Piper: Suffering is Judicial

This is via a summary by Adrian Warnock, but I doubt Adrian would get a whole section wrong. There are a large number of things in this message that are right on target, and a few also with which I disagree.

But the reason I’m posting a brief response is this: As has become standard with those who accept penal substitutionary atonement (PSA), metaphor has been promoted to reality. Everything gets placed in the courtroom. If we cannot distinguish spiritual things from the worldly metaphors used to describe them, then we will always be off track.

Let me quote Piper as summarized by Adrian Warnock:

Suffering is Judicial
John PiperThis is most important, most controversial, and most helpful. In verse 20 it is clear that somebody took the universe and disordered it. Someone brought painful disorder to our relationships, workplaces, etc. GOD did it. We know it must have been God because it was done in hope! There can only be two other candidates—Adam and the devil. Did Adam and Eve sin in the hope of a future new heaven and earth? They didn’t have a clue about that when they fell! Was it the devil’s design to do it in hope? No! Only God did this in hope. God judged the universe because of sin. . . .

Now while there are even some valid points within that selection, there is also a basic error. The courtroom has been imported and made into the reality. If God allows this to happen as a consequence of sin, that is apparently not sufficient for Piper. But God is still doing it, because God is in and behind everything that is. The courtroom metaphor distorts the issue.

Quoting further (after skipping half of a long paragraph), still from Adrian’s summary:

The meaning of all misery in the universe is that sin is horrific. All natural evil such as floods, disease, etc. is a statement about the horror of moral evil. God looked upon sin, and he said, “Here is my response to that.” He subjected the entire creation to this. Until you see the moral outrage of sin in proper proportions, and the magnificence of God in proper proportions, that will seem to you like an over-reaction. The world will say, “That’s ridiculous! He saw one sin and he did all that?” The reason for suffering is to teach you about your heart. You don’t even get close to understanding the horror of the way you treat your wife. There is a moral scandal about falling short of God’s glory.

Here I have to disagree again. The imaginary universe in which no natural disasters occur is just that–imaginary. Again, promotion of a metaphor (the courtroom) to reality distorts our ability to discuss the issue.

I’m wondering if Piper and those who hold a similar view don’t also have to hold a young earth creationism position. Certainly there were natural disasters before the fall of humanity if one holds that the earth is old. The old earth creationism position would suggest physical death as a natural part of the world, not as a consequence of sin, and much of that death historically was caused by natural disasters.