Jo Vitale [00:00:35] So welcome to the podcast where we invite you to Ask Away.

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[00:00:43] Hey guys, we hope it's been an encouraging start to the summer or winter, if you're south of the equator. Thanks to all of you who've been writing in with questions from all over the map. Canada to Australia, Liverpool to India, we're loving hearing from you. But we're also getting a little tired of the sound of our own voices. Some of you can probably relate to that feeling, so we wanted to encourage you that you can submit questions not only in written form, but also by leaving a voicemail. We would absolutely love for our listeners to hear your voice, on the show as you ask your own question. The details for how to do that are at the end of the episode, but don't be shy, we'd be thrilled to hear from you. This week on Ask Away, we're sharing with you three different questions that Vince responded to at previous live events. First up is a short answer that he gave at a quick-fire Q&A event for high school students in response to the question, who made God? 

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Vince Vitale [00:01:48] Often times you get this question who made God? If you're saying God had to make the universe, well, can't we just ask the question and say, who made God? It's actually not a great objection, although sometimes I think it gives us a hard time. Just because you have a good explanation for one thing, it doesn't mean you have to have an explanation for that thing in order for it to be a good explanation. You don't have to have a good explanation of your explanation in order for it to be a good explanation. You got that? So, if we found a city on the backside of Mars, we would be rational in concluding that there must be intelligent beings somewhere that created it. But if somebody said, "Who are these beings or how did they come to be?" I might just say, "I have no idea." Or Isaac Newton might see things dropping and might determine that there's gravity. 

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[00:02:40] Or somebody might say, "Well, where did gravity come from?" And you might say, "I have no idea." That doesn't mean that his explanation is not a good explanation. One more point. The reason we say that the universe requires an explanation is because it had a beginning. Like an explosion, when something bursts into existence, there has to be an explanation for why there was that change. Why did it go from nothing to an explosion? But we don't have to say that with God, because we believe by definition that God is eternal. He has always existed. He doesn't have a beginning like the universe. And so, he's not vulnerable to that question the way the universe is. 

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Jo Vitale [00:03:19] All right. If you want to hear more on that topic or have us dive into a question pertaining to the beginning of the universe, feel free to send in a follow up question. Next up, you can hear Vince offering the beginnings of a response to the question, if God did make the universe, why would he allow it to include so much suffering? 

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Vince Vitale [00:03:46] This is a question that always bring back memories for me, because it's one of the first questions that I ever got asked. Maybe not word for word, but this theme when I became a Christian. And it was my Aunt Regina, and she talked to me about the suffering in her son's life, my cousin Charles, which is quite severe, he had a lot of disabilities. And as this kind of zealous, kind of eager new Christian, I began to spout some of my new philosophical arguments for why God might allow evil and suffering like my cousin Charles. And my Aunt Regina, she listened really graciously and then she turned to me and she said, "But Vince that doesn't speak to me as a mother." I've always remembered those words. And as I reflected on it more, I realized that Jesus understood that a lot better than I did. 

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[00:04:37] When his good friend Lazarus died, Jesus had waited a couple of days before he went to see him, and by the time he got there, Lazarus was already dead. And Mary and Martha Lazarus's sisters, they don't seem too impressed. And they come out one at a time. If you had been here, our brother would still be alive. In a sense, saying, what do you have to say for yourself? What's your response? What's your reasoning, what's your apologetic? And I'm sure Jesus could have told them, well, here's why I waited two days. I had good reason and I can explain it to you. It was justified. And instead, we get the shortest verse in the Bible. Jesus wept. So, before he tried to respond to this type of question, there was genuine emotion there from Jesus. 

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[00:05:15] He never jumped to the philosophical, but he wept first. And so, even in this room, there are going to be people who are suffering pretty significantly at the moment, even in a room this size. So, the first thing I want to say is just that that's not right. That's not the way things are supposed to be. I'm sorry. And I don't want anything that I say theologically or philosophically to undermine the significance of that. And yet, I do think that there may be some helpful things that we can say in response to this question. My sort of training is in academic philosophy. And interestingly, in that area, there's a lot of talk of natural evil. It's like a phrase that used to talk about things like earthquakes and tornadoes and pandemics. 

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[00:05:56] And [inaudible] it's like a funny phrase because if it's genuinely natural, like if it's just the universe doing its thing, if it's just a random atheistic universe, it's just time plus matter plus chance, then in what sense is it evil? Like, maybe we don't like it, maybe we got unlucky, but it's just the universe doing what the universe does. It doesn't seem like there's any sort of deeper reality that's evil. And then on the other hand, if it is genuinely evil, these things that cause suffering, then is it natural or is it actually unnatural? The very fact that we call something evil, does that point to the fact that actually this is not the way it's supposed to be? There's like an intentionality and a purposefulness in the universe, the direction it's supposed to head in. And this is contrary to that. 

