Psalms 42:10

Psalms 42:10

An atheistic suggestion.

One of the greatest strains upon human faith when any disaster overtakes us is the thought, How can it be that God is omnipotent and infinitely tender, as we believe He is, and yet can allow such things to happen? It is the old question of the origin and allowance of evil, which philosophers have debated from ancient days without resolving; yet it is a question which comes home like a sword to the humblest and least cultivated. The strain is as old as the world, and David felt its force, and in this poem expresses it.

I. Some have answered this question by denying the omnipotence of God. Believing in a god or in gods, they also believed that the Divine powers were limited, that there were powers as great or greater than those of the gods; in other words, they recognised either gods which were equal and opposite, or one stern power to which even the gods themselves must ultimately submit. The latter was a Greek faith; the former was Oriental, appearing in different forms in different religions. Such systems are too remote from our ways of thinking to prove attractive to us.

II. But there is another system of religion, and there is also a form of Christianity, neither of which absolutely denies the infinite tenderness of God; but they explain everything by the bare assertion of Divine sovereignty. They say it is enough that God does a thing, and that man has no right to question the justice or propriety of it. Now, whether this creed be held by the Mussulman or the Calvinist, it lands us in terrible difficulties. There are deeds done in the world which all men see are evil, and are we to teach that God is the Author of evil? Arbitrary sovereignty will not explain the mysteries of life.

III. The truth is, the world is a great machine which moves according to definite and ascertainable laws. It was not the Maker's will that the machinery should work destruction, but the constructive power becomes destructive when misapplied. The more we know of the world, the more we discover the working, constant and uninterfered with, of law of law which brings happiness to those who act in accordance with it and disaster to those who transgress it.

IV. The Positivist triumphantly asks, Where is your God? I see nothing but law, and now you, a Christian, say that you see nothing but law. You are no better off with your God than I am without Him. Our answer is, (1) If there were no advantage in believing in God, we should still be obliged to believe in Him, because there is a God to believe in, because He is real, and we cannot help believing in Him. (2) There is a blessed mitigation of our sorrows which he who knows no God but law cannot share. The man who in his bitterest need can look up even dumbly to God becomes possessed (a) of a sense of sympathy, and comfort, and courage, and (b) of a Divine patience.

W. Page-Roberts, Law and God,p. 1.