What Do You Do When the Good Guys Don’t Win? The Parable of the Weatherman
One of my favorite verses in the Bible is Isaiah 1:18: “Come now, let us reason together,’ says the LORD. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” Last Lord’s Day I preached to you; today I want to reason with you. Last week we explored the events of 9/11/01 from the perspective of the comfort God gives in troubled times. This week I want to have a dialogue with you about one of the most troubling issues in life, namely the problem of evil. The terrorist attacks on our country have brought the problem of evil out of the ivory tower of philosophy and theology and have brought it to the fore of every thinking person’s mind.
Chuck Colson wrote this week in his daily commentary on current events:
This weekend I received a call from a Christian friend who was deeply troubled. The husband of a woman to whom she had been witnessing had been killed in the World Trade Center attack. The woman called my friend and demanded bitterly: “Where was your God that you’ve been telling me about this week?” Everywhere, people are raising the same question: How could a good God have allowed such massive evil? No question poses a greater stumbling block to Christian faith; no question is more difficult for Christians to answer.[i]
I want to address this issue today for two reasons: First, I wish to help each of us in our own confusion to distinguish biblical reasoning from emotional response, and second, I also want to offer you something to say to your friends and neighbors who are asking these same questions. 1 Peter 3:15 tells us we should “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone for the hope that we have.” If we can give people an answer for the problem of evil, we may earn a hearing for an even more important question, “How can I get right with God?” So I begin this morning with this proposition:
The problem of evil demands a response from every thinking person.
The classic formulation of the problem of evil is that only two of the following three propositions can be true:
1. God is good.
2. God is sovereign.
3. Evil exists.
In other words, either God wants to prevent evil and can’t–in which case He is not sovereign; or He is sovereign but doesn’t want to prevent evil–in which case He is not good; or He both wants to prevent evil and is able to do so, but in that case there should be no evil. Frankly, friends, this dilemma is a stumbling block to millions of people, no doubt even some in this room. They want to believe in a good, sovereign God, but when they see evil of the level we witnessed less than two weeks ago, they don’t know how it’s possible. The facts just don’t seem to add up.
One possible solution in resolving this dilemma is to give up one of the three propositions. The deists of early America were convinced of the goodness of God, and the presence of evil seemed to them beyond question, so they surrendered God’s sovereignty. They viewed Him as one who created the world, wound it up like a clock, and then abandoned it to run on its own. Thus the evil they encountered was the result of God being detached or busy elsewhere. The liberal church of the past century has largely followed suit in elevating God’s goodness at the expense of his sovereignty. And sadly, even some professed evangelicals have recently abandoned the traditional view of God as a sovereign, all-powerful, omniscient God. They tell us that God cannot know the choices of free moral agents in advance; thus evil is to a certain extent outside His control. The bottom line of all these views seems to be that we should give God a break; He’s doing the best He can under difficult circumstances.
Others openly question God’s goodness, though this is more rare. They worship a god of inexorable justice and law, but not a personal God of love and kindness. And there are even some who have dispensed with both God’s sovereignty and His goodness. In other words, they have given up completely on the God of the Bible in the face of the rampant evil around us. Those who espouse the evolutionary, naturalistic philosophy of human origins, tell us that evil is what we must expect as natural selection and the survival of the fittest works toward development of the human race. The strong survive; the weak perish.
There are even those who challenge the third proposition, namely the existence of evil. In a sense the whole postmodern mind set has been that right and wrong, good and evil, are relative terms that depend upon one’s cultural context. It’s wrong if you think it’s wrong; it’s right if you think it’s right; there are no absolute standards to guide us. Well, a lot of postmodern thinkers developed a severe headache on September 11, for they saw absolute, unmitigated evil in a way they had perhaps never seen it before.
Now these are interesting attempts to resolve our dilemma, but none of them works for a biblical Christian. Why not?
The Bible clearly affirms that all three of the propositions are true at the same time. God is good; God is sovereign; and there is evil. If I thought there was any serious doubt about God’s character in this congregation, I would stop now and cite a multitude of Scripture passages to support His goodness and His sovereignty, like Psalm 37, 91, 118, 121, Isaiah 40, Romans 8 & 9, and Ephesians 1. But I don’t think that’s a problem for most of you, so today I will focus our attention on the third proposition–the existence of evil.
The fact of evil is undeniable and can reach stunning proportions.