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[00:06:43] So I really appreciate the way this question was phrased. And in the question, it recognizes evil as a category. And not every worldview does, but I think it's significant that the Christian worldview does. Let me add another perspective to this. One of the most significant forms of suffering that Joan and I have experienced as a couple, is going through a miscarriage. And we were completely unprepared for how deeply that affected us. And when we first heard from the doctor, you have this baby that’s growing inside, and you go to the doctor and you just can't wait to hear the heartbeat of your baby. And then there's just this deafening silence. And when we got back to the car after they had told us it was very likely the baby would be miscarried, and we decided that we would name the baby Luca. 

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[00:07:39] And then we didn't really feel like going home, we certainly didn't feel like going home and cooking. We just googled top pizza place in the vicinity, in that town. And we then drove to the pizza place and we hadn't looked at the name. We just picked number one, click, directions. And we look up and it was Luca's pizza. Well, this is the name of the pizza place. And it felt like just this kindness of God just saying that he was present, even though we didn't fully understand. Joe got pregnant soon thereafter again. And we now have a son named Jonathan Lucien Vitaly. And we named him Lucien as his middle name, as a way of remembering and honoring Luca. Because we realized at some point that if Luca had not been miscarried, Jo still would have been pregnant with Luca at the time that she conceived Jonathan. 

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[00:08:37] We literally would not have Jonathan as our son had this suffering and this death not occurred. It was literally life that came out of death. And it just made us realize that so often we don't realize how things are interconnected. So often we want to just wish a certain piece of suffering out of this world, and we don't think how it's connected to other things that we love and that we value. And in this case, we feel like we have a family that includes Luca and Jonathan and our son Raphael, and that one day we could actually be together as a family of five, rather than as a family of four and it never could have been the case otherwise. And so, often times I think we picture this world with all of its suffering in it. Then we picture a very different world with far less suffering or no suffering. 

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[00:09:21] And we think to ourselves, Surely God should have made me in this very different world, the world with no suffering. And the question that we never think to ask ourselves is, would it still be you and me and all of the people that we love who would exist in that very different world? And that's a really complicated question. If I'd met my dad at some point, I might get frustrated with my mom that she married my dad and think, mom, you should have married somebody else. I could have been better looking, more athletic, taller, stronger. Maybe I would have been British royalty like the Queen. And I could have lived in a castle. But I don't stop to think if that my mom married someone else, it wouldn't have been me who came to exist; it would have been someone else. 

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[00:10:07] And I think often times when we imagine, we wish God had made and sustained a different world, we're doing the same thing. We're actually unwittingly wishing ourselves and all the people that we love out of existence. It's actually an interesting analogy here between divine creation and human procreation. Because having a child-- and I just spoke about it-- it's actually a much more sobering choice than we often think about. We want to think about the positive aspects of having a child. All the good that's going to happen in that child's life. But as a human parent, if you choose to try to have a child, you're doing something that you know full well will cause serious suffering in the life of the child that you have. Because any life, even the most fortunate of lives in this world, includes serious suffering. 

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[00:10:55] And even beyond that, at some point that child is going to suffer death. And that's a really sobering thought. But it makes me realize that if we think it would be evil to create someone into a world that will include serious suffering in their lives, if that's our position-- and that might at first seem pretty reasonable, but if you agree with that statement, you will not only need to call God evil, you'll also need to call evil anyone who decides to have a child. And it's so interesting how often we don't hold ourselves to a standard that we hold God to, and we look up and blame God for our suffering. Same God who when he suffered at our hands, he looked down and he said, "Father, forgive them." A few thoughts on this question. There's so much more to say. 

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[00:11:43] The last thing I'll say is just we shouldn't expect to have all the answers. God's ways are higher than our ways. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Our son Raphael has a bicuspid valve. It's not dangerous to him at the moment, but it's an anomaly in his heart. And so, I remember when he was very young, having to take him for those first tests. And they put these sticky things all over his chest and he had to get needles and he's just shrieking in horror. I mean, it's like the worst thing possible to him. And actually, it's good for him. This needs to happen. This is how we're diagnosing what he has. This is actually the process of healing. But that's not how he experienced it. And I couldn't communicate to him why. And in his being he was screaming, why? 

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[00:12:29] And it's not that I wasn't intelligent enough. I knew why. I could talk to Joe about why, but I couldn't communicate that to him because my ways are higher than his ways. How much higher are God's ways than our ways? And I remember in that moment the only thing I could do was I just drew as close as I could to him. I just went down really close to him and I just kept saying, "I'm here, I'm here. I'm here." And it just makes me think that that's exactly what Jesus has done. We're not always going to understand all of his ways and why we go through what we go through. But Christian faith is the one worldview where we can say that the one who does knows, does know. He came and he said, I'm here. Jesus is God, saying, "I'm here, I'm here." 

