God isn't a Magician, He's a Parent

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People always ask, "If God is so great, why does he let bad things happen, death, hunger, disease, genocide, etc?".  Until recently I didn't understand either, why would an all powerful "loving" God let such horrible things happen to his "children"? The answer is...FREEWILL

One of God's gifts to us was freewill, we have the ability to make our own choices...good or bad we have to live out the consequences.  I recently took a 6-week Love and Logic course and it spoke volumes to me about God the parent. As a parent I understand how it feels to want to protect my children from everything that can hurt them and do everything for them, give them anything they want so that they can be "happy". But that would not allow them to grow up to be strong and independent. We have all known an adult that was spoiled as a child, and it is apparent that it benefits no one to spoil our children rotten. They need to learn from their mistakes and parents need to allow them to be their own people. The Love and Logic program teaches parents to stop nagging children, giving reminder after reminder and in some cases to set up situations that will allow your child to make choices that result in mistakes in an effort to teach the child the REAL consequences of their actions so that they can learn what not to do.  "I'm going to ground you for life" is not a real consequence for a child, either they know you wont do that or they don't care.  Just as God saying to us, "Don't do that or you will go to Hell" isn't a real enough consequence for us.

God is our heavenly father and of course he could fix all of our problems, just like I am sure you can get your kid out of almost any situation they can find themselves in, it just wouldn't be responsible parenting. TLC had a show called The Curse of the Lottery, basically it showed what happens when you give stupid people everything they want, they make big mistakes and not too long after they want more, end up addicted to drugs, in jail, or worse..dead. 

This is a personal lesson I am learning now...my mistakes have caught up to me and it is not too late to fix them. At first I asked God to wave his magical wand and fix it then I realized that, if my prayers were answered exactly as I had wanted, I would put myself right back in the messed up situation that I was in now. I needed to learn a lesson first.  So I started to ask God for guidance instead.  Just as I give my child suggestions about how they can do something when they ask for help, God gives us guidance by way of several choices. We can take good advice or go our own way, God doesn't care he will love us just the same and when you go back asking for help he will be there again giving guidance and choices. The question is, will you be smart enough to learn the lesson so that history doesn't keep repeating itself?  Or will you blame your problems on God? That also, is your choice! 

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This is the same with our choices NOT to do something, we tend to blame God for the global problems we all face.  Honestly these problems are everyone's fault.  If we see a problem and choose to do nothing about it, who's fault is it that the problem is not solved.  The bad guys win because they are the ones who work the hardest and take action to fulfill their "evil plots".  I believe that there are more good guys on the planet than bad guys and if we (the good guys) all did something, we could win.  God wants us to make that choice to do good, otherwise the good we do (if forced to do it) would not be as effective.  But we CHOOSE to do nothing.

Last year when the campaign to find Joesph Kony became a YouTube phenomenon I read lots of comments like"why should we help them...this is pointless...why should we care when we have our own problems?"  This mind set is the cause for all of our problems as a species  wars, hunger, and disease are not God's fault they are our own.  Because the bad guys made a choice to do something and the good guys made choice to NOT do anything.  Examples of human freewill in it's most powerful form.  When you see a social problem or a person in need, and you have the means to fix the problem, but you don't, is that God's fault?  So why do we turn our heads and then cry out that God is mean because he does nothing?  Doesn't make much sense, does it?  In a nutshell, if God solved all of the worlds problems but we were still dumb and selfish we would wind up creating new wars, new poverty, new diseases, and blame it on God all over again.

Happy Learning