Cliffe Knechtle Debates the Problem of Suffering: Why Does God Allow Cancer?

[00:00:00]My mother passed away this February because of cancer and death. She was uh very much involved with Christianity and and so on and so forth for a very long time. And I don't think I don't place any blame on God. Um I don't I don't even have an anger per se, but I have a hard time saying God is good all the time and all the time God is good.

[00:00:23]>> A grieving student named Matthew corners Cliff with a question most people are afraid to ask. If God is truly good, why did he take his mother? The crowd presses in as Matthew lays out his sharpest challenge yet, that every argument for God's goodness is circular, self-referencing, and ultimately unconvincing. Cliff holds his ground, dismantling the idea that goodness can even exist without a creator, while Stuart steps in as the tension sharpens.

[00:00:50]Because this debate isn't really about logic or language, it's about whether human life has objective value at all.

[00:00:56]If there is no God, then justice is just an opinion. But if there is, then everything Matthew is feeling, every ounce of grief, every demand for fairness suddenly makes perfect sense.

[00:01:07]Now, let's step into the conversation.

[00:01:08]>> The arguments ultimately seem circular to me. God is good. Well, what is good?

[00:01:13]The things that God does in the Bible, God is loving. Well, what is loving?

[00:01:18]Well, things that God does. God gives us everything we need. What's the only thing we need? God. You know what I mean? So I want to >> get a perspective where that convinces me it's not a circular arth.

[00:01:31]>> You best.

[00:01:33]Okay.

[00:01:35]First point.

[00:01:38]I trust that you and I are not arrogant enough for you and for me to define good and then inform the world that they better live good lives because you and I, Matthew and Cliff, have defined what is good. And so all you guys in different cultures, you all got to buy into Matthew and Cliff's definition of good.

[00:01:57]That would be kind of elitist, ethnosentric to put it mildly, right?

[00:02:03]So then the question is, is good real?

[00:02:06]And if so, who defines it?

[00:02:09]Okay. Now, if there is no God, then guess what, Matthew? There ain't no objective value of good. Why? Because Matthew and Cliff and Tom and Susan and Leopold, they all have their own definitions of what's good. And it's all relative. I'm not right. You're not right. Leopold's not right. It's all relative.

[00:02:33]But if there is a God who created Matthew with innate value, then it is good for me to respect Matthew and it is evil for me to disrespect Matthew.

[00:02:45]Because if there is a God, then it's possible that this God created a value of goodness, a value of justice, and he gave you and me a conscience. And we better use our consciences in order to understand that real value of good and treat each other appropriately.

[00:03:00]That's where Jesus Christ enters the picture as being so key because you and I can't hear God audibly. You and I can't see God physically. So, how are we going to know what God thinks? Jesus claimed to be God, revealing what God thinks.

[00:03:17]The evidence of the way he lived, taught, died, and rose from the dead is that Jesus is reliable. Matthew, if you die and rise from the dead, I promise to listen very carefully to everything you have to say, sir. Right. So, it's this resurrection of Christ from the dead that convinces me that Jesus is reliable. Okay? Does that make any sense? Mhm. But but still the I mean uh so there there's examples in the Old Testament of of of uh wars and stuff that God ordained. Yeah.

[00:03:50]>> And and so we're supposed to call that good. And then there's the sort of inactiveness that we can all sort of see of God in situations like tsunamis, which you talked about free will. I can punch someone or I can give them 20 bucks.

[00:04:04]free will I think is irrelevant in the tsunami situation and in the terminal cancer situation and stuff like that. So like if if I go to a doctor because I have terminal cancer and I say hey I have terminal cancer and he doesn't do anything I would not call that doctor a good doctor or a loving doctor especially if he has the capability to so when I approach God and say God I have terminal cancer >> right >> and and he has the ability to cure cancer he has the ability to do everything he can think of right >> and and he doesn't do that I have a hard time saying that's good and I do get the free will example but but I think this is separate from for >> yes it is >> good thank you for raising it so if you're granting God to be an omnisient being right that's that's pretty high above us he's a transcendent omnisient being we need to grant him that omniscience and we need to say our understanding our knowledge is limited so for me to tell an omnisient transcendent god that I must know every reason for every piece of suffering in my life. Is that a little absurd?

[00:05:13]>> Absolutely. But isn't it absurd that God doesn't do anything when so many people die from cancer? And I get that is me, a non-God figure saying God isn't good because of those things. But like, dude, let's get absurd. Let's do it. I think God can handle it.