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[00:13:11] He says, "Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. Anyone who hears my voice and opens the door I'll come in and eat with him, and he with me." So even in suffering, I don't think it's how it was intended to be at the beginning. But I do think that God intended you. And if you can begin to get your head around the idea that God wanted you with all of your secret sins and all of your flaws, then you can begin to get your head around the idea that maybe God would value a world that would allow for you to come to exist, even if that was a world that for a time would include a lot of evil and suffering. But just for a time, because at some point God is going to wipe away all the tears. A beautiful detail in that verse. It doesn't just say the tears are going to be gone, it says that Jesus himself, physically resurrected in his body, is going to wipe away every tear from our eyes. 

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Jo Vitale [00:14:06] How badly all of us need to hear those words at one point or another, don't we? I'm here. And how stunning it is that those aren't just words that we comfort each other with, but that in Jesus, the God of the universe becomes Emmanuel, literally God with us, to whisper them to the heart of each one of us. Maybe some of you even need to hear that today. Whatever it is you're going through, however lonely the road feels, there is a God who sees you right now, even as you're going about your day and listening to this podcast in the background. And he's speaking those same words to you. I'm here. You're not alone, I see you. I'm with you. If you want to hear more from Vince responding to that question and why God would allow certain forms of horrendous suffering in particular, this was the topic of his PhD, and you can download for free his book with Oxford University Press or pick up a paperback copy. We've included the links in the episode description. 

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[00:15:04] For some of us, perhaps the particular suffering that we're dealing with at the moment is in the area of mental health, whether our own or somebody else's. As the church, we certainly haven't always known how to support those suffering in this area. Let's be honest, oftentimes we failed to properly acknowledge the reality of what people are dealing with in the first place. And yet, statistics show that one in every three American adults will deal with some form of anxiety in their lifetime. And for many more, the fight for mental health can be so overwhelming that at times it leads to some very dark places. If you're in one of those, we want you to know that you're not alone, and we want to encourage you to share what you're going through with somebody else in your life who can come alongside, that can get you the help and support that you need. Please don't keep it to yourself. Right now, here's Vince engaging with the following question: When suffering gets very personal-- not just suffering out in the world, but even suffering within us in the form of anxiety and depression, is God mad at us? How can we draw near to him in these most difficult times? 

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Vince Vitale [00:16:20] I really applaud the courage of just asking this question and being open about anxiety and depression. And then we are in a mental health crisis in this country. And I do believe that any worldview that you're going to commit to has to speak to that. And I don't think that everyone does. I remember seeing a commercial a while back, and the commercial depicted a baby being born, and then over the next 30 seconds-- it's sort of an odd commercial. But over the next 30 seconds, this child flew through the air and went through all the different stages of life. So, this infant became a toddler, became an adolescent and an adult, and then started to become elderly and then kind of became more hunched over and gray, as this person now descended out of the sky and crashed into a grave- dead. 

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[00:17:09] And then the screen went black and words appeared across the screen and said, life is short, play more Xbox. And I reacted just like that. I instinctively laughed. I'm like, that's funny. And then I was like, but that's also devastating. Like, really? Is that the best we've got? Life is short and is full of anxiety and depression and loss and betrayal and relational conflict, but there's nothing we can do about it anyway so just try to distract yourself, just spend more time on social media and just play more Xbox. Like, is that really the best that we've got? And I believe that Christianity says something very different. And it says something that affirms, in one sense, those feelings of anxiety and depression, because it says that there is a large chasm between the way things are right now and the way things are supposed to be. 

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[00:18:08] And Christians feel that deeply too. It was CS Lewis who said that we're content to play in the mud because we can't imagine a holiday at the beach. We can't imagine the goodness of actually living life with God and the community he desires, and how good that would be eternally. So, we're content sometimes in the mud, but sometimes it also goes the other way too. Once we get a glimpse as a Christian of the goodness of living with God, it can then be very difficult to kind of come back and live in the mud of this broken world. So, I think that the anxiety, the depression, this is something which is felt across the board, whether you're a non-Christian or whether you're a Christian. We need a worldview that says something to it. We need a worldview that answers the question, why do I feel this way? And we need a worldview that answers the question, who can help? 

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[00:19:02] And I find that the Christian faith says a lot about why we feel that way. First, in a general sense, there's this chasm between where we are and where things are supposed to be. Because you can get more specific. How about one form of anxiety? Take separation anxiety. One type of anxiety. Okay, anxiety caused by a sense of not having a home or being separated from people who are supposed to be significant in your life. The Bible tells me that I'm an exile. That I'm a foreigner. That my real citizenship is in heaven. It tells me that there's a significant sense in which I'm not home. It helps to make sense of some of those emotions. And it also tells me that my natural state on this earth is separation from the person that I'm supposed to be in closest relationship with, with God himself. So, it makes sense of some of what we experience. 

