“If God is so good, why does he let bad things happen?”

Possibly the most over asked and infuriating question to be asked as a Christian, and a question that more often than not leaves us gulping like fishe gasping for air as we struggle to find an answer.

I want to use todays post to clear a bit of this up. Clean some of the dirt off of the name of God. Does he need me to do it? No, but I’d like to, besides I feel it’s got a great practical aspect for everyone of us that has had to face a torrent of questions like the one above.

God is Love, He says so in his word. He didn’t say so because He likes to hear His own voice. He said it because it is a truth, even in discipline much like our own parents, He still loves. Furthermore there is nothing we can do to make God stop loving us. There is no disqualifying factor that will remove us from God’s love in this life. Christian or not. In fact all his thoughts towards you and about you are love. He was thinking of you and loving you before time began, and after it ends. He loves everything about you!

So why then, if God loves me does he let bad things happen to me?

To answer that question, we need to take a trip to Genesis, to where Adam and eve are tempted by Satan in snake form and are thrown out of the garden for doing exactly what it was that God told them not to do. Eat the fruit from the tree of Life & Knowledge (Poor old Adam and Eve have copped a lot of slack about this over the years, but I can sympathise with them, even I’m tempted to press Big Red Shiny Buttons that say do not press. We Humans do have an inquisitive nature, and always seek the praise of others).

Hence they were removed from the very presence of God and were made to live in a fallen world, a world that interestigly enough, Satan had been banished to and had been dwelling in. A world where he had established his chaos as order, and corrupted the very nature of man, so far beyond God’s original design, that the acts of rebellion we preformed and still preform to this day and age are a mockery to God. That rebellion is called sin, and sin by it’s nature is really Satan spitting in God’s eyes. It’s him gloating over how he has taken something that God had created perfect and twisted into the very thing he couldn’t stand.

So here’s God in the heavens dwelling over his amazing creation, Earth inhabited by his most beloved creation – Man, having to watch day after day as man found sin more appealing than the things of God. He watched as man would turn his back and do what he morally knew was wrong and take delight in it. He watched day after day as men killed each other as sickness, famine, disease, and murder sent his beloved creations to Hell to spend the rest of their eternities in pain and torment, forever seperated from His love.

Why didn’t he do anything about it?

Hell was designed at the very beginning to be the place where the “fallen angels” would spend their eternites once being judged by the saints. Before God created man, Satan sinned for the very first time, and God created Hell as the very place that these beings would be punished for their Sin. It wasn’t designed for you and me. Then God created man, and Satan trying to get one back over the creator of the universe stepped in and shared the very thing he created with the very things God had created. Sin. And sin as God had established as Law at the beginning of time was to be sent to hell.

Fast track a few thousand years forward to Jesus Christ, God’s plan on salvation from a fallen world. A ticket off this rock, if you will. With his sacrifice on this Earth, God made it so that any and all who believed in him would escape that final judgement, which we, until we believed were destined to face.

Well why didn’t he just change the laws of the world he created, and destroy Satan, stop sin, and let us all romp with wild abandon in the garden?

Because when God created man he gave him Dominion over the Earth and all that dwelt in it. every animal, every rock, every mountain was to subject to the rule of man kind. We were appointed to have control, to rule the Earth. To make it’s rules, to harvest it’s culture, to cultivate life. Yet, we let Satan slip into the throne room and steal the mantle that belonged to us. And instead of storming the castle and taking back what was ours, we accepted his rule, his burden, his death, disease and famine, and we look to God and we say WHY? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?

He isn’t. He never has. He never will. Nor will he interfere, he gave us everything we needed, and he won’t interfere because he gave us free will. So that really only leaves one group of people that can change this very world we live in. Us.

If we take the authority as joint heirs with Christ the son of God, and claim our rights to dominion over this fallen earth, and remember that we were made in God’s image and so have the same power that raised christ from the dead in us, we will begin to see change fall across the earth.

I don’t think it’s fair to blame God for doing nothing when he has given us everything we need to fix it. I think the real culprits of doing nothing are ourselves. If you are sick and tired of seeing the sick, the poor, the lonely, the desperate, the depressed, the lost, the homeless, the despondant, the weak, death, destruction, and disease, than know this. YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

Take up that dominion, walk in the likeness of Christ and LOVE. That’s what God is, and Love is exactly what we are at our very essence. Let your heart burn with God’s compassion, that not one shall perish to hell, and join us in taking back the ground the enemy has taken from us. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers and make a difference in your world. It’s the only one we’ve got!

And just remember, it’s not God doing these bad things, it’s satan. Meddling since he has from the beginning of time. But God gave you a way to free yourself from the binds of the fallen earth, and created you to be the difference! So Go Be It!

Blessings – The Kid