[00:05:28]>> Yeah. Absolutely. So, and again, that gets back to Genesis 1 and three, right?

[00:05:32]God creates us and there's a human fall with sin and you have free will involved. So that's that's the narrative from the biblical understanding, right?

[00:05:40]But then if you look in the New Testament and you have Jesus and the script of the Bible, if you look at it closely, Jesus is coming in working for social justice. He's healing the sick, right? All of his miracles have a very purpose to them, very specific purpose.

[00:05:56]And what is that? To end up eradicating suffering, right? You don't see this in other religions. And again, you're how you're making the issue so complex and you're how you're so disturbed by it, right? It's a very western approach that you have to understand. And that's okay.

[00:06:14]I'm a westerner, too. And yet at the same time, okay, why is it disturbing you so much? Right? What makes it wrong?

[00:06:23]That's that's what you got you got to grapple with as I don't know if you're an atheist or not. But then getting back to your original question, the circular reasoning on God and why do we really need God? I think St. Augustine answers this question well in his book Confessions. If you want to read it, I would encourage you to do so. He talks about disordered loves. So, I'm from New Canaan, Connecticut, and I see this played out on a regular regular basis.

[00:06:48]You see parents loving their kids way more so than a transcendent God. And what happens when they love their kids more than anything else on earth?

[00:06:59]>> Bad things.

[00:07:00]>> Very, very bad things, right? They're living vicariously through their children. So, they're putting all kinds of pressure on their kids. And now all of a sudden, we have a serious opiate addiction problem in my town and the surrounding county. You also have anxiety and depression that's through the roof. And there's a serious disorder in relationships as well. So the claim that the Bible is making is if you put God at the very top, right? If you understand that your primary love is from him, then all these other loves fall into their proper place. And so you're not putting absurd pressure on your kids, right? Absurd pressure on your spouse, right? You're loving them.

[00:07:40]The Bible's claim is if you love God supremely, then you're going to love them well.

[00:07:44]>> Yeah. And I can I can definitely see the logic there. But um you've you've made the assumption that God is loving without explaining to me why he is loving and and and again like I don't think you've addressed a circular component of that.

[00:07:59]>> Uhhuh.

[00:07:59]>> So I'm just hearing you wrong.

[00:08:02]>> The probably the hottest Russian philosopher out there right now talks about how the Christian understanding for love makes sense and should be followed more so than any other religion. Right? And why is that?

[00:08:15]because of the cross of Christ. He talks about I don't know where specifically he's coming from religiously speaking, but he makes this point that if you have someone dying on the cross for his enemies and you base a society on that kind of self-sacrificial love, it's impossible not to have people following that model and loving each other in a very healthy way.

[00:08:39]So, so you're convinced uh he is a loving God because of of the examples, namely the sacrifice of the redeemed.

[00:08:47]>> That's one of the ways. Yeah.

[00:08:48]>> So, that's one of the way. So, what so what about justice? And again, I get that it'd be arrogant for me to look at God and say I know more about justice, but I'm not doing that. I'm asking about justice. Um there are some things like the se sending someone to neverending conscious torment for a finite number of years. To me, that doesn't seem like justice. And I know we can go through the sandbox analogy and I can slap my teacher and then Obama and then or Trump now and then someone else at the punishment gets worse and worse.

[00:09:19]>> Good.

[00:09:19]>> But I don't it it seems that's arrogance, not justice to me to me. And and so and I don't want to come off attacking or something.

[00:09:29]>> That's all right. But um to me to say you go to never- ending conscious term torment for all eternity because you lived here 21 years and you sinned and then you died. Even though he is at the top, the ultimate the only form of love justice um uh the only form of love and justice I can see is despite the fact that you're on top still ultimately forgiving them time and time again still ultimately loving them in the way that I can understand love namely fraternal maternal love.

[00:10:03]>> Uh does that make sense?

[00:10:05]>> Yeah. I'm going to go back to loving God supremely, understanding God's omniscience and why we have to have him at the top. Right? So, if you look at Luke 16, you have Lazarus and the rich man. The rich man is called rich and he is in hell, right? He's just referred to as the rich man. I think there's a pearl of wisdom there to be mined and that pearl is he has lost his very name. He's just rich man. So, his very identity is stripped. It's the whole idea of born a man, born a woman, died a doctor. So, you've lost your very humanity because you're just living for a certain job, another source of identity, right? And so, hell, I think you got to be careful.

