When Christianity leaves questions unanswered, it can be tempting to consider other worldviews on the market—believe me, I’ve experienced this temptation. However, as Peter saw, leaving Jesus doesn’t really solve anything. We may not always like what Jesus has to say, but we won’t find anyone in the universe saying anything better. He alone has the words of eternal life. 

Suffering will make parts of the Bible come alive that previously you may have glossed over. I recently read about John the Baptist’s imprisonment and was shaken by it in a new way. His unjust imprisonment and execution under King Herod recorded by the gospel writers is not something I’d seriously pondered until recently. After being falsely accused of a crime myself, and unjustly separated from my family for months on end before finally being exonerated by a grand jury, I have a new respect for those who endure false accusations and experience injustice at the hands of oppressive governments.

John the Baptist’s story is especially troubling because if any man would have expected Jesus to miraculously intervene and rescue him from his maniacal oppressor, Herod, surely John did. Humanly speaking, John was Jesus’ cousin. John had been Jesus’ forerunner, paving the way for his ministry. Jesus was traveling throughout Israel, proving himself to be God’s Son through mighty miracles and casting out demons. He was teaching the people through parables the importance of persistence in prayer. In the parable of the unjust judge, Jesus tells his disciples to pray for justice, assuring them that God will “swiftly” answer them.

Sometimes John gets portrayed negatively for sending messengers from prison to Jesus to ask if he was, in fact, the awaited Messiah after all. Before criticizing John, though, we ought to put ourselves in his shoes. How must John have felt? God Incarnate was there, in the same town. To use a Narnian analogy, when Aslan is present, isn’t “everything put to rights”? The Incarnate God was doing favors for countless people throughout Israel, healing the infirm, giving sight to the blind, freeing people from demonic activity. “Why,” John must have wondered, “isn’t he doing any favors for me, getting me out of this prison that I don’t belong in? After all, I’m in prison not for doing something unrighteous, but rather for the opposite reason—for rebuking Herod for his own sin.”

Jesus wasn’t harsh in his reply to John’s messengers, so we ought not be harsh in our assessment of John either. In Jesus’ inaugural sermon to the people of Israel, he quotes from the prophet Isaiah, explaining that, among other things, one of his roles will be to “proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners”. We don’t know precisely how long John’s imprisonment lasted, but scholars estimate that it was just under two years.  The “Sunday School answer” for why John was eventually beheaded was that it must have somehow glorified God, but humanly speaking it seemed quite senseless.

Let’s first weed out some of the wrong answers to this dilemma. First, John’s imprisonment and execution was not a result of Jesus’ indifference or lack of love for John. Jesus told the crowd that “among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist”. Clearly, Jesus had high regard for John. Jesus tells his disciples that John was the fulfillment of the prophecy that Elijah would come and pave the way for Messiah. When Jesus hears word of John’s death, he withdraws with his disciples to a “lonely place” to get away from the crowds. Jesus, as a human, was grieving for his cousin and friend.

Secondly, John’s imprisonment and execution was not a result of Jesus’ inability to rescue John. Just as Jesus could have called down legions of angels to rescue him in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus could have done the same for John the Baptist. Jesus’ miracles, which he told John’s messengers to report back to him, amply testified to Jesus’ authority over all creation. A man who could raise the dead could miraculously open a prison door.

Thirdly, it was not a result of John being punished by God due to his own lack of faith. There is no indication that John was forsaken by God in prison because he didn’t pray fervently enough. The world’s health and wealth preachers would have us believe that the only way a person’s prayers could ever go unanswered is due to a lack of faith. The Bible utterly contradicts this. Jesus asked God to let the cup of suffering pass from him in Gethsemane. Did the Father deny this request because Jesus’ faith was weak?

If Jesus, therefore, loved and respected John and had the capability of sparing him from his terrible suffering, why then didn’t he? This sounds quite similar to the standard argument atheists make: if God is all good and all-powerful, why does evil exist? Though theologians have spent centuries hammering out thoughtful answers to this question, the short answer is that we don’t know. We don’t know why God, who could prevent all evil for the moment allows so much of it. We don’t know why God, who could’ve spared John, didn’t. Acts 12 tells us that Herod arrested the Apostle James and had him killed with the sword. Seeing that this pleased the Jewish leaders, he proceeded to arrest the apostle Peter and have him killed, but before the execution could happen, God sent an angel to save Peter. Why did Peter get such a rescue and not James? Again, the short answer is we simply don’t know.

