Is God "Morally Sane"?

We're continuing in this series calling it What Would Jesus Do?

Looking at the major cultural happenings of the world that's around us and then bringing biblical truths to it to understand how do we interpret what's happening in our culture and how do we interact with it.

That's very important because you probably are aware there's a lot happening in the world right now and lots of big questions, which you have, no doubt, in your heart.

And if you have in your heart, then you know your neighbors do, right?

Your coworkers do.

And so at every turn of these difficult days or complicated situations, we have an opportunity to bring the stability of the gospel to these, to these, these troubles, these struggles.

Now, of course, one of the major complications that we're facing in the world today is what's happening in the Middle East around Iran.

And I know, like many of you, you come to a place like this to avoid those kinds of conversations.

But I want you to know that if you will hang out with me just for a minute looking at this circumstance situation, then by the end of this service, I hope that you will discover an incredible word of encouragement.

Everyone has an opinion about what's happening in Iran.

Uh universally, uh, whenever the nation is polled, most folks are not in favor of us being over there.

Others understand what's going on.

This past week or two, of course, Congress and the Senate have been debating whether or not the war should have happened and how it's being conducted.

Everyone's got an opinion, right?

If if I ask you what your opinion was, you would probably be like me and have at least two opinions.

I I have uh been reading through some of the commentary and I ran across a quote the other day from an individual concerning what's happening in Iran, and I I was caught by it, not because of what he said.

I there's not much I read online anymore that shocks me.

Can I get a witness?

Like it's all out there, it's all tough, right?

But what caught me about this particular quote wasn't what was said, but who said it and and the angle that he took.

The individual's name was Sam Harris.

Now, if you are um familiar with who he is, you know he's an influential figure in the new atheistic, new atheism movement.

In fact, he is one of the four horsemen of the new atheism, right there with Dawkins and Hickon Hitchens, and like he is a very outspoken, not just, hey, I think science should not be impeded by religion and they should be totally separate.

He sees religion as the enemy.

In particular, and in addition to that, he also probably not surprising to you, is not traditionally a fan of conservatism, uh, the Republican Party, or in particular, Donald Trump.

And so whenever I read in a Substack article recently where he said this war has some valid reasons.

And then at the end of the opening, the introduction to his point, he said, if you can't see why it is that we are over there, and your opposition to the war doesn't take into account how brutal and malicious this regime has been, then your opposition, he says, is not morally sane.

And that's a pretty heavy-handed way of saying his opinion sharing his opinion, um, but it is the way that Sam Harris speaks.

Now, what called me about this phrase, of course, is he's not typically someone who's going to give any credence to anything that a conservative does under normal circumstances.

But more importantly, what caught my attention was the use of this phrase morally sane.

Because, see, Sam Harris and others like him have a significant problem.

Whenever you remove the authority of religion, and specifically for us as Christians, the authority of Jesus Christ from determining what should happen in the world and what wrong is and what right is, you're not left with much.

You're left with a bunch of people on social media arguing about what's right and what's wrong.

Because in the absence of religion, in the absence of an authority like God, who determines what's right and what's wrong?

And what right do we have as individuals in the West to determine how Iran or people in the East or Mideast are conducting themselves?

And so, what I want to do this morning is to raise the question: what is moral sanity?

And who has the right to determine how we answer these big questions?

And I want to do this because I know, look, I get it, like this is some heavy stuff.

And so I want you to know that, well, I want you to know that this sermon is going to end at some point.

And so I want you to see exactly where we are and what we're going to be talking about this morning.

And so what we're going to be doing as we walk through Romans 8, verses 18 through 23 or so, is we're going to be looking at three separate images that explain a very important question.

Romans 8:18–23

Because uh Sam Harris and Dawkins and Hitchens and Denton and like all of these guys, Neil deGrasse Tyson, their greatest complaint with God supposedly is the existence of suffering.

Whenever they challenge your belief in God, they will almost always come down to the question of if God is all good and if God is all-powerful, why do bad things happen in this world?

And so one might be tempted to believe that if we could just come to an answer to this question, then people who don't believe in God because they choose to believe in an atheistic worldview would come back to this place where they believe that there is something out there that is greater than we can see with our eyes.

That if we could just answer the theodicy question, if we could just answer the question, why do bad things happen in a world where there is a good, all-powerful God?

If we could just answer this question, then maybe we could all get on the same page that we are not in control.

And we're not, are we?

Someone else we hope is.

As followers of Christ, we're told that that person is Jesus Christ and he rules with love and grace and power.

And so we have to answer this question.

So here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna look at these three images, looking, walking through Romans chapter 8 very quickly and see like, is there a reason?

