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British conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has told the BBC how she lost her faith in God.

Badenoch, whose grandfather was a Methodist minister, said she had always believed in God and regularly attended church.

But that changed when, in her late twenties, she read horrific reports of how Austrian sex offender Josef Fritzl had imprisoned and repeatedly raped his daughter Elizabeth in a basement over more than two decades.

Double Standards?

Badenoch said she could not understand why her prayers were being answered, while those of Fritzl’s daughter were not.

“I was praying for all sorts of stupid things and I was getting my prayers answered.

“I was praying to have good grades, my hair should grow longer and I would pray for the bus to come on time so I wouldn’t miss something.

“It’s like, ‘Why were those prayers answered and not this woman’s prayers?’ And it just — it was like someone blew out a candle.”

What she says makes a lot of sense at first hearing, and I think a lot of people would relate…

Who hasn’t looked at injustice in the world and been tempted to give up on faith in God?

After all, how can there be a God when so many bad things happen, especially to good people?

It’s an age-old question and, on an emotional level, I totally get it.

If you think with your feelings and reason according to your emotions, then, of course, you would look at the state of the world and give up on God.

Whenever I meet an atheist, I ask them: “What happened?”

Most people give up on God because of a bad experience rather than because of an intellectual obstacle.

Moral Foundation

Let’s reason this out, though. Because I contend that injustice is a reason to turn toward belief in God — and Jesus in particular — rather than away.

Here’s the irony…

The argument for not believing in God because bad things happen relies entirely on there being a God.

After all, if there is no God, on what basis can we declare something bad, or evil, or unfair?

If there is no God then everything is meaningless. So if there is no God there is no point complaining about evil, or wrongdoing, or unfairness.

Without God, all our concepts of justice are illusionary. Chemicals playing tricks on our brain.

The moment you get upset about injustice, you are positing the existence of God, not the opposite.

In fact, the REASON we get upset about pain and injustice is precisely because we think ultimate reality ought to be righteous and loving.

And the moment you believe some things ought to happen and some things ought not happen, you are appealing to an objective standard that exists beyond your own personal preferences and opinions.

In other words, the very complaint is an appeal to God.

Free Will

The question then becomes, what sort of God would permit evil, and why?

This is a much better question because it is first, logical, and second, a doorway to answering or finding a way to cope with injustice and to bear pain.

The question essentially is:

If God is all good and all-powerful, why does He allow bad things to happen?

Is He not good?

Or perhaps He is not as powerful as we had hoped.

Essentially, the question demands a God who intervenes whenever something bad is about to happen.

At first hearing, that sounds perfect. A God who jumps in and out of my life — whenever I or someone else is about to do something stupid — sounds ideal.

But on reflection, to ask for that is to ask for something God cannot give.

Think about it…

If we want a God who gives us free will, then we cannot, at the same time, want a God who jumps in and out of our daily lives, preventing every calamity.

Either we have freedom, or we do not.

Either we choose our actions, or we do not.

We cannot have it both ways.

God cannot grant free will to humanity and not grant free will to humanity all at the same time and in the same way.

To insist that He does is to hold God to a standard of applying two mutually exclusive alternatives and is essentially meaningless.

Your Choice

God did give us free will. He also gave free will to those around us.

And God’s gift of free will means that in many cases, people will choose to do terrible things — to themselves and to others.

So what are we to conclude about that?

First, the reason God gave us free will is so that we can have a relationship with Him.

To have a genuine relationship with God, we must be free to reject a relationship with God.

And evil only occurs at all because people reject God and choose sin. If people didn’t reject God in the first instance, there would be no evil.

This puts the problem of pain into sharp and unexpected perspective.

The first victim of mankind’s free will is not me, or other men, but God.

Rather than man ceasing to believe in God because of evil, it is God who should cease to believe in us!

Let that sink in!

Have you never thought it strange that we ask the question, how can God allow so much evil in the world… but always about the evil others do?

We never personalise it, look in the mirror and ask how God can allow us to do so much evil.

I wonder why.

Everlasting Love

Rather than reject us because of evil, God took on human form and leaned into us… personally taking part in our pain and suffering — even to the point of death on a cross.

If God stood apart and afar off from our sorrow — unsympathetic and unable to relate — then I would be suspicious of Him.

But the Christian message is surprising.

It tells of a God who becomes one of us and suffers with us.

At the very least, that should pique our curiosity.

It should really engender our trust.

It should cause us to trust that if a good God allows free will — and with it so much horrible injustice and suffering that even affected Him — it can only be because what follows this life of pain is so glorious as to be worth it.

I know that’s hard to get our head around when there is so much evil and so much pain.

But the Bible promises that in eternity every tear will disappear — no more crying, no more weeping.

Joy evermore.

Jesus says to trust Him that the glory of eternity will be worth whatever hardship we endure for a short season here.

And I do trust Him. Everything I know of Jesus says that He is trustworthy.

And besides, what is the alternative?

Do we find meaning or justice in our suffering by giving up on God? Quite the opposite.

Giving up on God does not stop suffering and injustice. It simply declares that suffering and injustice serve no purpose, have zero meaning and can never, ever be resolved.

How is that a better position in which to wake up tomorrow?

Which brings me back to a curious thing that Kemi Badenoch said at the end of her BBC interview.

Having said her candle of faith had been snuffed out by the question of injustice, Badenoch then said that she remains a “cultural Christian”.

She told the BBC she wants to “protect certain things because I think the world that we have in the UK is very much built on many Christian values”.

In other words, she rejects God, but wants to hang on to God just the same.

And I get it.

With God, there are difficult questions that require us to trust Him. And that’s hard.

But without God, all is meaningless. And that is unbearable.

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.