Misguided notions of personal responsibility, natural law and God's will
Bad things happen to good people all the time. We pray and pray to God for help, we plead to God to interviene. We hold our breath, make a wish, and expect the outcome to always go our way. When it suits our needs we ask God for help, when it doesn't, we act as if He doesn't exist. The finger pointing always goes back up.
It's human nature to question God in the face of tragedy. Whether natural or man made, whether personal or global, our instincts tell us someone has to be responsible. On the global scale, a catastrophe (like that of the earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina or the tsunami of 2005) is immediately an accusation against God and why He either isn't good or can't exist (because a "loving" God wouldn't allow such a thing to happen). On the personal scale, we pray to God for healing or help, and when it doesn't come it's because He's not there or doesn't care (or in many cases for Christians, they didn't pray hard enough or have enough faith). The truth is we can blame God — and ourselves — at the same time; the difference is in the expectation of entitlement.
Natural Law
Tragic events of nature are without cause, they merely happen because its the natural law. The larger the catastrophe, the louder the calls to God (in most cases). Could God stop it? Certainly He could. Is it reason for God to stop all earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes and volcanoes? No. That is a request for God to completely change the world, to alter nature (and many of the things we actually love — like oceans and clouds and rain and wind) and much of what makes earth inhabitable. There isn't anything fair or just about a natural disaster, which is why its called a natural disaster — it's apart of nature and its devastating. All in all it's small-minded to disbelieve in God because of natural disasters (any more than one should disbelieve in God because they have small hands or detatched earlobes or long feet). If you don't want to be subjected to large-scale natural events, than move to places where those don't happen; and if you can't then don't be indignant when they happen.
Personal Consequences
None of us will live forever. We'll die in accidents, or heart disease or cancer. Our marriages will fail, our lives fall apart. A good number of these things are consequences to our actions (both immediate and long-term). If you smoke your entire life it's reasonable to expect that you'll die of some lung related disease. If you overeat your entire life it's reasonable to believe that you'll die from heart troubles. What we chose to do will always dictates the outcome of our life. If you marry someone without knowing them well, or because of their looks or the sex, your marriage will fail. Commitment lasts only so long without communication, trust, respect and mutual compatibility. When it's falling apart and you're praying to God to save you — and He doesn't, its more a reflection on your desperate last attempts to find a magical answer than your failure to work hard on your life and everything in it.
It's quite easy to become cynical and misguided and angry when you allow only the hurt and pain of the harsh world to paint your perspective, when their is so much more nuance, more beauty and complexity, more to be thankful for, in the world. I think at the heart of the matter we all know that the world is set against us. In a word, the world is fallen. Yet rather than look to God for guidance and hope (knowing that the world is as it is, and there is more to it than the suffereing it causes) we shake our fists in blame and turn away from God, yet expect Him to do something about the world to save us (but He needs stay out of our personal lives, of course).
It's not God's will to destroy us. It's not God's will to kill us. Nor is it God's will to intervene at every moment we ask; if He did, then we'd all truly be puppets. God's will is always and foremost to love us. The problem is, do any of us really know what being loved means? Is it love to let your children do as they please: to do their homework, do their chores, solve their problems, feed them the food they want, put their clothes on, tie their shoes, watch their every move and shelter them from all things? Instead of looking for the times when we feel God isn't their, we should be thankful for the times when He does the extraordinary and miraculous.
Comments for "Misguided notions of personal responsibility, natural law and God's will"
Amen, Paul. Amen.
[And the problem of pain is why I became an Open Theist.]
by Geof F. Morris
∞ Monday, January 25th, 2010