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Is there a rationale?

Here are the three images, and so you know exactly where we're where we are going to be tracking through.

The images we're gonna look at are a miracle drug, a faster road, and a delayed ending.

I know that means nothing to you right now, but just hang on, so here we go.

We're gonna look first at a miracle drug.

Now, look at me with me, if you will, at Romans 8, verse 18.

Romans 8:18

Paul, what's happening here in the book of Romans, has been sharing how you and I find faith in Jesus Christ.

And he begins by pointing out the fact that we're sinners, that we're broken people.

And our greatest problem is that we need to trust God with our salvation.

And we so we turn to him in faith to find the grace that we need in Jesus Christ.

Now, here in Romans chapter 8, he kind of takes an aside.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Because what he's doing is he's talking about the power of the Spirit to work mightily in the life of the believer.

We don't talk about this enough as Southern Baptists, but I'm here to tell you like, I need the power of the Holy Spirit in my life.

What God did in my life was more than just give me a ticket or a key into heaven whenever I die.

His spirit walks with me through the tough times in life.

That's good news, isn't it?

And so Paul is bringing us to that place.

And now he's taking this a little aside, and he's going to point out how how that idea, like someone's going to say, okay, Major, if the spirit is walking with us, what about the sickness of my child?

Okay, Major, if the spirit is walking with us, what about my financial problems?

What about my hunger?

If the spirit is walking with us, what about my marriage?

What about my community?

What's going on with all the struggles and the sorrows in the world?

So you and I aren't the first ones to wrestle with these questions.

Paul takes this head on.

By the way, let me just say to you: like if you're watching online or here in this room, God is not afraid of our tough questions.

He's not.

He knows they're coming, he knows they're there.

In fact, he's the one who designed the world so that those questions could exist at all.

And so here's what Paul does he sets up this image for us to consider that the sufferings of this present world are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed in us in the future.

In other words, there's something greater coming than your suffering.

I know right now it's down here, and this is difficult, but there's something that's far more important, something there's a payoff coming later for the sorrow and the suffering that is currently in this world around us.

Look at verse 19, and he begins to sort of unpackage this for us.

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revelation of the sons of God.

The creation itself.

You in this realm, this world that we live in, is patiently waiting.

All of us know that this cannot, this is not sustainable, that there's something that has to come out of this or after this that is going to provide for us the hope that we need.

And the problem is waiting is tough.

How many of you like to wait?

Man, I pick the longest lines everywhere I go to.

How about you?

Seem to, anyways.

It's not because I choose to, it's just how it how it works.

And I don't like waiting, especially when waiting is uncomfortable.

But sometimes waiting is necessary.

Time is the reason that the delay occurs.

We need time.

I read an article recently, it was actually a section out of a book, where the author suggested the possibility that in the future you and I would have drugs that would help us overcome the greatest grief in our life.

If you were to lose a spouse or a child, we would just combine, we would give you a miracle drug.

And that miracle drug would help you to, for a season, forget about the sorrow, the suffering, the absence, the loss in your life.

Now, the author made this point to raise the question whether or not that would be ethical.

Can I just ask you, would it be ethical to prescribe a miracle medication that allowed you to circumnavigate the sorrow and the suffering and the waiting that was necessary for a season of grief?

The answer is no.

I mean, it would be immoral for us to circumvent the natural processes of life.

Maybe that's exactly what God is doing.

In fact, I'm going to suggest to you from scripture that's exactly what he's doing.

That this world is broken, and that our grief over the loss of this world, over the agony of this world, must be felt.

How oblivious it would be, how unethical it would be if God allowed you and I to live separately, even as followers of Christ, to live totally separately from the sorrows of this world, so that we would obliviously forget about the brokenness and the sorrow and the loss and the suffering.

Image number two, a faster road, a faster road.

Look at uh Romans chapter 8, verse 20.

Romans 8:20

Very next verse, Paul continues his argument by raising this point.

He says, For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it to hope.

Now, this is a significant verse if we pause and consider what it's saying.

Because what Paul is saying here is that the world has been subjected to futility.

Someone put it in this state.

It wasn't just the sin of man that caused the world to be broken, it was the love of God who came down and caused our world through the curse in Genesis chapter 3 to align with our spiritual fallenness.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

So you and I are spiritually deaf, dumb, and indifferent.

We would know nothing of that realm were it not for the fact that God has allowed our world to reflect something of the brokenness of our souls.

It's futility.

Futility is not fun, is it?

I mean, I don't like obstacles, I don't like delays, I don't like problems, I like, I like straight lines.

Uh right now we're working on a home remodeling project.

