Much Too Limited
Ruth 4:14–17
"The women said to Naomi: “Praise be to the LORD, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.” Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him. The women living there said, “Naomi has a son!” And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David."
From Ruth 1:20, Naomi asked the people to call her Mara, for God has made her life bitter and now the sweetness flows, who would've thought? When we consider the pain and the suffering in the world, it makes us doubt God's benevolence and for some even His existence.
But it is simply due to our finitude that we approach the problem of evil wrongly. Skeptic Dr Paul Draper wrote: "Logical arguments from evil are a dying (dead?) breed… even an omnipotent and omniscient being might be forced to allow evil for the sake of obtaining some important good. Our knowledge of goods and evils and the logical relations they bear to each other is much too limited to prove that this could not be the case." We are just not in a position to judge whether the evil we experience is meaningless compared to the bigger picture of God's purposes (which is maybe even beyond our own lifetimes). In this case it is more reasonable to trust: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose (Rom 8:28)."
"The women said to Naomi: “Praise be to the LORD, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.” Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him. The women living there said, “Naomi has a son!” And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David."
From Ruth 1:20, Naomi asked the people to call her Mara, for God has made her life bitter and now the sweetness flows, who would've thought? When we consider the pain and the suffering in the world, it makes us doubt God's benevolence and for some even His existence.
But it is simply due to our finitude that we approach the problem of evil wrongly. Skeptic Dr Paul Draper wrote: "Logical arguments from evil are a dying (dead?) breed… even an omnipotent and omniscient being might be forced to allow evil for the sake of obtaining some important good. Our knowledge of goods and evils and the logical relations they bear to each other is much too limited to prove that this could not be the case." We are just not in a position to judge whether the evil we experience is meaningless compared to the bigger picture of God's purposes (which is maybe even beyond our own lifetimes). In this case it is more reasonable to trust: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose (Rom 8:28)."
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