The "Shut-Up Defense" on the Problem of Evil, Schaeffer's Warning for Our Generation, and a Question About Christian Involvement in Politics

AN IDEA FROM ME

I love the Shut-Up Defense, because it's just, “Shut up, he explained.” That's the explanation. God is God. You're going to challenge God [on] why he does something? It would blow your puny pea brain if he tried to explain it. You're a human, he's God. He's the potter. We're the clay. He has the absolute right to do whatever he wants.

—(In this quote I am giving one of three “Defenses” to the so-called Problem of Evil. Learn more about the “Shut-Up Defense,” the “Greater Good Defense,” and the “Soul-Building Defense” in the new episode featuring real conversation from men in the Hammer & Anvil Society. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po1dXjLksoM

A QUOTE FROM SOMEBODY ELSE

“The Christian is to resist the spirit of the world. But when we say this, we must understand that the world-spirit does not always take the same form. So the Christian must resist the spirit of the world in the form it takes in his own generation. If he does not do this, he is not resisting the spirit of the world at all. This is especially so for our generation, as the forces at work against us are of such a total nature…

“When the apostle warned us to ‘keep [ourselves] unspotted from the world,’ he was not talking of some abstraction. If the Christian is to apply this injunction to himself he must understand what confronts him antagonistically in his own moment of history. Otherwise he simply becomes a useless museum piece and not a living warrior for Jesus Christ.”

—Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There (Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1998), 31–32. 

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Jesus Christ prayed for His disciples, “ I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” How involved should Christians be in “worldly” arenas such as politics?