Some of you know the feeling that, you know, whenever you get to the place where you're working in your house or on a job and you reach in your tool belt for the tool you need, you know, you know what you're not going to find?

What you need.

I have made more trips up and down the stairs at my house than I care to count.

I'm telling you, it's futility, it's it's obstacles.

And the whole world, Paul says, is kind of set up this way.

If here's my point: if you don't get anything else out of what you're here today, hearing today, that this will be valuable for you.

If you feel like the world is working against you, it's because it is.

This creation is designed to reflect the brokenness of the world that is around us, Paul says.

The creation is subjected to it, that the creation itself one day will be set free from this futility, its bondage to corruption, and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

That's you and me.

And creation is right here with us.

In fact, Paul tells us that creation is suffering together.

It's subjected together in futility.

Now, what does it mean, subjected together?

It means that it's subjected together because it's not just the world that has been subjected to futility.

It's not just the world that's groaning, as he's about to say here, but you and I are groaning.

We feel the pain in this world.

Yes, like that's not an epiphany at all.

We all know that life can be tough.

But more important than that, Paul's going to say in Romans 8 26, which we're not going to get to this morning, Paul's going to say that the Spirit Himself is groaning.

See, the suffering of this world moves from the creation to us as God's image bearers, all the way out to the very heart of God Himself.

God suffers along with us with us.

He has chosen to do so.

Creation is not the way it is because of sin alone.

Creation is the way it is because of the love of God.

Do you know where the most dangerous road on the planet is?

This is your second image, by the way, if those of you who are keeping count of the points, the the fastest road, do you know where the most dangerous road on the planet is?

It is located between Kabul and Jalalabad Jalalabad in Afghanistan.

Now, the it didn't, it wasn't always the most dangerous road in the world or the most dangerous road in Afghanistan.

At one point, the road was full of boulders and cracks, and it was just a path that people drove across the desert whenever the U.S.

showed up and decided, you know what, you know what folks really need here is a highway.

And if there's one thing we know how to do in this country is to build highways that move without any problems, right?

Thank you for those of you who've driven on 81.

You know it doesn't always work out the way that we intend.

And so so this road was cut and it was blacktopped and the boulders removed and all of the obstacles, all of the futility was removed from the road.

And do you know what happened?

A road that at one point had no fatalities became one of the most dangerous roads on the planet.

The reason being is because people were able to move faster, they were able to move quicker, they were able to just assume they knew exactly where they were going to, and they would make a turn and not realize that they were about to come head on against oncoming traffic, to have to make a choice between running heading straight into a truck or driving off a 100-foot embankment.

And many people lost their life.

The futility that we experience in this world is no different.

The difficulties that you and I face are like the boulders and the rocks and the brakes and the turns in a path forward that keeps us from driving off the abyss.

Many of us, if we did not have circumstances in our world that caused us to slow down, how many of you are good at slowing down?

How many of you are good at stopping whenever you're angry and you know you need to stop?

How many of you like it's easy for you whenever, whenever you feel rushed to stop and say, okay, I'm feeling rushed right now.

I just need to slow down and take a deep breath.

Like, is that intuitive for anybody in this room?

Because if it is, like I want to talk to you because I've got some problems I want to work through, and maybe you can help.

No, no.

The truth is the futility in this world has a place.

The sorrows in this world have a place, the struggles in this world have a place.

Without the struggles, we would never choose to turn to God.

I would just rely on myself and my own finances and my own strength and my own health and my own intuition and my own fill in the blank.

Without the struggles in this world, I would if I were never laying flat on my back, I don't know that I would ever look to heaven.

I'm just being real with you right now.

And I think you're the same way.

Without the struggles of this world, without the futility, without the boders of life, we would never choose to turn to God.

Secondly, and this is crucially important for our topic today, we would never choose to leave this world if this was a utopia.

And it's not.

And nor will it ever be.

I know your politicians are promising you they're gonna they're gonna bring you utopia.

I I know that the that the the academy is promising you that one day we're going to accomplish utopia.

I I know that somewhere in your world there's a guru somewhere that just acknowledges or tries to prove that all we have to do is to get people to think this way and act this way, and we're gonna create never gonna happen.

And the reason it's never going to happen, the reason why there are boulders in the road, the reason why there is no faster road that exists is because you and I would become satisfied living in this world and we would never want to let it go.

And the one thing God wants to do is to separate us from this fallen world.

Image number two.

Now, these again, just keep up with me because these are explanations for why maybe it is that God is allowing suffering, why it is that God allows struggles, this perfect God who could fix everything in his mercy and grace chooses to allow us to languish, to delay.

