Why Doesn't God Intervene In the World's Suffering? - Dennis AMA

On today's episode of Timeless Wisdom, what happened 5 minutes before creation?

The answer is there was no 5 minutes before creation because time was created. But you don't understand that, and I don't understand that. What does it mean time was created? Time is time, right? That's the way we think. What will happen after we die? Let's say— so people say eternal life, sounds great, but Is it great? Eternal life?

That's coming up on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

One nation under God. Here's Franklin Graham.

I'm inviting you to join with us and to pray for America. Pray that we as individuals and as a nation turn to the God of our fathers, the God of the Bible.

As we approach America's 250th, join Franklin in praying for our nation every day. A new prayer is posted daily at onenationundergod.com. Invite your friends and family to pray too. onenationundergod.com.

Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Hear thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs. And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to dennisprager.com.

Hey everybody, it's the AMA, Ask Me Anything. Dennis Prager. Welcome to it. It's great to be with you. Got a lot of questions. I can't get to all of them, obviously, but I will keep them. So here we go. Let's see. There's no order. The only order is the way they were handed to me. I have not picked them in any other order. Here's my question. Is there a topic, issue, opinion you had been passionate about for a long time but have since changed your mind? If so, what was your position and what changed your mind? I know you had been a Democrat before Reagan, but is there something beyond that? Thanks so much. So let's see, is there something that I— an opinion I passionately held and have changed my mind about? I know this will sound bad, but I can't think of any. I have changed my mind on subjects, but I wasn't passionate. Like, I changed my mind on the minimum wage. I was for it, now I'm against it. I wasn't passionate about it. I must say, on the big issues, I have been fairly consistent, and I wish I could say to you, "Oh yes, I changed my mind on X or Y or Z." But I hate evil, I've always hated evil. Much of what I believe flows from that. What I believe flows from two major beliefs: a hatred of evil, love of good. That's one. And the, the understanding that God has to be involved in the ethical structure of one's life, or society is doomed. And that we're now seeing to be the case in much of the West. But I'm going to give that thought. Maybe my wife will remind me of something. Michael in Conroe, Texas: I hear you talk about cigars all the time. Have you stopped smoking a pipe? If not, are there specific times you decide to smoke one over the other? So it's another hobby question. I love a pipe as much as I love a cigar. How do you like that? But I don't talk about it because nobody smokes pipes. I mean, I think among young people there's no cigars or pipes generally, but there's more, much more cigar smoking. But when I see videos from the '30s and '40s, you know, distinguished people smoking a pipe I so relate to it. I, I really— I love the taste of tobacco. That's why I like cigars. That's why I like pipes. That's why I don't like cigarettes. Cigarettes— people smoke cigarettes for entirely different reason, for the nicotine. People smoke cigars and pipes for the taste. Major difference between a pipe and a cigar? The feeling on your lips, obviously. One's squishy tobacco and one is firm stem, pipe stem. But I can't explain it. They— pipe tobacco tastes different from cigar tobacco. No, it's not cleaner. Not— there's no— it's like if I asked you What does pizza taste like? Could you answer me? No, you couldn't, because you would say, well, it tastes like cheese and tomato sauce. All right, so what does tomato sauce taste like? You can't answer a what does it taste like unless you use another thing like it. Anyway, I love it, and it's very relaxing. Galveston, Texas. John, I have loved your show since the Sunday night Religion on the Line back in the 1980s. Saw you once at the Menorah Temple in Hermosa Beach speaking about what Jews can learn from Christians and vice versa. By the way, that lecture is one of my favorite, and it's up at pragerstore.com. I'm 2 or 3 years younger than you. We're in fact the same age. Do you agree or disagree that it is harder to be happy when you are retired in your 70s? Fewer social contracts, not doing life's work anymore, harder to make new friends, your longtime friends are getting grouchier and grouchier, etc. That's