Kenneth W Daniels
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Do all things work together for our good?

2/19/2012

 
As a Christian I believed that “all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28, NASB). No matter how difficult or tragic the circumstances, I believed there was always a silver lining that could justify whatever happened to us, whether or not we could discern God’s purposes. An illness might help me take a break from my busy life and draw closer to God. A stubborn root in the ditch I was digging was a chance to develop my muscles, gain some exercise, or nurture a strong work ethic. The death of a loved one meant that the loved one would have a better life in heaven in God’s presence. A persistent backache presented an opportunity to develop my character, to strengthen my ability to depend on God. to exhibit grace in the midst of my pain, and to relate to and console others experiencing similar hardships. As Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 1:4, God “comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God."


As a secular humanist, I no longer believe there’s an omnipoent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being watching out for me and orchestrating every event to ensure it works out for my ultimate good. This means I can no longer look at everything that happens to me as good; there really are some bad things that come my way, things I wish hadn’t happened, things that have no silver lining, no redeemable value. This doesn’t mean I can’t seek to make the best of a difficult situation, to “turn lemons into lemonade,” so to speak. It doesn’t mean I can’t use my experiences of adversity to comfort others who are going through similar adversity. It doesn’t mean I can’t allow hardships to soften my pride and sharpen my character. It just means I can accept the reality that life would have been better if certain things hadn’t happened or that some things just suck, end of story.

On the downside of this secular realism, I can no longer take emotional comfort in the certainty that every difficulty I face has a reason that will make it worthwhile in the end--indeed, that will make it so that life will be ultimately better when anything unimaginably awful happens than if it had never happened.

On the upside of this secular realism, I have more of an impetus to redress wrongs in this life. We have some Christian friends whose twenty-something son died several days after the mast of his sailboat struck a 14,000-volt power line above a Minnesota lake, necessitating the amputation of his legs before he eventually succumbed to the effects of electrocution. As a father, I can’t imagine anything worse happening than to lose my son in his prime like this. If this were to happen to me as an unbeliever, I would see it as purely and utterly bad, and I would not seek any silver lining in the incident; rather, I would investigate why a 14,000-volt power line was hanging so low over a lake where sailboats roam, and I would sue to the maximum extent of the law whoever was responsible for it--not to profit financially but to help prevent such an unmitigated tragedy from ever happening again. I would not be able to bring back my son from the grave, and I wouldn’t have the comfort of knowing I could see him again in glory, but the least I could do would be to take measures to see that this couldn’t happen to anyone else. I would not allow Christian meekness, forgiveness, or the desire to be a good Christian example to get in the way of my pursuing like a bulldog as much justice in this matter as the law permits.

Several years ago I was discussing with a Christian the issue of slavery in the Bible. Unlike some disingenuous apologists who deny that the Bible supports slavery (see, for example, Exodus 21:20, Leviticus 25:42-46), this individual acknowledged it but reasoned that this life is so short that, despite the hardships of slavery, it’s like a drop in the bucket compared to eternity, which is really what matters in the end. I can’t think of a better example than this of the downside of seeing a silver lining in everything: it dulls our sense of justice, potentially opening the door for us to accept as God’s will all manner of carelessness, inhumanity, or injustice, or at least to give us less incentive to fight for redress.

I can’t say for sure, but I wonder if this “all things work together for good in the end” outlook is at least partly responsible for the historical tendency of fundamentalists to be more concerned with doctrine and evangelism than with social justice. Note that I don’t have this view of all believers; moderate and liberal Christians (and, to be fair, some fundamentalists) have championed the rights of slaves, women, and racial and other minorities, but historically it was the fundamentalists who fought to keep slavery in the South, to prevent women from voting or from working outside the home, to fight environmental protections, and to maintain the status quo of racial segregation and economic inequality, all the while championing fundamentalist doctrine, evangelism, and the inerrancy of the Bible. But if this life is the only one we have, and if this earth is our only home, and there’s no supernatural being to make everything work out in the end, then we are responsible in this life for seeking justice, for redressing wrongs, and for preserving this planet for our posterity, knowing there is no “new heaven and new earth” coming to wipe our mess clean.

