Did God Cause 9/11?
In honor of the victims who lost their lives on September 11, 2001 and the brave heroes who rescued many survivors, I wanted to take on a common objection to the Christian model of God.
Objectors typically point out that God is omnipotent and omniscient according to the Bible, and either of these is grounds to believe that God is behind every evil action, either directly (by omnipotence) or indirectly (by inaction despite knowing the event in advance through omniscience).
Which leads to two questions:
- By virtue of his omnipotence, did God cause the terrorist attacks of 9/11?
- By virtue of his omniscience, does not halting the attacks make God as guilty as the planners?
No and no. Let’s find out why.
The first is fairly easy to dispense with. The capacity to do something isn’t the same as actually doing it. I can throw in a load of laundry and do the dishes, but I don’t do either very often. If the dishes or the laundry are done at my house, I’m not necessarily the cause (even though I’m more than capable of doing a load of laundry). Odds are, if either of those tasks are done, it was my wife who accomplished both.
So it is with God. Though God is capable of bringing about terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11, that doesn’t mean he did. In fact, as we’re about to discover, it is quite doubtful that he had anything to do with them.
From a Reformed perspective, isn’t God is the ultimate cause of everything? Not exactly — that’s actually a strawman that Arminans throw at Calvinists. Properly, God has foreordained that which will come to pass, and most think that Calvinists teach that God’s decree is one dimensional.
In the model that most non-Reformed folks attack, if life were Red Riding Hood, God is David Leslie Johnson. If life were Spider Man or Mission: Impossible (how cool would that be?), then God is David Koepp. If life were a 007 movie (best scenario yet!), then God is Neal Purvis. If life were Inception or Memento, then God is Christopher Nolan.
Get it? Those guys are screenwriters. Life, however, is most certainly not a screenplay, and God is not a screenwriter. The decree of God for this earth is not so one-dimensional that it can be reduced to a pile of 112 white, 8.5 x 11″, typed in Courier New, 1″-margin pieces of paper.
God’s decree has more flexibility than a shot list and George Lucas-style unrealistic dialogue.
Part of God’s eternal decree is the free will to choose our paths apart from him. Our liberty is not forfeit, neither is the responsibility we bear for our choices (despite their contingency). And, moreover, God is not the author of sin. Mankind is wicked enough — we don’t need help creating sin!
The Calvinist affirmation: God is sovereign, yet we are responsible.
Which means that the 9/11 terrorists chose, apart from God, their paths. And those paths are to destruction, as are all paths chosen apart from God. Unfortunately, their destruction led to the forfeiture of many more lives than just their own.
Freedom to do horrendous evil sometimes, unfortunately, means that we do horrendous evil.
Is God, then, responsible because — knowing 9/11 would happen — he did nothing to halt it?
Nope. As I’ve argued above, God’s gift of free will means that curse of moral responsibility. God is not obligated to clean up our messes.
Which actually raises another interesting question. If God did stop sin, how would we ever know? We wouldn’t. So, then, is God the restraint on sin that Paul speaks of in these verses?
Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessnessis revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. (2 The 2:3-8)
And there is at least one biblical example of God staying someone from sinning, despite that person having a prime opportunity. In Genesis 20:1-18, Abraham lied to Abimelech and told him that Sarah was his sister rather than his wife. So Abimelech, smitten with Sarah, tries to take her as a wife. I think we all know what that means (wink wink, nudge nudge!).
Yet, Abimelech never had the ceremony, nor consummated the relationship.
When the truth came out, and Abimelech pointed out that he was innocent, duped, and didn’t do Sarah, did God congratulate him for keeping it in his pants? Uh, nope. God said, “Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her” (20:6, emphasis added).
Interesting. God stopped Abimelech. There is precedent, both in the apostle Paul’s passage and in this earlier example, of God restraining mankind’s sin so that it isn’t as bad as it could be.
The bottom line is that we notice the ones that God lets by, like 9/11. But we can’t fathom how many he might hold back, essentially saving us from ourselves. The ones he stops might be worse than 9/11.
But why let any through? Two main reasons, I think.
First, perfection of the saints’ faith:
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (Jms 1:2-4)
Second, revealing pretenders:
A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear. (Mt 13:3-9, explanation at 13:18-23)
A third reason, not in the Bible, is the display of compassion. Look at what happened post-9/11. Every country rallied to the U.S. Everyone sent relief to the victims. Volunteers to clean the rubble weren’t in short supply. Blood donations soared. When President Bush announced the War on Terror, the armed forces suddenly had more recruits than they knew what to do with. Chain stores were out of American flags.
Patriotism was no longer out of style.
Truly, a person is refined in fire and tribulation. If you have it too comfortable, then you will never know what you’re truly made of.
