Sometimes you wish you could solicit the help of God, but he doesn’t seem to show up. Occasionally you wish you could give him a piece of your mind, but he’s not there in any tangible way to take questions or criticism. Where is he when you need him? Why does he seem so distant? Why doesn’t he stop all the terrible things that happen in our world? Does he care at all? If you haven’t asked any of these questions, you aren’t human, or you aren’t being honest.
Please be aware that I am mocking human nature, not God. I know our God has no duty or obligation to respond to our questions or criticisms: He is God and we are not. Our attitude to Him should be one of humility and contrition – always.
I recently wrote about the plight of Lazarus, a character in one of Jesus’ stories. Lazarus was in such terrible health that all he could do was lay in the street and beg. Nearby lived a rich man who had no care whatsoever for Lazarus. I wondered how Lazarus felt, and speculated that he probably asked himself the very same questions I’ve sampled in the intro to this post. It was interesting to me that Jesus said nothing about God dropping pennies from heaven into Lazarus’ lap, and nothing about the Lord goading the rich man into giving generously. Instead, both characters in the story lived this way until their deaths.
However, the consequence of a lifetime of inaction and carelessness led to the rich man finding himself in hell upon his death. It’s almost as if Lazarus was poor and suffering in order to test the rich man’s heart, so that what the wealthy one did with his money would lead to his own salvation or condemnation. Additionally, Lazarus’ suffering, or perhaps his inner humility because of it, earned him a place with the righteous upon his own passing.
Without doubt, Lazarus must have asked himself many times why the Lord seemed unwilling to help him, when the truth is that the Lord had all things in hand for the most profound and righteous outcome. We want our problems to go away immediately, but the One who knows all things may be using those problems for His own incredible ends, including our own hardening or softening, depending on the state of our hearts. God’s ways are not our own. We expect a powerful, loving God to wave his magic wand and make everything wonderful for us while we go about taking care of ourselves. While He does indeed sometimes bless and act on our behalf, that’s not always His plan.
I just started my second reading of Tolkien’s “Silmarillion”. The novel is a fiction loosely based on life, the universe and everything, so that it’s pretty comprehensive (joke) beginning with the creation of the world. While the names of Tolkien’s “God” and angels, along with the numerous characters of the book are not those found in Scripture, Tolkien was a Christian believer, and the story mirrors the Bible’s narrative in many ways. Tolkien clearly had a grip on the hard, stark realities of life from its beginning to its perpetual end, so that while he was not afraid to face and to represent the menace of evil and death and the fact that evil seemingly goes unchecked, he had a deep faith in the unquestionable supremacy and goodness of God.
There are, however, indications in the novel that even Tolkien was mystified and offended sometimes by the apparent inaction of God, as represented by his god called “Iluvatar” (I have a red line under that name) He therefore doesn’t shy away from or attempt to hide the difficult paradox every human faces, which is that God, while claiming to be loving and merciful; while being omnipotent and omnipresent, seems to stand back and watch when the absolute worst things that could happen to people do happen.
The truth of life is there in Scripture. The problem is that most of us are unwilling to look for it or accept it, or we’re “too busy” or we “don’t understand”. An additional problem is that the ministers who should be digging it out for us and explaining it according to God’s will, don’t. The horrors and the challenges of truth are like a wound. No matter how much we would like the pain and the ugly sight of the thing go away, it has to be looked at, examined and treated. Most churchgoers are content with the “feelgood” factor which ministers are happy to give them, so that the wound never gets looked at, examined or treated.
The causes of our sufferings, problems and frustrations are expained in the pages of the Bible. We don’t need to be in the dark about why we suffer, why God seems to allow suffering, or whether there’s a cure: it’s all covered in Scripture, or at least, as much as human flesh can comprehend and deal with for now. A summary of those causes may seem rather flippant and simple: take it or leave it.
God created our physical world with parameters and with limits. We ourselves are limited, so that if we try to travel into space or jump into the middle of the ocean without proper preparation, we will quickly die. God didn’t create this limited realm with the intention of regularly and normally negating its natural laws every time we attempt to. Miracles are rare things no matter what the determined Charismatic tells you, and if you jump off a cliff, you will hit the bottom with a very hard thud and likely die. If someone moves to hit you over the head with a heavy object, your head will suffer, and most likely the Lord, while He is present, will not prevent the contact.
Why not? Why would a loving God not speak the word or have one of HIs angels reach out and grab the rock before it hits your relatively soft capital? The answer lies in the matter of free will. Theologians debate and differ over the extent of or even the existence of free will, but if you take the word of God at face value and don’t attempt to say that God means something other than what He said, you have to conclude that it’s real. We make choices every day throughout our lives from our own God-given minds.
You can believe the story of Adam and Eve as a literal, historical scene or not (I do). The point is that once God created a perfect planet and the perfect couple (the only ever perfect couple, by the way) He then placed a tree in their immediate vicinity which had the potential to wreck it all. Adam and Eve were told not to eat from that tree (though they could eat from any of the others) and what do you know – with the serpent’s prompting they decided to eat it. As a consequence, which God had warned them of, they began to die. Perfection came to an end. Life began to disintegrate and suffer corruption, because God would not and will not allow rebellious and disobedient humanity to live in perfection.
Decisions do, without doubt, have consequences in a physical world, hence the inspiration to find and learn wisdom. Sometimes the hardest lessons provide the greatest gain, and this is likely all a part of the great Plan of God.
Cain killed Abel: why didn’t God stop him? Was God too busy? Was He just not quick enough? No, the record of Scripture and the demand of the witness of creation is that God is all powerful and fills His own creation: He also knows the end from the beginning. Dwelling in eternity, he can see the future and the past with equal clarity. He would have foreseen what Cain was going to do, and He could have stepped in and stopped it happening. The problem with that outcome, however, would have been that Cain would not have free will, and neither would you or I. We would be like the robots Elon Musk is working on – without feelings, without soul and without genuine love.
When you (or I) do, think or say things we know to be wrong God doesn’t stop us. However, being the most intelligent being we can imagine and then some, He sees and remembers all that we do. An unbelieving friend of mine once asked me, when I was new in the faith, if I thought that God is testing us in life, and I said “No”. I was wrong. God is taking account of our actions and our decisions.. He sees how we live and how we think. He even acts to put us to the test, or rather, He uses others to do it for Him. God sees our motives and has already told us that the day is coming when He will judge every one of us.
The good news is that God so loved that world that he gave his only son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Coming to faith in the son of God we find mercy from God because we have accepted his offer of a free pardon, and we have agreed that our lives have been godless until that point. We begin to live as we should, and we have access to the mercy of God despite what we’ve done wrong. As Paul wrote, “There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”. Good news indeed.
God’s grand plan of the ages is to call a people out of humanity to be with Him forever. They have freely loved Him when they were given the option to love or to live in intentional ignorance and rebellion. You can become a part of that family of God right now, wherever you are, by reaching out to your creator in faith, and by accepting his mercy through His only son, Jesus Christ.
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 