Dan Russell

Great balance of showing compassion while sharing truth as Wes Huff responds to the question of why a good God would allow evil: "Well, that is arguably the hardest and most pressing apologetic question there is, because ultimately, the very tidy philosophical and theological answer isn't the right answer sometimes. You know, sometimes the right answer to the wrong question is the wrong answer, because I've encountered situations where someone has brought up a variation of the problem of evil to me, and I've just felt uneasy about maybe the tenor that they're coming at with the question...and asking them, 'You know, that's a great question. Why are you asking that question in particular?' and finding out once again (like the previous question related to it), they're personally hurting. And so, in that sense, I could give a tidy answer about if you're positing that something is good, you're positing that there's an objective good and evil, and if there's an objective good and evil, then you're positing an objective law, and objective law needs an objective lawgiver. So where do we find the groundwork for an objective lawgiver to begin with? Otherwise, you may not like certain things, but to say they ought not to happen is actually an ethical leap to an objective reality that you may or may not have groundwork for. But if that person is struggling because a family member of theirs has cancer, then that particular, maybe tidy, tied-up-in-a-nice-bow answer is not going to speak to them whatsoever. And so that's why that's the hardest question because there are actually very good answers to it, but often it doesn't speak to the person in front of you, because questions have questioners that sit behind them. And one of the pitfalls of my chosen field of ministry apologetics is that sometimes we give answers where we talk at people rather than with people. And there's a danger to that because the Christian faith isn't just an intellectual assent, right? It's a personal relationship. And that should also be played out in the answers that we give..."