God Makes Sense

Christians are so closed-minded.  We hear that all the time.  But are they really the closed-minded ones?  Consider this example.

A Christian does not have to believe that all of the rest of the world’s religion’s are completely wrong.   An atheist on the other hand must believe that ALL of the other religion’s of the world are totally and completely wrong. (C.S. Lewis)

From the Christian view, the other religions of the world have some varying levels of truth within them.  The Atheist on the other hand, who likes to brag about their open-mindedness, believes there is no God and therefore ANY religion that believes in the existence of anything spiritual is wrong.  Which view seems more open-minded?

I was recently discussing my book that I am writing by the same title as this Web Site with a young man.  When I told him the title he stated, “but God doesn’t make sense.”  When I asked him why, he responded with a question I get often - “why do bad things happen to good people?”  That’s a question that probably all of us have wondered about and been troubled with at one time or another.

I’m not going to attempt to answer this question in full in this article.   The scope of that question is too large to address in one blog.  What I ‘d like to do here is put forth something to consider when you are thinking about that question.

Have you ever had a bad day?  Of course you have.  That time you did poorly on the test or you had that fender bender that was your fault, or when you got that speeding ticket.  Maybe it was when you lost the championship game.  At the time these things were frustrating, even sad.  We would classify them as bad things.  But as time went on they bothered us less and they certainly impacted us less.  Maybe enough time has passed by now that they seem almost trivial.  If not it one day will.  They seem almost unimportant in the overall story of our lives.  The two or three hours or even few days that were “ruined” by these things seem minor in the full picture of our lives, especially if you are someone who has lived say 40 or 50 or even 70 or 80 years or more.

While I certainly do not wish to diminish the pain and suffering that come with more serious things in life like cancer or the death of a loved one, lets consider how they fit into the overall picture of things as well.  Things like these are serious and they cause pain and sadness.  The test, the speeding ticket, the car accident mentioned above became less of a defining item in our lives as more time passed.  Is it possible that these more serious matters may also?

As Christians our view of life is that it is eternal.  We do not view life as lasting merely 60, 70 , 80 or 90 years, but for all of eternity.  Consider what the cancer, or the loss of a loved one will be like in comparison to 100 million years. 

I know this doesn’t ‘explain’ why bad things happen to good people.  We will try and address some of that in future posts.  But maybe it helps put it in some perspective and makes it a little easier to accept and understand. 

Consider this question.  Why do good things happen to bad people?

God doesn’t always fit into our box.  Reality is much more complex and complicated than we would like to think it is.  We picture the kind of people that Jesus would like to hang around with and the kind of people He would choose to work with and then, the ones He actually chooses don’t fit our ideas.

In Matthew chapter 9, it says that Jesus saw a man sitting at the tax collector’s booth, named Matthew, and He said to him, “follow me.”  That doesn’t fit who we might expect Jesus to choose.  Matthew was a man working for the enemy.  He collected taxes for the Roman government, the oppressors of Israel. 

Matthew was also a man who liked to hang with the non-church crowd.  After Jesus told him to follow Him, He decided to have dinner with Matthew and some of his friends.  The church folk (the Pharisees) asked Jesus’ disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ’sinners’?”

Isn’t it interesting that the church folk did not see themselves as sinners?  Aren’t you glad that Jesus does indeed choose to hang out with sinners?  His response to the church crowd was, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.  For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Our salvation is not obtained (and retained) by our actions or our deeds, but by mercy, because of the grace of God.  Those who are righteous do not need forgiveness and grace, but those who are sinners do.  We need to recognize that there is not one who is righteous on their own - we all need forgiveness and grace.  We all need doctor Jesus and His mercy.

Our prejudice against those different than us reveals something about our soul.

Scripture reference Matthew 9:9-13