This is a post I wrote a while back. While we were at training camp we worshipped to a song that talked about “All your promises are Yes and Amen.” We were challenged during worship to ask God where He was during certain things in our lives. It’s a question that I’ve been praying and asking Him for a few months, about some hard times throughout my past. What I came to realize as I struggled through God’s promises being Yes and Amen and one of those promises being that He is our shield and protection, is that in those hard times when it seemed God maybe wasn’t protecting, that’s probably not the case. Maybe instead, God was there and was protecting. Maybe His protection just looks different than what I want it to be or look like. It seems like it could’ve still been there though because things could’ve been worse which leads me to believe at least some protection was there even if it’s not as much as I would’ve liked. Anyways, this stuff has still been on my heart and mind since Training Camp so here ya go…
Does God cause things or does He allow things? This is something I have asked on and off for years. There is so much bad in this world, and if God is truly a loving Father as Scriptures tell us, then it is hard to imagine Him causing or allowing the horrible things like abuse, rape, death, etc. that happen in our world today.
Now, if you are a believer I know you’re immediate response is well there’s free will, and I understand that. I have seen both sides of free will in my own actions and in the actions of others. My parents and friends have free will and because of that there are times I have been hurt, and there are times I have been blessed. However, that’s not the whole argument in my opinion, or in my mind. I hate to be one that says, “that’s not enough of an answer”, but “It’s not enough of an answer.”
I’m not unaware of sin and the freedom to make our own choices. God did not create us as puppets;
He created us imago dei (in His image)…and saw that it was good.
He gave us free reign of the garden with the exception of one tree. We made the choice to be disobedient to Him, and now we are where we are. Free will answers “why” these things happen, but it does not answer God’s hand in it.
I look around and I see kids being beaten, kids forced to perform sexual acts, kids being denied food, people being murdered, people with drinking and financial problems, car accidents taking the lives of the one who did everything right, the one in the situation you least expect, people being shot and killed in mass shootings, war, terrorism, snipers, and countless other horrific things.
I’ve faced my fair share of these things (we all have), and then some probably, and I can’t help but ask did God cause this, or did He allow it?
Before I wrote this I was having a conversation with someone about this very thought and we determined that our English language probably does not have a good word to describe God causing or allowing such things to happen, or she and I just cannot articulate it properly.
The problem I have is that if God causes these things to happen, if He suggests they happen, as in the story of Job, where “The Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered My servant Job?’” (Job 1:8), then it is that much harder to see God as a loving Father. If He simply allows them to happen, as in many stories in the Bible, then it seems He is just sitting back watching as we suffer.
That said, I went to the thesaurus and found some synonyms that helped me put this together a little better. I believe that God does allow things to happen, but it is in a non-acquiescing way, He doesn’t roll over and play dead, He doesn’t give the green light or the go-ahead, He doesn’t give in, bow to others, concede, approve, endorse, or support the actions of others against us. I also believe He doesn’t cause these things in that He doesn’t make them happen, think them up, dream them up, and He isn’t generating, producing, activating, or instigating the actions of others against us.
These things happen because of the free will we and the rest of humankind have. Sometimes our free will has consequences that we face or that others have to face, and just the same, sometimes others’ free will has consequences that they have to face or that we may have to face. It doesn’t seem fair, and sometimes it isn’t fair, but neither was us disobeying God in the garden.
God is not a God of fair, but He is just! And that is a Truth that I can cling tightly to. There are eternal consequences for sin that goes unclaimed.
This doesn’t mean I don’t still wonder at times if God allowing things to happen can coexist with Him being a good Father, but I do understand better now that when I think of God causing or allowing things to happen, I can think of those terms in not such a frightening, unloving way. Even in causing or allowing the bad that happens, God loves me.
He is still very much on my team!
He does not like to see me hurting or in pain, and He feels that pain and carries that burden with me, but He can’t always protect me from that pain.
A while back at church the worship leader put it in a way that made a lot more sense to me. “God is most concerned with our Spiritual well-being, our physical safety is secondary. Therefore physical things will happen, we will face physical and emotional pains, but God can use those and be glorified through those.”
Will you lock eyes with Jesus in those painful times and allow Him to heal you and be glorified?
Along with the conversations and church, these two songs have really got me thinking and helped me with this topic these past few weeks.
“Something Worth Dying For” Mike’s Chair
“If We’re Honest” Francesca Battistelli
And a song a friend of mine wrote about Job.
“A man named Job” Ryan Proudfoot
