The cold unfeeling hand of cruelty and death seems to be more at home in a random, purposeless universe. However, it more clearly leads to God. This is because we live in a Genesis Three world. The earth is cursed by our rebellion (Romans 8).
Each of us feels an ought-ness about this world that remains woefully unfulfilled. The activist is simply a loud reaction to this universal impulse. They feel, falsely, that there are material conditions that are keeping the world from being the way that it should be. So they march, write books, and create political parties, societies, kibbutzim, communes, and utopias. They all fail. There is no one you can elect, there is no system you can put in place, no material need you can satisfy that will rid the world of evil–natural or anthropogenic.
I'll just answer that age old problem quickly, "How can a Loving God exist with so much cruelty in the world."
ReplyDeleteAnswer: It's BECAUSE of Love. God Loves, and the Main thing Love does is share, to multiply boundlessly that Love- he did so by Creating Lots of things (see Universe) including us so that there can be others to share and multiply this endless Love too. But there is a catch even God can't get around, or Won't to be more precise. For Love to TRULY exist, it can't be forced. If we were all Robots PROGRAMMED to Love, it may be Love, but it would be MEANINGLESS.
Only when we can CHOOSE love does it have its real power and meaning. So to have Love in this world (which I'm sure we can ALL agree is a good thing) God has to ALLOW us to choose Love OR the opposite- this is where sin comes in. We all may want love, but starting with the first man through us, we CHOSE the opposite. And that's why God sent his Son and the point of life is now to get BACK what we originally had- God/ Pure Love.
But until that plan is over (which God is mercifully delaying so that he can get the maximum amount of people to call on Him (see: You), there will be the opposite of love rampaging around us in all our billions of CHOICES to be unloving in all the billions of people scurrying around us filled with that Sin, That opposite of Love that WE CHOSE.
But again, without the choice to be in a cruel world, there can't be the Choice to Love, and God saw it fit to be worth that price. And I for one am glad he did- that He Chose Love first, which allows me to know and feel and share Love. otherwise, we'd all be programmed robots, and really, why would you want God to do that?
So the Atheist point is mute, a Loving God ONLY makes sense in a world that can choose to be cruel and filled with sadness.
Luckily for all of us, God has set a plan in motion to take care of that, when His patient waiting for YOU ends. Let's both hope that's not too soon.
I would recommend a really amazing book that I'm reading right now called Trusting God : Even When It Hurts by Jerry Bridges. I would pretty much recommend anything written by him. It's all about God's sovereignty over everything, and the LOVE element is dissected a ton. It's great.
ReplyDelete