The origin of evil can be traced to the angelic world. The archangel Lucifer, one of the highest of God’s created beings, rebelled against Him and was joined by up to one third of the holy angels, who fell from heaven in a cataclysmic, prehistoric event. Evil from the angelic world, in turn, infected both the physical earth and the human race, as Adam and Eve were enticed by Lucifer (known also as Satan or the Devil) to violate God’s revealed will for them. The results were stunning and far-reaching. Not only were Adam and Eve’s spiritual lives impacted negatively by their sin; so were their bodies, their minds, their work, their environment, and their progeny. Their oldest son actually killed his brother, and things went down hill from there. We call this…
The Fall of Man. The Scriptures make clear to us that when God completed His creative work, He said, “It is good.” In fact, He said it was very good. But with the Fall came the capacity for man to be very evil as well. Some of us naturally react against the way the Apostle Paul describes “man without God” in Romans 3, or at least we did prior to September 11. Perhaps we’re willing to take a new look at it today:
“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” {14} “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” {15} “Their feet are swift to shed blood; {16} ruin and misery mark their ways, {17} and the way of peace they do not know.” {18} “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Even if you accept this as a perfectly valid description of the suicide terrorists who struck our nation, you probably have a difficult time with the verses that immediately precede that description: “As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; {11} there is no one who understands, no onewho seeks God. {12} All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no onewho does good, not even one.”
Wow, that sure sounds like all of us are being painted with the same brush, and that is simply unacceptable. We all may have our little peccadilloes and we may have made our share of mistakes. But there’s no way we want to be put in the same category as these terrorists!
Let me be very careful at this point. True, there is probably no one in this room who has even conceived of the monstrous evil these terrorists have perpetrated on our country. There is a qualitative and quantitative difference between sinners. And you can be sure there are going to be qualitative and quantitative differences in the punishment sinners receive from the hand of almighty God. But there actually is a sense in which we are in the same category as these terrorists. We all share in the Fall; we all possess a basic sin nature, and, left to our own devices. we will drift toward evil–it’s only a matter of degree.[ii]
The Enlightenment, followed by 20th century optimism, humanism, and relativism, reacted to this biblical analysis of human nature by claiming that man is basically good, and it’s only his environment that needs to be altered to bring out the very best in him. I think in our heart of hearts we know that is not true. After all, I suspect none of us here this morning was born in a refugee camp, few in the ghetto, and I’m pretty sure no one in slavery. Most of us have had every advantage possible, and yet we know the wickedness in our own hearts. Sure, none of us would go on a suicide mission, but we hate and lie and steal and commit adultery in our hearts. The picture of the human race apart from God is not a pretty one.
Now the evil that resulted from the Fall can be thought of in two primary categories. There is pain and suffering, on the one hand, and wickedness on the other.
Pain and suffering. Here I’m thinking of pain and suffering that is not a direct result of human wickedness but rather results from disease, accidents, natural disasters, etc. Not all pain and suffering is evil; in fact, some is almost pleasurable. The aching feeling in one’s legs and arms after a hard day’s work in the garden is a good feeling. Those who jog tell me that the pain of running eventually becomes exhilarating. I wouldn’t know–it’s never had that effect on me. Furthermore, some pain is downright beneficial, as when one touches a hot stove–if you didn’t feel instant pain, you wouldn’t pull your hand away so fast and you would end up with worse injuries than a blister.
Nevertheless, there is a level of human pain and suffering that seems so pointless or so severe that one can hardly refer to it as anything but evil. C. S. Lewis writes,
We are perplexed to see misfortune falling upon decent, inoffensive, worthy people–on capable, hard-working mothers of families or diligent, thrifty little trades-people, on those who have worked so hard, and so honestly, for their modest stock of happiness and now seem to be entering on the enjoyment of it with the fullest right.[iii]
I know what he’s talking about. I think of a man in my church back in Wichita who worked 40 years for the same firm, living frugally, investing wisely, and then within a few months after retiring to spend his latter years enjoying his wife and traveling to see the world, he died of a heart attack.
