I saw this in my news feed on the Facebook this morning. It was posted by a lovely and well meaning friend. I am confident it was meant as encouragement for her friends who were experiencing tough times. Most days I would scroll right by but not today, I’m not sure why. Maybe it is because of our recent scare with our son’s ruptured appendix and emergency surgery. Maybe it is the war raging in the Middle East. Or maybe it is the Ebola outbreak in Africa. But today, I just could not allow it to pass by unchallenged and uncommented upon.
Here is the comment I posted to my friend:
What about child abuse? What about people who starve to death? What about rape? What about when your child dies? I could go on and on. I apologize for being so negative but when I read something like this it just seems so glib and dismissive. Seriously, what is God’s purpose for genocide? Or the holocaust? I personally don’t think a God like that is worth serving.
Seriously, how in the world do we lay such horrendous things at the feet of God? What kind of fucked up God is that who would for some “purpose” allow terror, destruction and death? Jesus says those things come from one place and it isn’t God. (John 10) Jesus says that he is light and in him is no darkness. (1John 1) Jesus says that he is love. (1John 4) Genocide isn’t love. Jesus says he is the author of life. (Acts 3) I would rather worship a God who is there with me in my suffering than the cause of it. That is the God I see in the scriptures. This is the good news, that God did not leave us alone to experience evil he came down and experienced it himself. (Philippians 2) The good news is that love can win in the end. That someday all will be made right. (Revelation 21) And that until then he is here with us in it. Suffering with us. Just like the creation we are all “groaning” together waiting for that day. (Romans 8)
To borrow a thought from Rob Bell, often I find that when somebody says they don’t believe in God, and I ask them to tell me about the God they don’t believe in it turns out I don’t believe in that God, either. Here is what I think. I think a lot of people who want to believe are turned off by a God and a people who say that their God is a bloody, vengeful, narcissistic, genocidal maniac. Well, if that is my choice, to either worship that God or no God at all, I pick no God at all. Fortunately that is not my choice. I worship the God who is all love, who is unselfish, who is for humanity and not against it, who is light devoid of any darkness, who recoils at violence done in his name, who never forces himself on anyone, who loves all, who wants all to be saved, who is making all things new.
Links:
Rob Bell: What is the Bible Series
You’re Damn Right I Believe Another Gospel
#anothergospel immigration, contraception and patriotism edition
word of a woman 