Blame GOD!
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Second, we are confident that nothing happens in this world without his permission. So when tragedy happens, we wonder, "How can God let that happen?" It's the first thing that crosses our minds, wondering how a loving God can allow it.
Why did God actually permit it?
There's a thin line separating blaming God and aghast or wondering about his strange acts. God's permissive will can seem crazy and blow our minds off. In my case, the more I delve on Scriptures and know God, the more I'm prone to ask why God permits what I think he shouldn't be permitting. His being a compassionate God, for instance. "Compassionate," among many things, means feeling so sorrowful and ready to help anyone suffering. God, the bible says, is like that. He is compassionate both to the good and bad.
Yet, how can sick people go on being sick and poor folks being poor? How can the wicked remain thriving and victimizing the innocent? In particular, how can God let an innocent child suffer serious ailments? And worse, it seems God does nothing (in spite of his power) to help them even if serious prayers are offered. Where is compassionate there?
I've seen rich pet owners readily spend lots of money the moment they discover their pets are sick. Wouldn't God do the same with sick people? The moment we see our pets hungry, don't we immediately feed them, even if our pets do not ask us to? Would God not immediately rescue us from troubles the moment we ask him in prayer?
Often, I think compassion should always be accompanied by action. What would I do with compassion if there's no help coming? We all feel pity for a sick child fighting for his life at the ICU but we couldn't do anything because it's not in our power to. Our pity is good, but a seriously sick child definitely needs more than that. He needs remedies that work NOW!
But God is powerful! He has all the answers. He is the Author of Life. Nothing is impossible to him. And yet, it seems, despite our prayers and pleadings, no answer or remedy is forthcoming. Sometimes, our beloved sick even dies. And we ask, where is compassion in that? Why did God allow the suffering, and death? We get shocked and sometimes, without realizing it, we cross the thin line separating shock and blaming, and blame God.
Saving and healing the dying (especially children) is a very simple thing to an all-powerful God to whom nothing is impossible. And yet, even after many prayers, the sick die. And that we couldn't understand. Often, in the end, we give up trying to understand and just weep and wail until no tears are left to shed. Then we hope that time would heal and help us forget.
Sometimes, all churches teach us is that---rely on the Lord to heal our hurts and pains after a tragedy. They explain pain and give tips on how to live with it until the wound dries and leaves behind a mere scar. They tell us it's how God heals today. Pain makes us stronger and closer to God. Because that's all church and its theologians can offer, we pacify ourselves with that. We're taught to "welcome" pain.
But then, after a while of being entertained and pacified by theologians, we open the bible and find Christ doing something else when he ministered to the sick and dying---he healed them all. Jesus never welcomed pain or sickness. He didn't teach people to just let disease control their lives. He healed them all, and instantly! Not one was not healed! We see that and wonder in the back of our minds why things are so different today---why almost no one gets healed miraculously. But then we dare not explore the unknown. Men's "sound doctrines" tell us to stick to what religion traditionally teaches. So, we try to forget about what Jesus did or dismiss it as something only Jesus could do.
Worse, we treat it as fairy tale---we love talking about it in church but see it as make-believe. Once anyone seriously believes and tries to do healing as Jesus did it, we think he's gone crazy. I've seen pastors mock things like this. They preach about Jesus, but the moment you take Jesus seriously and really imitate him, they'd laugh at you.
So what happens when someone's so sick or dying? We get shocked, to the point of blaming, "Why did God allow it to happen?" No one in church is telling us everything we need to know about God. All they tell us are their "sound doctrines." They paint God as Mr. Nice Guy who does nothing else but patiently give us what we ask for. They never tell us about the strange (often fearsome and bewildering) moves of God---why he sometimes prospers and sometimes destroys [Isa.45.7]. Why he causes some men to be blind or mute:
The LORD said to him, "Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the LORD? [Exo.4]No wonder we have the tendency to blame God for tragedies, though most times we'd deny it. We won't admit it. We'd try to put up a front and pretend we understand everything and not one bit blame God for anything. But deep down inside we do. It's so useless pretending we're unaffected.
However, when we've had enough and explode in anger, we start to blame God openly. We hide nothing and talk to God without pretensions---and we shock religious people in the process, people used to pretending propriety in front of God. It's good to talk to God as ourselves, without hiding anything, even our rage. Maybe, sometimes God allows hurts and pains so we'd approach him the way we really are---bitterness, frustrations and even rebelliousness and all---so we'd be purified later in repentance. The deep-seated impurities need to surface from within us and they won't unless God permits hurts and pains. Jeremiah, Job, Abraham, Moses were their true selves when they complained to God, without religious pretensions. And they came out shining like gold.
Job. the patriarch, was honest. He asked God why he was punishing him. He saw that it was God causing the pain and tragedy and said it so. We need to learn how to be honest before God and not hide in falsehoods. Adam and Eve hid from God the moment they saw they were naked. We still fear being radically transparent even before God. We think we can hide anything from him.
But when we're finally ready to be our true selves, hiding nothing, all we see is God's culpability, and this because of wrong or insufficient experiential knowledge about him. More precisely, we lack the needed intimacy, the oneness with God---a one-flesh union that enables us to quietly accept even the craziest, strangest and unreasonable happenings in life. Just like how a faithful wife would quietly submit even if her husband seems contrary or awkward.
Jesus admitted and cried, "Why have you forsaken me?" But then later he cried, "Into your hands I commit my spirit!"
It's not blaming God---it's wondering about a strange act or decision by God, and we need it to somehow cushion ourselves from the shock. "Why, God?" is not a query of rebellion. It's confusion about knowing God to be compassionate and all-powerful and yet finding him silent and distant and seemingly unmoved when we most need him. It's probably how Mary felt when his brother Lazarus died. "Lord, my brother wouldn't have died if you had been here!" she said. It sounded pretty much like blaming. But I too would have said the same if I thought God was never late with his answers to prayers but then came "late" after Lazarus died.
Shock is what you get when you see God doing something you only slightly expected he'd do (you know God can do something strange and radical, often going against our expectations) but didn't think he'd do so at this point in time or in this particular instance. Blame is what you do when you're too shocked to see what God did or didn't do because you were never told the whole truth about God. Some folks like telling us that in Christ everything is smooth-sailing.
When God allows the unthinkable and seems distant and silent, it's natural to feel disappointed or ask troubling questions. It's okay to be transparent. Anyway, God sees you through and through even if you pretend to be unaffected. So why not show your true self and feelings and thoughts?
But later, when we have exhausted all our shocked emotions, faith tames us to silence and acceptance, especially when we realize that there's nothing else we can do but to keep trusting God, even in his silent moods. Even if he seems distant.
Continued...
Present MOVE: Seeing the UNSEEN in real time.
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