Where Is God?

“Night, is a book by Elie Wiesel about his experience in the German concentration camps. “One day,” writes Wiesel, “as we returned from work, we saw three gallows… The SS [guards] seemed more preoccupied, more worried, than usual. To hang a child in front of thousands of onlookers was not a small matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was pale, almost calm, but he was biting his lips as he stood in the shadow of the gallows… ‘Where is merciful God, where is He?’ someone behind me was asking. At the signal, the three chairs were tipped over… Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive… The child, too light, was still breathing… And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death… Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer; ‘Where is He? This is where – hanging here from this gallows…'

Where is God when a child is shot in Newtown or hung in Auschwitz or killed in an American drone air strike or for that matter dies of cancer? I don’t know. There is no answer.

Talk of God giving humans free will and thus allowing us to face the consequences of our choices solves nothing. If the creator could intervene personally when it came to the magic tricks in the Bible like making the sun stand still for a day in a battle, he could have done something about that child gasping out his young life. He didn’t. Theology that tries to paper this horrible fact over with explanations about why there is evil is nothing but nervous blather.

But I take comfort in the fact that sometimes a person of immense courage follows Christ to a cross. Such acts point to a God that had the empathy to share our fate. Sometimes one person’s example gives me hope that following Christ might be the path that leads us out of the hell we’ve made, even if I’ll never know why we’re here in the first place, let alone why God didn’t just make things simpler, better, faster rather than taking the slow path of gradual ethical evolution."

***

If you are Christian, if you deal regularly with the unchurched, sometimes even the churched, you will hear the wail and the anger - because there is no God, because no fair God would allow ...

And how do you answer them?

When I think of my late friend Peter, telling of me of the nun Maria's plight in a Magadan death gulag ...
When I think of the 6.5 million Jews, the 7.5 million Christians executed by my father's Reich ...
When I think of Lenin and his 19 million executions to purify the land ...
When I think of the 30 million Stalin in his paranoia executed ...
When I think of Mao Tse Tung and his 32 million deaths ...
Or Pol Pot ...
Or Rwanda ...
Or Ruby Ridge, Idaho ...
Or Waco, Texas ...
Or the assassination of John F Kennedy ...
Or a record setting typhoon ...

Where is God when the millions, or even the one is crying out in their death rattle?
Where is God in the storm, the waves, the tides, the mass deaths by nature?

How can a fair God ...

And that is the rub, God is not "fair".  If he was you would already be dead, as would I.
God is a "just" God, he does what is right, not what is fair.

When we see with human eyes, we are looking for fairness.
When we see with God's eyes, we are looking for justice.

And when we are judging God, we are judging by human standards, not God's standards.

Where is God?  Allowing man to trash and destroy His creation, even human life.  He has already provided the only standard of measure for life - the ability to stand with Him but acknowledging His son's sacrifice, at human hands.

Where is God in the storm or other natural disaster?  Perhaps judging a perverse culture, perhaps destroying false witnesses, perhaps testing the faith of His people, perhaps calling His people home because it is time.

We are not smart enough to know.  I can look at a culture dedicated to sexual vice and know God will call them to judgement.  I can look at authorities whom are ruthless or corrupt and know that God is going to call them to account for their deeds.  I do not know when, I do not know how, but anyone can read Jeremiah or Isaiah in the Bible and see that God has a standard and He was willing to use it even against His own people - to their own destruction!  How much more so for a just God, to do the same to  _____ (fill in the blank).

We are the creation, not the creator, we can not judge how He uses us, when he uses, where he will use us - we just have to be willing to be used, ready to be used and expect to be used.  The problems arise when we say, "Well, God would never work that way!"  Really?  Maybe you need to study your Bible a little more closely before you side with Western (American) Culture's beliefs about God.

The real God does not cause sin, that does not mean He can not use it to His advantage.  The real God does have control of everything and is more than willing to turn Satan loose upon a world unable to recognize much less fight against it without the Holy Spirit's intervention.

Everyday, in the world around you, in your daily life, God is there, God is working.  Can you see Him?  Can you see His handiwork?  Can you show others?

But, if you are not a Christian, well, there is no requirement that God does anything in your life or around you, other than to continually offer you the chance to make your peace with Him - through you acceptance of His son's death as the payment for your doing things your way and not His.  And then you get to be held accountable for having followed teachers of the truth ...  (hint, we are surrounded by those quite willing to lie to us and mislead us!)

So where is God right now?  Calling the hurting, the desperate to look to Him and not theirselves for the answer to their problems.  Calling you to account - right now, right here ...

That does not mean you are saved from death or punishment, but it does mean there is a better way from what you knew on this Earth.

