Do bad things happen to Christians because they are bad?
My mom broke her wrist. Fortunately, it was not in the most intricate portion of the wrist but was actually a little ways up the forearm, the radius and ulnar, which broke clean. The surgery patched her up and she was out of the hospital same day. Pretty sure that was last Sunday.
Then I injured my frayed MCL in my right knee. It is a chronic knee injured mostly playing basketball (funny how I never had a major football injury but had several basketball injuries. Weird). So now I was limping around in pain. That was Monday.
Then somebody let their dogs run loose and my wife was walking our dogs down a steep hill when loose dogs appeared. Debbie tried to fall on her butt in the grass and yank the dogs back while shouting commands but they were too quick and she hit the sidewalk with her right knee. Thankfully nothing broken but the knee was badly scraped and swollen. So she got medications, a full-leg brace and crutches. That happened on Wednesday.
So then this Sunday some guy in a truck ran over our son, Nathan, when he was riding a bike to work. Usually my wife would drive him to his Sunday job but she couldn't drive and I was hurting so he decided to just ride his bike, which he does on nice days at times. Imagine having a police officer show up Sunday morning before 7:30 AM and tell you that a truck hit your son, he had head injuries and had bled a lot?!
So I drove my wife and myself to the emergency room. She was on crutches and I was limping badly so we probably looked like patients but we were there for Nathan. Even though he actually had the imprint of the truck logo on the back of his neck, he somehow avoided internal injuries or broken bones. Twelve staples and special superglue patched up the cuts on his head. He had left large patches of skin on the road. He is a walking sore, poor guy. But the truck couldn't break him. The bike? Not so good.
Therefore I was ignoring my injured knee and doing things for hurt family members until my MCL got so bad I couldn't hardly walk. So with all this going on I have not been blogging. I am trying to get my pain level down enough to work. Thought I would share something with readers.
My body has been broken a lot. Three ruptured discs in my back, permanent nerve damage in my right leg and foot. Completely crushed and rebuilt left shoulder and collarbone. Broken ankle. Not even sure how many ribs broken since some of them broke more than once but a dozen or so. Huge tumor that wrapped around and went through muscles so that my left shoulder had to be cut open and muscles cut and then attached again. Auto accidents, factory accidents, attempted murder, sports injuries. So many ligament and cartilage injuries, so many scars all over my body. Anyway, now I take more drugs just to function than most people can take without passing out. My blood pumps controlled substances as a matter of course. Not to be high, but rather to be able to walk and think and be functional.
My wife had her head split open like a melon and has a scar you cannot see that runs pretty much straight down the middle. She had miscarriages and needed to be cut open to produce her babies. Once a horse smashed her knee into a post so hard she was on crutches for six months. Yes, the same knee she just hurt. She also has sciatica to an extent.
I was a bad man before I became a Christian. My wife was younger when she was born again, but she was definitely a druggy back then. Are we paying for our younger indescretions? No, I really don't believe that at all. Every single person has indescretions/sins. We are often just selfish or greedy, sometimes jealous, sometimes hedonistic, sometimes angry or vengeful...human beings know how to sin.
In the Book of Job, the title character was a well-known man with much money, many children and many animals and servants. Because of various events, he loses all family other than his wife, he loses riches and children, he loses his health and is in pain and misery. He spends much of the book defending his righteousness as his friends point out that God would not let such bad things happen to a good man. He was urged to admit his sin. Job kept calling upon God to tell him his fault and explain the injustice of his condition but he refused to curse God. After several "comforters" give him the standard belief (everything that happens under the Sun is a result of your personal righteousness and diligence. Good comes to good people and bad things happen to bad people).
Finally God comes to talk directly to Job and in doing so describes to Job His various works - the Universe, the Earth, the living beings found thereupon - and Job sees that his own righteousness is completely insufficient to compare to God's righteousness and glory. Job repents and realizes that God had given him life and opportunity but was not obligated to guarantee Job's success or failure. Job sees the real value in faith in God and withdraws every charge he'd laid at God's feet. Actually, it was the enemy of God, Satan, that had brought disaster to Job in an attempt to make Job curse God and abandon faith. Job would not do it. Job had a lesson to learn and it was hard, but he did learn. We do not serve God to gain earthly things. We worship God because He is awesome and deserves to be honored. It is a privilege to serve a Great God who is both Creator and Redeemer. Job did come to understand and I do, too. Knowing God is worth whatever price there is to pay.
