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I get emails like this a lot.  They always break my heart and I hope my answer to this woman will help others struggling with the same question:  Does God allow bad things to happen to us?

Most Christians think so. They’ve been trapped in a false and simplistic theology that concludes that because God is all-powerful he either orchestrates our pain, or at least allows it.  He could stop it, but for some reason he chooses not to.  Their thought is that God allows horrible tragedies to happen to his children, either because they either loved something too much, or they needed to really learn a lesson, or through the tragedy he would save a hundred other people.

I know I’ve been banging this drum for awhile, but that’s because believers as well as scholars have viewed the Bible as a legal document and one out of which we can draw any principle we want out of it as long as we can find a prooftext or two to back us up.  That leads to some brutal misunderstandings about God.  They fail to see the Bible as a story of God’s unfolding revelation in the world and one huge element of that story is the fall of humanity, the subsequent subjugation of the creation in futility, and how God is winning that back through the work of his Son.  We live in a dynamic story of the new creation rising up inside the old, and as we live in this world we are often victims of its pains and excesses.  

God is all-powerful, and completely loving, but that doesn’t mean people who follow him get a free pass from tragedy or pain in the world.  Jesus clearly told us that, as did every writer of the New Testament.  In fact, the life of faith will encounter greater difficulty than those who coast along plaing the world’s game.  We are told that God works incredible good in the tragedies of this world, but that does not mean that he orchestrates them.  The world provides trouble enough.  

What we must never forget is that he is the redeemer and rescuer in the story, not the one passing out pain in the interest of making us better people.  What a horrible God he would be if he did!  

Here’s the email I received:

I have been listening to the podcast with Kevin Smith.  After listening many times and mulling over it  I  need some clarification.  My confusion lies in God sending or allowing pain.  We lost a grandchild 11years ago due to being stillborn.  She was a beautiful 5 lb, fully developed baby girl.  I struggled with God allowing it and settled that He did.  Her death caused me to rethink who is this God?  I thought I had been so faithful in doing what He expected of me—daily quiet time, prayer, involved in the church, etc.   Why did He allow this to happen?  This is when He started untwisting my thinking about legalism and religious obligation.

However, when you and Kevin were speaking it was unsettling to me.  Isn’t God the blessed controller of all things?  I believe He could have prevented her death, but He chose not to, thus allowing it to happen.  Am I viewing God as superman as Kevin mentioned?

I didn’t understand what you were saying as to how we should view God in painful circumstances.  It is apparent that your view is different than what I believe or have been taught.   I am sorry to bother you, but would appreciate your help in helping me see God differently in painful circumstances.

This was my response:  This is not an easy conversation to have, since it touches something so deeply in you and because I don’t know you enough to speak into a specific situation.  It’s even worse trying to do it in a few words in an email.  This is a heavily nuanced conversation that involves God’s love, power, and sovereignty.  Most people have come to learn those things out of the Christian religion that looks for a logical explanation for everything as if God is not present with us in the world. 

That’s why you struggled with God “allowing” your precious granddaughter to die.  It didn’t make sense that a loving Father would make such an intentional decision in your case.  Well I don’t think it did.  That’s an answer Christianity has used for years to give people a false sense of security.  We’re OK because every event comes through God first.  But I think the Bible actually teaches us that we are safe because God is with us and will work all things together for good.  There is much that happens in our world that wouldn’t be God’s specific choice.  Though he could control everything and make us his robots, he does not.  This world is out of synch with it’s Creator and because of that it’s natural state is chaos.  It is broken and under control of the evil one.  Sin, sickness, and tragedies are part of all of our lives as we live in this world awaiting its final redemption in Christ.  God is in the world to redeem it back to himself and has plan that will bring all things together under Christ. He will get the last word on everything, but he doesn’t have it yet.   That’s coming in the day when all things are summed up in him.   He works toward that fulfillment even now as I write this email. 

