Stephen Fry "God is evil" vs The Bible
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STEPHEN FRY AND CANCER
Stephen Fry was asked what he would say if he were "confronted by God."
Stephen Fry was asked what he would say if he were "confronted by God."
Fry replied, "I'd say, bone cancer in children? What's that about? How dare you create a world to which there is such misery that is not our fault. It's not right, it's utterly, utterly evil.
Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain. That's what I would say."
Interviewer: "And you think you are going to get into heaven, like that?"
Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain. That's what I would say."
Interviewer: "And you think you are going to get into heaven, like that?"
Fry replied: "I wouldn't want to. I wouldn't want to get in on his terms. They are wrong. Now, if I died and it was Pluto, Hades, and if it was the 12 Greek gods, then I would have more truck with it, because the Greeks didn't pretend to not be human in their appetites, in their capriciousness, and in their unreasonableness.
They didn't present themselves as being all-seeing, all-wise, all-kind, all-beneficent, because the God that created this universe, if it was created by God, is quite clearly a maniac ... utter maniac, totally selfish."
They didn't present themselves as being all-seeing, all-wise, all-kind, all-beneficent, because the God that created this universe, if it was created by God, is quite clearly a maniac ... utter maniac, totally selfish."
BIBLE RESPONSE TO STEPHEN FRY ATHEISTIC UNDERSTANDING OF GOD
As the Bible declares, God is infinitely holy, righteous, and perfect in all that He is and does. That being true, how do we account for the existence of evil in this world? Did God create evil? How could He create a being with the ability to do evil? These questions plunge us headlong into a problem that has stumped the best minds of Christendom.
God is not capricious or arbitrary. He does not act irrationally, nor does He show or permit violence purposelessly. That doesn’t mean we always know why a particular evil occurs at a given place or time. Because we don’t know all the reasons behind each particular evil, we can’t make facile connections between guilt and disaster, between a person’s sin and the evil that befalls him. Texts including the book of Job and John 9 keep us from universally declaring that pain is a specific punishment for specific sin. That means that when inexplicable disasters occur, we must say with Martin Luther, “Let God be God.” Job’s cry that “the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21) was not a superficial display of piety or a denial of pain. Instead, Job bit his lip and clenched his stomach as he remained faithful in the middle of tragedy and unmitigated suffering. Job knew who God was, and he refused to curse Him.
This isn’t the best of all possible worlds. This world is fallen. Sickness is tied to a fallen world. Suffering is here only because sin has marred an otherwise good creation. Of course, that doesn’t mean all suffering is tied to a particular sin or that we can draw a one-to-one correlation between the degree of a person’s sin and the degree of his suffering.
However, suffering belongs to the full complex of sin that people visit upon this world. As long as creation suffers from the violence of men, it returns this violence. The Bible tells us that creation gets angry with its human masters and exploiters. Instead of stewarding the earth wisely and replenishing it, we exploit and pollute it. Until Christ returns with the new heavens and earth, we’ll deal with tempests, earthquakes, and floods. Until then, we’ll yearn for a renewed creation.
Finally, evil is not ultimate. Christianity never denies the horror of evil, but neither does it regard evil as having any power above or equal to God. Scripture’s final word on evil is triumph. Creation groans as it awaits its final redemption, but this groaning is not futile. Over all creation stands the resurrected Christ—Christus Victor—who has triumphed over the powers of evil and will make all things new.
CHILDREN - SICKNESS AND SUFFERING
We usually associate the love of God with the benefits we receive from him and the blessings that come from his kind and merciful hand. Because his love usually manifests itself in good things that happen to us, we sometimes fall back in shock and consternation when we see a child struck by disease or some other trauma.
Before we speak to the question of why God allows children to suffer, we need to ask the bigger question: Why does God allow suffering to happen to any person, whether he’s two years old, two months old, or twenty years old?
The Scriptures tell us that suffering came into the world as a consequence of the fall of man and of creation; that is to say, it is because of sin that God has visited judgment upon this planet. That includes the curses of pain, disease, sorrow, and death that attend the consequences of wickedness.
How could a loving and holy God allow a baby to suffer a debilitating disease? I think the answer is partly contained in that very question. God is holy, and in his holiness he exercises judgment against the wickedness that is prevalent in human nature.
When we ask the question with respect to infants, sometimes lurking behind that question is the unspoken assumption that babies are innocent. Virtually every church in the history of Christendom has had to develop some concept of what we call original sin because the Scriptures teach us so clearly that we are born in a sinful state and that the curse of the Fall attends every human life.
That sounds grim and dreadful until we realize that in that judgment on fallen humanity comes also the tempering of God’s wrath with mercy and grace and his whole work of redemption. We believe with great joyous anticipation that there is a special measure of grace God has reserved for those who die in infancy. Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.”
One warning that I have to raise at this point is that we dare not jump to the conclusion that an individual person’s particular disease or affliction is a direct result of some particular sin. That may not be the case at all. As humans, all of us must participate in the broad complex of the fallenness of our humanity, which includes the tragedy of disease. This world is fallen.