So, Augustine summed it up the best when he wrote, “God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.” If God has a great reason to let the evil through, then we can hardly hold him responsible for the results since the results are the good things intended for us, and the suffering perfects our faith and our humanity.
Other Posts in the Coordinated Blogging Event:
- Atheism, Evil and Ultimate Justice
- Resources on the Problem of Evil
- Do all roads (and flights) lead to God? (Pluralism)
- Evil’s Three Faces and a Christian Response
- Where Was God on 9-11? A response to Rabbi Kushner
- Where Was God on 9/11?
- Did God Allow the Attacks on 9/11 for a “Greater Good”?
- The Need for Moral Choices and Consequences
- Ground Zero
- America After 9/11: Is Religion Evil?
- 9/11: “Full Cognitive Meltdown” and Its Fallout
- My 9/11 Memorial: Christianity Gives Authentic Hope In The Face Of Suffering
- If God, Why Evil?
- On September 11th, 2001 harmless things became fearful
- The Problem of Evil: Who’s problem is it? Is it a problem? (see Tilled Soil)
- 9/11: Where Is God During A Catastrophe?
- Christianity and 9/11: Guilt by Association?
- Suffering and the Cross of Christ
Case Against the Case for Gay Marriage, part 4
David, an atheist who is dedicated to exposing Christianity for what it is, has begun a new blog that I discovered quite by accident.
Though he deleted the post that this series is replying to, I am still running my series.
David lays out the following argument in favor of gay marriage:
Homosexuality is not unnatural. (answered)Neither homosexuality nor its acts have been proven inferior to heterosexuality or its acts. (answered)Marriage is a basic human right. (answered)- Homosexual unions are unfairly not being given full and equal rights as heterosexual unions.
- Therefore, homosexual marriages with full and equal rights should be legalized and put into effect.
These get easier and easier to answer.
Premise (4) is a nominal attempt to say that homosexual unions aren’t given full rights through a fallacy of special pleading.
However, that’s not the case for three reasons. First, we have shown that homosexuality isn’t the typical order of things.
Second, we have demonstrated that heterosexual unions are superior by simple utilitarianism — which is the typical philosophy of right and wrong espoused by supporters of gay marriage (see NotAScientist’s comment for a great example of utilitarianism in action).
Third, marriage rights are regulated for perfectly valid reasons.
Therefore, it is easy to conclude that there is no special pleading going on. Recall for something to be special pleading, there can be no valid reason for differentiating it from other cases. In the case of gay marriage, there are big differences between it and heterosexual marriage, which is exactly the reason its forbidden in the first place.
This means (4) is out of gas. And, it means I’m done without having to address (5) as a conclusion. David has uber-failed to establish any of his premises as true. In fact, they are all false. Therefore, the conclusion is faulty and I will let this series stand, unless David cares to defend himself.
Case Against the Case for Gay Marriage, part 3
David, an atheist who is dedicated to exposing Christianity for what it is, has begun a new blog that I discovered quite by accident.
Though he deleted the post that this series is replying to, I am still running my series.
David lays out the following argument in favor of gay marriage:
Homosexuality is not unnatural. (answered)Neither homosexuality nor its acts have been proven inferior to heterosexuality or its acts. (answered)- Marriage is a basic human right.
- Homosexual unions are unfairly not being given full and equal rights as heterosexual unions.
- Therefore, homosexual marriages with full and equal rights should be legalized and put into effect.
Now we tackle premise (3), which is (like its predecessors) demonstrably false. Read the rest of this entry
Case Against the Case for Gay Marriage, part 2
David, an atheist who is dedicated to exposing Christianity for what it is, has begun a new blog that I discovered quite by accident.
Though he deleted the post that this series is replying to, I am still running my series.
David lays out the following argument in favor of gay marriage:
Homosexuality is not unnatural. (answered)- Neither homosexuality nor its acts have been proven inferior to heterosexuality or its acts.
- Marriage is a basic human right.
- Homosexual unions are unfairly not being given full and equal rights as heterosexual unions.
- Therefore, homosexual marriages with full and equal rights should be legalized and put into effect.
Premise (2) pretty much deserves a rhetorical “Are you kidding me?” in reply and nothing more.
David’s incoherent explanation:
According to the American Psychological Association, it has officially been declared that homosexuality is not a choice or a decision. (source)
Which we already acknowledged in the refutation of premise (1). The issue with premise (1) is that homosexuality was immoral, not that it is “unnatural;” it is certainly found within nature and is likely a part of our human nature.
But that doesn’t make it “good.”
Now, this premise takes it that we haven’t proven it “inferior,” but it never takes the time to define what would constitute the act being inferior. Read the rest of this entry
Case Against the Case for Gay Marriage, part 1
David, an atheist who is dedicated to exposing Christianity for what it is, has begun a new blog that I discovered quite by accident.