sad, the last part. My longtime friends getting grouchier? I don't think so. But anyway, I'm not a retirement fan, so I have a prejudiced answer. Unless you use retirement to do very productive things, it's not enough, I think, to play golf every day. By the way, if that works, I'm not trying to talk you out of it. More power to you. It wouldn't work for me. I work harder than I ever have right now. My, my profession is high stress. There's no question. I just handle it really well. I'm a relaxed dude, but it is high stress. There's no question about that. Mir B, M-I-R-B, the great state of— that's the city— is that right? Texas. There is no state that has as much state patriotism as Texas. Hey Dennis Prager, my wife and I are Christians who have recently been pondering the commandment of the Sabbath. We're really trying to figure out what that means, and more specifically, that what that would look like in the life of a Christian. Neither of us really grew up around the adherence of a Sabbath. And I recall while listening to your Torah teaching that you invited guests into your home for the Sabbath. Would you be willing to explain in some detail how you tend to practice the Sabbath? So you'll find this of interest. Charlie Kirk, the founder and head of TPUSA, Turning Point USA, who is a brilliant young man, obviously. So Charlie listened to all 240 hours of my Torah tapes, and he decided as a Christian— he's a committed Christian— to observe the Sabbath. Friday night he turns off his cell phone, turns it back on Saturday night. Exactly what Orthodox Jews do. And in other words, you wouldn't be able to text Charlie on Saturday morning or Friday night. Christians have to deal with this issue. I don't have a good, uh, answer for them. They need to come up with a good answer because 50% of the pastors and priests that I've asked, are you obligated to the commandment of the Sabbath, say no, as a Christian I'm not obligated. And I've heard all sorts of answers like it's the only one of the Ten Commandments that, that Jesus never repeats as obligatory, and it's really for Israel. It's a sign between me and Israel that in 6 days I've created the heavens and the earth, and on the 7th day I rested, etc. But I believe the Ten Commandments is for humanity. And obviously it was for Israel, but Israel to take it to humanity. The reason God gives for the Sabbath is universal, not Jewish. And the reason that given by God himself is, for in 6 days I created the heavens and the earth, and on the 7th day I rested. And so shall you, you and your servants and, and your, uh, and your family, your children And you're animals. I always get— I don't know if the ox is shor chava chamor chava chamor. I think if it mentions an animal, it would mention ox probably. It's a good stab. Sean has forsaken sports and now only reads the Bible when he gets home at night. It's a beautiful thing. It's also not true, but it is beautiful. So could something beautiful not be true? There was an example. Okay, anyway, when you don't rest on the seventh day, you are announcing to the world that God created the world. That is the animating impulse for me. God created the world, not chance, which is what the secularist believes. Chance, coincidence made the universe. I don't believe that. I believe God did. And observing the Sabbath is one of them. It's the only ritual in the Ten Commandments. It's incredibly important. The only ritual. So I, I think for the sake of a richness of Jewish— of, sorry, of Christian life, Christians do need to consider observing the Sabbath. Sunday in Christian theology is not creation rest day, it's Resurrection Day. It's the day of the resurrection. So That, that's a different bearing witness. In the Torah, you bear witness by keeping the Sabbath to God's creating the world. In Christianity, you keep Sunday, you are bearing witness to the resurrection of Christ. So that, that they're quite different. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but why isn't that even done? Christians have lost out. Society has lost out with the obliteration of the Sabbath. Just seeing all these children walking around in their Sunday best was worth it.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

One nation under God. Here's Franklin Graham.

I'm inviting you to join with us and to pray for America. Pray that we as individuals and as a nation turn to the God of our fathers, the God of the Bible.

As we approach America's 250th, join Franklin in praying for our nation every day. A new prayer is posted daily at OneNationUnderGod.com. Invite your friends and family to pray too. OneNationUnderGod.com.

