Answer 2

I want to explore something in the way that you asked your questions.

Picture the way people discuss past events- the Super Bowl, or the battle of Gettysburg, or American Idol. These are things we weren’t involved in and so we discuss them at some remove. We’re willing to assume some authority or even a sort of omniscience… what we’d do if we were there, where the people involved went wrong, you know. It’s called being an armchair general or an armchair quarterback. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this. After all, I wasn’t IN the Super Bowl, so I can say what I want and think what I want, with no consequence. It’s all make-believe, really. “If I was Brady I would have pulled it down and gone for the corner pylon, no question.”

Your questions were phrased that way. After all, you weren’t present for the early parts of the church age. You weren’t on either the giving or getting end of a crusade. God didn’t put you on His advisory council before deciding what to do. This would seem to give you some latitude for speculation! It’s as if the world and history are a play on a stage, and you’re the Times’ drama critic down in the audience… and it sounds like you’re going to rip God a new one in the Sunday edition.

And that’s the problem, of course. You’re not IN the gallery. You’re on the stage.

What do I mean by this? Well, do you remember what I said in answer number 1 about how we can see that the world is involved in a war between good and evil? This is obvious. I also said that the front line is very hard to distinguish. This also is obvious. Well, the reason the front line is hard to distinguish is because it runs right through the middle of every person. The battlefront is in you, and it’s in me. This is very easy to demonstrate. Set aside any religious rules that tell you what to do. Forget them; because the fact is that every (sane) person knows that he doesn’t even live up to his own standards for himself. I am not who I know I should be. Nor are you. I’m not who I wish I was. Nor are you. And for people who have had enough time to harden their consciences to this, the answer is still easy. If you think you are the person you ought to be, well, no one who knows you thinks that. So the front line is inside you. And you’re beaten. You can’t win. Neither can I. None of us can.

Now, we’re all good at excusing ourselves, myself not the least. And we also like to move the goalposts: for instance, asserting that we do more good than bad and so on the whole we come out ahead. But remember that I am giving you the Christian answer. So I am asking you to posit that Christianity is true, and listen to what the Christian God says in this case. And He doesn’t say this is loveable or just human, or just a game of averages. He says it’s evil. He says He made us to be more and we can’t and won’t do it. He says even if we could we still wouldn’t. And we know from experience that this is so. When we know what is right, we still won’t choose it.

OK. Blah, blah. Here’s the thing. The main question is not why God made a world that didn’t turn out to be worth what He put into it. And it isn’t why God made a church that didn’t turn out to be worth what He put into it. Your big question, the main event, is why God made YOU when you really aren’t worth what He put into you. You aren’t in the gallery- you are up on stage. Your three choices from your original post are really about you, not about the church or Jesus:

There is no God cause a God would be all knowing and he wouldn’t intentionally create something like you.
You are here, but that’s a mistake because why would God create you knowing how you would waste what He gave you.
There is a God but He can’t see into the future cause if he could why would he send you here and allow you to happen?

What is the Christian answer? Why did God make all us people who obstinately waste the good things He gave us? As I alluded in the previous answer, God is tolerating all this evil, and paying this price, in exchange for something. And as I referenced, God is up on stage, too. He Himself, as Christ, paid more then everyone else combined, again in exchange for something.

So the Christian question is this: are you part of the price God is paying? Or are you part of what God is paying for? Are you going to lose your battle? Or is God going to win your battle?

If you get that figured out, the original questions you asked will become much more manageable. And UNTIL you get it figured out, I wouldn’t waste my time worrying about the church, if I were you.