Friday, October 13, 2017

A Very Messy Question

Why is the world such a mess?  Why is God allowing these things to happen?  Hurricanes, fires, riots, mass shootings, stupid politics, nuclear threats, man's inhumanity to man (women,too) in general.  Well, there are three options, I've been told.  Either there is no God and it's all chance.  Or if there is a God, he doesn't care.

The third option is the hardest to understand.  That God created humans with free will, and therefore it's our own choices that have led to where we are now.  So why doesn't God fix it?  I ask myself (and God) that quite often.

Here's something I read in a book by British pastor and theologian J.B. Phillips: 

"Once we admit the possibilities of free will, we can see that injustices and grievances are inevitable...We may not agree with the risk that God took in giving man the power to choose.  We might even have preferred God to have made a race of robots who were unfailingly good and cheerful and kind.  But it is not in the least a question of what God could have done, but a question of what He has done.  We have to accept the scheme of things as it is.  If we must blame someone, it is surely fairer to blame mankind, who has chosen wrongly and so produced a world awry."

From "For This Day, 365 Meditations by J.B. Phillips" copyright 1974

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