Mary Jo is reflecting on the question “Does suffering disprove the existence of a good God?” over at Biblegateway.com

Here’s a Preview:

The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?
—Jeremiah 17:9, NASB

As I tried to imagine the depth of pain, the horror of suffering that so many humans have inflicted on each other, I began to have that most unwelcome feeling of having my paradigm shifted. Humans are not good. It’s the average member of society that commits genocide. I didn’t want this to be true, and to this day I don’t want it to be true.

These ideas go against everything I believed growing up and into my young adulthood. But what if I were to be a defense lawyer in a trial of humanity where the judges were some alien race? As the prosecution brought forth the massive amounts of human suffering caused by other humans, what would I have to say? “Well, you see, Your Honor, I can tell you that at least I’m not like that . . . and neither is my family.”

I could hear the alien judge: “You seem to forget yourself. The probability of your goodness is so infinitesimally low in light of human history, that I have no reason for judgment in your favor. Or perhaps you can prove that you are better than every human who has ever lived?”

“Well, no, I don’t think I could do that, but there are some great humans in time and history: Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi . . .”

“And what percentage of humankind do they represent? Less than a percent? Less than half a percent? Less than half of a half of a percent? And can you prove that even those humans never did anything to hurt another human? You would do well to offer more realistic statements in your defense.”

“But what explains all this? We have accomplished amazing things!”

The alien judge, looking unimpressed with my plea, says, “You seem to have an internal error.”

There it was. Dr. Clay Jones’s statement that we all suffer from original sin. And if he’s right, no matter how averse our generation has become to the word sin, the answer to the problem is not more education, more opportunity, or more resources. None of these things can, or have, cured the lack of goodness in human beings. For all of the Enlightenment’s work to show religion as false, or the language deconstruction that has relegated everything to the subjectivity of the individual, or the experimental drugs trying to release us to higher realities, or the sexual revolution trying to give us ultimate autonomy, or the new atheism movement that says we can be good without God . . . we are still full of selfishness, envy, hatred, racism, sexism, objectification, self-interest, and yet, self-loathing. We are not getting better. We can pretty-up the terminology all we want, but the ugliness still rears its head in all of our lives.

Wow. I feel like I just raised a glass to toast my generation and gave the worst speech of all time. Honestly, I really do fit in better with the crowd that believes we should all “follow our dreams.” But what is the cost of ignoring what I see? To blindly cling to a belief that humans are good despite the evidence? I had been raised with such humanistic optimism! We all just need to respect each other, and the world will finally come together. However, the empirical evidence, found in human history, suggests the complete opposite conclusion.

No matter how good we think we are or how far along we think we’ve come, we’re still doing horrible things to each other and to ourselves. I don’t need to go to the historical atrocities to come to this conclusion. Becoming an adult was sufficient for me to understand that humans, on a daily basis, do not do what is good to each other. This idea was becoming plain as day through my experiences in church ministry. Even the people who professed the moral teachings of God as binding on their lives practiced nearly the worst of human behaviors and attitudes. Read the rest over at BibleGateway.com

On December 5, Mary Jo was privileged to be the guest speaker at the Guild of HBU’s annual Christmas luncheon. The Guild is a group of civic-minded Christian women who serve HBU by providing women in the Houston area an opportunity to participate in the ongoing development of Houston Baptist University, filling needs which are not being met at the present time by any other University support group.

This year’s luncheon theme was “A Brilliant Star.” Mary Jo shared her own struggle of questioning the truth of Christianity because of the hypocrisy she encountered early in her faith journey. She encouraged the attendees to reflect God’s truth in their own lives by being thoughtful, engaged and trusting. As Mary Jo said, “We are the lights that are supposed to reflect a radiant testimony of the Light. We are the mirrors with which God has decorated His world to reflect His own character.”

After her talk, Dr. Robert Sloan, President of HBU, honored Mary Jo by presenting her with a Pre-1650 leaf of Job 28. He explained that the reason he chose this specific passage is because of what Mary Jo does as a professor; she searches for wisdom, which is far more valuable than silver and gold. Where can true wisdom be found? As Job 28:28 says, “The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding.”

Mary Jo was recently featured on the Regeneration Project podcast. Mary Jo, Jay Kim and Issac Serrano discuss the common cultural notion that the Jesus story is actually based on several pagan myths which some claim carry the same exact key components of the story – virgin births, twelve disciples, death and resurrection, etc. This idea was recently made popular by the Zeitgeist film.

Listen to how Mary Jo deconstructs these ideas and shows how the Jesus story is unique and historically valid.

Mary Jo was recently featured on a New Zealand Catholic news website regarding her trip to New Zealand and encountering the problem of evil in everyday conversations. Find the first part of the article below:

It is not often that St Augustine and his wisdom are subjects of everyday conversation, but his thinking might be given more of an airing after US Christian apologist Mary Jo Sharp visited New Zealand. Mrs Sharp, a Professor of Apologetics at Houston Baptist University, spoke in Christchurch, Auckland and Tauranga recently, courtesy of Thinking Matters, a ministry that “encourages New Zealand Christians to think more deeply about what they believe, and why they believe it, so they can present the Christian faith as both rational and true”.

In Auckland, Mrs Sharp spoke at the Greenlane Christian Centre on May 25, with her main address titled “Encountering the Problem of Evil in Everyday Conversation”, at the start of a two-day conference on “Confident Christianity.”

She outlined a three-step approach for engaging people on this topic in a way that is aimed not at putting them on the defensive, but rather freeing them to think. The steps are essentially “refine the objections [to belief in God based on evil]”, “define the terms” and “outline your view”.

St Augustine’s treatment of the topic of good and evil was summarised under the second heading.

But Mrs. Sharp, a former atheist, introduced the subject on a more personal note, sharing what happened on one occasion after she had given a talk at a women’s ministry event on life having meaning and purpose in God.

“At the end of my talk, a group of women came down to ask me some questions afterwards. There was one lady that just kept hanging towards the back of the group. She kept catching my attention because I noticed that her eyes were completely red. She had been holding back tears.

“As soon as everyone was gone, she made her way up to me and she said, I want to make sure that everyone else had a chance to talk to you because I’m having some real problems about my belief in God. My son died of leukaemia when he was three years old. And I can’t reconcile that with the Church’s teaching on God being good. So I just need to have some conversation with you on this matter.”

Mrs Sharp said this woman’s “questioning lament, her deep grief over the problem of pain and suffering in her own life, is something that is common amongst us as humans”.

“So while a person could say that the argument from evil seems purely academic . . . our experiences in this life continue to thrust it into the conversation, by means of our own suffering. We do not have the luxury of purely pontificating on the matter. We all experience evil and will have to handle it one way or another.”

“One of the first things we need to do,” Mrs Sharp said, “when we encounter this problem in conversation is help the person clarify their objection.”

To read the full article, click here.

How confident do you feel in talking about matters of faith? Do you wish you could express your beliefs with more effectiveness? Are you looking for an exciting summer Bible study? Look no further! 

Join Mary Jo in a practical seven-session study and gain understanding and skill to share Jesus effectively with others, and you’ll better understand your own faith. In Why Do You Believe That? you will answer your doubts, build your confidence, and start changing lives.

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Are you currently going through this study or have you done it in the past? We’d love to hear from you!