The Biblical Answer to Evil
Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is groping for answers in the dark night that has fallen on our nation after the Aurora massacre. The question is, “why?” He goes back to the reality of human evil. Then he goes to the grace of moral restraint which he sees in the institutions and laws that God has established. As we will see, Mohler doesn’t challenge the validity of those laws and institutions as we have them today; he takes them all for “grace.” Then, at the end, he admits he has no fully satisfying answer to these questions in this life. But he gives it a try:
We must grieve with those who grieve. We must pray for Gospel churches in the Denver area who will be called upon for urgent ministry. We must pray for our nation and communities. And we must pray that God will guard ourselves from evil — especially our own evil. And we must point to the cross. What other answer can we give?
We must grieve. And we must pray. And pray. And pray. And point to the cross. We have no other answer. We have no practical solution to the Holmeses of the world, or, to be exact, no “fully satisfying answer.” We can do nothing to stop them. Or remove them from the society. Or protect ourselves and our loved ones. Grieve, pray, pray, pray, and point to the cross. (Which reminds me of the seminary student who answered all the questions by his professor with “Jesus is the Answer!”)
This is another example how Mohler, led by his theology of the two kingdoms, forgets to go to the Bible for answer. He did it before, when he was challenged by other Southern Baptists on his position on sodomy. He accused conservative Christians of “homophobia.” Then he said – in complete opposition to Romans 1:18-32 – that sodomy is not just a choice. And in the whole controversy, Mohler didn’t refer a single time to the Bible, and what the Bible said about sodomy, and how Christians are supposed to regard sodomites. His position was based on emotional manipulation; solid Biblical teaching was lacking from it.
Now, Mohler could have at least checked his concordance for the word “evil.” Or, even better, “remove evil from among you.” He would have found that the Law of God is replete with very good answers as to what must be done to protect the society; and “grieve, pray, pray, pray, point” is not the only answer one can give. God has told us that He has established laws to remove the Holmeses among us, and those laws are the answer, a much better and more Biblical answer than Mohler’s. God has also told us that if we fail to obey his laws, and institute them among us, we will suffer curses. The presence of so many Holmeses in our society is caused by our abandonment of God’s Law as the standard for our society. This is also part of the Biblical answer, much better and complete than Mohler’s answer.
Mohler could have also gone to the New Testament and seen what the Gospel says about evil and its removal from the society. For example, 1 Timothy 1:8-11 where Paul says that the Law is good when used lawfully, and the Law is for the lawbreakers; and then Paul explains the judicial foundation for the Law: “according to the glorious Gospel I have been entrusted with.” The Law gives us God’s answer, perfectly satisfying, and there’s no need for Mohler to “grope” for it. And then the Gospel gives us the same answer, and it is, again, perfectly satisfying, and there’s no need for Mohler to “grope” for it.
But Mohler has his own answer. He rejects the answer of the Law, and he rejects the answer of the Gospel. His answer is much more pious: “grieve, pray, pray, pray, point.” Remain passive, and don’t try to eradicate evil. Just hope it will go away. We can’t do anything in this world.
We shouldn’t be surprised. Mohler’s “answer” is a direct consequence of his Two Kingdoms theology which says that the Bible has nothing to say to the “common grace” kingdom, that is, to the world outside of our personal experiences and outside the church. He rejects the idea that there can be such a thing as a Christian culture, or a Christian nation, or a Christian government. Cultures, nations, governments, are subject to the “natural law,” not to the Biblical Law, and therefore we as Christians can do nothing – Biblically speaking – to oppose evil in the society. Or, at least, nothing practical. (But we can grieve, pray, pray, pray, and point.) The society is morally neutral, as far as Mohler’s theology is concerned, or at least, if it isn’t, it must be by default evil, with no possibility for redemption. Indeed, if it is subject only to the “natural law,” what redemption can be there? There is no redemption in nature, so there is no redemption in “natural law.”
That’s why, when he talks about the moral problem of evil and the spiritual conflict between good and evil, Mohler confines it to the soul and the experience of the individual man. When talking about the society, he is broadly general:
God has also established institutions and orders that restrain human evil. As the Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 13, God gave us the institution of government in order to restrain evil and to punish the evildoer. He has also given us the institution of marriage and the family and the larger order of society in order to restrain evil. We are surrounded by a complex of laws and statutes and social expectations and civic associations. All these function to restrain evil.
All these? No matter what the laws are, they all function to restrain evil? There isn’t any possibility that at least some laws are evil, and therefore function to encourage evil, rather than restrain it? Mohler himself mentions people like Hitler and Stalin. Weren’t these people committing their evil through laws? Did their laws function to restrain evil or to encourage it? Doesn’t Mohler see a difference between laws and laws?
No wonder. If Mohler agrees that at least some laws are evil and therefore don’t restrain evil but encourage it, he will have to agree that the same ethical conflict he describes in the individual soul of man is also present in the legal foundations of the society. That just as a man’s soul is a battleground in the spiritual conflict between good and evil, a culture and its laws are also a battleground in the same spiritual conflict. And if Christians are called to “mortify the deeds of the flesh” (Rom. 8:13) in their personal life, they are also called to mortify the deeds of the flesh in their culture and its laws. And indeed, the Bible is full of examples for that spiritual war going on not only for the soul of man but also for the soul of a society, and it is expressed in the answer to the question: “Whose law shall rule the land?”
Based on his theology, Mohler can not afford such conclusions. Any spiritual conflict must remain strictly individualistic, inside the soul of the individual, and never cultural. Because if we allow the conflict to become cultural, then we may be tempted to speak of a Christian culture, or a Christian nation, or Christian legislation, and, God forbid, Christian government. And the Two Kingdoms theology – that radical dualism between individual and his culture – can not permit such a thought.
And therefore the answer of the Two Kingdoms theology boils down to irrelevance: “grieve, pray, pray, pray, point.” What other answer can it give?
A true Christian has a better, Biblical answer: The Law is for the wicked, according to the Gospel. We must return to the Biblical judicial standards for our society and work to apply them, so that we “remove the evil from among us.” We must acknowledge the Biblical right of every person to protect the life of the innocent around him against criminals, and arm the population. We must impose irrevocable death penalty for the crimes listed as capital crimes, from murder to sodomy to kidnapping. This is what the Law of God requires of us, and this is what the Gospel of the most blessed God requires of us (1 Tim. 1:8-11). Any other answer is not the answer of the Gospel but the answer of a false teacher. And we must recognize those false teachers who give us un-Biblical answers, and stop listening to them.