Latest / Millennial Mustard Seed / S4 85. The Epicurean Paradox – Age Old Question

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S4 85. The Epicurean Paradox – Age Old Question · Millennial Mustard Seed

• 0:01
  Hello folks. This is Princess.
• 0:03
  You are. Listening to the Millennial
• 0:05
  Mustard. See Podcast.
• 0:07
  Thanks for listening. Don't forget.
• 0:08
  To share with your friends, that's tough.
• 0:12
  We're in a very tough spot. I think that what we're doing
• 0:15
  right now is a great. Benefit in virtue because it's
• 0:19
  an end around between this whole corrupt informational system,
• 0:24
  media system we claim to believe.
• 0:27
  In a God who spoke the universe into existence.
• 0:29
  And literally raised himself from the dead.
• 0:33
  And yet, we're not going to. Believe that?
• 0:35
  Anything else exists in the spirit realm, even though his
• 0:38
  word tells. Us that they do.
• 0:40
  Their bodies weren't permitted to go to sleep like humans do,
• 0:45
  and they weren't permitted to go to heaven.
• 0:47
  So they wander the earth, you know, I've seen the eyes turn
• 0:51
  black to unknown tongues being spoken.
• 0:55
  These giants were way up in the island.
• 0:58
  The young Braves, the young men would hide have been the trees.
• 1:01
  I wait for one of these 12 footers to come walking down the
• 1:04
  bath and they would jump on them.
• 1:06
  And kill them and drag them back to the village, and the village
• 1:09
  would feast on the body. Then people start to get
• 1:17
  weapons. They start to get armor.
• 1:18
  They start to build cities. They start to fortify their
• 1:20
  cities. Now God looks down and there's
• 1:22
  violence everywhere. The battle, this war that we are
• 1:26
  at is not against each other. It's against these
• 1:29
  principalities and these rulers and these archons.
• 1:32
  In the high places, it's really worthwhile to read the Bible
• 1:35
  yourself. Fear is one of the primary
• 1:38
  drivers of mind control, because we have to take every thought
• 1:42
  captive and resist fear. You're going to have a testimony
• 1:50
  that is a justice case against the Kingdom of Darkness.
• 2:07
  Hey Rod from The Millennial Mustard Seed.
• 2:10
  This is Pete from the days of NOAA podcast.
• 2:12
  How are you, Sir? Doing Well, man, we're going to
• 2:15
  get this thing recorded because somebody in the airwaves does
• 2:18
  not like this topic. So I'm actually excited for a
• 2:21
  round two here. Yeah, we had an unprecedented
• 2:26
  Internet flash outage there, right?
• 2:29
  And then my local backup disappeared as well.
• 2:33
  So my local backup is missing. So this has never happened
• 2:36
  before in this unique manner. In five years of podcasting,
• 2:40
  this is the first time I've had this unique literally wipe out,
• 2:45
  made-up recording back. I have a local backup going
• 2:48
  right now too. It's just unbelievable.
• 2:50
  But yeah, so let's jump into it, man, because we were, we were
• 2:53
  getting ready to move in the spirit and get some things lined
• 2:57
  up here that's going to be edifying and tackle this huge
• 3:00
  question. So I'm going to go back and
• 3:01
  reread this question, Pete, and then let's just get back into
• 3:05
  it. And let me just say this real
• 3:06
  quick right before you do that. We'll let the audience be the
• 3:09
  judge as far as if that. If you guys think there was some
• 3:13
  spiritual opposition just now once you hear kind of what we're
• 3:17
  going to discuss, not to talk it up too much, but it's an Angel
• 3:22
  question challenging the the authority of who God is, which
• 3:27
  is where Satan loves to attack. So yeah, won't you jump in?
• 3:32
  This was a a Twitter post that I saw and I sent screenshots to
• 3:36
  Rod, so he's going to read this. All right, I'll start with this
• 3:39
  first screenshot Here the paradox goes as follows.
