Hop on the bus Gus

After a quick breakfast we grabbed cab to the District 10 Phuong Trang bus company office. I mentioned in yesterday's post that this portion of the trip is the most disconnected that we have had due to some communication breakdown.

When we asked to buy tickets to Minh Ling for the bus that was to depart in less than an hour our ticketing agents response was a surprised "You no buy yet?" Yup, that's right, no ticket - no bus. I was thinking, and praying, about this situation before I fell asleep last night. All things are ordered by God for His reasons and our bus fiasco was no exception.

The agent was even more surprised when she actually found seats and wrote down our seat numbers on the tickets. "Move quickly" she said and we scurried for the shuttle to the main bus station. We had the last four seats on the shuttle and had the last four seats on the bus. Those manually assigned seats turned out to be all in the same row. Thank you God for ordering where our planning failed.

With my mention of Gods ordering of our bus scheduling, I do not want to minimize the very real pain that can accompany His purposes. A common objection to the God of the Bible is the problem of evil. In a nutshell - IF God is all powerful and all good AND there exists evil THEN He is either not all powerful or not all good. Thus the Biblical God cannot exist.

There are a few ways to approach the problem of evil. One way to come at it is from the concept of evil. What is evil? You may be thinking of examples of evil, but think of a definition, not an instantiation. Most simply, evil might be defined as a departure from good. Now we are left to determine what good is.

- Good can be defined from a societal utilitarian perspective. Good is what serves the most people and does the least amount of harm.

- Good can be defined on an altruistic personal level. Good is what serves me the most and does the least amount of harm to others.

- Good can defined on a selfish personal level. Good is what serves me the most regardless of the harm done to others.

- When considering the specifics, which is required to actually apply any standard, there may be as many definitions of good as there are people to conceive it.

IF good is defined at an individual and/or societal level AND good can be different for each person and/or society THEN evil as a departure from good is also subject to individual and societal preference.

Said differently, what one person or society defines as evil another person or society might define as good. How then do we call (let alone apply punishment for) anything evil unless we have a standard outside of our subjective preferences?

God's revelation to us provides just that, a transcendent standard of good which He cannot violate because it is an expression of His nature. A standard which can govern individuals and societies in a way consistent with the nature of God and used as a corrective to our own selfishness and the abuse of lawmakers.