Evil and God’s Will

Peacemakers… Sons of God… Rule over… Under [our] feet… Salt and light… Little less than God…

It’s difficult to see how words like these could be meaningful in any sense that matters, yet involve no individual or corporate moral responsibilities of any kind whatsoever. And where there is responsibility, there is accountability, and real consequences for dropping the ball… accountability not for the Angels, for Creation, for Karma or Manifest Destiny, not even for God… but for us.

Over the years I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to travel the Third World. I’ve been to sub-Saharan Africa, to impoverished regions in the Republic of Kiribati in the South Pacific, to poor regions of China. Interestingly, for all the people I met in these places… people who have spent their lives on the receiving end of the worst suffering and injustice the world has ever dished up… not once did I ever hear any of them question God’s goodness or demand answers from Him as to why their world is the way it is. Not once. Without exception, virtually every person I’ve ever encountered who did (myself included) was richly blessed with a comfortable, Developed World life and had the luxury of doing so. This does not make the questions irrelevant or meaningless, of course. Nor does it eliminate the need for answers. But it does make me wonder… These people, who live their lives far closer to the front lines of suffering and gross injustice than I ever will—why are they not as troubled by such things as I am? What do they know about God’s Will and life in a fallen world that I don’t?

Years ago I read an essay by Jim Wallis (in Sojourners magazine if memory serves me) in which he told of meeting a poor black man on the streets of Johannesburg years before the fall of Apartheid. “Do you believe there will ever be an end to Apartheid in South Africa?” Wallis asked him. Without missing a beat, the man stood tall and looking him in the eye said, “Yes! I will see to it!”

Consider these words. Consider the man who said them. Here is someone who had none of the rights, privileges, or power we in the Developed World take for granted… unable to vote, without a voice of any kind in his society, barely able to feed his family no doubt… a man who had likely been beaten senseless by police and military personnel on multiple occasions… someone who unlike most of us, had lived every day of his life enduring the very suffering and injustice we in America demand that God answer for. Yet when confronted with this question he responded by saying “I…” not my government, not the Angels, not the U.N. or America, not even God… but “I” will see to it! When was the last time any of us heard something like that said here at home during an election year…? At a Town Hall meeting…? From a Fox News commentator or talk show host…? From a condescending, brandy sipping Atheist in the lounge who felt it was his self-appointed job to “enlighten” the rest of us about theodicy and belief in God…? From James Dobson…?

I understand all too well why so many people cannot get their heads around a “loving” God who didn’t stop 20 kindergarteners from being slaughtered. I can’t get my head around it either… And for that matter, few things in life worry me as much as people who actually can. But the older I get, the more I find myself confronted by other less easily avoided questions first…

What if there is more to this than helpless, responsibility-free infancy?

What if this means that it was we who dropped the ball, not God? We who were responsible for being His Peacemakers… salt and light to a world in need… to actually (God forbid) obey Him… yet chose instead to build a society that willing sets aside the safety of our children for paranoia and my responsibility-free “right” to military weaponry and fragmentation rounds for “home defense” against “leftists” and U.N. black helicopters? Who did so despite strident, never-ending demands in God’s Word and the words of His prophets to do otherwise? The other day I came across a parable of a little girl who asks, “God, why do you allow violence in my school?” to which God answered, “I don’t Sweetie. But I’m not allowed in your school.” Valid concerns regarding Church/State separation aside, in the larger picture what if there actually is something to that?

What if the God who is in control didn’t intervene in Connecticut, not because He “respected my free will,” but because as His Son, the responsibility to intervene had been entrusted to me… to us as a society?

What if I dispensed with demanding “why” and instead took my Sonship seriously enough to come before Him saying, “Here I am Lord! I will see to it!”…?