This past Sunday, I was slated to deliver a message at a local jail, during the Sunday evening chapel service. Unfortunately, an incident occurred at the jail on Saturday, causing the facility to be on “lock-down” for three days. My next opportunity to speak there is more than a month a way, so I thought I’d use this prolonged preparation opportunity by sharing my message with you in more detail than the time constraints of the aforementioned venue would allow…

My text for this message is the Gospel of John, Chapter 9. We read in the first two verses:

Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

The question of the disciples was not unusual, seeing as they likely grew-up in the shadow of a religious tradition that taught that birth defects were the result of sin. If the parents were found to be blameless, then it must have been the child himself who sinned in utero - perhaps by kicking his mother too violently while in the womb; so taught the religious leaders of that era.

Today, people grasp for answers to similar questions, such as “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Ultimately, they are asking “If God is good, why is there evil in the world?” Now a question like that makes a few, rather unfounded, assumptions: First, it assumes that the person asking the question is a fair judge of “good” and “evil”. I find that ironic, since often the same people who pose such questions also believe in moral relativism. If morals are something invented by individuals and their collective society, how can they expect someone outside of their community - a supernatural being, no less - to conform to their view of morality? Next (by implication), it assumes that the person has knowledge of “good” and “evil” apart from God. That is, it assumes that God, if He exists, should not only conform to their view, but be subject to it - that is, that the questioner is in a position to both prescribe moral behavior to, and find fault with God. If that be the case, then God would not be a God at all, but a servant of men’s desires; which - in a convoluted way - is likely their point, i.e., God doesn’t conform to my image, therefore He must not exist. Utter silliness.

In typical fashion, the entirely unexpected answer of Jesus is quite profound. To be continued in Part 2.