• 3:44
  If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to, then
• 3:48
  he is not all powerful. If he is able to prevent evil
• 3:52
  but is not willing to, then he is not all good.
• 3:56
  If he is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why is
• 4:00
  there evil and suffering in the world?
• 4:02
  So Pete, this is a paraphrase of a very ancient age-old question
• 4:08
  you want to fill us in on. Who asked this question
• 4:10
  originally from the old times? Yeah, I was looking up just if
• 4:16
  it had a particular, you know, title to this this question or
• 4:20
  series of questions, and it actually did.
• 4:23
  It comes from the 3rd century BC from a guy named Epicurus or
• 4:28
  Epicurious and he posed this question if if God is willing to
• 4:33
  prevent evil. But doesn't is he actually good?
• 4:37
  Or if he doesn't want to but he's able to, you know, it's
• 4:42
  it's. So it's basically this conundrum
• 4:44
  of if he's incapable but unwilling, what does that say
• 4:50
  about him? Or if he's willing but
• 4:52
  incapable, what does that say about him?
• 4:54
  And if he's neither, well, maybe he's not really God.
• 4:58
  And so, so this has been a challenge that apparently to
• 5:03
  this day, a month ago, I saw a Twitter post.
• 5:05
  An atheist had posted this, and he posted it under a caption.
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  You guys can Google this picture looks like out on the African
• 5:13
  Prairie, a poor little starving child.
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  Just by the, you know, the frailty of the child, you could
• 5:20
  kind of come to that conclusion. And here's this vulture.
• 5:24
  You know, 10 or so yards. In the background looking for an
• 5:28
  easy lunch, it appears. And so just kind of throwing
• 5:33
  this at God's face saying look at the suffering, that here is
• 5:37
  just one snapshot of suffering in the world.
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  So God, either you don't care and but you could do something
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  but you don't care, or you care but you just can't do anything
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  and either way. They seem to have a point
• 5:56
  against God, but the reason I brought this up to Rod, I wanted
• 6:01
  to do a mini episode on this is because, you know, I've done a
• 6:05
  fair bit of of study on the topic of just how deterministic
• 6:10
  God is and how free will works. And there's a lot of theological
• 6:15
  systems that go back and forth between those things and try to
• 6:18
  wrestle with those questions that I won't get into, but.
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  I think when someone asks this question, and it's a good
• 6:26
  question, it it deserves an answer.
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  Unfortunately, I think a lot of Christians don't have a good
• 6:32
  answer. I think we need to understand
• 6:36
  the nature of God in order to answer this question.
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  And one of the things about him is that he has chosen.
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  In his sovereignty, he's the one deciding.
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  In his sovereignty, to limit himself to a degree.
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  And he does this for a variety of reasons.
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  He set up the world and the the, the, the creatures that He made
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  the creation He made, He set up in a certain way, with certain
• 7:06
  rules, their spiritual realm rules.
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  There's, you know, giving mankind dominion over the Earth
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  rules. And so when I see suffering in
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  the world, in large part I say to myself, well, as much as we
• 7:21
  are willing to follow God's ways and let him in, then we see more
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  of him because we are his ambassadors on Earth.
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  That's how, by and large, that's how he's chosen to represent
• 7:34
  himself in this world. Not that he doesn't intervene on
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  his own. I'm sure he does on a daily
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  basis. In many ways we don't even
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  realize. But by and large, they are his
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  ambassadors. And so if the world doesn't see
• 7:47
  God, it's because of his children not acting how we're
• 7:53
  supposed to act. And if we let, if we decide that
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  we want to live our own way and we don't want to let God into
• 8:03
  the equation, well then evil gets a leg up.
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  It's really this back and forth of what are you going to feed?
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  What are you going to give power?
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  And so I think this self limiting nature that God has
• 8:16
  chosen to act upon in this way is he is going to let a free
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  will play out to to a certain degree as far as he has
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  determined. And once he sets up those rules,
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  since the Bible says he does not change, he is not going to go
• 8:37
  back on the way he set out to. Accomplish things.