To think that God would “allow” your granddaughter to die, in my view, disfigures him.   I don’t see how it makes it better for God to be behind the deaths of our loved ones as the agent of their dying or making an active decision not to intervene and stop something that hurts us so deeply.  It is the devil who steals, kills, and destroys.  Death is God’s enemy according to I Corinthians 15, not his friend.  Sometimes, for purposes beyond our understand God will intrude into our circumstances and in miraculous ways right some wrong.  That’s the kingdom of heaven making itself known here.  Jesus walked in that reality and invited us to as well, but even with that he knew incredible pain and tragedy as well.  We get to be part of an unfolding kingdom with him, but since it is HIS kingdom, we don’t get to control the outcomes.   God doesn’t work miracles to make our lives easy and comfortable circumstantially.  He does them to advance a far greater purpose in the world.  He wants to unfold the kingdom in our midst and work through us as we learn to listen and respond to him. 

We can enjoy the miracles when they come, and when they don’t, we learn to lean more deeply into him.  For he is in our tragedies and heartache every bit as much as he is in the miracles.   He’s there to comfort us in our pain and draw us more deeply into himself so that we can be more transformed to think and live consistent with the new creation in us, rather than be manipulated by the brokenness of the old creation around us.  We can’t do that if we begin with God as the cause of the bad things that happen to us.  

I’m so sorry your grandchild died, but I don’t think God allowed it in any overt way.  That wouldn’t be his nature, any more than you would have allowed your child to go through that loss if you could have stopped it.  There are mysteries about God we won’t understand in this life, but the fact that he loves you, loves your child, and loves that little girl who was stillborn is the one thing we do know.  And as we grieve the pains of this world, we keep finding a life in him that goes beyond this age participating in a greater redemption that is unfolding in the world.  So in the chaos of our lives today, we get to look for the seedlings of that new creation popping up around us, like grass poking through the asphalt in a parking lot.  We get to grieve with him (and each other) where we hurt, and we get to rejoice in his goodness as he does extraordinary things in us.  And all the while his kingdom of light keeps growing even among the kingdom of darkness.   It’s what makes the unbearable, bearable. 

And some day when you sit with that little girl in the kingdom of our Father this will all make sense far more to us all than it does today. 

I got this email over the weekend and loved it.  She’s really angry at God and wants to know if it’s safe to let him in.  I wish more people were like her.  I meet so many people who have a deep anger or disappointment in God but are either too afraid of him to let him know, or too busy trying to pretend otherwise that they miss the transformative moment. Every good engagement with God begins with naked honesty.  

I’ve listened to The God Journey podcasts for around two years and read a couple of your books.

I have a question: Is it okay to be angry at God?
I feel so angry and I’ve been pushing it down, because I’m terrified that Papa will be angry with me or will abandon me for expressing anger at Him. I’m 20 yrs old and don’t really have a close connection with my family or really have any close friends, so Papa is really all I’ve got and the thought of Him being angry or ignoreing me is frightening!

I’m beginning to wonder if Israel’s preoccupation with counting horses and chariots whenever they were threatened instead of relying on God to protect and care for them is the same mistake we make when we look to human-designed structures to keep us safe in Jesus.  We are still looking to what man can do and not only is it always disappointing in the end, but like Israel’s kings it was always destructive to the people they ruled over.  From the beginning of time, God has invited humanity to trust him only with the promise that he will care for us.   And our natural proclivities have been to feel safer in structures of our own creation, led by other humans who think they have authority over people and rarely seeing what kind of community God creates if we ceased from our own labors to embrace his.  

I’m one person who is far more excited about the church Jesus is building in the world than I am any of man’s attempts to do so.  For even within our institutions the real community doesn’t flow from the programs but the interconnections God gives between people who will lovingly care for each other and encourage each other in the journey.  We’re going to talk about that this weekend in the first three days of my ten-day trip to Carolina.  Twenty of us are meeting in a home on Lake James and see what God has taught us in our journeys and what he might show us together.  I have no idea what the outcome might be but you’re sure to read more of it on the blog or hear it on a future podcast.  This conversation has been building since The Greater Gathering podcast I did in January.

After those days I’ll be staying another week in the Charlotte and Winston-Salem areas meeting with a variety of people.  If you’d like to connect, please check my Travel Page for details.  I’ve intentionally left some open time to see what God initiates while I’m there.  

