Author Randy Alcorn asks in his most recent book If God is Good, why it is that many atheists claim to reject God because others suffer — while so many people who do the actual suffering are drawn even closer to that same God.

While Western atheists turn from belief in God because a tsunami in another part of the world caused great suffering, many brokenhearted survivors of that same tsunami found faith in God. This is one of the great paradoxes of suffering. Those who don’t suffer much think suffering should keep people from God, while many who suffer a great deal turn to God, not from him.

Imagine eavesdropping on a conversation between [atheist and supposed "former Christian" author/activist Bart] Ehrman and the very people whose suffering he uses as an argument for disbelieving in God. After hearing Ehrman’s case, someone says, “You’ve lost your faith because of my suffering? But my faith in God has grown deeper than ever. Why would I turn away from the only one who can comfort me, the only one who has planned eternal life for me, the only one who suffered immeasurably, beyond any of us, so that one day I need suffer no longer?”

You won’t find the strongest Christian churches in the world in affluent America or Europe, where the problem of evil [as a debate issue] has the most traction. In Sudan, Christians are severely persecuted, raped, tortured, and sold into slavery. Yet many have a vibrant faith in Christ. People living in Garbage Valley in Cairo make up one of the largest churches in Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of India’s poor are turning to Christ. Why? Because the caste system and fatalism of Hinduism give them no answers. So they turn to a personal God who loves them and understands suffering. I have interviewed numbers of people who take comfort in knowing that this life is the closest they will ever come to Hell.

Later, Alcorn quotes the final “nihilism”-laced paragraphs of Ehrman’s book (which is rather cheekily titled God’s Problem). First he presents Ehrman’s encouragement to seek money, material goods, nice cars and homes and families and the good life. Then Alcorn continues with the quote:

What we have in the here and now is all that there is. We need to live life to its fullest and help others as well to enjoy the fruits of the land. … But just because we don’t have an answer to suffering does not mean that we cannot have a response to it. Our response should be to work to alleviate suffering wherever possible and to live life as well as we can.

Do you see the inconsistency here? If we follow Ehrman’s advice to “drive nice cars and have nice homes” and consume expensive meals and drinks and spend as much as we can—in fact, “the more the better”—then we will not be working to alleviate suffering whenever possible.

What percentage of the royalties from Ehrman’s best-selling book has he ear-marked for easing world suffering? If it seems unfair to ask, remember that I am merely applying the standard he expects God to live up to: using all of one’s resources to relieve suffering. Does Ehrman place himself under the same condemnation he places God? Based on the lifestyle he seems to advocate, the answer appears to be no.

These questions seemed appropriate in my response this morning to a young man who claims to embrance “nihilism.” However, he admits his life has been an easy one and he has not really suffered like others do.

And this, as Alcorn and many others note, is the problem with such religious faith in life’s supposed meaninglessness: they cannot deal with the “problem of good” any more than some Christians struggle to address the “problem of evil.” Furthermore, without belief in a God who is good, there is no “problem of evil” anyway — for no belief  or action can truly be called “evil.”

I wonder if, before they died, they ever felt the flames that blasted through the car.

They died at nearly midnight this past Saturday. Three people, in a vehicle heading east on a two-lane country road, could have been speeding. They crested a hill and plunged down the side, and the driver lost control — veered left — slammed into a tree that tore shuddering through metal — and bodies — and then came the flames.

Two died, the driver and her front passenger. Police told me they didn’t know how the woman in the back survived. Last I heard, she was doing better at the hospital.

Later a police officer showed me photos they took when the pile of shrapnel, once the car, had still been wrapped around the tree. Protruding from the vehicle’s near-center was the charred trunk. You might not think it could be that strong to survive, while two human beings had perished almost instantly. The officer pointed to parts of the blackened debris: one victim was here, and another here, he said. Even police haven’t seen many wrecks like this.

I had been bracing myself for a shocking sight. Perhaps the greatest shock was that it did not seem so shocking at all. All I saw was a steaming mass of metal wreckage.

Here is the crash scene, two days later. Flames had blazed across this tree, the crumpled car and the people inside. Now the crash wreckage is removed. Still remaining are the items strewn over the grassy side. Ash particles mingled with pieces of the car. I saw a bit of burned paper, tiny glass shards, a tangle of wires, a bulb from a headlight.

Someone had already placed artificial flowers and a small religious statuette against the tree. They join the three crosses near another tree some yards away, and another series of crosses I had already seen on this same road, a few miles back.

People have died here. And this is only a common road, not some rare disaster scene.

What killed these people?

The world killed them, a sad, groaning, suffering world of death.

Who were they? I found and wrote about the victims’ names, ages and the cities where they lived. But I don’t know about their lives. They weren’t from around here, so (this may sound very callous) those aspects of the story don’t matter as much to my local newspaper’s readers.

Yet they mattered to God. I hope to Him they were among His own. But even if they weren’t, they mattered to God. Their lives mattered. Their bodies mattered.

Lives and bodies were destroyed that day. They were strangers to me. Still, the truth is horrific.

But for those among His own, their lives and their bodies will return — just as He brought Himself back from death on that strange and glorious Sunday morning.

First He had to die. Sin required it.¹ It was God’s will to crush Him.² This was not God “murdering” Him as if from spite, like some people, even professing Christians, might think. The Son, God Himself, sacrificed His life for the greater joy set before Him ³, part of the eternal plan that had been put in place before the world’s foundation.⁴ It was even directly forecast moments after the first humans’ rebellious sin against God⁵ that brought death, groaning and suffering.

The world killed Him. Yet He even desired to die. And I am sure He felt all of the experience.

(Next: what might His death have been like?)