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  Now to me that just makes him a bigger, more more impressive
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  God, because if he had to play both sides of the chess board
• 8:51
  and he won, no one would be impressed.
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  But he if he can let the you know, most powerful grandmaster
• 9:01
  you know an A, I, you know supercomputer.
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  Compete against him and chess and he can still win.
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  That's what makes him God is the fact that he allows evil and
• 9:16
  free will to exist and he will still accomplish what he wants
• 9:20
  to accomplish. So it's basically this this
• 9:25
  question is answered this age-old question from 2300 years
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  ago. In my opinion.
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  The way I answer it is we need to understand that God is self
• 9:35
  limiting because he has given dominion of this earth to
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  mankind. He's self limiting in part
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  because he wants genuine obedience and genuine love, just
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  like we don't want our child to. You know, if we could give our
• 9:52
  child a pill, that forever would make them love and be obedient
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  to us. Sure, it might be peaceful in
• 9:59
  the house every day, but deep down we know that that that love
• 10:03
  and that obedience is fake. It's robotic.
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  And and I think God is an idealist.
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  He he wants the highest level possible good and he's willing
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  to risk a lot to get it. So that's that's my answer to to
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  that question is we need to understand it's not that God
• 10:25
  isn't omniscient. It's not that he doesn't care.
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  It's that, in general, he's given dominion to us.
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  And it's what we do with it. And he is self limiting in that
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  way. Not that he can't, but because
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  he set it up in his sovereignty. Yeah.
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  And this is a big question, it's obviously an age-old question.
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  So the way that I'm going to enter into this one is I'm going
• 10:54
  to lean towards the focus that that God shows us in his word,
• 10:59
  which is the power of storytelling.
• 11:02
  There's plenty of examples of good stories in the Bible, but
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  Joseph comes to mind. The thing about Joseph is he was
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  he was guiltless before his brothers who betrayed him.
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  He was brutally betrayed and sold into slavery and he works
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  his way from the bottom, finally becoming the head of the
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  household of one of the the generals.
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  Or it's somebody important in Egypt and is betrayed again by I
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  think his Potter for his wife and he was rolling Potter for
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  his house. And after spending some time in
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  prison for something he didn't do wrong, God is webbing and
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  weaving behind the scenes. In my opinion, this very long
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  range, limitless filtered plan because of the willingness of
• 12:01
  what Joseph's heart looked like before God.
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  You see, God doesn't see the outward appearance, he sees the
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  heart. So when he knew he's seen
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  Joseph, he's like, I can bring what I want to pass into
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  succession because of a child like Joseph goes through this
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  betrayal, becomes a slave. Most of us complain about just
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  these simple things in life that, heck, we probably brought
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  it on herself. But here's a guy who's just not
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  not perfect, not guiltless, not blameless, but in the things he
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  was betrayed on, the word shows us that he was blameless in this
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  betrayal. He did nothing to invoke it, and
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  by the time he finds himself interpreting 2 dreams of two
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  other, let's just say laborers for Pharaoh in a jail cell, he
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  still dishes out grace. The same measure honestly
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  depicting the dreams of the guy who was Ferris Baker and the guy
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  who was Ferris Cup holder. They both had drastically
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  different outcomes, but Joseph once again, genuinely, honestly
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  used a gift that God gave him in the lowest position possible
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  without mumbling, without complaining.
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  And eventually this leads the cup bearer to remind Pharaoh in
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  one of his hardest seasons as to not understanding how to
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  interpret this dream. The wise men of the land, the
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  mages of the land. Nobody could interpret this
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  dream for Pharaoh. But the cup bearer remembered
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  being in that dark and low and that damp in that dirty place
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  where a servant of the one true God had accurately and
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  faithfully depicted his dream and gave him resolve.
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  And he mentions Joseph's name, De Pharaoh.
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  And now this lands Joseph from the lowest pit into the courts
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  of the highest power in the land.
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  And the reason I bring this story up and obviously I
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  paraphrase and I just was wanted to hit a couple climaxes.
