Victoria was in her early thirties when she died of cancer. She left a broken-hearted husband and a little girl who didn’t understand why mommy wasn’t coming back.
Terri fell during tumbling practice in his high-school gym and is paralyzed from the neck down.
Every day babies are aborted or born addicted to drugs or abused by the people who are supposed to love and care for them.
The list is endless. We could go on and on about the horrible, frightening, unimaginable, inexplicable things that happen to innocent children and grownups alike. We ask why, and there are no answers.
So we cast about for someone to blame. Someone has to be responsible or it might happen to us. Then it does.
Go ahead. Blame God. Hold Him responsible. He can take it. And He is still in control, all visible appearances to the contrary.
We worry that blaming God is not respectful. He is, after all, God. So we say, “God allowed Satan to do thus and so, and God can and does bring good out of it for our best good.”
If I stand at my stove and watch my son pull the kettle of boiling water on his head and don’t move to stop him, then say, “He learned a lesson about boiling water he needed to learn,” no caring human being is going to say, “Don’t blame her, she wanted her son to learn a valuable lesson.” More likely my son would be removed from my care, and I would find myself in jail.
More than human parents know what is best for their child, God knows what is best for us. He knew when He created beings with the power of choice that the whole sin problem would come up. He knew when He created this world that Adam and Eve would sin and that humans would keep on sinning until the world became the horrible mess it is today. Yet He created this world and has allowed evil to run rampant for thousands of years.
So why do we go to great lengths to avoid letting God be responsible? It is very hard for us to reconcile the God who loved us enough to allow His Son to die for us with the God who allows the horrible, cruel, wicked, heartbreaking things we live with every day. But we must. God asks us to trust Him, to accept that He knows the end from the beginning and that His ways are just and true. “He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he” (Deut. 32:4).
If we cannot put the responsibility of this wicked world on the One who is able to take that responsibility, we are undone. There is no other answer. A nuclear war that destroys all life would be the most humane solution to the hopeless situation.
But, glory to God, He is in control. For reasons far beyond our understanding, He is allowing Satan to wreak havoc on this world. He is allowing horrible things to happen to the good as well as to the bad.
But He will make it right again. Not always right now and not always in the way we think it should be, but in the way that He knows is best. Someday, we will stand before God, and He will explain everything. Then we will understand and say, “Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the ages” (Rev. 15:3).
So go ahead and blame God. Let Him assume the responsibility that belongs only to Him. But don’t stop there. Trust Him. Lean on Him. Accept His control in the bad as well as the good. And He “will turn your mourning into gladness and give you comfort and joy instead of sorrow” (Jer. 31:13, paraphrased). He is, after all, God.
