"Why won't God heal amputees?"

An unbeliever has thrown out the following challenge to Christians. Ten argumentative questions.

Before dealing with the specifics, let’s make a general observation. It’s impossible to make the world better in some way without making the world worse in other ways. That principle is illustrated by science fiction scenarios in which a time-traveler tries to make the world a better place by changing the past. But every time he makes one thing better, he makes another thing worse. Every improvement carries a collateral downside. He can never strike a perfect balance, in which everything is better and nothing is worse.

Every life touches other lives. Every life has consequences. Humanly speaking, every life has unintended consequences.

Suppose medical science discovers the cure for cancer. In some respects, a world without cancer is a better world. However, some cured cancer patients will end up committing crimes. A world in which no one dies of cancer is a world with more rapes, murders, domestic violence, and so on. Certain evils will occur as a result of a cancer-free world that wouldn’t occur if some patients died of cancer.

To take another example, suppose I have kids, and they have kids, and their kids have kids, continuing for several generations. Odds are, one of my decedents will accidentally kill someone in a traffic accident. Eliminating tragedies upstream can result in tragedies downstream. You’re trading one set of tragedies for another set of tragedies.

Suppose ER physicians could see ahead. Suppose they could anticipate the long-term consequences of every life they save. Should they still save every life, even if–by saving the life of the patient, they effectively take the life of someone else who dies as a result of saving the patient’s life?

Now you might say, What about a world with no evil? But that has tradeoffs, too. An unfallen world has no evils at the expense of eliminating the second-order goods you have in a redeemed world. So there’s both loss and gain.

1. Why won't God heal amputees?

i) The question is ambiguous. Is the question Why won’t God heal any amputee or every amputee?

ii) Craig Keener has cited documented cases of body-part regeneration. Cf. Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. So there’s prima facie evidence that God heals some amputees (or the equivalent).

iii) God will heal every Christian amputee at the resurrection of the just.

iv) If God healed every amputee, would that be a better world? It would be better in some respects. However, a world in which God healed every amputee would also contain some evils not present in a world with amputees.

Some healed amputees will use their regenerated limbs to commit crime. Or some amputees will have kids or grandkids who commit crimes. Or accidentally kill someone. As long as they were amputees, their prospects for marriage were dim. As healed amputees, they are now far more eligible. That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the long-term repercussions. Indeed, it can be a little of both.

2. Why are there so many starving people in our world?

That's a variant of the first question. So the answer is the same. A world in which no one starves is better in some respects, but worse in others. Suppose no Muslim ever starves to death. As a result, you have more suicide-bombers, honor-killings, female genital mutilation, &c.

In a world where no one starves to death, more people survive to outlive their loved ones, die in a nursing home, succumb to Alzheimer’s. Every improvement is offset by something worse.

There is no best possible world. There are different combinations of good and evil. Likewise, there are goods that exclude other goods.

3. Why does God demand the death of so many innocent people in the Bible?

According to the Bible, everyone is a sinner.

4. Why does the Bible contain so much anti-scientific nonsense?

That question assumes what it needs to prove.

5. Why is God such a huge proponent of slavery in the Bible?

Once again, that question assumes what it needs to prove.

6. Why do bad things happen to good people?

i) In a fallen world with common grace, people are a combination of good and evil.

ii) Many people are “good” only so long as it doesn’t cost them anything. Likewise, many people would do evil if they could get away with it.

iii) In a godless universe, there’s no such thing as right and wrong, good and evil.

7. Why didn't any of Jesus' miracles in the Bible leave behind any evidence?

A number of his miracles did leave behind evidence–testimonial evidence.

8. How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you?

i) If I said Jesus appeared to me, an unbeliever would dismiss that as a hallucination.

ii) I can learn far more about Jesus from the Bible than I can from a one-time apparition.

iii) My maternal grandfather never appeared to me. He died before I was born. I only know about him from relatives. So what? Should I doubt the existence of my maternal grandfather because I never met him? Should I discount what relatives told me about him?

iv) Jesus will appear to me (1 Jn 3:2).

9. Why would Jesus want you to eat his body and drink his blood?

As a Zwinglian, I deny the premise of the question.

10. Why do Christians get divorced at the same rate as non-Christians?

i) They don’t. That’s an urban legend.

ii) Anyway, that’s a diversionary question. The divorce rate among Christians is irrelevant to Messianic prophecy, the Incarnation, Resurrection, &c.