Is God a Mean, Selfish, Bully?
Miracle? Sure. I guess.
But why would God use such a method?
The book is talking about going through hard things and not
letting discouragement or pain get the better of you and cause you to “curse
God and die”. But why does God do these
things? Max never asks this question,
and therefore, I had no answer.
It doesn’t seem to fit God.
Why ask the boy to endure the pain of the kick in the gut just to reveal
the tumor? Why not just reveal the
tumor? Better yet, why not avoid the
tumor in the first place? Is this not
the work of a father who gives good gifts to his children? But God doesn’t work that way. I can think of several instances in my own
life that were painful:
Why did I suffer 3 miscarriages?
Why did I endure heartbreak in my young adult years by
not one, but two men I loved?
Why did my grandmother reject me?
Of course, the natural Christian response would be to quote
Romans 8:28: “For we KNOW that God works all things together for the good of
those who love God and are called according to His purpose.” I can imagine “reasons” for these proverbial
kicks to the gut:
If those 3 children had been born, I wouldn’t have Ike or
Isabelle.
If I had stayed with either of those 2 men, I wouldn’t
have been available for Nick.
If my grandmother had loved me… well, I got nothin’ here.
I can find these justifications, but on some level, it feels
like I’m making excuses for God. He
doesn’t need me to do that. God doesn’t
need me to defend Him. But
sometimes I feel the need to—because if I don’t the “and yet”s would get the
better of me. Each of these kicks to the
gut carries with it an opportunity for God to have ensured that I never
suffered in the first place. There’s a
pattern here:
God allows this pain SO THAT this good thing can
happen. AND YET, it could have all been
avoided.
·
God allowed the pain of losing three babies, so
that I would eventually have my beautiful Bebo and my spunky Isaiah. And yet, God could have simply made these 2
children the ones I lost.
·
God allowed 2 men to shatter my heart in my
early 20s so that when Nick and I reconnected after 4 years, we’d both be
available at the right time. And yet,
God could have made sure that neither of those men ever crossed my path. Nick and I would have reconnected and still
we’d have the beautiful life we have.
·
God could have made my grandmother show me
genuine love and affection in my youth.
Period. The End. There is no justification for this that I can
see. No good at all. My brothers and my cousins all enjoyed
her. Not me. I was forgotten at Christmas. Pushed aside for someone more important in
high school. And perhaps the strangest
and worst of all—I was not the one of my mother’s children she tried so
fiercely to protect. I will never know
why.
What then, is the point of the kick to the gut if not to
reveal the tumor? And where does the
“and yet” fit in?
Could the answer be in the story of the blind man that Jesus
encounters and heals? When Jesus comes
across a blind man and restores his sight by spitting on him (EEEEWWWWW!), his
disciples ask Him who caused the man to be blind—his sins or those of his
father? (I guess mom gets a free pass.) Jesus tells them that neither the man’s sins
nor his father’s caused his blindness.
He was blind so that God’s glory could be revealed when his sight was
miraculously restored.
Um, WHAT??? Does this
mean that God allowed this man to endure years of blindness just so that Jesus
could hock a loogie in the dirt, make a mud patty and smear dirt in his
eyes? All for the glory of God?
Yes, that’s what it seems to mean.
This makes God sound an awful lot like a mean, selfish bully. Or like Dwight Schrute in The Office
when he says that he can raise and lower his cholesterol at will. Pam asks, “Why would you raise your
cholesterol?”, to which Dwight replies “So I can lower it,” as though the
answer should be obvious.
God made the man blind just so he could restore his
sight. I had to sit with this for quite
a bit before the lightbulb went off.
There’s an old saying that what doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger. I suppose that’s true. I’ve gone through a lot of things that have
taught me life lessons and made me a stronger woman. Hard stuff—nothing super traumatic (though a
bit of that too, for sure).
·
When Nick and I were dating, we were in a
long-distance relationship for about 2 and a half years. Between my living in Kansas while he was in
California and then him moving to Florida just months after I moved to California—we
saw each other only about every 3 months.
LONELY! But now, handling 2 weeks
without him is a monthly occurrence and goes by in a blink. Piece of cake!
·
Nick’s big Korean adventure was the first (but
most certainly not the last) time I had to rely completely on my own resources
to parent, run a house, and maintain my profession. HARD!
But now, 15 years later, I’m crushing all of that on a regular basis.
·
I’ve worked for several non-profit organizations
that struggled, hand to mouth, to keep going, keep delivering services, keep
fundraising. EXHAUSTING! But now, I can accept it as a fact of life
for small organizations that don’t have massive endowments because we spend our
funding on the mission, and not let it send me into a panic. That funder said no? Well, go out there and find a yes!
·
The first time I drove across the country by
myself was fraught with morning sickness, full hotels, empty gas tanks, and
many Texans who were unfriendly to vegetarians.
(What do you MEAN you don’t want sausage on your Egg McMuffin? You want bacon instead?) SCARY!
But the last time I drove 17 hours as the only driver, I had not only my
own 4 kids (the youngest of which was still nursing) but 2 more who weren’t
mine! We didn’t stop for ANYTHING but
gas and food. Who needs a good night’s
sleep when there’s caffeine available?
These things were hard and I came out stronger. Is that what a kick in the gut is for? Maybe God is trying to prepare us for
something harder down the road so we can better weather that storm.
Except no. I can
think of no Biblical evidence that God is trying to toughen us up for the real
test of life. In fact, it’s just the
opposite. While it’s true that we can
“do all things through Christ who gives us strength”, that is not the
point. The point, I think, is that
through all of these kicks in the gut that eventually reveal God’s glory, what
we are learning is not to be tougher, stronger, better.
We are learning to trust Him. In EVERYTHING. But why?
Why must He allow pain? Because
sin entered the world. When Adam and Eve
took a big bite out of that apple (and, really?
And apple? Just an apple? Couldn’t it have been a chocolate cupcake or
something?) they made a choice. It’s one
the rest of us have to live with. But
why could God have not allowed them to make a choice? Because without free will, there can be no
genuine relationship. We must CHOOSE
God—He chose us. If we can’t make the choice
to love Him, it’s not really love.
And as much as it’s so difficult for us to understand, the
reality is that nothing—NOTHING—in this life matters at all. It’s all about what happens next. And that, I think, is the ultimate test of
trust. In knowing that my salvation
comes through accepting Jesus as my savior, I trust Him when He says “one day
you will be together with me in paradise”.
Paradise. It’s not really a
concept we can possibly understand. Our
small human minds aren’t meant to grasp the spectacularity of Heaven. We have to trust that it is so much better
than anything we can imagine.
And that’s the point.
God allows the kick to the gut so His glory can be revealed in those
answered prayers and miraculous healings so that we can trust Him with the one
thing that really matters—salvation. It
doesn’t always make sense. I have no
idea how many accidents He prevented when He allowed me to spill my coffee all
over my clothes as I was walking out the door, making me late for work. Why did He allow me to absolutely CRUSH a job
interview for a job I REALLY wanted only to never get a call back? Why, oh why, did my grandmother hate my mom
so much that it spilled over onto just ME?
There’s a reason and somewhere underneath the pile of pain is a single
request from Him—Trust Me.
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