No, not  everything works together for our good--neither for believers not for unbelievers--but I hope we can all agree for the need to work together to improve the world we share, to reduce the things that don’t work for our good and to increase the things that do.
Julia
2/19/2012 12:02:08 pm

Short term, liberal Christianity is no doubt far less dangerous. Long term, because it has not actually made changes to the book (Bible) it follows, it curses future generations to the kinds of dangers you discuss here. And it is most effective at doing so, by virtue of making it all seem rational and somehow okay or even good. I continue, in my new view, to see all on the spectrum as different only in the way that pregnant is different from a little bit pregnant.

Ken Daniels
2/20/2012 02:45:42 pm

Julia,

I can appreciate where you're coming from, though my views on this aren't really settled, and I feel somewhat conflicted. I've gotten to know some liberal Christians whose views on pretty much everything are closer to mine than to those of most evangelicals. Perhaps in the future liberal Christianity will largely give way to full-fledged secularism and we won't be having this discussion, but I do admire the contributions of liberal Christians in advancing of science and progressive humanitarian causes (the abolitionists and Albert Schweitzer come to mind). And for all my bluster against fundamentalism, many fundamentalists, it has to be said, are kind and gentle and generous people, while some secularists can be angry, belittling, and selfish. If we don't acknowledge the positive aspects of religion--community, service, belonging--it's possible to lose our credibility, because we appear to lack objectivity when we don't see good where it exists. But I agree with you on balance that a world in which holy books and sacred traditions and ecclesiastical authority (even the watered down forms of these that liberal Christianity embraces) has the potential to be a better place than it is, as long as secularism doesn't take a dark path as it did in the middle of the 20th century. During my deconversion from fundamentalism, I used liberal religion as a stopping place on my way to humanism; I don't think I would have been courageous enough to make it in one leap, and I fear the same is true for many would-be deconverts. It doesn't make liberal religion true, but it can serve a role in helping pave the way out of religion (the mirror image of Sam Harris' complaint that liberal religion can legitimize or pave the way into fundamentalism).

Julia
2/20/2012 11:51:51 pm

Thank you Ken,

As usual, your response is helpful and insightful. I believe that I am stuck in too black and white an understanding, also as usual.

I cannot seem to put aside the strong discomfort I experience when some Christians point to other Christians as outlandish in comparison with their own valid varieties of faith; both believe equally faith based magical ideas, different only in whether they are objectionable to some of our current cultural sensibilities.

And despite my agreement with your points, I seem unable to view even all of that as helpful beyond the short term in a historic perspective. That liberal forms of religion can help people who need a way to step away from faith is true, for example, but its truth is a very sad and horrible reflection of the harm that faith has caused them in the first place, placing them in a situation of emotional, social, cultural, or even economic danger. And it is the unchanged written documents/holy books of even the more palatable liberal believers that will carry forward in the very long view, assuming humanity carries on, thousands of years into the future.

I hope that you are correct that things can change by increasing liberalisation, but I am more certain that if people had to be honest about what they are really saying that they believe in (supernatural things no less 'unscientific' than the ones they scoff at more traditional Christians for believing), the change great thinkers assumed was just on the horizon over 100 years ago could actually arrive.

But I also think you are on the right track in making sense of the conflicting sides of the issue; I would be far better off finding a middle way of seeing all of this.

L J Conway
3/17/2012 10:45:55 pm

I like your sentence that starts, "But if this life is the only one we have..." especially the "if" part. Not "since this life..." or "as this life..." but "if this life..." Thank you for not being dogmatic in your unbelief - indeed, you could be wrong. I do believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, all powerful everlasting God who is the maker and creator of the universe and though I don't understand all the hard places I've had to traverse these 40 years I've called myself a believer, I believe that this life isn't all there is and I'm living to live again. I grieve your loss of faith especially since your current state could be mine also, but I have Peters testimony from John 6, where else can we go, you (Christ) alone have the words of life - I believe and know that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of God! Though I may not readily see the good and I cannot "trace his hand," I must "trust his heart."


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    Author

    Kenneth W. Daniels (1968-), son of evangelical missionaries, is the author of Why I Believed: Reflections of a Former Missionary. He grew up in Africa and returned as an adult to serve with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Niger on the edge of the Sahara Desert. While studying the Bible on the mission field, he came to doubt the message he had traveled across the world to bring to a nomadic camel-herding ethnic group. Though he lost his faith and as a result left Africa in 2000, he remains part of a conservative Christian family. He currently resides with his wife and three children in suburban Dallas, TX, where he works as a software developer.

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