The problem of pain relates to our choices. We choose to hurt others, we choose to hurt ourselves. In the first and introductory quote, a good man is dead because he was hit in a road crash by a young drive.

Which is every parent’s nightmare. Cars are needed in NZ unless you live in a central city. And then they are useful. I spent Saturday unloading 30 kg sacks of mulch: the alternative would be to have them delivered about three miles horizontally and 60O feet vertically. My sons will need cars soon, because outside of that central bubble the distances here are great.

And it is not God who is malevolent. God is truthful. We find the truth brutal, and deny it, saying that we are triggered.

In the 1980s, Depeche Mode wrote what may be the greatest philosophical lyric ever written in pop music.

I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors
But I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor
And when I die
I expect to find Him laughing

As an indifferent agnostic, that fairly well described my religious perspective before I became a Christian. But that is why it is so important to understand the correct application of the Problem of Evil, and to grasp what it means for the world to be fallen, why it is necessary for Christians to be in the world, but not of it, and why the Word became flesh and died on the Cross.

Depeche Mode was right, in a sense, though it is not God who has the sick and sadistic sense of humor, but the Prince of this world. Neither God nor Jesus Christ rule over the Silent Planet, and they are not the architects of human misfortune.

I do, however, contra Umberto Eco, firmly believe that God possesses a sense of humor. I have sensed it. And one cannot read the New Testament without recognizing that Jesus was almost brutally sarcastic.

Christ was brutally truthful. And he walked away from those who rejected him, while others wer sealed and chosen.

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him. But the people did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. And they went on to another village.

(Luke 9:51-56 ESV)

After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree. Then I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.” And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel:

(Revelation 7:1-4 ESV)

Who are those sealed? This has been a source of apocalyptic speculation: it is one of the fundamental errors the Jehovah’s Witnesses make. One think is clear. They are from the 12 tribes, and not from the pagans who turned to Christ, or the converts to Judaism.

And they are protected until the end. As is the church. Christ promised to keep those of us who are his to the end: it is not us who do this, but him. For he gave us the spirit of God as a seal.

But the world instead sees the prince of this world, worships him, and hates religion, for they see but the cruel humour. The elite are callous, uncaring, for they follow the same prince, wishing profoundly to converge with him in hell.

To reject Christ, is to join them. The Samaritans rejected him out of a patriotic bitterness: if he was going to Jerusalem he was the enemy.

Do not let your ideology or love for your nation blind you. For as Christ sealed those of the Jews who he chose, he chose you from before the beginning of time, and knows you can be glorious in this time of the nation’s rage.