[00:10:49]I I heard you kind of tie in different types of again works, righteousness, right? You're talking about you sin a lot on earth and then you go to hell.

[00:10:57]Okay, that's that's totally not the biblical understanding. That's more of a cultural understanding of a few different religions and >> and I I get like Dante has a big that's why I didn't say fire and brimstone right said never ending cons but again hell is is based the whole Christian understanding of faith is based on grace and love and hell you have separation from God and it's not a matter again of God putting you in hell it's simply you're living for something else and you don't want a connection with God. And so it comes in to an understanding of okay, do I want God to be supreme in my life or do I not? And what does that look like if he is supreme in my life? And so many of my atheistic friends are very kind, loving, moral people. And so for me to say, "Oh, just because they don't believe in God means they're absolutely going to hell." That's me playing God.

[00:11:56]as me making a judgment on their life, which is absolutely absurd. So that's one, right? Another understanding that you got to think about when it comes to hell is like you said, you got at Dante's Inferno, right? Dante's Inferno, it's constantly referencing hell as a certain depiction. So if you go into a museum and you look at a picture, a painting of hell and one of heaven, the one of heaven is going to be way more simplistic, right? You're going to have a a baby on a playing a harp on a cloud.

[00:12:23]But then Dante's Inferno style painting, you're going to have real greed. You're going to have real evil taking place.

[00:12:31]They're very graphic paintings, right?

[00:12:34]And I think again that gets at this understanding of, okay, what happens if we do not accept faith, do not accept God, live separately from him, which are very individualistic lives turned in on themselves. What happens when we live those types of lives? Most likely we will be more greedy. Most likely we will be much more self-centered, egotistical, and that kind of thinking, that kind of lifestyle will be played out.

[00:13:01]>> Okay. So that I would say you address love and and justice. Um so so what about the the good part that that's the thing that's most relevant to me? The reason I asked my mother passed away this February because of cancer and uh she was uh very much involved with Christianity and and so on and so forth for a very long time and I don't think I don't place any blame on God. Um I don't I don't even have an anger per se, but I have a hard time saying God is good all the time and all the time God is good when in my mind he actively did nothing when a situation not having anything to do with free will or her own words, right?

[00:13:45]It was just Cell didn't replicate the right way. I I have a hard time saying God is good in that situation and and it's fresh on my mind and and stuff like that. So, I get I'm I'm probably not in the best mindset to have this discussion, but but yeah. So, so not to get too personal, but try to convince me that even in that situation, God is good. And I don't want to hear, well, God can use this for good things, which he already has. Absolutely.

[00:14:12]>> Platos, right?

[00:14:14]>> I have a I can imagine a world in which good things happen in my mom's still mind, right? That's not hard to imagine, >> right?

[00:14:21]>> So, yeah, that's >> okay. So, I'll speak personally. You're speaking personally. First of all, I'm really sorry about your mom. And so from a family personal perspective, my uncle lost his only daughter in a car accident when she was 7 years old, right? His biggest resource to help him through his suffering was Psalm chapter 88. David isn't sitting there when he is struggling with all kinds of depression, anxiety, when his very own kids are after him to kill him. He's not sitting there saying, "Oh, God is good all the time. God, you're good all the time."

[00:14:56]Absolutely not. He's attacking God verbally, and God's okay with it. God's not smiting him for that. So, that helped my uncle, you know, this absolute mind. He's the only one to have done a triple transplant in the state of Georgia, so way smarter than me. And yet that was by far and away the best resource for suffering for him. The Charleston shooting, the church, right?

[00:15:24]The racist white boy who shot up the black church. Okay, how did they respond? Do you remember?

[00:15:29]>> Forgiveness.

[00:15:30]>> Okay, but it was more than forgiveness.

[00:15:32]They invited him to their small group two days later. Okay, that's absurd.

[00:15:38]What? How do you explain that?

[00:15:41]And for me, I explain it through they understood God's justice, not just his forgiveness. This wasn't cheap grace.

[00:15:49]They understood his love deeply. And they're saying God will judge in the end. If there's no justice, I don't know if they would responded like that.

[00:15:57]Actually, I'm sure they wouldn't have, right? They understand who the God of the scriptures really is, just like Martin Luther King Jr. did. Just like if you saw the movie Birth of a Nation, Nat Turner, right? fascinating there how he's basically seeing how these white slave owners are ripping scriptures like slaves obey your masters out of context and he's saying this is completely wrong completely wrong >> he understands that you need a god of love and a god of judge justice and a complete good God in order to weigh both good and evil a lot of times in in church groups and including the one that invited you before there's like uh you might hear something like I had a really rough semester, but God really brought me out of it. Or we talked to a couple, we were really rough. We almost got a divorce, then God brought us out of it.