Back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

This is from Maria in Wyoming. Dear Dennis, I've been listening to your collection of male/female hours in PragerTopia. In the introductory soundtrack for that segment, you play a line from the movie As Good As It Gets when the lead male character in the movie is asked, how do you write women so well? And he responds, I think of a man. Oh, this is the, what's his name, character. Yeah, Jack Nicholson. Yes, take away reason and accountability. The line always makes me laugh, always made me laugh, but I didn't really understand the accountability part until now, I think. Do you think it is true that women have less accountability than men? How do you interpret that line? I share my thoughts only after having left the workforce and dedicated myself to my family and community completely, did I realize that I don't really like being accountable to anyone. While I excel at achieving whatever I set my goal to be, I don't actually enjoy the process when I'm being accountable to anyone other than myself. On the other hand, I not only excel at whatever job I set for myself, but I find myself actually enjoying it and deriving happiness from it when I do something I don't really have to do but do regardless out of wanting to help out, improve something, or make life better. You were not accountable to an editor here. It's a long letter, but it's a good one. Anxiety goes down, happiness and enjoyment go up, and thus a better family life follows when I'm not accountable to my boss or my business for that matter. Anyway, I want to know your thoughts on the accountability part of that line. Al, I think you took it a little further than Jack Nicholson meant it. Take away rationality and accountability. Or reason, was it? Well, the same thing. Okay, reason and accountability. Yeah. So I'm thinking about it anew because I always understood the reason part and I never fully understood the accountability part either. I just thought it was a funny line. Uh, but I think there's truth to that. Women, for example, women are more into participation trophies than men are. When you lose a game, baseball, basketball, whatever, when you lose, you're accountable, right? You're accountable to the score. You lost. Men are fully at ease with saying to themselves or their sons or daughters, you lost, no trophy. The trophy has been animated by the feminine side of the human species. So there's no, you don't have, you're not accountable for having lost the game. You're gonna get a trophy anyway. I think that's a good explanation of it. I think women are less into punishments for, for various criminal acts. Men are more into punishment. That's accountability. Women are the nurture machine. Men are the justice machine. And we need both in society. You need compassion and justice, but it is clear which sex is more for one than the other. So the Nicholson line would seem to me to bear out in reality. Okay, let's see here. Car— Carola M, Nevada City, California. I have thus far read each of your wonderful Rational Bible volumes 3 times. By the way, they are all worth reading a few times. I write very concisely and there's a lot there. And I'm now on my 4th reading of Exodus. Each time I read your books, I absorb something new and enlightening. Good, it's meant to be that way. That, that I had somehow missed on prior readings. So here's my question. Since God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th, I was thinking what we call a day must actually have been an unknown but very lengthy period of time rather than the mere 24 hours that we now classify as a day. With this in mind, would you say that these several thousand years since God spoke to and interacted with the people in the Torah do not represent such a long time to God himself, perhaps just a blink of an eye to him, and certainly not as long as we humans view this 3,000 or so years without hearing from him. When I look at the horrors of the world today and the despicable behavior of so many humans, I feel we need some sort of intervention from God to right the ship again, so to speak. Why do you think he doesn't intervene in some way now? Surely things are far worse now than they were in the early Bible days. It almost seems like we need him more now than we did— than people did 3,000 years ago. Today's evil is beyond comprehension. I realize God was establishing the laws and trying to change the behavior of the people of the time, but their behavior can't have been worse than that of so many truly horrible people now. What do you think? Thank you, Dennis Prager. Well, it's all accurate. I also think that it is a blink of an eye. It says in— I think it's in Psalms, might be Proverbs— what is it? One day is— what is it? One— a thousand years is like a day, or something like that. Time is relative. Einstein proved that. There's no way to understand time. You know how long you and I were not here before we came into existence? Think about that. How long— what is it, what do they say, 17 billion years ago was the Big Bang, let's say? So 17 billion years the world, the universe existed and you didn't. Does it seem like any time at all? Of course not. The human brain cannot grapple with it. I'll give you another example of how much we can't grapple with on the time issue. What happened before the Big Bang? So, to which a physicist would say, there was nothing. There was no time, there was no space. But you can't imagine no time. I can't imagine no time. What happened 5 minutes before creation? The answer is there was no 5 minutes before creation because time was created. But you don't understand that, and I don't understand that. What does it mean time was created? Time is time, right? That's the way we think. What will happen after we die? Let's say— so people say eternal life. Sounds great, but is it great? Eternal life? You mean after 42,000 years you might not get a little tired of life? And why would you do anything if there's eternal life? Hey, there's a great book. I think you should read it. Well, I'll read it 100 years from now. You know, death gives, gives time meaning. I'm not a fan of death, believe me, but to be honest, the fact that time ends for us means that everything matters. Every moment matters. If moments can't end, they don't matter. I have no answers to any of this. I'm just aware of the fact that I can't answer them. So I grapple with these questions too.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this. For decades, Dennis Prager shared his wisdom with listeners around the world through his lectures, courses, interviews, and debates. Now, for the first time, the collective wisdom of Dennis Prager is being made available as a podcast. Listen to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager, with new episodes released for a limited time only as a podcast. Subscribe for free today at DennisPrager.com. That's Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager, exclusively at dennisprager.com. Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

