I’ve been watching and participating in a conversation recently that has really caused me to think and understand what it is I believe in. There have been questions asked recently that I believe deserve an answer, but I can’t do so in the limited space I’ve been allotted. So I choose to write out here just what it is I believe and why I’ve come to believe it.
“Tell me how you explain the existence of a loving and nurturing god to a father of a child with a debilitating birth defect. What kind of twisted deity would bestow a disfiguring malady on an innocent child? Is it God's will? Part of God's "plan"? Bizarre. What kind of god subjects his creations to cancer? What kind of god allows and enables his creations to commit atrocities against one another?”
This is one of the many questions posed to a group of people who believe in God. How does one answer questions like these? Clearly, they come from someone who has suffered through one of these scenarios and the questions must have been asked many times over by others. Is the answer clear-cut? Yes…and no.
For someone who doesn’t believe in a higher power, it can seem ridiculous that He could allow such things to happen to His creation. But the answer to these very serious questions can only be found in understanding who He is and why He created us in the first place.
God created the earth and its inhabitants in order to have a relationship with us. In the creation story, you see Him walking and talking with Adam & Eve. That was His intention from the very start; a relationship. And what is a relationship? It’s the sharing of lives; the communication between two people; interaction in all its many forms.
I think many unbelievers see Him as some big puppeteer in the sky, directing our every move, controlling everything on the earth. But believers don’t see him that way, because they know the purpose for which we were created…relationship. And what is a relationship if it is not freely entered into. You see, we believe God created us with free will, the free will to love Him…or not. Think about that. How is it possible to truly have a loving relationship if you have your thumb on someone all of the time.
Have you ever encountered someone who wants to control your every move? If not, you are very fortunate; but I think everyone has encountered someone like that in their life. Did you feel a loving and caring connection with that person? I highly doubt it; in fact I’m sure you had no respect for them.
God loves us and He wants us to love Him back. In order for that to happen, He cannot control us. And so He doesn’t. Oh, He has tried to give us a few basic rules to live by. Just like any good parent, He established some ground rules in order to keep us safe and healthy. And like any typical child, we rarely listen. And so, we did not take care of this beautiful world that He created for us. Sickness entered the world as it developed and we introduced synthetic materials or started using natural materials in unnatural ways. Because our environment is not healthy, we cannot expect our bodies to be healthy.
I think everyone, believers and unbelievers, understands that the world we live in today, with all its sickness and disease, is the direct result of our own carelessness and greed.
I think (my opinion only) that unbelievers think that if there is a God, He should just wave His magic wand and fix everything. But I ask you, why should He? He tried to tell us how we should live, but we just didn’t listen. If you say to your child, “don’t touch the stove, it will hurt and you will get burned,” but he touches it anyways because he’s just so darned curious, how do you react? You treat the burn, you hug him and try to console him…but that doesn’t stop the pain or the mark that he will have on his hand, does it?
I have a burn mark on my leg because as a young girl I wore shorts on the back of a motorcycle. When I went to get off, my leg leaned in and burnt to the tail pipe. I knew I shouldn’t have gotten on the back of the bike with shorts, but I wanted to ride so I did. When I got home and my mom saw my leg, she took me to the doctors who put bandages on it and treated it with antibiotics (it did get infected). My mom gave me Tylenol for pain and did her best to console me, but for a few days there was nothing that could stop the pain and here I am all these years later with a scar. Does that mean my mother didn’t love me? Hardly! It broke her heart to see me in pain. Could she have stopped me from riding the bike? Sure, she could have kept me locked in my room throughout my teenage years (but I probably would have snuck out) and I would not have felt very loved or very loving in return.
God created us with free will so that we would freely love Him back. Because what is love if it isn’t freely given. With that free will also came a huge responsibility on our part, but we chose not to listen to Him and now we suffer for it. And our children suffer, and their children will suffer as well. But our suffering doesn’t please God any more than my suffering pleased my mother.
Our suffering is a result of our own actions. And sometimes, we just don't know why things happen.
Faith is not about having all the answers, it's about trusting that some day you will have them.
But that doesn’t mean a thing to someone who doesn’t believe, for one minute, that there could be a higher power.
And that, my dear, is the subject of another post for another day.
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