Even more tragically, I have seen wonderful people go through a whole series of tragic events in their lives that would stretch the perseverance of the hardiest believer. I think of Bill Meddings, a very special man who attended First Free when we were back at Westminster with his wife and two sons. He lost his job while his 12-year-old son was struggling with cancer. After Timmy died, the family moved to California, where Bill lost his job again. Then Sherry died of cancer. Or how about John and Donna Bahnak, who sit right down here in front every Sunday? John lost his voice box from cancer, he lost his job, their house burned to the ground, and their son died in the fire.[iv]
It’s OK to ask the question, “Why?”, when faced with perplexing situations like this. But what is even more difficult to understand for most of us is the pain and suffering that is due to…
Human wickedness. The capacity of human beings to inflict evil on one another is astounding. From the cruel taunts of a Junior High bully to the massive extermination of 40 million people by Joseph Stalin, there is an incredible evil lurking in some human souls that cries out for answers. Why is it there, and why does God allow it to continue? The simple answer lies in both our greatest blessing and our worst curse: our capacity to make choices. God designed us with the ability to choose either good or evil. This is one asset that sets us apart from animals, but it is also the source of a great deal of the pain in our world. People (and that includes all of us) often make selfish, self-centered, and evil choices, for the power to choose necessarily includes within it the power to choose wrongly. Whenever that happens, other people get hurt.
God could prevent evil by simply removing our ability to choose it, but then we’d no longer be free moral agents; we would be robots. And although the power to choose is a profound truth that goes to the core of our humanity, an even more profound truth is that a sovereign, all-powerful, all-knowing God has chosen to respect and honor our choices. He wants to be loved and obeyed voluntarily. Love is not genuine if there is no other option.[v]
The wickedness that we see in our world today (and frankly, we are just beginning to see what has always been there, for as terrible as our current distress appears, it is just a drop in the bucket compared to the Holocaust or Pol Pot’s Reign of Terror or Stalin’s purges or the Hutu massacre; the difference is that it has happened in our own cities now.) demands examination. Thinking people can’t just observe it and ignore it. However,…
The interpretation of specific evil acts is complicated and risky.
Jesus himself was asked why bad things happen to some people. In Luke 13, He was asked about a bloody massacre carried out by Pontius Pilate, the same Roman ruler who would condemn Him to death a short time later. Let me read that account and even back up a few verses to get the context:
(Luke 12:54‑13:5) “Jesus said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. {55} And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. {56} Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time? {57} “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? {58} As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled to him on the way, or he may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. {59} I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.””
Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. {2} Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? {3} I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. {4} Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them‑‑do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? {5} I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
The first lesson I see here is that . . .
We are better at interpreting physical signs (like the weather) than we are at interpreting spiritual signs. And Jesus faults us for that. He calls us hypocrites for not being more spiritually discerning. This is a strong accusation. It implies that we are externally religious. We are more interested in the superficial than in the significant. How much more effort do we devote to predicting the move of the stock market (frankly, it doesn’t take much effort today) than we do to figuring out where the Spirit of God is moving? How much more attention do we give to studying the baseball and football standings than our standing with God?
Then Jesus goes on to teach us a second lesson:
Causal relationships between specific sins and specific evil events are often impossible to establish. Pilate wiped out a bunch of Galileans while they were worshiping God at the altar. How are they to understand this event? Jesus says, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
Now wait a minute. That doesn’t seem like any kind of an answer–He just throws it back in their lap! And then He reinforces His point by referring to another tragedy–this one a natural disaster. A tower in a nearby city had fallen suddenly and unexplainably, and eighteen people had been crushed to death. Jesus asks, “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” This is one of the hard sayings of Jesus, but there’s great truth in it. While we cannot help but seek answers as to why tragedies strike, it is risky to tie such events to specific sins. Oh, once in a while the OT connects a specific judgment of God to a specific sin or period of rebellion by God’s people. And in the NT we have occasional similar incidents, as when Ananias and Sapphira lose their lives as a direct result of their lying hypocrisy. But for the most part, it is dangerous for us to say, “This happened before that; therefore, this caused that.”
I listened and read, as you undoubtedly did, to Jerry Falwell’s response to the recent terrorism, as well as the predictable hateful reaction of the Post Dispatch to what he said. Falwell intimated on the 700 club that God was judging America through the WTC attack, and he cited abortion, the homosexual agenda, and even feminism as evidence that our country had asked for it. This was probably not a wise thing to say publicly while people are still in shock over the events (and in fact, he apologized the next day), but setting aside for the moment the political naivete it reveals, I have a problem with it even from a biblical standpoint.
