It’s amazing what you find while panic-writing a paper at 3 in the morning.

The year? Sophomore, almost over. The class? Eschatology, the study of the book of Revelation. The professor? Two things to know about him: 1. His cousin is one of the co-authors of the Left Behind series, which made for an interesting class because Reformed theology looks at the end times in the complete opposite manner of the Left Behind books. 2. He was one of those people whose mind moves at a gazillion miles per hour, making an already-tough class tougher. So there I was, frantically flicking from Word doc to Google to Spotify to Google and back. In my Googling, I found a page called “Theodicy: An Overview” from Dallas Baptist University.

And then everything changed.

Recently, I was reading back through some old assignments, and my Eschatology final paper was one of the papers I looked at. After cringing at my writing from 3 years ago, I took a second look and thought, “You know, I could make a blog post out of this.”

So, consider this my sort of mission statement. This is what I believe.

The Soul Making Model Theodicy

A theodicy is “the defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil,” so says Merriam-Webster. It’s a key idea in Christian philosophy. Saint Augustine, one of the most important thinkers in Christianity, has that status in part because of the Augustinian theodicy. Alvin Plantinga, a philosopher in the Calvinist Reformed tradition, has also devoted his career to theodicies, writing the book God, Freedom, and Evil to put his own theodicy out in the public sphere. But the one that makes the most sense to me is the soul making model theodicy. To quote the overview:

Evil is a necessary condition for a world in which we overcome obstacles and struggles in order to develop. In fact, many higher-order goods (e.g. self-sacrifice, endurance, courage, compassion on the poor, etc.) are not possible unless we have to overcome evil.

Philip Irving mitchell, “Theodicy: An Overview”

Now this is not to say that I nor anyone who upholds this theodicy looks at injustices in the world, shrugs and says, “Deal with it. It builds character.” Rather, we believe that we are myopic. The most obvious statement: pain is uncomfortable. Humans don’t want to deal with things that are painful, and so when something painful happens, it’s easy to think that God has either abandoned us or is trying to punish us. It’s often only in hindsight that we can see how God was using our pain for the good.

Support for this is everywhere in the Bible. The story of Joseph, for instance. Joseph was sold into slavery by his own family, falsely accused of rape right as his life in servitude was looking up, and languished in prison despite a fellow prisoner promising to help him win back his freedom. But all of this put him in the position to save millions of lives when famine devastated Egypt, and reconcile with his brothers and reunite with his ailing father in the process. When Joseph revealed his identity to his brothers, he paraphrased perhaps the most famous verse from the Book of Romans, a verse you could say is the Soul Making Theodicy in a nutshell: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who^[a] have been called according to his purpose.”

But this isn’t enough. It’s easy for the soul making model theodicy to be misconstrued into a cop-out, an excuse Christians can use to shy away from life’s miseries with a dismissive “God works in mysterious ways.” No, the theodicy must go hand-in-hand with…

Eschatological Hope

An extension of this is that the Church should be a community that looks to that future justice by modeling it now: believers are to avoid fatalism and work toward God’s promised shalom, a future of perfect peace and justice that begins in God’s work on the cross. Resistance to evil and suffering can be a form of obedience to God.

“Theodicy: An overview,” emphasis mine

I hate Joel Osteen. I mean, I hate prosperity theology and any huckster hack preaching it, but I take Joel Osteen’s existence personally. He made headlines in 2017 for dragging his feet to open the doors of Lakewood Church to those victimized by Hurricane Harvey. Lakewood is one of the largest church facilities in the country, with a congregation 45,000 strong and the seating capacity for almost 17,000 people. Osteen tried to justify the church’s slow response time by saying the church was “inaccessible” due to flooding, only for several amateur photographers to dispute him by snapping pictures and videos of Lakewood’s facilities, barely affected by the hurricane. Lakewood’s representatives made a counter-argument by posting their own videos, showing Lakewood’s parking garages and other areas submerged in floodwater.

Who you believe in this situation isn’t important, nor is the fact that Osteen eventually opened Lakewood’s doors to those in need. What matters is the optics. Joel Osteen claims (keyword: claims) to be a Christian. He had a prime opportunity to care for the least of these and he squandered it.

In C.S. Lewis’ book The Great Divorce, the narrator finds himself on a bus to Hell. After reaching Heaven, the narrator’s guide, Scottish minister George MacDonald, asks the narrator to look at a crack in the soil. He tells the narrator that the entirety of Hell is no bigger than that crack compared to the glory of Heaven. This is the idea of eschatological hope: that in the grand scale of eternity and God’s love, human suffering is but a blip of inconvenience in the journey.

That’s only one half of it, though. I’ve witnessed people, especially during the worst of the pandemic, spin ideas of eschatological hope into a kind of spiritually based toxic positivity, minimizing people’s dismay and depression with sweet nothings: “Let go and let God.” “In Heaven, it will all make sense.” No, to truly abide by eschatological hope involves action. To be eschatologically hopeful, Christians must make priority fighting injustice and suffering in this lifetime rather than waiting for it to disappear in the next.

Óscar Romero was a prime example of eschatological hope. The Salvadoran archbishop refused to submit to the dictatorship of General Carlos Humberto Romero and advocated for the poor, who were caught in the civil war between General Romero’s forces and the guerrillas resisting his rule. Óscar was so dedicated to loving the poor that his final sermon, in which he was cut down by an assassin partway through, was a plea for the members of the congregation to not participate in the government’s routine violations of human rights.

Jesus commanded us to “take up your cross and follow me.” Crosses are a tool of torture and agonizing execution. If your theology emphasizes comfort and complacency, I recommend finding a new one.

“God Is Not Mad At You”

I listen to a podcast, formerly called “The Non-Partisan Evangelical,” now called “The Post-Evangelical Podcast.” While the host Paul Swearengin’s views have evolved, hence the podcast’s name change. But there’s a phrase he’s pushed that’s stuck with me: “God is not mad at you.”

I think God’s anger has been overemphasized. It’s the basis of so-called “fire and brimstone” preaching, sermons that say, “Be good or burn in hell.” The consequences of deemphasizing God’s loving nature are becoming apparent. One of the many reasons the exvangelical movement has gained steam is because the shaming nature of angry God theology traumatized a generation of church kids. When any step out of line, whether that be such a bad decision as getting drunk or something as trivial as holding hands or girls showing cleavage, puts you on the road to hell, can you blame these kids wanting nothing to do with their Heavenly Father when adulthood finally gives them the freedom to make church optional?

Now, this is not to say God can’t get angry. After all, God is a God of justice. But to say he’s only angry is a disservice. And it’s false. The story of Bible is the story of a sad God, not an angry one. This is a God who was in perfect unity with humanity, until they were led astray by the Great Deceiver. He so yearns for His children to be back on the same page with Him that He sent His own son to die so we could be reunited with Him.

God doesn’t hate you. He’s not a strict disciplinarian, waiting for you to screw up so He can drop a hurricane on your house as punishment. He’s not keeping a checklist, chuckling in anticipation of when He can see the look on your face as the trapdoor to Hell opens under your feet. He loves you, and He’s eager to see you come back to Him.

This is what I believe: that God allows suffering with a purpose, to make us better people and to cultivate care and love for our brothers and sisters in Christ. It is our duty as Christians to alleviate and stop the worst and/or unnecessary of suffering: war, rape, genocide, wealth inequity, slavery, etc. And God’s not doing this out of spite; He’s not mad at you and me.

He loves you.

…that’s it.