Faith Questions People Ask And The Answers

If God is loving, just, and all-powerful, why does he permit moral evil, or sin?
Because God is Love, he asks the freely given love of man and not a compelled love. Because he is just, he will not deprive man of the free will which is in accordance with his rational nature. Nor is this against the omnipotence of God, for even his power does not extend to contradictory things. Man cannot be free to love and serve God without being free to reject him and rebel against him. We cannot have it both ways. Even God, if he wants men to be free, cannot take from them the power to choose evil. If he enforces goodness, he takes away freedom. If he leaves freedom, he must permit evil, even though he forbids it. It is man’s dignity that he is master of his own destiny instead of having to develop just like a tree which necessarily obeys natural law. Men, as a matter of fact, misused their freedom and sin and brutality resulted. But it was impossible to give man the gift of freedom and the dignity of being master of his own destiny without risking the permission of such failures.

Do you insist that baptism is necessary to salvation?

Yes. Christ came to save men, and he has the right to dictate the conditions of salvation. If you offered me a fortune provided, I would go to London via Suez, particularly insisting that I should go via Suez, it would be little use my saying, “Oh, I’ll go via Panama—it’s a much more sensible route.” You would reply, “But I want you to go via Suez, or there will be no fortune.” Now Christ distinctly commanded baptism as a condition of salvation, and no arguments of men, who cannot save us, are of any avail against the authority of Christ. It is necessary to be baptized, or we shall never see God and rejoice in the happiness of heaven.

How do you know that there is a heaven?

God has revealed the fact: “Rejoice and be glad,” said Christ “for your reward is great in heaven” (Matt. 5:12). That heaven is not in this life, nor is it to be on this earth: “I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:3). The conditions of heaven will differ from any we know in this life: “For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Mark 12:25); “These all died … having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland … they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:13-16). And St. John tells us that God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4).