Starting in January, we began on a journey preaching through the entire book of Matthew. A huge benefit of this type of series is that it means we cannot skip over any passages that don’t make for nice clean sermons. The downside is that we are forced to wrestling with some passages that we might rather want to leave alone. This week we hit the first of those passages: Matt. 13-23. These verses tell of Herod’s plan to kill Jesus, the holy family’s flight to Egypt, and the resulting murder of all the male toddlers in and around the town of Bethlehem (an event sometimes called the Massacre of Innocents).

Now, it just so happened that this last week was also a family service, meaning it was geared toward and starred more of a younger audience. For obvious reasons we did not focus on the massacre of innocents in a special kids’ service. Rather, we focused on how God protected Jesus and the family by telling them to flee. This is a valuable and important lesson to learn—that God protects us. But a keen reader will instantly notice the dozens of children that God did not protect. How can we say God protects us when we read about the genocide of an entire toddler population?

I will start out by saying that there is not a clean, simple, and satisfying answer to this. This question is one with which I, myself, constantly wrestle and struggle. The answer most often given to this question is that God has a larger plan and works everything for good. Now, I do believe this is true. But simply stating that as a response to something as awful as the mass murder of toddlers is just cold-hearted and lacking any kind of compassion. If you were to give a that simple answer to someone grieving the loss of a child, you more than likely would be punched—and justifiably so! Sometimes the correct academic and theological answer is not the correct loving answer.

Despite this, how I answer this question for myself is wrapped up both in the idea of God’s divine plan and our limited understanding of its scope. I would argue that God prioritizes protecting our soul’s over protecting our bodies. Later in Matthew, Jesus tells us that we do not need to be afraid of the ones who can kill our body’s but rather we should fear the one who can destroy our soul (10:28). This hits on the notion that our time on Earth is so limited in the grand scheme of our everlasting existence. But, because we are not God, we can’t wrap our minds around anything that big. As a result, we focus on the here and now with all of our passions and mental strength.

Think about when you were in third grade. Can you remember the things that caused you stress? What were the day-to-day things that were your entire world? For most of us, we can’t remember. This comes from gaining a larger perspective. We can look back and realize that third grade was such a small part of the grand story that is our life that most of what happened there just fades into the background. But in the moment, while we were living them out, they were the most important things, nothing mattered but them.

Now, please hear me. I am not trying to callously compare genuine heartbreak and loss to a third-grade spelling test. I am in no way trying to mitigate our current feelings of loss. I am trying to illustrate how our perspective of time is so small compared to God’s and how our earthly lives are so small compared to our eternal souls. Yet they are all we know; they are all we can know right now.

Like I said at the top, there are no easy, clean, or 100% satisfactory answers to a question like this. But this is how I currently handle the problem of evil at this point in time. I believe that God’s top priority is protecting my soul and I believe that through Jesus I do not have to worry about the safely of my soul. While we all walk through deeply painful times of heartbreak, loss, and pain on our time here on Earth, all of that is wrapped up in the briefest of salvos across the duration of our eternal lives.

Please, I want to hear how you approach this question. The problem of evil is one we will never fully answer on this side of glory. How I wrestle with it will be different from how you grapple with it. Let me know what has brought you the most comfort in the moments of heartache in your lives. 

In addition, some of the absolute best horror comes with genuine moral messages, that invite the reader/watcher to examine themselves. One of the earliest moral messages I remember from a horror story came from Alvin Schwartz’s collection of folklore tales: Scary Stories 3. One story is about Herold the Scarecrow and how Herold is completely mistreated by his owners. Eventually Herold comes to life and takes his revenge. The underline message here is that we ought to show compassion for others or, put another way, that you reap what you sow. This is a notion we see several times in the Biblical text: “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap,” (Galatians 6:7) or “The wicked earns deceptive wages, but one who sows righteousness gets a sure reward,” (Proverbs 11:18).