Which brings us to the third image.

We talked about the miracle drug.

There is no miracle drug, a miracle drug that would cause us to be able to look over, to get past the sorrows of this world wouldn't be, it wouldn't be ethical to give.

It would be it would be a lie.

A faster road, some way of working around the boulders and the sorrows of this life.

If if that were the case, we would drive headlong off the abyss of eternal wrath and there find ourselves in greater struggle than we.

Could ever imagine here on this earth.

Finally, image number three, a delayed ending.

A delayed ending.

All right.

Romans 8, verse 22.

Romans 8:22

Paul says, For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together.

There it is, together.

The creation.

You, he's going to say in verse 23, the spirit in verse 26, we've been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

Now, I have no expertise on childbirth, having never experienced it, but some in this room have.

And I think the one thing you can most of you will be able to testify to is it takes longer than you would like for it to.

It lasts, it drags on, it delays.

But yet at the end of that childbirth, many of you have chosen to go through it again, knowing what you faced in that room.

And why would you do that?

Why do you choose pain and sorrow with tremendous love and joy?

And the reason is because you're giving birth to something.

And at the end of that process, there is something far greater that comes out of it.

Let's just face it, there's also pain and sorrow.

I mean, the kid, the pain and sorrow is not over after the delivery.

Can I get a witness?

Any of you got grown children?

Like you, you know, like it continues, but yet you know that's coming too, and you still choose to do it.

Why?

Because of what happens at the end, the greater thing.

Now we're talking about a delayed ending.

Delayed endings are not fun, but sometimes they're appropriate.

Sometimes, in fact, they're helpful.

Look at verse number 23, and then we'll look at our image together.

Verse 23, Paul says, and not only this, but the creation, uh, not only the creation, but we ourselves who have who are the first fruits of the Spirit grown inwardly.

We align our hearts, align our brokenness, aligns with the sorrow of this sinful world, so that we would never be satisfied with it, so that we will always be willing and eager to turn to God, so that we will not make this place our home, but we will make Jesus our Savior.

This is what God wants.

We eagerly await, we wait eagerly for the adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

What does it profit a man, Jesus asks, if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?

And the inverse of that is also true.

What benefit is to is it to a woman?

What benefit is it to a man if they surrender the whole world and gain their soul?

It's a good trade-off, even if if it comes through some sorrow and some pain.

The ending, you see, whether it's childbirth, life eternal, the ending redefines everything that came before.

The ending redefines everything that came before.

You know, we know this in our culture.

Sam Harris knows it.

The medical community knows it.

Have you ever been to your dentist?

And like they maybe they're they're working in your mouth, which is always a lot of fun, right?

Very uncomfortable.

I I've remember I remember uh one time going to a dentist, and uh they they had this contraption in my mouth that helped to prop my mouth open even larger, which I don't get.

I'm like, surely it's large enough as it is right now, or at least that's what I hear.

But apparently the dentist needed more room to get both his his elbows down inside.

And so, like, he's got this contraption in there, and like I'm very uncomfortable.

And like there's some intense moments of pain in the middle, you know how it is.

And then at the very end, the pain stops, and and the the brace is still there.

And I kind of glance over, and the doctor, and I promise you this is the case.

The dentist is sitting in his seat, he has his hands on his on his knees in front of him, and he's just setting there.

And I'm thinking to myself, what on the earth is he doing?

You probably have a similar experience where you caught your doctor taking longer than she should, or longer than he should, to do a procedure.

And it's not because they they work by the hour, they don't work by the hour.

It it there's something more important happening there.

They call it the peak end rule.

And and what the peak end rule says is that if you have this high moment of pain in the middle of a procedure, and then you let that pain subside, and there's a period of comfort, and you draw that out a little bit.

Now it's uncomfortable and it's not easy, but it's not the pain that you experience, the peak pain.

You let draw it out a little bit, then the individual is more likely to remember the whole experience more positively.

That's statistically proven over and over again.

And so if a dentist will stop in the middle or towards the end of a procedure, whenever it's uncomfortable but not painful, statistics tell us you're more likely to come back.

And so that's why they, that's why they many of them will practice this.

It's called the peak end rule.

What if it's the case that God is at least as smart as a dentist?

And he figures, look, there's gonna be a lot of pain, and it's necessary pain, as we've talked about.

And some of it's gonna, the discomfort is going to be carried out to the very end of life, and it's not gonna be great, but it's necessary because the end redefines everything.

A miracle drug, it's a a faster road, a delayed ending.

Now we could go on and on and on examining reasons why maybe it is that God allows sorrow and suffering in the world.

There there's a there's a hundred more reasons that could be offered.

