Whose Fault is it Anyway Part 2

Whose Fault is it Anyway?

Hello friends, I hope you've had a productive week!  I also hope you were able to interact with the post from last week.  I want to let you know that I am aware that the material I am presenting can be controversial and inconvenient.  I also want you to be aware that I am in no way attempting to provoke, insult, or chastise anyone or their families.  I believe these are issues that we each consider in our own minds every day and I am merely bringing them to light for the purpose of critical thinking and deeper fellowship.  That being said, let's take a look at this weeks discussion.

Could we be to blame for the calamities of the world?

Last week I outlined a few of the "great interventions" of the Lord; the times when He proverbially said "Enough is enough!" can caused terrors and wonders in order to get the attention of the world and turn their hearts to know that He is real and He is in charge.  This week, let's take a look at our involvement.

Look at these events:

• Ejection from Eden (Gen 3)
• First murder (Gen 4)
• Famine in Abram's day in Negev (Gen 12)
• Famine in Isaac's day in Beer-lahai-roi (Gen 26)
• Famine in Joseph's day in Egypt (Gen 41)
• Israel enslaved (Ex 1)
• Personal afflictions [demon possessed, blindness, leprosy, etc.] (Gospels)
• Famine in the Roman world (Acts 11)
• Christian suffering and intolerance (New Testament)

These are all troubling things NOT caused by God.  Do you think that sometimes a flat tire is just a flat tire?  I do.  And SOMETIMES a flat tire is because I wasn't paying attention and I ran over something.  Who is to blame for that?  It's me!

We each have a choice in every situation we are in; we even have the choice of how to perceive and respond to situations we don't like.  What would your life and mine be like if the first people would have simply said "No, I trust my Maker and not this snake"?  Surely, God can't be to blame for this can He?

I bet you know someone who has or has had or has died from cancer.  My wife had melanoma several years ago.  According to cancer.gov, only 5-10% of cancers are caused by hereditary traits.  So let's say that we could blame God for how He made us, so we could say that God can have the blame for cancer 5-10% of the time (nature).  That means that 90-95% of the time, cancers are caused by lifestyle choices or other exposures (nurture).  So 90-95% of the time, if I get cancer it is because of something that I did or something I was exposed to, or allowed myself to be exposed to inadvertently.  Does that math sound right?  My grandmother died a few years ago, just days before her 90th birthday from mesothelioma.  My parents and relatives joined a class action lawsuit again 3M for asbestos exposure from the home she lived in for decades.  They are still receiving money.

Now before you get upset about these facts that seem accusatory, I want you to know that epigenetics/gene expression is something that interests me greatly and I've done quite a bit of learning on this over the years.  Everything has an effect on you in some way from the air you breath to the foods you put in your body.  Yes it's true, everything kills you (or brings you life!) and it is a tragic thing.  If a life-long smoker gets cancer, no one is surprised and yet when a person who spent their life consuming harmful foods gets cancer, we are asking "Why, God, why?"  Even a lot of infant disorders can be linked to the lifestyle choices of both parents.

Who picked your parents?  They did!  I, through no fault of my own, have a higher than normal risk of alcoholism.  Lineage, for will or for woe, is simply a matter of historical choices.  While I can think of merely a few times when God has ever said, "go marry that girl" (Gomer the prostitute!), the choice we have in a mate is our choice, making it a lifestyle choice.  Some people even choose to be with an abusive mate; could we pin that on God?  Hereditary traits are a gamble that we take, not a curse of God.  If we think of it this way, surely God can't be to blame for cancer or other disorders can He?

The trouble with choice

Just the sight of this picture make bring up in you emotions that you have worked hard to put to bed.  In a little more than a year we will think about on the two decades that separate us from the tragedy that we each remember in a different way.  While I'm sure that some said at the time that this was "God's wake-up call" or some other such nonsense.  Think back to the flat tire, which is a microcosm of a tragedy such as this were two groups of people intent on violence got what they came for and thousands upon thousands of lives were destroyed, and the millions and billions not touched directly felt the water ripple and their lives change in some way or another.  Was it God's fault? 

If someone had no opinion of God at all, they couldn't even call this evil; just survival of the fittest.  Thank you Mr. Darwin.  And yet a person like that might blame God all the same.

When I was a kid, I listened to a rock band called P.O.D..  In one of their hits "Youth of the Nation", the singer describes instances of violence involving kids.  Amazingly, the album "Satellite" on which this song is listed was released on September 11, 2001.  You can't make this stuff up.  The Columbine Massacre in 1999 and other acts of violence had us all wondering when the next shoe would drop, and then the TV came on that day to show us.  I want to share with you some lyrics in the song:

Who's to blame for the lives that tragedies claim

No matter what you say

It don't take away the pain

That I feel inside, I'm tired of all the lies

Don't nobody know why

It's the blind leading the blind

I guess that's the way the story goes

Will it ever make sense

Somebody's got to know

There's got to be more to life than this

There's got to be more to everything

I thought exists

P.O.D. was actually taking a empathetic look at the world when they wrote this as they as a band claim Christ.  When the bad things happen, who do we turn to?  Instead of blaming our Father, could we run to Him for comfort?  God made man and woman clothing in the wake of their disobedience.  He honored David as a friend even after he chose to take another man's wife.  Christ bound up the broken-bodied and brokenhearted.  He is God in the pain.  If you remember Pastor Mike's message from a few weeks ago, Jesus was in the boat with the frantic disciples during the story, not outside looking in.  I truly believe that when we make choices that harm us and the world around us, the tears of the Father fall just like ours do.  Whose fault is it?  Sometimes it is yours and mine.

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“Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly,”

― G.K. Chesterton

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Questions for Interaction

1. How can we come to grips with the fact that a lot of reasons for the "wrongs" in the world are because of human choices?  How does this fit in with the the story of redemption through Christ?

2. What do you think is the purpose of pain, if there is any at all?

3. Based on what you have heard and researched, do you believe that Corona Virus could be the result of human mistakes?