The Problem of God and Suffering

Introduction:

Today we begin the second half of our apologetics study where we handle objections to the faith. In the first part we laid out some of the most common ways to present the rationality of Christian belief. This was by no means an exhaustive survey. We presented the following list of arguments for God:

• the resurrection;
• the authority of Scripture;
• the unity of Scripture;
• the uniqueness of Scripture;
• the prophecies of Scripture;
• archaeology and the Bible;
• the manuscripts of the Bible;
• Jesus as an argument for God;
• the moral argument;
• the ontological argument;
• the cosmological argument;
• the teleological argument;
• the transcendental argument; and
• the arguments from desire and experience.

If you have a grip on those arguments you have a good armoury for engaging in a conversation about God with our unbelieving generation. However, apologetics is not only about presenting the facts for God making a positive case; but also defending against objections, and that is what we are going to begin today.

The objections are legion so we will have to limit ourselves to the most pertinent ones.

• The problem of evil;
• Christians are hypocrites;
• science and the Bible are incompatible;
• the Bible has errors;
• the problem of exclusivity

These are just a few of the most common ones. Today we begin with the most common, the problem of evil.