Some horror authors are deeply religious in their own personal lives and they use their writing as ways to express and share their beliefs. Take Mary Shelly for example. Her most famous work is the novel Frankenstein. Many people today forget that that the book had an alternative title The Modern Prometheus. In Greek Mythology, Prometheus is a Titan who defies the other Gods by gifting humans with fire, elevating humans to god-like status. This same idea is at the core of Adam and Eve’s fall. Their desire was to be like God, so they ate the forbidden fruit so they could have God’s knowledge. Pride is also at the core of Dr. Frankenstein’s story. He tries to assume the power to create life. His ultimate goal is to ascend to the same level as God, an endeavor that only leads to pain and ends in death. Shelly is warning the reader that the same pride that led Adam and Eve to turn away from God is still in all of us and we need to rely on God to tame that pride.

Horror often gets a bad rap. Don’t get me wrong there is a lot of bad horror out there! But when it is good, horror can be a wonderful introspective tool. So this Halloween season, I would encourage you to not write off horror wholesale. If you are up for it, investigate a good horror movie or book. You might find that it sparks some amazing theological conversations.

Now before I go on, I should say that there will probably be some mild spoilers in this. So if you are worried about that, go watch Dark and then come and read this. With that out of the way, the main premise of this show involves time travel and time loops. We are introduced to the show’s main character, Jonas, as a teenager. We follow his adventures and it is not long before Jonas runs into a man simply called the Stranger. Eventually, we learn that the Stranger is Jonas from 33 years in the future. They have an emotional scene where teenage Jonas is locked up in a bunker and the Stranger (middle aged Jonas) comes and talks with him. The Stranger refuses to let Jonas out, reflecting that if he lets Jonas out that he will not be able to follow the same path to eventually become the person standing outside the bunker. The first 2 seasons of Dark hint at this idea of free will vs. fate. Is the Stranger freely choosing to leave Jonas in the bunker, or is there an underlying fate that is controlling his actions? As the show goes on, we are introduced to the antagonist of the show – an old man named Adam who is horribly scarred. Now, as you might have guessed, Adam is Jonas from 66 years in the future.

Now, here is where things get really interesting on the free will vs. fate front. For a large stretch of the show we see Jonas teaming up with the Stranger to try and stop Adam. They both see Adam as evil, a twisted old man who is trying to destroy everything. But remember, this show as all about time loops. So throughout the third season, we watch as each of these characters turn into their older selves. We watch Jonas slowly turn into the Stranger we first met in season one and we watch the Stranger slowly turn into Adam. The transformation from the Stranger into Adam is especially interesting because we watch as one of our hero slowly shifts his thinking to become the very thing he fought for so long to defeat.  Here we realize that this cycle from Jonas, to the Stranger, to Adam has happened over and over again in a seemingly endless loop.

So this transformation brings the question of free will verse fate right to the forefront of this show. Does the Stranger have any real say or genuine freewill in his life? Or is he simply fated (or predetermined) to always become the evil Adam? (I am over simplifying plot elements here, but you get the main idea). This question of free will vs fate or predestination is one that Christians have been debating almost since the beginning of the faith. Different denominations set up camps closer to the free will side or closer to the predestination side. I feel like most people end up lost somewhere in the middle—seeing both powerful positives and harmful negatives in both arguments.

I really wish I could lay out an answer for this. But to me personally, the most frustrating part of a debate like this, is that there is no way of 100% answering it here on earth.  I don’t think we can have an answer on a question like this short of standing with God at the end of all things. But that does not stop us from wrestling with it. Maybe that is why I like sci-fi so much, because it so often gives us handholds to propel us into these hard topics. I mean my favorite movie of all time, Terminator 2, is another one that sits squarely on the free will vs. fate fence. Is John destined to lead the humans in a future uprising over the machines? Or is it as John himself says, ‘there is no fate but what we make for ourselves”?

I feel like this post has not really said anything, it has simply just been me musing. But I want to hear from other people. Where do you all land in the free will vs. fate spectrum? Does it even matter (which is a whole other debate that we could be having)? Am I ridiculous for losing almost two weeks of my life obsessively thinking about this (I am going to go with Yes)? I would love to hear what you think. Now, I need to go watch something else to clear my head. Talk to you all later!

I want to hear from you. How do you rest? Do you find yourself filling your rest time with ‘jobs’ that prevent you from genuinely resting? What ideas do you have to move forward and engage in actual and true rest?