We desperately want to establish causal connections between A and B. We are obsessed with categorizing things and explaining them. We also want to be able to lay blame, because that helps us get a handle on it. But Jesus tells us such judgments are not ours to make. Why? Because we don’t have the wisdom and knowledge to do that very well. Events can be terribly complex, and our feeble efforts to explain them often result in oversimplifying the obvious and ignoring underlying causes.[vi]
Sin, of course, is the ultimate cause of every tragedy, and the consequences of sin are a kind of built-in judgment from God, but it is impossible for us to say with any sense of assurance that abortion in our country is tied to the bombing of the WTC. It might be, but we can’t say for sure. A third point Jesus makes is this:
Instead of seeking external answers, we should focus on internal response, namely personal and corporate repentance. Henri Nouwen writes perceptively,
We spend countless hours making up our minds about others. An unceasing exchange of opinions about people close by or far away keeps us distracted and allows us to ignore the truth that we ourselves are the first ones who need a change of heart and probably the only ones whose hearts we indeed can change.[vii]
Remember the words of the apostle Peter: “It is time for judgment to begin with the family of God” (I Peter 4:17). The sins of Christians and of the church are our first order of business. Our greed, materialism, pride, prayerlessness, disunity, gossip, self-protection, and lack of love are as much a cause for judgment as anyone else’s behavior. And that seems to be Jesus’ point in Luke 13. Every victim of a tragedy is an evangelist reminding us that repentance is our most important response.
The term “repentance” means to change our minds and head the other direction. First we must reorient our minds about our sinfulness before a holy God. It doesn’t matter how my sins stack up against Jeffrey Dahmer, or a mafia chieftan or even Osama bin Laden. What matters is that judgment is coming and, as a sinner, I owe a debt to God and I have no ability to pay it. This is the “bad news” part of the Gospel.
But repentance also involves reorienting our thinking about Jesus. We need to quit thinking of Him simply as a nice extra or a loving friend who rounds out our life, but rather as the Lord of the universe and the only One who is capable of paying our debt to God. As our Savior, He died that we might live. This is the “good news”part of the Gospel—Jesus paid it all!
The greatest value of pain and suffering, whether brought on by natural disaster or human wickedness, is that it is the chief means God uses to get our attention so that we may be brought to repentance. C. S. Lewis wrote, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”[viii] Later he added, “No doubt Pain as God’s megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. It removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul.”[ix]
What happened last week was one of worst tragedies in American history. But God (and only God) can bring good out of horrible evil, and He has already begun to do so. Since the terrorist attacks, we have seen our nation come together with greater unity than ever in my lifetime. Politicians who have fought against any religious expression in the public sector were found singing God Bless America on the Capitol steps. Churches all over the country were packed out, and in England as well. People may be angry at God, but they’re also asking questions about the meaning of life and God’s role in it.
I don’t know how long it will be before our nation returns to its default mode of secularism. But this is a time of unprecedented opportunity, and you and I need to be prepared to answer the questions of people in pain. The primary question we must ask ourselves as Christians is not “Why is there evil?”, but “How can we be used best by God to seize the day and the opportunities He has given us?” Never in our lifetimes has there been a more teachable moment than today! We desperately need to become a community of contagious Christians, praying fervently, celebrating Jesus and spreading the flame to metro St. Louis and beyond!
Now I have two other points I wish to make about evil this morning.
The ultimate evil in the universe is hell.
I mention hell this morning because I believe there are many more people open to considering the existence of hell today than there were a short time ago. Most people simply cannot imagine that there would not be a final reckoning for the individuals who perpetrated this atrocity. Some can perhaps dismiss the notion of hell for the average American who lives a decent life but isn’t particularly religious; but how does anyone dismiss it for those who massacre hundreds of noncombatants.
Yet hell is not an easy doctrine. C. S. Lewis wrote in his great classic, The Problem of Pain,
“There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, especially, of Our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason. . ., but . . .in the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question: ‘What are you asking God to do?’ To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.”[x]
You see, the worst thing about hell is not the fire, but knowing, finally, that God is the loving God of grace and mercy He always said He was, and yet having no access to Him, ever.
Our President has called on the countries of the world to make a decision. “Are you for us or against us?” Whether you realize it or not, our God has called all people on earth to make a similar decision: “Are you with Me or against Me?” And those who are against Him will spend eternity in hell. There will be only one roll call, and we never know when it will be called for us! We have seen just how quickly life can end. Living on the spiritual fence, thinking, “I’ll decide later,” is a very dangerous course of action. What side are you on today?
And that brings me to my final point:
The ultimate answer to evil is the Cross.
