| August 3, 2020 -- Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer, nor withheld his love from me. (From Psalm 66)
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, [39] Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God. (Paul’s letter to the Romans)
A question which may come to any of us in times like these is “If God loves us, why do all these bad things happen?” Attempts to answer this question go back thousands of years, all the way back to the biblical Book of Job and perhaps earlier. But I am persuaded, as was Paul, that nothing outside myself can separate me from the love of God.
Is there an answer to this apparent paradox? I dare to offer a few things to consider.
Firstly, God has given us free will, the ability to make choices, whether they be good or bad choices. God is not a “helicopter” parent, constantly hovering over us, telling us what to do or what not to do. (This should not prevent us from asking God’s advice as to what we should do or should not do; indeed, we should be asking far more than we do.)
Secondly, this is an imperfect world. God made the world, and “it was good”, but we and all who came before us have done much to make it less than good. According to Genesis, God put us in charge of this world to take care of it, and often we have done a poor job of caretaking.
Thirdly, we are supposed to take care of each other, to love our neighbors as ourselves. It seems to me that we have sinned grievously in failing to obey this commandment. Many bad things happen to people at least partially because other people are not looking out for them. I have mentioned before the maxim which I learned in childhood: “We are born not for ourselves but to help others”.
And lastly we have a bad habit of taking things for granted, which includes tending to ignore the many benefits God has bestowed upon us. In fact, it is all too common for those for whom all is going well to declare that they don’t need God, because they are doing just fine without Him. I believe that God will not directly cause Evil to fall upon people, but will in some cases allow Evil to occur, just as a reminder that it exists and that we, as God’s people are responsible for fighting against it, by helping others, by taking better care of the World that God has entrusted to us, and by remembering to call upon God to help us. |