What - Is - Love?

In the middle of Monday's song I posted, Peter Furler ad lib'ed the question, "What Is Love?", and the song continues as published, almost - James ad lib'ed part of a verse as well, leaving one to wonder at whom he was thinking about as he recorded the voice track.....  Little things always interest me.  And given how this week has gone so far, Furler's question has hung heavily on my heart and mind.

I would have so liked to have not been able to answer it.  In fact, prior to May I never could have, but in three blinding weeks - God left me staggered, having seen and known love - an emotion so alien and foreign to me, I still have no defense against it.  It sits as a gaping wound, which God uses daily to rally me to prayer for the lone target that emotion was constructed for.  You have no idea how I fought and raged against it, finally being forced to yield to God's will, not my own......

John 14:15-24
God created Love, without Him we can not even know True Love.
True Love was created to be shared with all, throughout our lives.
True Love is to pulsate through our life.  We can not manipulate it, or God, or others with it.
Only with True Love will you be able to "...keep my commandments...".
The Holy Spirit comes to empower you in Love, to assist you in doing as you have been instructed.
If we do as He commands, we can have no fear of failure.
His Love flowing through us shows His relationship with us.
True Love is His intensity through us, in concert with obedience.
In order to live His commands, we must live His Love.

Unlike the non-regenerate world, we are not to be living by our own rules and calling Him King.
We are to live by His rules, with Him as our King, in submission to Him and what Authority He has placed over us.

What Is Love?  Living God's Will in our life, for others, to the detriment of our own.....

John 15:12-13
12    My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
13    Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
(NIV)

Never lose sight of this goal Jesus issued to all of us, lest we forget and become lost - as so many in our day have become.....

Postscript: Given the horror of Sunday night and Monday's discussions, I find myself at quite a loss.  And so what did I learn from three days of prayer and study?  That true love is of God, not of my baser nature.  That what God gave me was and is needed by Him and my daughter.  That ultimately, His Love through me will win - because it remains the only beacon of true love in her life.  But, I might be mighty worn out before this happens.  And she will probably be far more damaged.  And until that day, I have very much to do.....

The Quandary of Pacifism

The shoot went rather well, fewer came than I expected or had bought ammo for.  Family, extended family and one of "My Kids" made it though.  Mostly I spent my time instructing New Daughter in her first shooting lesson.  I think she did just fine.  Will there be others?  I think so, I got the impression from her that her interest at the beginning of the day was to try something new and different; by the end of the day her desire was in bonding identities.  Either way, I had fun.  And, if true I am very flattered.  I may never understand how God works things out....

About 25% of what we were blazing away with!

New Daughter asked an interesting question on the way home: "In light of your shooting abilities, where do you stand on persecution for your faith and the ability to respond in kind?"

That is a hard one to answer when you are an avowed pacifist.....  (And what an awesome question!  I have not told her of this blog, so I doubt she will ever know I was really impressed by that one!)

I believe in the right of self defense, preferably without deadly force.  I do not believe that purposefully putting oneself in harms way, so that you are forced to defend yourself - is self defense at all.  Nor do I believe that using my abilities to kill someone at extreme distance is self defense either.  Both are murder.

So, when ordered to kill, I have through tremendous prayer, managed to never have to pull the trigger to do so.  No one has ever even been wounded by a gun I possess.  Scared out of their minds, into surrender for arrest - hecka yeah as my oldest daughter says.  And think on the amount of finely placed rounds that takes!

When requested to go to Africa to "support" Christian missionaries, through the usage of my "God given" abilities - I politely told the mission board that I would not commit murder and perhaps those missionaries would best be placed where people would listen rather than kill and eat them.  (And they learned about me how?????)

Yet, would I go into harm's way to protect my children?  Yup.  My extended family such as Dutchman, Swede, Gaelic Girl and the real Dutch Girl?  Yup again, assuming they were not the aggressor.  "My Kids", those students whom have become special?  Oh yeah, several times over - especially to get them out of drug dens, sexual orgies and other problems they never saw coming.  Small towns make it easy to know exactly what is going on where, with whom.....  Sometimes the shepherd has to hunt down the wolf, in order to protect the flock.

So, would I use a fatal weapon ever on a human - to kill them?  I pray no event in my life will force that to happen.

As for being persecuted, isn't that one of badges of courage?  To take a stand for Christ, unarmed by the world's weapons, against the evil which has clouded the minds of the many?  I have lost friends and family to real martyrdom and I have no doubt they went down with a prayer for their executioners - not in a blaze of lead.  Would that should my life come to this, I too will have the strength to do as I perceive they did.

Character is everything in our Christian walk.