Now isn’t that ironic? The single most evil, heinous act ever committed–the death by torture of the only truly innocent person who ever lived–is the ultimate answer to evil? Yes. John Stott, in his great book, The Cross of Christ, writes,
I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. . . . In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away.
And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering.[xi]
Jesus Himself put it this way: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Then He did just that.
I close this morning with a short playlet entitled “The Long Silence.” I think it says it all:
At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God’s throne.
Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly — not with cringing shame, but with belligerence.
“Can God judge us? How can he know about suffering?” snapped a pert young brunette. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. “We endured terror . . . beatings . . . torture . . . death!”
In another group an African American boy lowered his collar. “What about this?” he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. “Lynched . . . for no crime but being black!
In another crowd, a pregnant schoolgirl with sullen eyes. “Why should I suffer” she murmured, “It wasn’t my fault.”
Far out across the plain there were hundreds of such groups. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering he permitted in his world. How lucky God was to live in heaven where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping or fear, no hunger or hatred. What did God know of all that man had been forced to endure in this world? For God leads a pretty sheltered life, they said.
So each of these groups sent forth their leader, chosen because he had suffered the most. A Jew, an African American, a person from Hiroshima, a horribly deformed arthritic, a thalidomide child. In the centre of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather clever.
Before God could be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they had endured. Their decision was that God should be sentenced to live on earth–as a man!
“Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Give him a work so difficult that even his family will think him out of his mind when he tries to do it. Let him be betrayed by his closest friends. Let him face false charges, be tried by a prejudiced jury and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let him be tortured.
At the last, let him see what it means to be terribly alone. Then let him die. Let him die so that there can be no doubt that he died. Let there be a great host of witnesses to verify it.”
As each leader announced his portion of the sentence, loud murmurs of approval went up from the throng of people assembled.
And when the last had finished pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence. No-one uttered another word. No-one moved. For suddenly all knew that God had already served his sentence.[xii]
“Come let us reason together,” says the God of the universe, even as the World Trade Center and Pentagon lie in ruins. The problem of evil–that God is good, He is on the throne, and yet there is evil–is hard to understand, but there is one thing we know. Each of us has the opportunity this morning to take an inward look at our own evil hearts and repent. If you wait until the Judgment, you will have to pay your debt yourself. But God is willing to settle out of court. He loves you and offers to forgive your debt to Him. No terrorist, no evil, not even Satan himself, can cancel this divine deal. All that remains is for you to sign on the dotted line and then, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”
Tags:
Problem of evil
Fall of man
Total depravity
Pain
Wickedness
Repentance
Hell
Cross
[i]. Charles Colson, Breakpoint Commentary #010918, September 18, 2001, “Where Was God?: Reflections on God’s Goodness and Terrorism.”
[ii]. The theological term used for this is Total Depravity. It essentially means that no man without God has the capacity to please Him and, in fact, each of us has an immense capacity to rebel against God and to destroy our own environment, other people, and even ourselves. When theologians call mankind without God “totally depraved,” they do not mean that every individual is as bad as he could be, or even that anyone is incapable of doing some things that are nice and noble as judged on the human level. Rather they mean that no one has the capacity to merit any favor with God or do anything that will earn a right standing with Him.
[iii]. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 96.
[iv]. The best I can do to explain this degree of pain and suffering from natural causes (which ultimately will be understood only in eternity) is probably to quote C. S. Lewis when he says, “Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for the moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed; that all this must fall from them in the end, and that if they have not learned to know Him they will be wretched. And therefore He troubles them. . . .” (The Problem of Pain, 97). Interestingly, John Bahnak did not give his heart to God until after the terrible events I mentioned.
[v]. Some of the thoughts in this paragraph are borrowed from Rick Warren, Pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA., who wrote a letter last week to his congregation entitled, “Why Does God Allow Evil?”
[vi]. In John 9 Jesus’ disciples thought they were being very astute in asking Jesus regarding a man born blind, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Do you remember Jesus’ answer, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” I don’t think Jesus really meant that neither the man nor his parents sinned; actually both sinned, for all have sinned. What He meant is that no particular sin by either party was the immediate and direct cause of this tragedy.
viii. Henri Nouwen, Here and Now, 60.
[viii]. Lewis, 93.
[ix]. Lewis, 95.
[x]. Lewis, 118, 128.
[xi]. John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ, 335, 336.
[xii]. Stott, 336, 337.