But in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord, always ready for a defense to everyone asking you an account concerning the hope in you; yet with gentleness and fear.
- I Peter 3:15
There are a lot of people who have been hurt and are angry at the church and at God who ask one form or another of the following question: If God is love, then why...?
If God is love, then why did He make the wages of sin death? Why not just a fine or a time out? After all, He set it up, made the rules.
If God is love, then why did He destroy almost every living thing on the planet in the flood? What did the animals do? Surely there were some innocent children, pregnant mothers with innocence inside them. Is it really possible that every single person on the planet had become evil except Noah?
If God is love, why did He destroy women and children because of the sins others committed? Examples would include the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the deaths of the firstborns of Egypt and instruction to commit genocide on the nations surrounding Israel.
I could go on, because there are a lot of stories to choose from that can inspire such questions, and although the vast majority are Old Testament, they are not all. Why, for example, did God the Father save Jesus by having Joseph take Him to Egypt rather than just striking Herod dead and saving all those other baby boys from being slaughtered? And part of the problem with questions like these is that they are soundbite questions with book answers.
What I mean by that is that they are quick, easily asked questions that can be thrown out in a hurry, often just to shut some Christian up or to justify refusing to believe in and or surrender to God because of something else. This is not why I am really upset with or doubting the love of God, but it will do to express my doubt and anger because I'm pretty sure you don't have an answer to it. It can be asked in a flash and then the person can step back just as quickly because there are no soundbite answers.
The answers that are out there are more lengthy because some of them do take some explaining and making sure context and such is understood. But truthfully the vast majority of the answers are long because those answering have taken their cues from politicians and say some religious sounding things for long enough so that it seems they have answered the question when they really haven't.
I may be about to frustrate some people at this point, but I am not going to do more than give a general and brief answer. I only address the answer at all because I brought it up, and I only did that because the theme of the day is God is love. You can not state that without having some wounded soul ask something like this. I used to ask these questions myself to prove that I could be right when I felt and believed that God hated me. People would say God didn't hate me, that He loved me, and I would respond that if God was so loving....?
First, a very brief, general answer for the sake of time (Like I said this is more a book answer than soundbite or even blog - The Problem Of Pain by C.S. Lewis does a good job with this type of philosophical issue, and I would be happy to talk to people one on one more in depth). God created everything that was created. That doesn't mean that everything that exists was created by God. Just that He made the stuff that's been made. He didn't create Himself. I don't believe that He created evil either.
Evil being there from the start helps explain why Lucifer would ever rebel and try to establish himself as God in the first place. It also explains why sin leads to death and not a time out. God didn't make sin equal death. Anything less than perfect holiness and righteousness allows evil to have a place, and the result of evil, the purpose of evil, is to destroy good. It leads to death. So a good God, a loving God, created humanity in His image, with free will to choose good or evil, death or life, and turned the earth into an arena to defeat evil and death once and for all. He did that by establishing from before time began that Love would take on flesh and walk among the creation He spoke into existence, die in their place for the evil in them, then rise and pour out His love and power on them, living in them, so that they could now finally walk free of evil and clean before a Holy and Good God. We can have relationship with Good because the evil is being purged by grace. One day the job will be complete, and there will be no evil, no death, left within us, and we will have perfect peace, perfect joy and perfect love as we each uniquely reflect an aspect of the love and goodness of God.
As Dante wrote, the gates of hell are locked from within. A loving God doesn't send people to hell. A loving God made a way, Jesus and the cross, so that no one would have to go to hell, but He allows us to choose, even when our choice breaks His heart. It was not ever and still is not His desire that anyone should go to hell....not the gays, not the Muslims, not the any group that misguided practitioners of churchianity have tried to say is going to hell because God hates them. He doesn't. He loves them, and His desire is that they say yes to the call to come and enter into the rest of His love.