In other news, I want to offer my apologies to those of you who have had trouble navigating our website since we made the switch.  Unfortunately that was not as smooth a transitiona as I hoped for and the process made it difficult for people to find what they wanted, order from our store, or simply comment on a blog.  We have made huge strides this weekend to make the site more user-friendly and I hope if you gave up at some point, you’ll return to have a look around.  Though I’m not much for videos, I’m blesed by the feedback we’re getting on my Engage Videos, that are helping people find their way into a meaningful relationship with God, just by encouraging them to recognize how God is building a relationship with them. If you haven’t seen them yet, you might want to check them out.  

Finally, I’ve been in constant communication with the brothers and sisters in Kenya.  They sent this picture of those pastors and teachers who have gathered to go through The Jesus Lens material to help them share with others a gospel of grace and freedom from the Scriptures, rather than the old distortions they’ve learned in the past to twist people into the religious rules that were part of the Old Covenant, not the new.  

I am also working with them in completing the petrol station they are building to fund the ongoing needs of the orphanage we helped them build.  We are in the last stages of finding the money to help them complete the service station and are in need of more funds to help us complete it.  They have run into some unexpected expenses with an emergency system and some additional land so that large trucks and buses can access where they were required to put the pump.  This amount needs to come in quickly as this land is being developed, so if you feel called to help us support these children with this enterprise, we and they would be grateful. If you want to know more about this project or the AIDs recovery home we also support in South Africa, you can see our Sharing With the World page at Lifestream. You can either donate with a credit card there, or you can mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560 Newbury Rd, Ste 1 #313 • Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

It’s the season for new graduates, in high school, colleges, and universities to mark a moment of significant transition in their lives.  I don’t know John Green, the author of The Fault in Our Stars, but I do know truth when I hear it.   Here are some excerpts of his recent commencement address to the graduates of Butler University.  I hope they listened long enough to let it soak into their bones and influence a thousand decisions they’ll make in the next frew years.  

We don’t hear these kinds of words often enough in our culture and yet they are as true as true gets.  

I would just note that the default assumption is that the point of human life is to be as successful as possible, to acquire lots of fame or glory or money as defined by quantifiable metrics: number of twitter followers, or facebook friends, or dollars in one’s 401k.

This is the hero’s journey, right? The hero starts out with no money and ends up with a lot of it, or starts out an ugly duckling and becomes a beautiful swan, or starts out an awkward girl and becomes a vampire mother, or grows up an orphan living under the staircase and then becomes the wizard who saves the world. We are taught that the hero’s journey is the journey from weakness to strength. But I am here today to tell you that those stories are wrong. The real hero’s journey is the journey from strength to weakness…

 

You are probably going to be a nobody for a while. You are going to make that journey from strength to weakness, and while it won’t be an easy trip, it is a heroic one. For in learning how to be a nobody, you will learn how not to be a jerk. And for the rest of your life, if you are able to remember your hero’s journey from college grad to underling, you will be less of a jerk. You will tip well. You will empathize. You will be a mentor, and a generous one.

Let me submit to you that this is the actual definition of a good life. You want to be the kind of person who other people — people who may not even be born yet — will think about … at their own commencements. I am going to hazard a guess that relatively few of us thought of all the work and love that Selena Gomez or Justin Bieber put into making this moment possible for us. We may be taught that the people to admire and emulate are actors and musicians and sports heroes and professionally famous people, but when we look at the people who have helped us, the people who actually change actual lives, relatively few of them are publicly celebrated. We do not think of the money they had, but of their generosity. We do not think of how beautiful or powerful they were, but how willing they were to sacrifice for us — so willing, at times, that we might not have even noticed that they were making sacrifices.

(You can see his entire speech here, though I have not and cannot vouch for all he said.) 

Sara and I are reading through Ephesians these days and read these words last night in The Message, “You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live.”   I hear that sentiment echoed in the words above. The world teaches to pursue the wrong things and I applaud the courage of someone who will speak into the absurdity of false success and invite people into a different way of living where success is not measured the way the world measures it, or even rewards it.

Life is found in embracing our weakness and in doing so find a God so much larger than ourself and a way to live generously in the world.  Those people do more to make a difference in the world they live in than the politicians, media moguls, or Wall Street brokers.