We live in a world that is full of sin. Because Adam and Eve sinned, then sin and death came to the world and we all must suffer from this. There will be accidents and there will be evil. There is a law of reaping and sowing - if you work hard, you most likely succeed, if you goof off you probably don't. If you are faithful in marriage you will not get an STD as long as your mate is also faithful. If you drive carefully you probably won't be in an accident - unless some careless person smashes into you. Sometimes while driving down a highway I consider that each new car coming down the road could suddenly swerve into my path and quite possibly kill me and everyone with me. Usually we all stay in our lanes and avoid smashing each other.
I'm not mad at God. I am so happy Nathan got run over by a truck and is relatively unscathed! We were rejoicing that Debbie's leg wasn't broken, that Nathan had somehow even avoided a concussion, that my mom could have an easy operation and that I can probably get by without surgery. Sometimes it is about the attitude. I know that my sins make me eligible for death and hell. I don't deserve anything good at all. Doing my best to do God's will doesn't guarantee a better paycheck.
It makes me mad when pseudo-preachers try to get people to send money to THEM so that the people will get money from God. Give to get? Blab it, grab it? It makes me mad when a pseudo-preacher tells people that "they need more faith" in order to be healed or for a family member to be healed. More often than not that same guy will have a hand out asking for money at the end of it all.
God is not obligated to bless me. I hope He does bless me and I am thankful when He does bless me. I believe God led me to enter this business knowing I would be smashed so badly I'd need a job I could do from home that would still support a big house and a lot of people. I believe God helped me find my wife, my soul mate and love, the person I wanted to be with my entire life but it had to be after getting my Masters in the college of hard knocks. I now own a Doctorate. I have a doctorate in pain, dumb decisions, strange experiences, sharing the pain of others, helping others, being betrayed, being blessed, knowing love, having children, being under great stress, unbearable physical pain, excruciating emotional pain, epiphanies, miracles, friends...life. God is not obligated to bless me but I am still blessed. He gave me life. I have lived, loved, raised children and have grandchildren coming down the road. I am entering the last third of my life. I could die today and feel as if I have lived a full and satisfying life.
We do not know God's overall plan. He wants to bring all humans to repentance. My life on Earth is a tiny aspect of a massive long-range plan to bring humans to a knowledge of God.
Once the pain is better and everyone is settled I will make another regular blog post. Right now it is hard to deal with all the things going down. With the pain comes some focus. One of the major problems Darwinists have is that they do not understand (or choose to ignore) what Creationists teach. Thus, many questions are not actually relevant. So I realize I need to fix that. But getting to the place I can work effectively comes first.
If you are having tough times or good times, I hope you will find your personal compass and your moral foundation will hold firm. I know Jesus Christ has placed my feet upon a Rock of Salvation. In the end this is what matters.
Then I injured my frayed MCL in my right knee. It is a chronic knee injured mostly playing basketball (funny how I never had a major football injury but had several basketball injuries. Weird). So now I was limping around in pain. That was Monday.
Then somebody let their dogs run loose and my wife was walking our dogs down a steep hill when loose dogs appeared. Debbie tried to fall on her butt in the grass and yank the dogs back while shouting commands but they were too quick and she hit the sidewalk with her right knee. Thankfully nothing broken but the knee was badly scraped and swollen. So she got medications, a full-leg brace and crutches. That happened on Wednesday.
So then this Sunday some guy in a truck ran over our son, Nathan, when he was riding a bike to work. Usually my wife would drive him to his Sunday job but she couldn't drive and I was hurting so he decided to just ride his bike, which he does on nice days at times. Imagine having a police officer show up Sunday morning before 7:30 AM and tell you that a truck hit your son, he had head injuries and had bled a lot?!
So I drove my wife and myself to the emergency room. She was on crutches and I was limping badly so we probably looked like patients but we were there for Nathan. Even though he actually had the imprint of the truck logo on the back of his neck, he somehow avoided internal injuries or broken bones. Twelve staples and special superglue patched up the cuts on his head. He had left large patches of skin on the road. He is a walking sore, poor guy. But the truck couldn't break him. The bike? Not so good.
Therefore I was ignoring my injured knee and doing things for hurt family members until my MCL got so bad I couldn't hardly walk. So with all this going on I have not been blogging. I am trying to get my pain level down enough to work. Thought I would share something with readers.
My body has been broken a lot. Three ruptured discs in my back, permanent nerve damage in my right leg and foot. Completely crushed and rebuilt left shoulder and collarbone. Broken ankle. Not even sure how many ribs broken since some of them broke more than once but a dozen or so. Huge tumor that wrapped around and went through muscles so that my left shoulder had to be cut open and muscles cut and then attached again. Auto accidents, factory accidents, attempted murder, sports injuries. So many ligament and cartilage injuries, so many scars all over my body. Anyway, now I take more drugs just to function than most people can take without passing out. My blood pumps controlled substances as a matter of course. Not to be high, but rather to be able to walk and think and be functional.
