We can explain that man is now cruel, without God being a bad God. 

There is hope of a solution for this moral problem which is not intrinsic to the ‘mannishness’ of man.  If this cruelty is intrinsic to the ‘mannishness” of man – if that is what man always has been – then there is no hope of a solution.  But if it is an abnormality, there is a hope of a solution.  It is in this setting that the substitutionary, propitiatory death of Christ ceases to be an incomprehensible concept.  In liberal theology, the death of Christ is always an incomprehensible god word/concept.  But in this setting to which we have come, the substitutionary death of Christ now has meaning.  It is not merely god word/concept or an existential thing.  It has solid meaning.  We can have the hope of a solution concerning man if man is abnormal now.   

On this basis we can have an adequate ground for fighting evil, including social evil and social injustice.  Modern man has no real basis for fighting evil, because he sees man as normal – whether he comes out of the pan-everythingism of the East or modern liberal theology, or out of the pan-everythingism of everything’s being reduced (including man) to only the energy particle.  But the Christan has the solution:  we can fight evil without fighting God, because God did not make things as they are now – as man in his cruelty has made them.  God did not make man cruel, and He did not make the results of man’s cruelty. These are abnormal, contrary to what God made, and so we can fight the evil without fighting God.   

Continued tomorrow 😊 

Thoughts developed and/or taken from the works of Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer, Trilogy – He Is There and He Is Not Silent