It’s actually a funny story, which I’ll tell even though it has nothing to do with the actual argument that I’ll be critiquing from the site. I was trimming my RSS feed and noticed that, very long ago, John W. Loftus had started a blog called Counter-Apologetics Master Program. He intended to create a degree program to combat Christian apologetics. I noticed that it hadn’t been updated in a long time, so I visited the site to see if it was even still active.
Turns out, the blog address had been abandoned by Loftus, but claimed by David. David started his blog as a counterpoint to Matt Slick’s ministry CARM, even calling his blog by the same acronym. Probably to get accidental traffic.
So, anyway, I literally wandered into this by total accident.
In a deleted post, David challenges CARM to reply to his argument in favor of gay marriage. I don’t know if David deleted the post because it’s a terrible argument, or because he’s attempting to refine it. However, I’m still going to answer it, a piece at a time, in this series.
Even though I’m not affiliated with CARM.
Some More Changes
I decided that it is more productive to tinker with the layout of the blog than it is to actually blog.
For the sarcastically impaired, that opening sentence was meant to be taken ironically.
However, I think that I have achieved something pretty grand. I have taken a lot of clutter out of the sidebar and moved it to the footer areas. So the tinkering wasn’t a total waste of my time.
Although I did write a lengthy diatribe about how boring the powers-that-be want your writing to be at my personal blog. Ironically, it’s probably boring.
Anyway, I’m probably going to post the first entry in the aforementioned case against gay marriage series shortly. I would have posted it sooner, but I thought of an obvious objection to it, put it on hold, then didn’t get back to it (even though I had the answer the next day).
Plus, I have some pieces I’m writing for submission. Some for possible pay, which (of course) would be awesome. Even more awesome if I could keep a steady income stream through writing. My ideal, dream job.
Anyway, new piece on gay marriage coming soon. Stay tuned!
I’m About to Do Something Strange…
I seldom answer in my own comment section. So the strange thing I’m going to do today is to answer someone else’s comment section.
Jennifer Fulwiler wrote a fantastic post about the difference between secular giving and Christian charity. Secular giving is just one thing that you do to be an American, but Christian charity is woven into the fabric of our thoughts and actions. To be great, Jesus said, you must serve others (Mt 20:26-28).
The first atheist comment to that post deserves a reply. I think that the replies in the comment section miss the mark somewhat, so I decided to take a crack at it. Call me Jen’s Rottweiler. (If Darwin can have one, so can Jennifer Fulwiler, right?)
The commenter identifies herself as Jemima Cole, and let’s tackle her piece by piece: Read the rest of this entry
I Gave My Life to Christ: Now What? (part 6)
The final step for new Christians from Brownlow North is:
Never believe what you feel, if it contradicts God’s Word. Ask yourself, “Can what I feel be true if God’s Word is true?” And if both cannot be true, believe God’s Word and make your own heart the liar (Rom 3:4; 1 Jn 5:10-11).
Again, sound advice. If more people applied that rule, then Susan B. Anthony might never have said, “I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”
We, therefore, need an objective measure of truth. Our conscience does a pretty good job at showing us instinctively what is right and wrong. I often give the exampe of my daughter Ashleigh who (at 3) knows that when I tell her to or not to do something, that it is wrong to do the opposite. And when she inevitably does the opposite (show me a 3-year-old who obeys perfectly and I’ll marvel at your ability to create a cool robot–hopefully it follows Asimov’s Laws of Robotics!), she knows she did wrong.
She tries to get out of the punishment–usually no TV or a time out (I’ve spanked before, but I’m not a huge proponent; loss of privileges and time outs work just as effectively). But the point is she acknowledges that what she did was wrong and knows she shouldn’t do it.
Which brings us back to the average person. Knowing and doing are totally different. Everyone knows it’s wrong to steal, yet people are in jail for everything from petty theft to the Enron scandal. Everyone knows its wrong to cheat on your spouse, yet that is one of the main reason couples divorce.
So the conscience is effective at blowing the whistle, but we are equally as effective at ignoring the noise. And, more troubling, is that often we can delude ourselves into believing that God is on our side.
My pastor once told the story of a man who was fired from his job for embezzlement. During the search of his computer, they discovered e-mails proving that he was having an affair. When the boss fired him, he told the man that he was really concerned about the man’s relationship with God. The man told his boss, “I’m fine with God.”
Yeah. Think so?
What about pastors like Rob Bell who are very good at writing theological redefinitions of God that render eternal judgment unnecessary or plain evil, therefore a God of love would never consign someone to it? Instead of “Go, and sin no more” we are being told “Sin boldly, all will be forgiven.” That’s quite different than what Jesus would say, and very different from Paul’s message of grace.
No wonder Susan B. made the statement she did.