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[00:20:00] And oftentimes in the context of anxiety, we're told that what has happened is that we've overestimated our fears, that we have fears that are out of proportion with the reality of the circumstances that are causing them. A lot of cognitive behavioral therapy, that's one of the thrusts. Now, sometimes that's right. Sometimes that's good. Like, if you have an irrational fear of spiders in a place where there are no spiders, then great. Let's talk about that. Let's fact check that, let's get some new neural pathways going, let's deal with that. But what about when the fears are grounded very firmly in the reality of this broken world? And what about when the fears are that the relationships that mean the most to you might not last? 

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[00:20:49] What about when the fears are of betrayal? What about when the fears are the hopes that you have for life are going to go unfulfilled? What about when the fear is death? What about when the fears are not overestimated, but they are very real in this broken world? Then what are we supposed to do? And maybe it's not so much that we've overestimated our fears, but we've underestimated who can do something about it. And I remember when my friend had a mental breakdown caused by anxiety. And I remember him saying to me, "Only a counselor who has been through what I am going through can help." And I felt that was such a significant statement from him. And I was able to talk to him about Jesus being our wonderful counselor, being the counselor who actually has been through it, who has suffered with us, and not in just some general sense. 

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[00:21:49] He sweat blood in the garden, right? Because he understands the experience of the walls closing in. Okay. When he was arrested, everyone deserted him and fled. I've always thought it's one of the most devastating lines in all of the Bible. But he understands that sense of being betrayed. He understands that sense of isolation on the cross. As Jo said, him crying, "Why have you forsaken me?" He understands an emotion so deep and visceral. As for sacredness, is Jesus mad at us for these emotions that we have? No. I think he's mad with us. I think he's mad with us because he really understands in a very specific way, and the world is not the way it's supposed to be. And he's enacted a plan for eventually the world to be very different, both right now where he says, you can come to me. "Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 

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[00:22:46] You will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." You don't have to convince yourself that your fears are overestimated. You can acknowledge that they're real, but you can hand them over to me right now. And then eventually, one day, there's going to come a time where there can be no more death or mourning or crying or pain if you put your trust in me. And I will be the one who wipes away every tear. Jesus understands and Jesus can do something about it. I remember a clinical therapist, a good friend of mine, and he told me that there was a woman who came to him and she had a long history of cutting herself. And they had their first session together, and then at the end of the first session, she said, "There's just one more question before I decide whether we can work together or not." And then she said, "Will you touch my scars?" 

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[00:23:43] And he asked her why that was important to her. And she said, "Well, that's the only way I'll know if you really care about me, if you're willing to cross a divide, to actually reach out and touch my scars and my wounds." And what my friend said to me was he said what she was saying was, "Are you willing to viscerally descend into the darkness with me? Are you willing to be identified with my brokenness? Are you willing to actually touch my being with yours?" And through the process of their counseling, he had the opportunity to share with him that is exactly what God has done in the incarnation. God literally descends to touch our scars. He literally puts his being into our being and reaches out and is identified with our wounds. And through that, she gave her life to Christ. And he was able to also share with her that even beyond that, Jesus not only reaches out and touches your scars, but he was scarred for you. 

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[00:24:54] Even invites you to touch his scars to think of doubting Thomas. He says, "I can't put my trust in you unless I actually see the scars and can reach out and touch them." Jesus appeared and said, "Peace be with you." And then he said, "Reach your hand and put it here. Reach out your hand and put it into my side." We can trust Jesus with our scars because he was scarred for us. And then beyond that, he literally invited us to reach out and touch his scars. He trusted us with his scars so we can trust him with our scars. And through this, this woman was able to see that Jesus was the one that she could put her trust in. And she eventually said that. Just beautiful, stunning words. She said, “I know now that my scars likely will not disappear.” She said, “But I have hope that one day they will bear the glory of the one who was scarred for me.” Every one of us will have scars in this life. They will often have a lot to do with anxiety and depression. But can we turn to the one who gives us hope that one day they will bear the glory of the one who was scarred for us? 

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Jo Vitale We’re so glad you joined us for Ask Away.

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Vince Vitale If you have a question that needs answering, we’d love to hear it.

Send us an email at askawayquestion@gmail.com or call and leave a voicemail at 321-213-9670.

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Jo Vitale Ask Away is hosted by Vince and Jo Vitale, and produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

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Vince Vitale See you next time. And remember, if you have a question, it’s worth asking.

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