LossSample

BLAMING GOD

When something goes wrong, humans have this natural tendency to want to blame someone. It frightens us to think about the seemingly random and uncontrollable nature of tragedy, and so we try to find someone to direct our anger and frustration at. Unfortunately, God ends up on the receiving end of that all too often. And honestly, it’s easy to make that leap. “If God is really all-powerful, then surely he could have stopped this,” we think to ourselves. And while God is all-powerful, who’s to blame for our pain and loss is much more nuanced than that.

While entire books have been written on what I’m going to put in a paragraph here, the very short answer is that in God’s all-powerful nature, he created human beings to have the capacity for a loving relationship with him. For that love to be real, we had to have the ability to choose whether or not we wanted a relationship in the first place. And where there’s choice, you have the potential for sin. And where there’s sin, you’ll always find pain. For God to use his all-powerful nature to stop whatever tragedy we’re facing would require removing choice from the equation, and that would remove real love. 

Okay, I know that’s a dense paragraph up there, so let me try to make it super practical for today. I know you’re hurting – God knows you’re hurting, and he hates it when we hurt. But, to blame God for your pain and loss will only drive you further from him, which will inevitably amplify your pain. It’s one of Satan’s greatest tricks…taking someone who’s already in pain and desperately needs God, and convincing them to run away from him. It’s like convincing a dehydrated person that water is bad for them…it’s just cruel. So, while we’ve already talked about mourning and laying all your pain before God, make sure you do that with the realization that God is on your side and he wants to help you through this.