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  I'm hoping majority of you know what this story actually
• 14:15
  entails. I hope you've read it.
• 14:17
  If you haven't, well now's the time but the power of this story
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  that God is showing us and the outcome of Joseph's climactical
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  line as the brothers who sold him into slavery returned to the
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  very land that God has lifted him out of the pit from and
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  given him the position as Co ruler of the land.
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  Joseph says this to his brothers though.
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  You have intended this for evil against me.
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  The Lord my God has used it for good.
• 15:00
  And this is like a heartwrecking story really.
• 15:02
  I mean if if you guys get into it and just be like a child
• 15:06
  again, just be like a little kid and open up the Bible and read
• 15:09
  this story about Joseph. Because God uses the the this
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  amazing power of storytelling throughout the word to show us
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  his long range reach as well as how he limits himself.
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  But through that limitation, the filtration of that that I would
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  agree with is through the dominion and Kingdom of men that
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  he has clearly made in his likeness and his image and
• 15:44
  established here on this earth with dominion.
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  And there's only a couple Joseph's for many other citizens
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  of Egypt, right? It's not many men of great moral
• 15:58
  and great character. Now why, That's another podcast
• 16:01
  episode. But what I would say to the
• 16:04
  audience is I love Pete's response.
• 16:09
  I agree with almost everything you said to an extent, but I
• 16:12
  wanted to use the power of storytelling that stirred up
• 16:15
  inside of me because that is how God responds to the age-old
• 16:19
  questions like this. Because Joseph probably asked
• 16:23
  himself that question a dozen or more times every month that went
• 16:28
  by as he found himself in the pit knowing he did nothing
• 16:33
  wrong. There was no bad ill will or or
• 16:35
  conniving this to any of the deals he found that fell short
• 16:39
  on to the extent of him being imprisoned, enslaved.
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  I'm sure he pondered God. Are you really just are you
• 16:49
  really righteous? Are you really in control?
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  I'm sure he doesn't confront God like that according to what the
• 16:54
  word shows us. But he's a man.
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  He this is a shadowing of what Christ would be like but Joseph
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  isn't Christ. Typology possibly could be
• 17:04
  argued, but let let's get it back to the childlike
• 17:07
  perspective here. One story that God shares with
• 17:14
  us through His word to help us understand these big questions.
• 17:19
  Because they're spiritual questions, they're emotional
• 17:22
  questions and and we shouldn't always have a perfect response
• 17:28
  for some of these questions. There is going to be some wonder
• 17:32
  and mystery to it all. But God, we cannot forget, has a
• 17:39
  long range plan that he works out through the least willing
• 17:45
  candidates. To the outside eye.
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  People would look upon the lowly things and and they would never
• 17:51
  imagine what God is intending to accomplish to that which has
• 17:56
  been rejected and abandoned and forgotten.
• 18:01
  And that's the power of storytelling.
• 18:04
  So in a nutshell, Pete, the way I view a question like is God
• 18:08
  good? Is God just?
• 18:09
  I think his contention is beyond comprehension.
• 18:15
  I think the love that he depicts to us in the word is beyond our
• 18:21
  grasp. Hence the reason he says I work
• 18:25
  in and through you to cause my will to come about.
• 18:28
  These are big questions and it's going to take some time for even
• 18:32
  me to just bask in that a little bit more like more and and I
• 18:37
  would expect you guys as listeners to have a secret
• 18:41
  conversation with God if this is a troubling topic for you and
• 18:48
  yeah. And and let me add one last
• 18:51
  little thing to kind of cap off what you said about God using
• 18:55
  things for good. That doesn't mean that the event
• 18:58
  itself is good, is that he's able to bring something good out
• 19:03
  of anything. And there's been something like
• 19:08
  20 billion people that have. That have lived the last you
• 19:13
  know 6000 or so years, something like that.
• 19:18
  And we have no idea all of the stories of pain and suffering.
• 19:25
  We hear a lot about them today because of the age of
• 19:28
  information but there's a lot of stories we haven't heard.
