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is that "everything happens for a reason." As in, everything, every crappy thing that ever happened to you or anybody else was allll a part of God's plan for your life and you've just gotta trust him through it.
Family member died? Must've been God's plan. Kid spiraling out of control? That must be God's plan for his life. Someone raped, murdered, sick, cheated, hurt? It must be part of God's perfect plan and there's nothing anybody can do about it except trust.
Guys, that's horrible, and depressing, and wrong. And no wonder a lot of people don't want to become a Christian. What sort of God would plan for those things to happen to people he loved? What kind of God would let them?
God has a perfect destiny in mind for everybody. He has a will. But it's not always followed. Do you always follow God's will? Of course not. "Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." If God's will was already done, we wouldn't need to say that!
Things happen every day that God never intended to happen. He never wanted anybody to be in pain or hurt or confused or depressed. His original plan for the world was for all of us to live happily ever after in the Garden of Eden!
But he loved us so much that he gave us all a free will to choose whether to love him back. And a lot of people chose not to. Those people, and the brokenness and sickness of our human souls, are the cause of all the pain in our world, not God.
Then why doesn't God just eliminate all the evil and bad stuff? Because then he'd have to eliminate us too.
You and me. If God chose to remove all the people that didn't live up to his standards, there wouldn't be a person left on Earth because God's standards are impossibly high.
You're no murderer. But we make choices that deviate from God's plan all the time. So for now, all that evil stays on this world along with us. But it won't always.
Jesus told this story in the Bible:
Matthew 13: 24-30
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. 25 But that night as the workers slept, his enemy came and planted weeds among the wheat, then slipped away. 26 When the crop began to grow and produce grain, the weeds also grew.
27 “The farmer’s workers went to him and said, ‘Sir, the field where you planted that good seed is full of weeds! Where did they come from?’
28 “‘An enemy has done this!’ the farmer exclaimed.
“‘Should we pull out the weeds?’ they asked.
29 “‘No,’ he replied, ‘you’ll uproot the wheat if you do. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. Then I will tell the harvesters to sort out the weeds, tie them into bundles, and burn them, and to put the wheat in the barn."
We are the good wheat in the field, and all the evil is the weeds. God can't pull out the weeds now for fear of uprooting us. But harvest day is coming, and when it does, everyone gets their just desserts.
But what do we do until then? Judgment Day seems impossibly far away. How do we deal with all this evil in our lives until then?
That saying, "everything happens for a reason." is probably a twisted version of this verse.
Romans 8:28. "For we know, in ALL things, God works for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose."
If you're called to God, God WILL work every horrible thing out in your life for good. He's just awesome like that. He's a master of that, in fact. I could give you endless examples of how pain and sadness, both big and small, have worked out to my benefit later on.
And it can seem like all those were part of a plan. It's actually backwards. The pain happens, and then God works it into his plan to make his plan even better.
For clarity: I'm not talking about little misfortunes, like missing a bus or something. God's plan can include little deviations or misfortunes or disappointments you don't understand. I'm talking about the big stuff-- the stuff no sane person would believe was God's plan for them.
Inspired by a sermon from my church.
**Copyright The Ballerina Project-He's awesome, check him out.
In a loving way, I have to disagree with this. That isn't quite right. That verse, Romans 8:28 is not what it says. It actually quotes, "And we know that [a]God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."
ReplyDeleteHe's saying that for His children, even the bad things will work out for good in one way or another.
Even if your dad or mom died, God still uses that experience and circumstance to grow you in righteousness. Yes, it will be an extremely hard and difficult time for you. Yes, it will be hard. But God can use it in a number of ways. He can submit our will to his, he can grow us in trusting Him. And he can make us grow (through the trial) in holiness.
Do you get this, or am I not making clear sense?
Hope this helps.
It makes sense, I'm just not sure how that conflicts with my post. I agree that bad things work out for good in the lives of those who follow God. I'm saying that people can't blame God for bad things that are the result of our fallen world.
DeleteAnd my verse is right, it's just the New International Version translation. You've got the New American Standard Bible there. ;)
Thanks for the comment,
Amaranthine
My mistake (about the translation).
ReplyDeleteAm I correct in thinking that your point of this post is that God doesn't control the bad circumstances in our lives?
If you agree with the fact that ALL things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purposes, I think that contradicts this part of your post.
ReplyDelete"is that "everything happens for a reason." As in, everything, every crappy thing that ever happened to you or anybody else was allll a part of God's plan for your life and you've just gotta trust him through it.
Family member died? Must've been God's plan. Kid spiraling out of control? That must be God's plan for his life. Someone raped, murdered, sick, cheated, hurt? It must be part of God's perfect plan and there's nothing anybody can do about it except trust.
Guys, that's horrible, and depressing, and wrong. And no wonder a lot of people don't want to become a Christian. What sort of God would plan for those things to happen to people he loved? What kind of God would let them?"
I wasn't contradicting myself...my point is that God works to make bad events work out for good in our lives, but shouldn't be blamed for those bad events in the first place. ;)
DeleteAny further, and I'm afraid we'll just have to agree to disagree. ;) Thanks for all the comments though!
i agree and disagee to an extent i don't think God controls every bad thing from happening from us and in fact he does protect us from bad things, but not everything sometimes we avoid a car accident other times we aren't so forutante. God uses bad things to make us grow or give us some new outlook or strength, of course its not ideal or even logical to blame God for everything bad in your life but to understand God does have his reasons and light can come from that darkness if we use it as a growing oppurtunity if that makes any sense. anyways good post
ReplyDeleteGod does control everything that comes into our lives, good or bad. And he does protect us from bad things, but sometimes he allows them to grow our character.
ReplyDeleteHe is omnipotent and DOES control everything.
Great post, I agree on most of what you said in this post. I definitely don't think that everything, especially the bad, is all part of God's plan(especially things like murder and rape).
ReplyDeleteI also think that God let's us, for the most part, decide things. He gives us talent and it's up to us to use them to the best of our abilities.
Interesting debates going on here. A wonderful post, Amaranthine.
ReplyDeleteI struggle with this personally, more than I realize. When people are late arriving, I immediately wonder if that ambulance i heard screaming down the street was for them. Easter weekend, God really spoke to me though. He made me realize that no matter what happens, He is in control. That verse (from Romans) is both encouraging and intimidating. A crucial point that I had never considered is that sometimes people dying (which is the worst possible thought for me) is God's plan. Think about it...as a Christian, that person will go to be with Christ! For us on earth, it's sad, but for them, they are gaining more than we could ever imagine. It's a matter of trusting God with all your heart and not being worried about where He's going to take you...sometimes the bad things happen to make us stronger people.
My friend and I were recently talking about this subject. In allowing sin to occur, isn't God condoning it? But your explanation of the weeds parable answers this very well. He has defeated sin (when He died on the cross), and it is only the evilness in man's hearts that keeps us separated from Him now.