On Tuesday's post I had talked about getting hit in the head with a golf club. Towards the end of the post I had mentioned that I felt God was protecting me from any permanent damage and people might question "If God was protecting you, then why did he let you get hit with a golf club in the first place?" My answer to that question was "I'm glad God doesn't coddle us every minute of every day otherwise we'd all be a bunch of babies." I want to go further into detail about that today.
Everyone has probably heard this question before: "Why does God let bad things happen to good people?" I can't claim to have the answer to this question, but I do have some thoughts about it. Imagine you had parents that always kept you away from trouble and from any harm by never letting you do anything or experience anything on your own. Sure, you'd be safe all the time but at what cost? It would suck to have those kind of parents and I feel sorry for anyone who grew up with parents who are like that. So why do so many people treat God like he should be that kind of parent? Why do we feel that God always needs to hover over us and protect us from anything bad?
God allows us to experience things on our own. He lets us learn from our mistakes and encourages us to get back on the horse when we fall off. He removes our training wheels when we're ready and gives us a little push to get us going even though we may wreck a few times. When life throws you lemons, God makes lemonade. Are those enough metaphors? He allows us to seek and explore and ask questions. It's what makes us all so unique as humans which allows us all to follow God in our own way. Some people might scoff at that last sentence, but I'm not promoting universalism, I'm promoting individualism. The truth is that no two people in the world believe in God exactly the same way. But if you do find yourself in a room full of people who do act and believe exactly the same way then you are probably in a cult and you may have been brainwashed, GET OUT NOW WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!! Whoops, I've derailed again. Time to get back on track.
So, if I had to take a stab at answering that age old question: "Why does God let bad things happen to good people?" I guess my reply would be "Because God is not a sucky parent." He embodies all the good qualities of what a mother and a father should be.
I think many people base their view of God on how they view their parents. It makes sense considering how God is referred to as a parent so many times in the Bible. It must be so difficult for those who had an abusive or an absent parent to view God this way. But know that God is the father and the mother you've never had before. Even if you had great parents growing up, know that God is more of a parent than they could ever be. It is hard for a parent to let their child experience things on their own knowing they will fail from time to time and they will get hurt along the way, but it is the only way the child will learn and grow. I also think perhaps that is why bad things happen to good people, because they must happen.
I want to elaborate more on this question, but I will do it next week. Some of my blog posts tend to be a little long and I'm trying to shorten them because I'll admit that even I get annoyed sometimes when I read someone's ridiculously long blog post. So even though I will be talking about a different subject it will still be based on the same question we've tackled today. Remember, I don't have the answers, just some thoughts.
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