I don't know all the answers to everything or the intricacies of the hows and nuts and bolts of everything. I do know that because of the combination of free will and the very existence of very real evil,, drastic things had to be done at times to protect the plan and the lineage that would bring birth to the Savior. I know that while God is loving, He is also just and He is at war with evil. Therefore those who aligned themselves with evil to help hinder or block the plan of Good to bring Him who would crush the head of the serpent with His heel and give us life set themselves up as enemies of God and waged war on Him. And yet, even so, Jesus died for those enemies and the men,women and children of Sodom and Gomorrah as surely as He did for me and you. I don't know the details of how it will be accomplished, but I know that every single person who ever lived, lives or will live, whether they lived in an Old Testament nation that was one of enemies of Israel, or if they lived in some area of the world never exposed to the message of Jesus, or something else along those lines, everyone, everyone, everyone will have a chance to say yes to Jesus and choose love and life.
You don't have to have a perfect or pat answer to these admittedly tough questions. Some religious people blow the question off as being philosophy and not a question of doctrine. Don't do that. These are real questions born of the pain that Jesus came to heal. We are commanded to have a reason that we can articulate. A reason for our faith. Because the question isn't really How can a loving God.... The question is really How can you believe in God and that God is love in the face of the deaths, the pain, the misery, the injustice, the etc., etc., etc.
These are legitimate questions that can not and should not be ignored or pushed aside. If you do not have an answer to why the firstborn of Egypt, including little innocent babies, had to die, then you better have a reason for why you believe in and trust God's love in spite of not being able to answer that question. Maybe it's time to get honest with yourself. Because it's confusing to me how anyone, Christian or otherwise, could read the Bible and not ask these questions.
I could be wrong here, but I believe all of these questions really are grown from the root of two other questions. If God loves me, then why is my life so full of pain, loss, misery destruction and death? Why is there pain and injustice if God is loving, just and righteous and all powerful? Seriously, Lewis does a better job with this in The Problem Of Pain than I ever could, but it boils down to Jesus came to set us all free from those things, to comfort and heal us and to restore us. The cross of Christ was, is and always will be a loving response to your pain.
The other question that sprouts the rest is the big one, the one caused by evil, sin, mutation and deformity. If God is love then why don't those who claim to believe in Him and follow Him love? Why, if God loves me, do Christians hate me? Why is it I never feel love from or in the church or Christians? The simple answer is because we who are Christians, all of us, have failed, sinned and rebelled against the law of God. Sometimes we fall short of loving as we should because we are not yet perfect and are on a spiritual journey of progress and transformation toward perfect love but have not yet arrived. We are still in need of a Savior. Sometimes we have forgotten the grace that saved us and become religious, self-righteous Pharisees trying to hold others to a standard that we can not ourselves keep and withholding love and acceptance to force conformity rather than loving Jesus and loving others as we have been told to do. And sometimes, in sheer rebellion against the law of God, we have chosen not to love because we don't want to.
The answer is because of sin. The truth is that God will discipline His children for their unloving hearts and actions. Just as my father would discipline me if he caught me bullying, some Christians are going to be shocked one day to be held accountable for the people they drove from God. This is our sin, not the result of the love of God or indication that God doesn't love. It simply means that we all, every Christian, still has areas in our life where we have not and do not fully submit and surrender to God and walk in obedience. I'm sorry. I'm sorry if this is you, and the church has tried to kill you. I'm sorry for the judgment and criticism and hate of people who claim to follow Christ. I am sorry that I have at times failed and at other times chosen not to love, just as I have chosen other sin over the will of God.
We who are Christians need to repent and to use the grace of God to allow us to walk in and show others the love of Jesus. Love Jesus. Love others. That's all we've been commanded to do. And we have all failed. We need forgiveness and we must surrender to Daddy and allow Him to change us from the spiritual jerks and bullies we can be and have been to the examples of the love of Jesus we have been called to be.
To those who aren't Christians I say this. I am sorry, but the truth is that God is indeed love and loving, despite His children failing to live up to the family principles. God loves you. You. Just as you are, not as you should be. He sent Jesus to make a way for you to become His child and have relationship with Him, to set you free from bondage, to heal and restore your broken heart and to give you a life worth living. If you say yes to Him, life is better. But know this in advance. You too will fail to love as you should, and you too will come to a place where you need to repent of holding back and surrender more so that God's love can shine through you.
The above photo is from A Children's Book Of Awkward Bible Story Moments.
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