Why doesn't God deal with evil in the world today? So my, my— I have a lot of answers. In a nutshell, the human race I regard biblically like a baby. Parents intervene in the baby's life constantly. Once the baby grows up, if they're good parents, they don't intervene anymore. In the infancy of human existence, God intervened, and then once we grew up, he stopped intervening. That's my, my theology. Part 2 of that theology is God told us how to lead a good life. Just keep the Ten Commandments, for example. You'll, you'll make a beautiful society. If we don't make a beautiful society, it's because we have decided to ignore God, to ignore him. So what, what is left for God to say? Here, hey, I gave you a rule book. You don't follow the rule books, it's like you get some electronic device with an instruction book. If you decide not to read the instruction book and, and the item goes haywire, it's your fault. It's not the maker's fault of the machine. We got an instruction book. It's why I wrote my Bible, my biblical commentary the rational Bible. The instruction book is the whole Bible, but especially the first 5 books. That's, that's the instruction book. And that's, and that's the way I approach the, the issue of God's intervening. And I have a third, I have a third approach. I, I have a third approach, and, and that is, if God did intervene, why didn't he intervene all the other times? Even if God intervened today to stop various evils We'd have the same question. Well, why did you intervene then and not then, right? Should God have allowed 60 million Chinese to be killed by Mao, 20 to 40 million Soviet citizens by Stalin, and the 6 million Jews by Hitler? The quarter of Cambodia's population by Pol Pot. But if he'd have intervened in one of them, he should have intervened in all of them. We have no answer to the question of— no perfect answer to the question of God's— when God intervenes. I, I don't expect him to intervene if bad things happen. To be perfectly honest, that is not my theology. Why? You're asking me why do I not spend more time thinking about this question? Oh, I have thought about this every day of my life. But, uh, did I say I don't think about it? You're saying that I don't? No, no, I have. I've thought about it all of my life, God and evil. And I've given 3 approaches that I have developed over the course of my lifetime. Oh, you, you want me to note that my position of we're here to fight? Yes, that's right. My favorite verse in the Bible: Those of you who love God must hate evil. If you don't hate evil, you don't love God. To put it in contemporary terms, if you don't hate Hamas, you don't love God. And if you can't call Hamas evil, then That's very, very frightening. If you didn't call communism evil, you didn't love God. If you didn't call Nazism evil, you didn't love God. If you don't call Hamas evil, you don't love God. God has told us how to live a good life, how to make a good society, how to make a good planet. If people ignore it, I don't expect God to bail them out.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

One Nation Under God. Here's Franklin Graham.

I'm inviting you to join with us and to pray for America. Pray that we as individuals and as a nation turn to the God of our fathers, the God of the Bible, As we approach America's 250th, join Franklin in praying for our nation every day.

A new prayer is posted daily at OneNationUnderGod.com. Invite your friends and family to pray too. OneNationUnderGod.com.

Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

JX Brand, I guess that's the email, Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Hi Dennis, I have a niece in her early 30s. She's quite a pretty young lady, smart and with a great job. All of us in the family know she wants to find a guy, settle down, get married and have children, but it's just not happening. Of all the son— of all of— of all of the sons, daughters, and cousins in the family, she is the last and the only one who is not married, and she is aware of her clock that's ticking. She would be a wonderful wife to some young man and a wonderful mother. We think she is very upset about the prospect of a life unmarried. And childless. Is she doomed to the possibility of being robbed of motherhood because she cannot find a guy? I suggested an option to my wife. My wife jumped all over me. Lucky you. Would it be so bad— I knew Sean would like that— would it be so bad if she adopted a child? Mm, the child would be so fortunate to gain this wonderful person for a mother. Of course, there would be no father right now, but maybe later. It seems like a win-win. What do you think, Jack? Well, this is a toughie, and I just— the fact that I acknowledge that it's a toughie will perhaps disturb some people, specifically my fellow religious listeners, but I— we have to live in the real world and bring our values into it. The ideal by far, and apparently from this email, it's her ideal too. You get married and then you have a child. That's correct. Or adopt a child, same thing in my opinion. So basically I look at it this way. I always look at things as what is better than the next choice. If there is— this is my position and it is called hate-filled by the left. That adoption should always be by quality couples of mother and father, a married mother and father. That's my number one choice. By the way, my, my, I have gay friends who have children who say that is the first choice. I'll be open, Dave Rubin is an example. Dave Rubin and his wonderful partner, spouse, David. These are wonderful human beings. They do have kids. They used a surrogate, which is another issue which I won't get into now. And he said to me, and I said, can I quote you? He said, absolutely. He said, Dennis, the ideal is a mother and father, and he's two fathers. He is much closer to my value system than, than heterosexuals who differ with me. Where married, a man or a woman married to the opposite sex and have children who don't say that that's the ideal, they are my problem. Not the gays who have children or, or who have adopted. My problem is, is we can't deny the ideal. The ideal is a mother and father. So let's say there is an adoption agency with a child, and, and let's say the child has physical problems, and there's no mom— married mom, dad or married man and woman who want to adopt that child, or at least the agency can't find one. What is my choice? My choice is what? An orphanage? I don't even know if we have orphanages today. But go from foster home to foster home? Or to have, let's say, a woman like this woman adopt the child? In that case, I— it seems to me better that the child be adopted by a woman like this than not be— not have a family chance. Uh, Crownsville, Maryland, Tracy. I was recently listening to Julie's podcast where she was interviewing an expert on Islam. She said that Moses and the crew were Muslim. Is this correct? I thought they were all Jews. I've been studying the Bible through the Bible in a Year podcast alongside your Bible commentaries, which I love, but this comment threw me for a loop. Please clarify. Thank you, Tracy huge fan. What do you think of that, Sean? She's a huge fan. You're a huge fan. That was good. In very understated tones, he said, that's mean. It wasn't. Okay, I know, I know. I decided I was— okay, I'm going to move on with the question. I I can't believe Julie said Moses was a Muslim. I have to say, maybe she said Islam considers Moses a Muslim. But it is not possible that Julie said that.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

One Nation Under God. Here's Franklin Graham.

I'm inviting you to join with us and to pray for America. Pray that we as individuals and as a nation turn to the God of our fathers. The God of the Bible.

As we approach America's 250th, join Franklin in praying for our nation every day. A new prayer is posted daily at onenationundergod.com. Invite your friends and family to pray too. onenationundergod.com.

Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless wisdom.

