitty pointed out in the opening paragraph of her article.
But to be fair, unbelievers do the exact same thing. They create a god, whom they mis-identify as the Christian God, and then abandon their made up god when that god doesn’t behave the way they think it should. They create a god in their own image, then get angry and reject that god when it inevitably lets them down.
But the Church must take some responsibility for this, for failing to be ready to give an answer with gentleness and respect when people ask these hard questions.
So this Christian, who has no theological training and relies only on what she has learnt in her six year journey, will do her best to give you an answer.
Love is the answer, and the challenge.
I love the question that the lawyer asked of Jesus in the tenth chapter of Luke:
One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher what should I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus replied “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”
The man answered, ‘You must love the LORD with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
This passage is often paraphrased as “love God, love others”.
To love God and others is unquestionably the highest calling on the lives of followers of Jesus.
You may ask what this has to do with God failing to prevent bad things from happening?
A lot actually.
I spent more than two decades in a frightening abusive marriage. I now understand that my ex-husband was terrified that I would leave him. He constantly made me tell him that I loved him, to write it down and sign it, to portray the image of a happy healthy marriage.
I was lying whenever I said I loved him, our whole marriage was one big lie.
People can be coerced into doing many things, words can be coerced, sex can be coerced, compliance can be coerced.
Love cannot be, it can be faked, but the real thing can never be coerced.
To love we must be free. Free to love, or not love. The choice must be ours, or it’s not love.
Without that choice, God’s greatest calling, the calling to love Him, and His creation would be impossible to reach.
The very nature of love is that it must be given freely and without coercion. To be capable of loving we must have free will. Without free will we are robots dressed as humans, and robots cannot love because love requires freedom.
Freedom is non-negotiable.
Understanding that God’s desire is that we humans, originally created in his image yet fallen away from that standard as a result of our own choices, would choose by our own freedom to come back to him is critical to understanding why He doesn’t intervene to stop evil.
He already has. He has because he has extended an invitation to all of humanity to turn from the sin that hurts the individual and the world and to instead turn to Him and be filled with His Spirit.
That Spirit, I have learned over the last six years of my life, is like having a handbrake in your heart. A handbrake that pulls you up when temptation presents itself, when you are tempted to lie, gossip or worse. The Sprit convicts the heart of those it indwells and constantly challenges us to keep turning away from evil towards good. That isn’t to say we don’t fall down, we do.
But I am convinced, having experienced the brakes being engaged in my own heart, that a person genuinely indwelt with the Spirit of Jesus is incapable of true evil.
But it is critical to understand that the true Christian is still free to sin. We must be, because otherwise we are not free to fulfill God’s greatest commandment. We are not free to love.
If we are not free to sin, we are not free to love.
What people who project the consequences of sin onto God really want from Him.
I understand that without freedom I can’t love God or His creation. Without freedom I cannot fulfil God’s greatest calling. Without freedom, love is impossible.
I ask the person who blames God for bad things happening this question. Are you prepared to sacrifice your freedom for a safe world that is free of evil? That is what people who dismiss God must ask themselves. They must consider what God would have to do, to give them what they want.
To give them the right to live however they want without consequences.
To allow them to live dangerously with no danger.
To live in rampant sin but be protected by the power of God.
They are demanding that God protect a world and a people who have largely rejected Him. They are insisting that God lay down His holiness and give us the benefits of this love and power without calling us to live righteously.
These people have created a god in their own minds that is like a negligent parent with brats for children, indulging their every whim without consequences.
Applying this reasoning God should not only let us indulge every fleshly desire (which He does), but He should allow us to do so in a world without consequences. A safe and padded world if you like, where we are all spoilt toddlers inhabiting an earth-sized kindergarten.
They want to remove the Christian God and put the one created in their own image in control.
So does 9/11 disprove the existence of the Christian God?
I sympathize with people who struggle to accept that a good God would let these atrocious things happen. I sympathize because it’s not the Christian God they are blaming. They are blaming a god they created in their own mind. A god that would respond the way they think they would, if they were god.
What this does prove is that the world is evil without God, but the world has largely rejected Him, so things are happening exactly as should be expected in a world where sin is celebrated and God is ridiculed.
Nothing has gone wrong, except your assumptions about God.
The god you are blaming for not intervening on September 11 is the god you have created in your own image. That god has let you down.
Because that god, never existed in the first place.
The real God calls you first and foremost to love him, and that is impossible if he takes away your free will. And because He is a God of love, who wants our love, it is impossible for Him to take that freedom away.
The god who has let you down by not stopping the tragedy of 9/11 is nothing but your own creation. It has let you down, as it was always going to.
The question is, are you brave enough, as part of your deconstruction, to dismantle what you have been told about God, and instead, let him show you for Himself?
Because He will if you ask Him.