• 19:33
  But that I bring that up to say I think that in every dark
• 19:38
  situation whether it's. Nazi Germany concentration camp
• 19:43
  or an SRA satanic ritual abuse survivor, you know or what was
• 19:52
  the guy that that lost like half his family that wrote it is well
• 19:56
  with my soul. I think God has someone who has
• 20:03
  experienced every suffering possible out there.
• 20:10
  And he has someone who is a believer in him, who has gone
• 20:14
  through that so that we can speak to the world and have a
• 20:19
  witness to the same, to a person with the same type of background
• 20:24
  who isn't a believer. And we can say how God has
• 20:30
  brought us through it and what he has taught us.
• 20:32
  So I think that's one of the reasons he allows things to play
• 20:36
  out with suffering and pain and free will is so that he can show
• 20:43
  the world how he can redeem situations that seem impossible.
• 20:48
  And if he gave Christians a special bit of protection that
• 20:55
  the world noticeably saw, if we had 20% less, you know,
• 21:02
  marriages fall apart or 20% less, or untimely deaths because
• 21:07
  we were Christians or something, the world would get a chip on
• 21:11
  their shoulder. And rightly so.
• 21:14
  Oh, God doesn't care about us. You're the special ones.
• 21:18
  No, we go through the same stuff.
• 21:20
  And that doesn't mean we don't have blessings and protection.
• 21:23
  It doesn't mean we don't have eternal life.
• 21:26
  But we go through the same stuff, and I think God lets us
• 21:28
  go through it so we can speak his truth to someone on the
• 21:35
  other side who's felt that same thing.
• 21:39
  Wise words, Pete. That's deep.
• 21:41
  Deep stuff, man. Deep stuff.
• 21:43
  Thanks brother. Yeah, and this is definitely the
• 21:47
  kind of question that needs to come up.
• 21:49
  It needs to be a heartfelt conversation that really we
• 21:53
  digest and bite sizes because it can trigger pain and trauma or
• 21:59
  remembrance of difficult things. And we're all going through this
• 22:03
  healing process. We're all going through this
• 22:05
  together. So being a little bit more
• 22:07
  vulnerable, you know, I think Carly said this recently.
• 22:09
  She said vulnerability is also a major tool that God uses too.
• 22:15
  So the enemy a lot of the times wants to make you feel this is a
• 22:19
  vulnerable question. This is going to expose the fact
• 22:22
  that Rod didn't have the best answer and he just wanted to go
• 22:25
  use a Bible story, whatever, right, Whatever people are
• 22:27
  thinking because I'm thinking in the confidence of what God
• 22:30
  showed me in the moment. And it was the comfort of
• 22:32
  knowing that in his word. He has brought a a peace and a
• 22:36
  comfort that through this power of storytelling that he's
• 22:40
  delivered to me. It has given me the confidence
• 22:41
  to to speak this way in front of one person or a million in front
• 22:45
  of Princess Kings, judges or the God down the street.
• 22:47
  It doesn't matter to me. I'm not discriminating.
• 22:50
  God is good. But we all have a vulnerability.
• 22:53
  And I think that if we took anything away from what Pete
• 22:57
  told us here tonight and the story that I reminded you guys
• 23:00
  of, of Joseph, God's a long range plan.
• 23:05
  Can really surprise us if we continue to follow him,
• 23:09
  regardless of what it looks like on the outside, regardless of
• 23:13
  what they say about us, what happens?
• 23:16
  He's good and faithful, and I believe that.
• 23:19
  And Pete, it's always an honor to chop it up with you.
• 23:21
  I know that this is more heartfelt.
• 23:23
  There's not as much laughter or any fun, spontaneous kind of
• 23:26
  questions that came out of this. But these this needs to take
• 23:29
  place. This is important.