So, North’s rule stands. The Bible states “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9).
Let’s not be Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs when it comes to our spiritual well-being. Though the conscience can be an excellent guide, we can ignore it in favor of pursing our own passions. Let Scripture stand as the objective measure by which we know what is right and wrong. Don’t trust your gut.
I Gave My Life to Christ: Now What? (part 5)
As we continue with Brownlow North’s six steps for new Christians (and old Christians can benefit from these, too), we come to a tough one:
Never take your Christianity from Christians, or argue that because such and such people do so and so, therefore, you may (2 Cor 10:12). You are to ask yourself, “How would Christ act in my place?” and strive to follow him (Jn 10:27).
The church is, in fact, “the pillar and buttress of truth” (1 Tim 3:15). So it’s impossible not to take (at least some) Christianity from Christians. To not take your Christianity from Christians denies the whole concept of discipleship, which is the spirit in which I posted these rules in the first place.
The place of the church is education and discipline. It should be the responsibility of the church’s elders to identify sin in the congregation and do something about that.
So it’s fair to say that I disagree with the first clause.
The second clause is excellent. Because other people do it, that doesn’t make it okay. As a manager for over a decade and a half in the fast food industry, every single time I dealt with someone’s tardiness the first thing I always got to listen to was an angry litany of names of people who are also “always late.”
That’s what North is talking about. Using someone else’s behavior to justify your own is not acceptable. Take responsibility for yourself.
Amanda Brown, co-founder of We Are Atheism, posted a video that indicted Christianity using the other side of this coin. She said that the church she grew up in preached abstinence, but her peers had sex in the pews during the service. Therefore, abstinence-only education is total crap and doesn’t work
Well, let’s think about this:
- Everyone has sex before marriage.
- It’s really hard to abstain from sex until marriage.
- Currently, the church thinks it’s morally wrong to have sex before marriage.
Given these facts, society has decided that the best solution to the problem is to lower its expectations, accept sex before marriage, and make fun of the church for continuing to preach “antiquated” morals.
Let’s look at this from a different perspective.
What if I were the new manager of your local fast food restaurant? Let’s say that the people in the store think that it’s okay to serve french fries that have been baking under heat lamps for two hours. It’s really hard cook new ones and make customers wait, and it also costs a lot of money in wasted food. Everyone in the store thinks this is cool.
If I were to follow Amanda’s logic, then my best course of action as the new GM is to lower my expectations until I, too, believe that serving two-hour old french fries is acceptable.
Ridiculous, right?
Lowering expectations is never the best solution. Indeed, it shouldn’t even be an option. Yet, with sexual morals, this is exactly what society is doing. It’s too hard to resist having sex until marriage, so let’s just have sex now and risk unwanted pregnancies, incurable diseases, serious heartache, etc. Just wrap it up with a condom and you’re good to go. The solution to loose sexual morals is to encourage them, as long as the people involved are being “responsible.”
That’s about like using a Band-Aid to treat an ear-to-ear throat slash.
Bringing this back neatly to the point, we cannot expect to justify behavior by comparing our behavior to the behavior of others. The yardstick for comparison is what North says next: Ask what the Lord would do were he in our place. In other words, “What Would Jesus Do?”
We might not have an immediate answer, but if we follow the first rule and the second rule, we’re on our way to having a good sense of the answer.
I Gave My Life to Christ: Now What? (part 4)
Churches too often focus on evangelism to the exclusion of discipleship. You confess Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and the Lord of life. You’re done, right?
Nope. I’ve already covered three of Brownlow North’s six rules for new Christians, and I believe they really apply to all Christians.
Rule #4:
If you are in doubt as to a thing being right or wrong, go to your room and kneel down and ask God’s blessing on it (Col 3:17). If you cannot do this, it is wrong.
I like this. It touches on the somewhat instinctual nature of moral duties. Normal people know the difference between right and wrong. My daughter, for example, knows what she is and is not allowed to do. She knows that she has to listen to mommy and daddy when we tell her to do things. She doesn’t, but whenever I get into it with her, she admits that she knows when she does something wrong and understands that it is wrong.
Similar to this would be asking yourself questions like
- How would my best friend feel about me if s/he knew I did this?
- Would I feel comfortable if my actions were reported on the front page of the newspaper?
- In my place, would my hero/mentor act this way?
As Dr. Tom Morris points out in Philosophy for Dummies (yes, I’m reading Philosophy for Dummies), these sorts of questions presuppose a generally good nature. Humans, according to the Bible, are so enslaved to sin that we can often rationalize the most heinous of behaviors. However, since we are made in the image of God, we have (at our core) a smattering of goodness that enables us to know the difference between right and wrong.
Asking whether we could, in good conscience, pray God’s blessing over an intended course of action is a great acid test for the validity of such an action.
Back Rome Again 