My wife had her head split open like a melon and has a scar you cannot see that runs pretty much straight down the middle. She had miscarriages and needed to be cut open to produce her babies. Once a horse smashed her knee into a post so hard she was on crutches for six months. Yes, the same knee she just hurt. She also has sciatica to an extent.
I was a bad man before I became a Christian. My wife was younger when she was born again, but she was definitely a druggy back then. Are we paying for our younger indescretions? No, I really don't believe that at all. Every single person has indescretions/sins. We are often just selfish or greedy, sometimes jealous, sometimes hedonistic, sometimes angry or vengeful...human beings know how to sin.
In the Book of Job, the title character was a well-known man with much money, many children and many animals and servants. Because of various events, he loses all family other than his wife, he loses riches and children, he loses his health and is in pain and misery. He spends much of the book defending his righteousness as his friends point out that God would not let such bad things happen to a good man. He was urged to admit his sin. Job kept calling upon God to tell him his fault and explain the injustice of his condition but he refused to curse God. After several "comforters" give him the standard belief (everything that happens under the Sun is a result of your personal righteousness and diligence. Good comes to good people and bad things happen to bad people).
Finally God comes to talk directly to Job and in doing so describes to Job His various works - the Universe, the Earth, the living beings found thereupon - and Job sees that his own righteousness is completely insufficient to compare to God's righteousness and glory. Job repents and realizes that God had given him life and opportunity but was not obligated to guarantee Job's success or failure. Job sees the real value in faith in God and withdraws every charge he'd laid at God's feet. Actually, it was the enemy of God, Satan, that had brought disaster to Job in an attempt to make Job curse God and abandon faith. Job would not do it. Job had a lesson to learn and it was hard, but he did learn. We do not serve God to gain earthly things. We worship God because He is awesome and deserves to be honored. It is a privilege to serve a Great God who is both Creator and Redeemer. Job did come to understand and I do, too. Knowing God is worth whatever price there is to pay.
We live in a world that is full of sin. Because Adam and Eve sinned, then sin and death came to the world and we all must suffer from this. There will be accidents and there will be evil. There is a law of reaping and sowing - if you work hard, you most likely succeed, if you goof off you probably don't. If you are faithful in marriage you will not get an STD as long as your mate is also faithful. If you drive carefully you probably won't be in an accident - unless some careless person smashes into you. Sometimes while driving down a highway I consider that each new car coming down the road could suddenly swerve into my path and quite possibly kill me and everyone with me. Usually we all stay in our lanes and avoid smashing each other.
I'm not mad at God. I am so happy Nathan got run over by a truck and is relatively unscathed! We were rejoicing that Debbie's leg wasn't broken, that Nathan had somehow even avoided a concussion, that my mom could have an easy operation and that I can probably get by without surgery. Sometimes it is about the attitude. I know that my sins make me eligible for death and hell. I don't deserve anything good at all. Doing my best to do God's will doesn't guarantee a better paycheck.
It makes me mad when pseudo-preachers try to get people to send money to THEM so that the people will get money from God. Give to get? Blab it, grab it? It makes me mad when a pseudo-preacher tells people that "they need more faith" in order to be healed or for a family member to be healed. More often than not that same guy will have a hand out asking for money at the end of it all.
God is not obligated to bless me. I hope He does bless me and I am thankful when He does bless me. I believe God led me to enter this business knowing I would be smashed so badly I'd need a job I could do from home that would still support a big house and a lot of people. I believe God helped me find my wife, my soul mate and love, the person I wanted to be with my entire life but it had to be after getting my Masters in the college of hard knocks. I now own a Doctorate. I have a doctorate in pain, dumb decisions, strange experiences, sharing the pain of others, helping others, being betrayed, being blessed, knowing love, having children, being under great stress, unbearable physical pain, excruciating emotional pain, epiphanies, miracles, friends...life. God is not obligated to bless me but I am still blessed. He gave me life. I have lived, loved, raised children and have grandchildren coming down the road. I am entering the last third of my life. I could die today and feel as if I have lived a full and satisfying life.
We do not know God's overall plan. He wants to bring all humans to repentance. My life on Earth is a tiny aspect of a massive long-range plan to bring humans to a knowledge of God.
Once the pain is better and everyone is settled I will make another regular blog post. Right now it is hard to deal with all the things going down. With the pain comes some focus. One of the major problems Darwinists have is that they do not understand (or choose to ignore) what Creationists teach. Thus, many questions are not actually relevant. So I realize I need to fix that. But getting to the place I can work effectively comes first.
If you are having tough times or good times, I hope you will find your personal compass and your moral foundation will hold firm. I know Jesus Christ has placed my feet upon a Rock of Salvation. In the end this is what matters.