Good God 2

One of the difficulties of trying to examine an individual tragedy to find answers for the why‘s and wherefore‘s, whether it included one person or a hundred thousand is that there is often nothing specific we can put our finger on to say this is the reason God would allow such a thing to happen to this person or these people.  There are cases, of course, where we see good reason for something terrible to happen to someone.  For instance, a man walks into the Post Office and begins shooting people and the police shoot and kill the perpetrator.  We understand why the guilty man should die, but at the same time we wonder why the innocent should have been allowed, by God, to be wounded, maimed or killed.  And what about the families of the victims and even the perpetrator‘s?  Should they suffer the heartaches that the horror has brought to them?  When any type of tragedy happens there is rarely only one person who suffers from it.  So we ask, “why?”  Where are the answers for these things?

I think there is an answer to these searing questions, but we don’t want the answer I am going to give.  It can’t be that simple can it?  No!  No, no!  We can’t easily accept it, but it doesn’t change the truth of it.  The answer is sin.  The whole reason for all of these tragedies, all the hurt and heartache, all the pain and suffering is SIN.  The world in its continuous defiance of God refuses to look at sin as a reality, much less the cause of our traumas and troubles, but the truth of all the world’s angst and trials can be laid at the feet of sin.

A simple law was given in Eden, don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  A penalty was given along with the command, but it all went unheeded.  And because of the nature of law it could not be unbroken.  Once you break the law you break it forever.  There is nothing in the law that can patch it, much less restore it to it’s original flawlessness.  So when the law was broken God handed down the penalty for breaking the law.  The way to the tree of life was taken away and man began to die.  Death came into a world where there had been none.  Pain and heartache and masses of sin was both committed and understood.  Man began doing atrocious things to other men and the world itself turned against man.  Thorns and thistles began growing instead of the beauty of Eden.  Floods and droughts reached out to destroy farms and families.  Man had to fight to bring in a harvest and as he fought, he aged and with the aging came the penalties of age.  There was the weakening of the flesh, brittle bones, lower energy and a host of sicknesses and all because the way to the tree of life had been taken away.  And why did this happen?  Sin.  All because of sin.

We can treat it like it’s nothing, pooh, pooh it and say that’s crazy Christian talk.  Denial is another alternative, saying good or bad is all in the heart of man and his mind.  We make the determination and not some God up in some by and by place that no one has ever seen.  Yes.  We can do these things, but they change nothing.  The truth remains, whether we accept it or not, there it is.  Truth stands because it is absolute and therefore eternal.  All the problems of this world are a direct result of sin.

But!  But!  We shout in our anger at such an explanation…  But what about all the babies that died in Haiti or that are dying all over the world?  They never sinned but they are being punished along with the rest.  What about them? 

While it’s true that babies suffer, there is no truth to the notion that they are being punished.  The innocent have always suffered because of the guilty.  Jesus and dying babies are just two examples.  Babies are not being punished because there is nothing to punish them for, but that does not mean they do not suffer because of the sins of their parents.  A child who depends upon his mom and dad to bring him up, feed, clothe and care for him suffers when his father goes out and robs a bank and ends up spending twenty years in prison.  The child suffers even though he did nothing wrong.  What about the child who is in the back seat of a car driven by a mother who is high on booze and drugs and runs into another car killing herself and maiming her child and the people in the other car.  The child was innocent, yet the sin of his mother caused him grief, pain and loss.

A great problem with these examples is not that they are not true.  On the contrary, they happen every day.  No.  The problem is we fail to learn or accept the truth uttered in them.  The babies are telling us that they are suffering for us!  Their pain is suffered for us, to teach us that sin is not just an awful problem it is THE problem.