I have had the discussion about pain and death with a friend. He has trouble with God being the loving merciful God that He is. He blames God for all the evil in the world. He once made the comment how can a loving and merciful god allow such things happen in the world. To tell the truth I have asked similar questions myself. It is hard to come to terms with this question. How can God allow people to starve to death? How can God allow people to murder one another? How can he allow all the atrocities to be committed over and over?
God doesn’t just allow them to happen. God doesn’t sit on His throne saying I will allow this bad thing or that horrible crime happen. God gave us the freedom to make our own decisions. Those decisions have good and bad consequences. Genesis 3:6 is one example in the Bible where we make the decision not God for us. “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” Eve chose to eat the fruit. No one forced it upon her Satan deceived her true but he did not have the power to force her to eat of it.
God wanted our love to be genuine and not forced. Most of us have had a pet at some point in our lives. We love our dogs and cats. How much more pleasing is it when you are greeting by your puppy because they love you and want to please you. Some of the most behaved dogs are the ones that love us and are eager to gain our affection. They sit or stay and roll over because they want the praise and loving we give them. It is more pleasing to God when we seek Him and want to be obedient to Him. He has the power to force us into obedience. He could force the perfect life upon us. But then we would be just like robots. In Star Trek Next Generation one of the main characters is an android. The character is very human in the way he acts and does things. However he cannot break his programming. He is programmed and cannot go beyond those parameters. Would we want to live that way? Does God really want that sort of love?
The freedom of choice comes with consequences. Because of our freedom to choose there is sin in this world. I have the choice to walk up to you and punch you in the nose. No one can make that choice for me. No one can force me to do that. The consequence of that choice is you would have a bloody nose and I would be in sin. I also have the choice to buy you lunch. The consequence is that you get a meal, a blessing from God. When the hurricane ripped through New Orleans people wondered how God could allow that to happen. How could God allow people to be killed by Tsunamis and earth quakes? Well God didn’t force people to live in New Orleans, known to be below sea level. God doesn’t force anyone to live in California, known to have frequent earth quakes. God simply allows us to make our choices. We have to live with those choices. Unfortunately other people are also affected by the choice you make…
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