Lord, please help me lose five pounds before Friday. And please don't let my phone bill be more than $60 this month, Amen.Bad things happen in life.
I don't mean not getting a much-anticipated pay raise or failing this semester's mid-term. And I'm not talking about being rejected by this week's once-in-a-lifetime girl or guy of our dreams (who we've been earnestly praying for at least 3 times so far this week).
I'm not referring either to speeding tickets we didn't deserve, surprises at the dentist's office or even to finding out that your spouse has been having an affair while transferring your life savings to a secret offshore account ... and who now says he or she is taking the kids and wants a divorce.
I'm talking about the things that happen that can make people despair ... and wonder if there's any point in going on living.
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Sometimes situations seem to come out of nowhere and present themselves in such
hugeness and with such urgency that we feel overwhelmed and stunned, completely at a loss for any reasonable explanation. When true calamities and disasters happen, it's likely that what most makes us feel so helpless is that
we don't know why.
After all, we hadn't
planned on that bad thing happening ... just as we hadn't expected that at 1:58 PM on Tuesday afternoon, life's rug would be pulled out from under our (clay) feet.
Why did God let that happen, or did we do something wrong? Aren't we just, righteous and church-going people?
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We want to believe in a merciful and benevolent God who only exists to make us happy and to prove our faith, we say a 30 second prayer when there's something we really, really want for ourselves (and maybe put in a word or two for all the victims we see on TV somewhere around the world). When things are going good, we might even reward God for doing such a good job by dropping $5 or $10 bucks in the offering plate a couple of times a year.
Naturally, because we call ourselves Baptists or Methodists or Episcopalians or Catholics or Pentecostals (and because we attend the church that suits us best), we feel confident that God favors our religion above all others and so he must like us the best, too.
So when bad things happen, whether to us or to other people on the other side of the world, we might feel secure enough in our esteemed eternal status to think God owes us an explanation and also feel entitled to know why he didn't leap tall buildings in a single bound and arrive faster than a speeding bullet to save the day before anything bad happened.
It's as if we're demanding, "Lord, why are you falling down on the job ... or are you even paying attention?"
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Some people argue that if a supernatural all-powerful and merciful God exists, then surely he'd have made himself known and prevented so many of the bad things that have occurred throughout the course of mankind's existence.
(That argument's weak, because we have no way of knowing the extent of God's intervention throughout history, just as we have no way of knowing how bad things in the past few thousand years
might've been.)
Other folks, you might call them Lucky Charm Christians, treat God like he's the rabbit's food in their pocket they rub for good luck. They play "If I do this, then God will do that" games in order to keep God on their side and be assured of perpetual happiness, health, stability, longevity and wealth. Instead of worshiping the Creator, they've chosen to make the wish and happiness-drive god they want ... in other words, they worship a god created in their own image.
In conforming God to suit their expectations of "God giving me everything I deserve in life because I'm a Christian and God wants me to be happy" what those folks are saying is "
I refuse to worship a God who doesn't give me what I want."
But the god of our selfish creation has nothing to do with the Creator of the universe, or with the Father revealed in Scripture, nor with the Almighty Living God who raised Christ from the grave.
"So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me," says the LORD Almighty. "I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you," says the LORD Almighty. - Malachi 3:5-7
