Several weeks ago when I invited questions from the congregation which I could address in these last several weeks of ministry here one of our Sunday School teachers gave me this question. "In view of the tragedies of the past months why do bad things happen to good people? Or as one young person asked me, Why does God allow such things to happen?"I really had very little to answer her.
It is a big question, isn't it? The really big "Q" that challenges our faith perhaps more than any other. We live in a world where bad things happen...the innocentsuffer...the guilty go free. Whether we're Christian or Jewish, Moslem, Buddhist is irrelevant. Bad and good come to us all and it doesn't seem fair.
I want to share some perspectives which have helped me because I've seen a lot of bad things happen, day after day; a lot of them to good people.
The first principle which I believe important is that GOD TO ME IS PERVASIVE, LOVING, CREATIVE AND RE-CREATIVE SPIRIT. God is not a big man with a lot of power. God is not a really big man with a huge amount of power.
The Bible talks about God as if God were human. Jesus prayed to the "Father" and instructed us to pray to God as Father, and yet you know that you can't take that literally. If you look around, which father would be most like God, which would most resemble God? The meaning which Jesus wanted us to understand is that there is an intimate relationship between us and God. God is not a "BigDaddy" in the sky, or anywhere else.
The Bible uses all kinds of anthropomorphisms, that is, using human attributes in describing God. When you think about it, it's natural, isn 't it? But it'snotthelastwordaboutGod. Wesay,"Godspeaks,""Godcarriesus,""We are safe in God's arms."
All the language we use about God is metaphors and not literal descriptions of God. We mean God is like something. God is like a father. God is like a mother. But God is spirit, the Bible reminds us, and those who worship God must worship God in spirit and in truth.
GOD IS PERVASIVE, LOVING, CREATIVE, RE-CREATIVE SPIRIT IN A WORLD WHICH IS A WORK IN PROCESS. The world is unfinished and imperfect.
I've gotten so many cards from you congratulating me about retiring and I thank you all for your notes and cards. On one of the cards, among the congratulatory sentiments, the sender began by saying, "Though you are not perfect.... " I don't remember what else she wrote! I need to say "I do have a wife who reminds me of that regularly." Neither I nor the world is perfect as we think of perfection.
When Bishop Tuell was bishop of our annual conference many years, before he read the appointments at the end of conference, he would introduce the new assignments by saying, "These appointments are made by an imperfect bishop and an imperfect cabinet appointing imperfect preachers to imperfect churches." And that really is the way it is.
A friend of mine, a member of our church in Redondo Beach, when he returned home to tell his wife about the prognosis of a doctor's report about his cancer; it was serious, terminal and he would live only a short time. When she asked him, "Why you?" He said, "Because I'm human and this is what sometimes happens to humans."Our world contains both birth and death.
Why not a world without mosquitoes and accidents and illness and betrayal? The short answer to that is, "I don't have the faintest idea."
There is a sign on the wall in one church office, I think the secretary put it there, "Be patient, God isn't finished with me yet." It could be said of all of us. We could put that on our foreheads, "Be patient, God isn't finished with me yet."
The genetic code we carry makes us too tall, or too short, too melancholy, not because God hates us but because no one is perfect.
GOD IS PERVASIVE, LOVING, CREATIVE, RE-CREATIVE SPIRIT IN HUMAN BEINGS WITH FREE WILL.
Love is not coerced. Kindness is a choice, more important than where you go to college, by the way. We have been known to choose badly. Trust and obey God, or not. Adam and Eve gives us the memory of falling from the beginning. We have free choice, and sometimes we choose badly.
Tucson is a beautiful city in the high desert ringed by mountains. We lived in Tucson for eleven years. Before we left some years ago, (because a lot of the desirable land was taken up,) contractors were building houses on the flood plains. The flood plains are the low-lying places which, once every hundred years, is flooded. The water pours down from the mountains and washes away everything on the plains. Why would anyone build a house there? Why would anyone buy a house there? The flood will come someday and maybe lives will be lost, will some people say, "How could God do this?"
Free will. A contractor built a house, the city allowed it, people bought the house. Is God to be blamed if people lose their lives when they choose to live in dangerous places?
A young mother smokes, or drinks, or uses other drugs; perhaps even knowing that it will affect the child that she carries, or will carry. Free will, obey God or not.
GOD IS LOVING, PERVASIVE, CREATIVE, RE-CREATIVE SPIRIT IN A WORLD WHERE EVIL ROAMS. The power of darkness struggles against God. Demonic, destructive power seeks to overwhelm and overturn the loving spirit within us, but it fails. These words ring from Revelation, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. The home of God is among mortals. God will dwell with them as their God and they will be God's people. God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, death will be no more." God's ultimate pervasive, loving, creative, re-creative spirit will bring life and the power of darkness will not overcome it.
Stuff happens. Bad stuff. More to some people than to others. There is a random nature to stuff. We can't tell why or when. We do know that it is not that God hates the one who suffers. There is a randomness to the bad news.
Rabbi Kushner, in his book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" writes, "The question we should be asking is not 'Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?' that is really an unanswerable, pointless question. A better question would be, 'Now that this has happened to me what am I going to do about it?"
Why doesn't God do something? GOD HAS AND IS DOING SOMETHING IN JESUS CHRIST THE ULTIMATE SIGN OF GOD'S PERVASIVE, LOVING, CREATIVE, RE-CREATING SPIRIT.
Christ is our companion in all experience.
Christ illumines the way of human life. Christ calls us from our folly and seeks to woo us back to faithfulness and loving, caring, compassionate, giving.
Christ gives us the confidence of assurance that death doesn't end God's love, our possibilities or life with those we love.
We look at life's ambiguities and find grace and hope or despair and destruction. It's your choice. We can experience the same thing and someone will find grace and hope and someone else despair and destruction. In Jesus Christ we're given the grace which leads us through the deep water, however deep it may be.
Remember this call from Isaiah, "When you pass through the waters I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire you will not be burned and the flame shall not consume you, for I am the Lord, your God." Amen.