• 23:30
  This is why I agreed to do it. This is why I believe that we
• 23:34
  can lead by example and bring, you know, stir up the fact that,
• 23:40
  hey, we're going to, we're going to charger places that most
• 23:43
  people aren't willing to go. And it doesn't mean we live in
• 23:45
  the space, but it does mean that we're man enough and confident
• 23:49
  enough in in who God is creating us to be to enter into this kind
• 23:52
  of space. So hopefully that's helpful and
• 23:55
  the word tells us, let us have an answer for the hope that we
• 23:59
  have right? So when you, when you hear those
• 24:02
  hard questions, those good questions in a lot of cases that
• 24:05
  atheists have, let's not be afraid to engage those, even if
• 24:11
  we don't know off the top of our head what to say.
• 24:15
  Because there are good answers out there exactly.
• 24:18
  And the and the wonderful thing about truth is it can stand up
• 24:23
  to scrutiny. It will all on its own.
• 24:29
  So so do the work because that because when you're defending
• 24:32
  God's truth, you can't fail that.
• 24:36
  You just need more. You might need more knowledge to
• 24:39
  know how to answer that, but go get that knowledge because it's
• 24:42
  out there. Truth will stand up to scrutiny.
• 24:45
  I want to leave one last thing, Rod, because kind of you brought
• 24:50
  it home with people that are probably feeling a lot of
• 24:53
  personal things where they don't want to talk philosophical, you
• 25:00
  know, they want to sit in silence like Job and say don't
• 25:03
  speak to me. I just need to sit.
• 25:06
  A book that I went through last year that I would recommend is
• 25:11
  called Dark Clouds Deep Mercy, Discovering the Grace of Lament.
• 25:16
  It's by Mark Vrogue up VROEGOP, and it's all about understanding
• 25:25
  how lament and learning how to do so.
• 25:28
  Especially in the Psalms where David is crying out in all of
• 25:32
  his struggle and you see him over and over turning it back
• 25:36
  towards faith and praise. So it's not just a rant or a
• 25:40
  venting, it's doing that, but then turning it into a faith
• 25:45
  building. So I highly recommend that book.
• 25:49
  First, John 4/19. We love him because he first
• 25:55
  loved us. Well, that's it for this little
• 26:00
  mini episode here. It's deep.
• 26:02
  It's an emotional roller coaster.
• 26:04
  Pete, I love the fact that you are a driving force to cover the
• 26:08
  chasm on these deeper and harder questions.
• 26:10
  A lot of the times, because we weep, we cry, we're up, we're
• 26:15
  down is just like the Psalms. A lot of the times is just like
• 26:19
  David's story, so I'm hoping this mini episode is helpful.
• 26:22
  Pete, some final words as we close out here.
• 26:27
  Yeah, just echo that. Good to be with you Rod.
• 26:30
  And yeah, just pray. A blessing over everyone
• 26:34
  listening, man. Sometimes God's answers take
• 26:37
  years and as we've had Tim Bentz on the show a few times he'll he
• 26:43
  says got off and answers in actions and things that play out
• 26:48
  not in words. And so it's not just a yes or no
• 26:53
  or it's it's it's how he'll show you the answer and stick with
• 27:00
  it. Because the more the more
• 27:02
  general revelation that you accept from God, the more
• 27:05
  specific and Debri he will take you.
• 27:08
  But you got to you got to open yourself up.
• 27:10
  If you're at that point where you're just accepting the very
• 27:14
  slightest little consideration of God, he will reveal more to
• 27:19
  you if you if you keep that open.
• 27:22
  And that's the echo of what a relationship looks like when you
• 27:26
  start to relate with your creator and have an intimate
• 27:29
  relationship, because that's key.
• 27:32
  And that's it for this mini episode.
• 27:34
  We cover your prayers and we ask you guys to leave us that five
• 27:37
  star rating and review. That helps us reach one more
• 27:40
  thirsty soul. That helps us reach one more
• 27:43
  person who has questions who they want to feel like they they
• 27:47
  fit in somewhere well that might be with us.
• 27:49
  So share this episode coming to you from southeastern
• 27:53
  Pennsylvania. Goodbye.