Being a Christian certainly doesn’t provide immunity from the pain and suffering in this world. Christianity doesn’t assure us that we will always be happy, healthy, and wealthy. Hebrews 11, the faith chapter, lists numerous heroes of the faith, explaining that some, through faith, conquered kingdoms, saw the dead come back to life, and savored unbelievable victories. Others, through faith, lived destitute lives, were sawn in two, were slaughtered by ungodly people, not experiencing “victory” until the next life. For some faith heroes, God vindicated them in the here and now; for others, they had to wait till the next life.

We see the same thing today. Some missionaries are rescued from persecution, while others are martyred. From a Christian perspective, I can’t promise that the good guys will always beat the bad guys—in this life, that is. From an atheistic perspective, though, I can’t even assert that there even are any good guys or bad guys.

If there is no Deity, then there is no ultimate standard of right and wrong, which means all truth claims are private, subjective opinions—nothing more. You can say that the injustice of your oppressors is displeasing to you, that you don’t like it, but you can’t say with any absoluteness—“This is wrong!” If there is no transcendent moral code the universe is governed by—and according to atheism, there isn’t—then the atheist argument, “The world is so unfair” caves in on itself. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, Christianity may not neatly resolve all the intellectual problems regarding how God allows so much evil, but, far worse, atheism cuts the ground out from under us in any attempt to call anything “good” or “evil”.

In a fallen world such as ours, no good deed goes unpunished. Jesus himself is the supreme example of this. The purest, most righteous man who ever lived underwent more unjust suffering than any other. His suffering, like that of John the Baptist, wasn’t a result of God the Father’s indifference or inability.  In the end, practically all of Jesus’ apostles were unjustly executed. Does this disprove Jesus’ assurance that for those who cry to God day and night for justice, he will “bring it about quickly” (Luke 18:6-8)? No. It does mean, however, that God’s ways are mysterious. It takes great faith to go on believing, in the words of the old hymn, “that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.”

If you are travailing under the weight of oppression, as John the Baptist did, what are you to do? Continue to bang the doors of heaven for justice. The psalms abundantly testify that it is a good and godly thing to petition God to avenge injustice. Continue to hope against hope that God is for you, not against you. This involves walking “by faith, and not by sight”. Persevere in believing that evil never has the last word. Persevere in obeying God, rather than man. Like John the Baptist, have more regard for God, who has authority over both body and soul, than for man who can only kill the body and nothing more. Resist the devil’s temptation to cave in to despair and stop believing that there is any real moral order to the universe.

If any theme emerges in the Old Testament prophets, it’s that God is keenly aware of the plight of the oppressed and that he is for them and against the oppressors. How are we to go on believing this day after day, seeing so much oppression going unchecked? Jesus’ resurrection—something neither John the Baptist nor the prophets of the Old Testaments had the privilege of living to see—is the key. Jesus, the most righteous man who ever lived, died a cruel and unjust death at the hands of a bloodthirsty mob and a cowering governor. Three days later, God raised him from the dead. God wouldn’t vindicate the life of a godless man by resurrecting him, so God bringing Jesus back to life certifies that Jesus was in the right and that his enemies were in the wrong. It certifies also that God is on the side of the falsely condemned, not on the side of the scoundrels. It certifies just how good the good news is.

When pressed under the weight of an excruciating burden of oppression, it’s hard to see how even God can really rectify the situation. This is when we should recall the resurrection. The worst thing that human beings have ever done—murder God’s Son—was carried out on Good Friday, and yet in Christ’s resurrection God turned even that around, accomplishing the greatest good (the world’s salvation) through Christ’s suffering. If God can flip the crucifixion itself on its head, making it the source of eternal redemption, then God can flip any scenario around, including whatever you may be experiencing. God will never wink at what the enemies of his people do to them, just as he didn’t wink at Pilate or Caiaphas or Herod. The key is to focus on Christ, not the enemies.

Martin Luther once said the gospel only shows itself to be a word of salvation and life in the midst of suffering and death. If our lives were immune from bearing such crosses, he said, we would never get to see the gospel be what it professes to be. Like Jesus himself, we have to go through our Good Friday experience before ushering in the Easter morning awaiting us.

One is reminded of John 6, when Jesus told the crowds, much to their dismay, that they would have to eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have eternal life. Many disciples left Jesus, unable to stomach this. Peter, certainly not understanding Jesus’ mysterious message any better than the crowds, decided to stick with Jesus, despite his inability to understand what the Savior was talking about. His words are significant: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).

When Christianity leaves questions unanswered, it can be tempting to consider other worldviews on the market—believe me, I’ve experienced this temptation. However, as Peter saw, leaving Jesus doesn’t really solve anything. We may not always like what Jesus has to say, but we won’t find anyone in the universe saying anything better. He alone has the words of eternal life.

Daniel Townsend is a graduate of Belhaven University in Jackson Miss., where he currently works as a tutor in the Adult Studies program. He is also a frequent contributor to the Jackson Presbyterian Examiner.