[00:16:50]So, so again, this is just people saying they know what God is doing or something, but it makes it sound like they're claiming God intervened in their lives and helped them on that chemistry test that they would have otherwise failed or they helped them with with the marriage problems and because of God intervening, they didn't get a divorce.

[00:17:09]And to that, I say, hey, where was God during my test I took the other day that I didn't do too well on? And then B, when why didn't he help my parents during their divorce and then see honestly where was he the best >> and to that I would say I don't know I no I would be arrogant and anybody would be arrogant up here saying giving you a definitive answer they would be playing God right so again if we're going to if we're really going to ascend to the idea that we have a transcendent omnisient God we have to live with mystery the end of the day we have to live with mystery and that gets back to okay are the scriptures reliable is Jesus Christ reliable historically, existentially, intellectually, emotionally, and you have to go through dig through the scriptures, but you still have to have questions. So I with those in specific instances, you're friends with the tests. Yes, I would be a little dubious myself, right? Certainly, I have seen tremendous prayers answered when people really ask, seek, and knock fervently and they're consistently in prayer. And if you if you were getting at relationships, like I brought up earlier, as a counselor and a a marital therapist, I see marriages put back together when God is involved totally differently than when God is not involved, right? Can you can you understand that one? Why that is?

[00:18:38]>> Yeah. So, does that partly answer your question? So would you say that if if person A and person B all the circumstances are the same both pray adamantly in the way that you talked about that A and B would have different output >> you would say that >> right >> okay um >> because it's not again that's not works righteousness it's not like I'm praying harder right than you and so I get this and you didn't get it >> it's not >> it's mystery grace yeah >> and then so and this is my last question that I didn't know um so we >> we get this nice definition of faith being sure of what we hope to certain of what we do not see. Can you um point out the difference between >> and again I don't mean to come all but blind acceptance then >> yeah so blind acceptance to me would be basically I hate to pick on them but some of my Mormon friends I think they'd be okay with me saying this but they're not they haven't a lot of my Mormon friends have not really dug through the Book of Mormon and really thought about okay archaeologically speaking right intellectually How does this line up with my present experience? And how can I really think through this faith? Many Christians do that as well, right? I I'd be hypocritical if I didn't say that. And that's why I frequently encourage my Christian friends, you got to think through your faith. I was sitting in a new atheism class once. There were a good amount of Christians in there. And the professor asked, "Can anybody here give me a reason for the hope that they have?" First Peter talks about for the for the the real reliability of the gospels and not one person raised their hand and I was sick to my stomach. I was thinking, okay, how what is going on here? Is there mass brainwashing? Right?

[00:20:23]And so you got to come back to a healthy type of doubt is running up against something like suffering, running up against something like how does God judge a civilization in the Old Testament and going looking at the context yourself and not just listening to social media, mass media, not getting an answer from a professor, a liberal professor who really hasn't done his homework either. You got to go look at it yourself, right? So there's healthy doubt there that leads to stronger faith when you go do the research yourself. I would say an unhealthy type of doubt is being paralyzed, right? Paralyzed in fear and paralyzed in that doubt saying, "Oh my word, that that one I can't overcome. So I got to I got to check check my faith at the door and get another religion."

[00:21:12]Okay, you're going to be jumping around religions your entire life if you do that. For me, my period of doubt came my freshman year of college. I I almost completely rejected my Christian faith and I looked at other religions. I looked at hedenism and ultimately they did not line up for me personally anywhere close to how the Christian faith lined up in terms of my personal experience and the evidence behind the Christian faith.

[00:21:33]And then um so the first part of the definition being being sure of what you hoped for that almost seems like uh >> that if if you accept what you hope for that doesn't seem like true. Does that make sense?

[00:21:52]>> Little bit. Keep going.

[00:21:54]>> So So if I say I am sure of what I hope for. Let's say I hope Hillary Clinton wins. being sure in what I hope doesn't affect what what the truth is. And obviously faith and truth are supposed to be in religion. Hopefully we have faith in the truth if we're doing the religion right. So it seems like if if we say faith is being sure of what we hope for and and we proclaim we have faith in the truth, it almost sounds like we're saying, "Well, truth is just whatever I want it." And I know it's not not I'm not like saying that's what all of Christianity is. But but if we say it's just faith is just being sure of what we hope to be certain of what we don't see. It sounds like to me it's saying well I believe truth is whatever I happen to wish truth is and I'm just going to accept it even though I don't have definitive evidence and then things like this.

