My wife has become a bit despondant due to the state of the world. She is having a bit of an existential crisis.
We have recently had a spate of horrific murders in my country. A guy killed his parents and siblings with an axe, a young girl of three was raped and murdered etc.
She is quite depressed and fearful due to this and has begun to verbalise doubts on the goodness of God, even said she is struggling with faith in His existence even.
This has largely come as a shock to me as she has always had an unshakeable faith. She has been my rock when I struggled into the Truth from my previous atheism.
Now I don't know how to help her. I tried to discuss the ways to solve the question of Evil, but ended up in a long sidetrack on how depraved and evil men are. I was trying to get her to remember that all goodness is ultimately of God, but she says I just made her feel worse. She says I am too negative, my view of man too dark. She says she believed in man, had hope for humanity, which she has now lost. I can't help but think that we are too sinful to get anywhere without God, without divine Grace, but this seems to only drag her downward and worsen the situation. She hates my bleak view of the world and my attempts to stress reliance on God have largely failed on account of how I seem to agree with her estimation of the blackness of the world. I just can't seem to lift her spirits, but my tendency to try and intellectualise everything seems to be driving her away.
I am really at the end of my tether. Prayers would be appreciated and any advice?
Hello, What is the truth? The truth about being Christian and Divine Sovereignty
How bad is man?
Quid est Veritas, may your wife read this first paragraph and know you are quite right to have a dark view of man. Believers, seeing their own redemption in the gospels often over look the 18% or more of the all the words of four Gospels are words in the context where the Lord Jesus condemns the Jews.
We should not be dumbfounded at the evil, violence, and wickedness in the world, but the surprise ought to be that there is any good in the world. The LORD looked for good many times but never to find much of it. What are the repeated events of the Bible? This is the story of the disobedience by Adam and Eve, of Cain and Able, of Noah and the flood, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of the continuous line of wicked kings of Israel and Judah, of the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel because the people rejected YHWH, of the Babylonian exile because the people rejected YHWH, and then there is the post biblical account of the A/D 66-72 War of the Jews against Rome because the people rejected the Lord Jesus and again in 132-136. What were the sins of King David? And . . . . what is the record of all the rest of history with its debauchery?
The biblical story of the Hebrews is the repeated rejection of YHWH. One must reasonably ask, “Why didn’t some scribe destroy all the records of the failure of Israel and rewrite an account of a faithful people who did not continuously violate the covenant?
How can a good God permit such horrific acts upon the innocent?
The problem of evil seems to always pose the question about divine sovereignty . . . . . and his goodness.
However,
the existence of evil, violence, and wickedness
must not be understood in questions about the nature of God, as in his sovereignty,
but in understanding the purpose of God as recorded in the Bible which purpose is the divine plan of redemption of sinful man.
Figure this!
Was the Lord Jesus innocent?
How can a good God permit such horrific acts upon the innocent?
Ask the Lord Jesus this question.
His answer from the NASB.
“Put the sword into the sheath; the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?”
“My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”
Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
For whom did the Lord Jesus suffer the divine wrath? Those other sinners and not us Christians?
The wrath of YHWH was poured out upon his only begotten on the cross because men are evil, violent, and wicked. What utter blasphemy it is to ask YHWH how he can permit such horrific acts upon the innocent? Those who ask this question do so when they have created a god for our own pleasure of love, comfort, safety, and peace rather than understood the YHWH of the Bible. Does you wife think the Apostles and other martyred early Christians accused YHWH and lost their faith because their world was not one of love, comfort, safety, and peace?
To be fair to your wife, often life long Christians have become so changed that evil, violence, and wickedness seems so foreign to their own changed nature it becomes unfathomable that the unsaved live with such horrific thoughts.