Uh, right, let's see here. Bruce Hamilton in Salt Lake City, Utah. Dennis, you are a New York Jew who speaks English, Hebrew, Russian, and probably a non-trivial amount of Arabic and German. How did it come about that you never claimed to speak Yiddish? It's a great question. That is funny, isn't it? All these languages, but— So I have an answer. First of all, let me explain what Yiddish is. Yiddish is not Hebrew. Hebrew is the language of the Bible and the language of the State of Israel. Yiddish is a— it was the vernacular the daily spoken language of Jews in Eastern Europe. It's a combination of German and Hebrew. It's written in Hebrew letters, but it's not Hebrew. Just like Italian and English have the same letters, but they're not the same languages. My parents grew up in Yiddish-speaking homes. They spoke Yiddish fluently. They used Yiddish to keep secrets from my brother and me. They didn't want us to know Yiddish, so I never learned it. It's just too bad. It's a very rich language. And anyway, that is the reason that I never learned Yiddish. Yeah, yeah. Oh yes, ultra-Orthodox Jews still speak Yiddish fluently. That's right. There are some schools that teach in it. Most use Hebrew, but, but some actually— it's, it's a living language in that sense. That's exactly right. I mean, Yiddish is a very rich language. Just the words itself, for example, You can't, you gotta admit that some words that we get from Yiddish, now chutzpah is a Hebrew word, but it's been adapted to Yiddish, and everybody knows chutzpah. Now, for example, schmuck. You ever hear that? That guy, he's a schmuck. That is Yiddish. It's perfect because the German word for jewel is schmuck. So what the Jews did was they said, oh, he's a jewel, meaning the opposite of a jewel. No, I don't really understand Yiddish. I, I, I, I, if, if somebody speaks to me slowly and not involved. But I, you know, I know German better than I know Yiddish. What am I going to tell you? But there are words like schlepp. Are you going to schlepp those boxes up the steps? I mean, that's— there's no— every language has its greatness. But Yiddish, I got to admit, the words like the word for the word for— what is it? Krächtz. I mean, I complain. He— that guy krächtz a lot. I mean, isn't that perfect? Complain doesn't give you the emotional meaning of complain like krächtz. Well, anyway, my parents did talk it, so I got revenge on my parents. I learned all these other languages that they didn't know. Well, everybody, this has been a joy. I hope it has been for you. So we're calling this Dennis AMA. Dennis, what is AMA again? Ask me anything. Thank you. The only guy that knows the name of his show and doesn't know what it means. I'll learn.

Tomorrow on Timeless Wisdom. With Dennis Prager.

I would say to you that in a nutshell, that is the most persuasive answer that I have for the question of God and suffering. It doesn't directly deal with it, but it gives you a— the larger perspective in which to be able to believe in God. I, I find that to be a terrific argument. I'll say it one more time. The believer in God has to account for the existence of one thing. Evil and suffering. The atheist has to account for the existence of everything else. An example of unjust suffering is only on the radio 3 hours a day. Well, yeah, at a given point it would be unjust suffering for me. I'm able to talk to your minds and your hearts and your souls through the magic of radio. And all of this just, it just is, it just came about. That's more intellectually satisfying? There's no comparison. And in the final analysis, although my theology is different than his, he has had a big effect on me, Harold Kushner, in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People. God doesn't stop the bad, but God is there when it happens. Yes, God allows these bad things to happen, but he is there when they happen for you to reach out to and to bring into your life. I have a very God-centered life. I may be, maybe personal for a moment, but I, at the same time, I never abandon reason. And I, I believe, I truly believe that there is more reason in a God-based understanding of the universe than in an atheist-based understanding of the universe. It is our task to reach out to those who suffer, to help them, to make this world a place where it is obvious that there is a good God. Hi Dennis, I think cell phones may prove that there's a God. Cell phones may prove there is a God. Well, I'm 2,000 miles away from you and getting to talk to one of my favorite mentors. Oh, that's very sweet.

This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles.

Rising interest rates, stock volatility, out-of-control inflation. People are concerned about what the future holds financially. This is Dennis Prager for AmFed Coin and Bullion. There's no better time the present to move a portion of your IRA into precious metals. You should know there's a right and a wrong way to set up your precious metals IRA. Mistakes could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in IRS fines. Call AMFED Coin and Bullion, 800-221-7694, americanfederal.com. That's americanfederal.com.