[00:22:47]>> Yeah. So my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Who said that?

[00:22:52]>> Good man. Jesus. Jesus said that, right?

[00:22:54]Okay. So, there's a model, another model on doubt. Okay. If Jesus Christ, the leader of the Christian faith, is actually himself saying, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" I think it's okay that we ask questions. But more pointedly, back to your point, being sure of what we hope for. No, hope hope is based in truth. The point of that passage in Hebrews is talking about, no, you better go out and look at the evidence yourself. And then yes, the tr there's going to be truth that you have stumbled upon and you believe in.

[00:23:28]So you hope in that truth, but it doesn't say proof because you can't test that in a lab, that hope, right?

[00:23:36]>> Right.

[00:23:37]>> It's based off of evidence.

[00:23:40]And so again, you got to keep digging, keep thinking about, okay, at what point is there enough evidence for me actually to believe in the claims of Christ and that he is the son of God? And if so, I will put my hope in him and I will be sure of my hope in him, right? But I still can't prove him. It's a faith claim. And like we've been talking about here though, >> a scientist makes faith claims daily himself, right? We can't get those two mixed up.

[00:24:12]>> Okay. Awesome. And I'd just like to say I've seen your father at least for the past four years every year. I thank you guys for coming back, Matthew.

[00:24:19]>> Good to see you, Matthew.

[00:24:22]Great to see you. All right. Can I make a couple points to you?

[00:24:26]>> Yeah.

[00:24:29]Matthew, there's no way with your mom dying in February that I can give you an answer. The same way that a couple of months after few months after my brother lost his little girl in a car wreck that I could give him an answer. Why? Because the emotions are so raw. There's so much pain. Because obviously you loved your mom and your mom loved you. And so to be able to answer this intellectually is impossible because the emotions are so raw.

[00:24:58]But somewhere down the road, cuz I don't know if I'm ever going to see again, I would encourage you to read the Negro spirituals, the African-American slaves were being ripped into by white Christian races, but they still pursued Christ. Why? When you read the Negospirituals, you'll notice two points. First of all, they connected with a suffering God. They connected with Jesus because he was God become a human being who suffered and therefore God is not some aloof deity.

[00:25:35]He's very personal. He understands my suffering not intellectually but experientially.

[00:25:42]And those African-American slaves connected with Christ even though they were being brought to church on Sunday by the white Christian slave owner.

[00:25:52]Because you see, they were able to to detach from that Christian bigot and understand Jesus didn't have a hypocritical bone in his body. He was the opposite of a bigot. He's reliable.

[00:26:07]The second thing that those African-American slaves did was not just connect with a suffering God, but they also connected with the eternal God who promises eternal life to all who trust in him. And there will be a day of judgment when Christ returns a second time. And the dude living in the mansion over there who's the slave owner and who's oppressing us is going to be judged by this all just all powerful God. And we are looking forward to having new bodies to live in heaven for eternity with Christ and with each other. So hope biblically for a follower of Christ is not wishful thinking.

[00:26:50]Rather, hope for a follower of Christ is a confident expectation of good based on the promises of God, not based on wishful thinking.

[00:27:04]Now, Matthew, that's what I pray. I lost my mom a few years ago, and it hurts like blazes.

[00:27:10]Matthew, because of the resurrection of Christ, because of your mom's faith in Christ, she will be in heaven. My mom will be in heaven because of her faith in Christ. Now the question is, are you and I going to trust Christ and be with them in heaven? Why is that so important? Because that's God's solution to the very real problem of suffering and death.

[00:27:33]Now, I know the cynic scoffs, but let's get real practical.

[00:27:38]What's the solution?

[00:27:40]The solution is eternal life in heaven.

[00:27:44]And that's hope which is not I wish I dream.

[00:27:48]Rather it's based on Jesus dying on a cross being buried 3 days later rising from the dead.

[00:27:56]It's his promise. Trust in me and I will give you eternal life.

[00:28:03]Does that make sense?

[00:28:04]>> Yes. Wishful.

[00:28:06]>> Yeah. Not wishful thinking. Confident expectation of good based on the promises of God. That's Christian hope.

[00:28:14]Not I wish, but I am confident that this will happen because Christ who is trustworthy has promised it.

[00:28:26]Thank you so much, Matthew.