But the most important thing that we need to understand is not why it is that I am hurting, because we're not always going to get that answer.

Nor is it is it reasonable for us to understand why it is that there's suffering in Iran or in South Chicago or anywhere else.

Like to understand exactly what's going on, we're not God.

We're not always going to know.

But the one thing that we do need to know is that there are reasonable answers.

There's there are rational, logical explanations for why suffering must exist in this world.

We aren't always going to know.

That's why God gave us hope.

That's where Paul wraps up in Romans 8, verse 24.

Romans 8:24

Last verse, here it is.

Paul says, For in hope we were saved.

This is how we were saved.

God didn't save us through works, God didn't save us through passing some tests, God didn't save us for us walking through the gauntlet, God didn't save us and then prove it to us by making the world around us perfect.

How many of you, your world got like instantly just completely better, and you didn't have any more problems after you became a Christian?

Now you got the same problems.

We all face the same stuff.

Why?

Because we're saved in hope.

Now, hope that is seen is not really hope at all.

Thanks, Paul.

That's very clear.

Hope that is seen isn't hope for us to hope for something.

It's something that we don't fully see, we don't fully understand, we can't fully grasp.

But if God saved us in hope, then he's going to sustain us through the same world in hope.

And that means we're not always going to have the answers because hope that is seen isn't really hope at all for who hopes for what he has seen, Paul says.

There are reasonable answers to the unreasonable struggles of this world.

I have a heart for this right now because I've recently spent time talking to an individual whose faith was challenged and crushed because of this question.

And I find it so unnecessary.

I find it no one's so unnecessary because there are reasonable and rational explanations to the sorrow and suffering of this world.

You may not like them, I may wish they were different, but whenever we pause and look at what God is doing in humanity and what he wants to do in my heart, of course there's suffering.

Of course there's sorrow.

Of course, there's struggle.

In fact, I'm just going to tell you that I think it's unreasonable.

I think that if your opposition to God is because of sorrow and suffering, I would say your opposition is not morally sane.

I would say there's probably something else going on in your heart.

Maybe there's another reason why it is that you really don't want there to be a God in this universe.

And so your argument becomes theodicy.

Good God, powerful God, suffering.

Doesn't make sense.

Check mark, I've got it figured out, and you don't.

But I'm here to tell you that is not reasonable and it's not morally sane.

People make decisions for other reasons.

We know this because here's the if you've if I've dropped you along the way, please come back in for a moment.

We know that people make decisions for other reasons and they don't consider the actual facts whenever they're presented to them because the three images that I gave you this morning were not mine.

I did not create them.

They were created and released in a book called The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, published in 2010 by Sam Harris, who is not arguing for the existence of God, nor is he arguing for why bad things happen in a world where there's a good, all-powerful God.

These three images were used by him to make other points.

Image one, the miracle drug, appears on page 22.

You could, I'm bringing the receipts to you.

Okay, here they are.

Page 22 was used to discuss the uncertain questions that science will face in the future, and yet it's a beautiful example of why it is God cannot remove grief.

Image two is found on page 84, the fastest road.

He used it to explain unintended effects and how that science can't always get morality right because it's going to make effect mistakes because there are unintended consequences or unattended effects.

And yet there it is.

It's a beautiful explanation of why it is that maybe the boulders are necessary.

The futility is necessary, the sorrow is necessary to keep us from driving off the cliff.

Image three is found on page 77.

He uses it to explain the unintuitive approaches that science will be willing to take in the future that may not always seem moral, but they actually are in the end.

And yet he does not give the same credence to the possibility that God is smarter than he is.

Then maybe God has unintuitive approaches that require sorrow and suffering in our life.

Now, why is it those images?

He wrote those images, right?

I mean, he pinned those things and applied them to other aspects of his field, but he cannot see how that if he moves himself out of the seat of deciding what's right and wrong, and he allows God to sit down in that seat, then suddenly everything makes sense.

The illustrations point to a God who is incredibly loving, who's incredibly gracious, and yet allows sorrow and suffering.

You know what I think Jesus would say about Sam Harris's substack post arguing for the legitimacy of the potential legitimacy of the Iranian war?

You know what I think he would say concerning Sam Harris's argument that he is the one who's making the determination, that science is the one who's determining what's right and wrong.

You know what I think Jesus would say to anyone who would argue that sorrow and suffering in this world is proof.

It's opposition, it's an opposition, sends an opposition to the existence of God.

I think, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I kind of imagine Jesus saying something like you know, usually I quote my father, but this morning I'm going to quote Sam Harris.

And if you choose not to believe in God, then your opposition is not morally sane.