Tess over at “Anchors and Masts” asked her readers to help her think about an answer for people who find out she is a christian and then say, “What good is God?” I’m sure many of us have had that happen…you say you go to church or that you believe in God and someone instantly lays into the old standby of “Did you see in the news where those 10,000 people just got wiped out in a hurricane / flood / fire / tornado? Where was your God then? If he can’t keep things like that from happening then what good is your God?”
Can someone please tell me what it is about human nature that we feel the need to blame every bad thing on God but never take the time to praise Him for every good thing?
Go ahead…tell me how your heart started beating in your mother’s womb if not for God? What made that first batch of cells split and what made them decide to start pumping away and forming what would soon become your heart? Your brain? Your arms and legs? Was that luck? Magic? Instinct?
What is it that keeps earth from spinning off it’s axis on a moment-by-moment basis? Why is the sun exactly far enough away so that it keeps us warm without toasting us all like cosmic marshmallows? Why does everything in nature work precisely in sync with all the other parts? Does that just happen? Really? Want to know the odds on that one?
I can pull out my trusty rusty calculator and figure out that I have lived approximately 820,375 days. I’ll bet money less than a dozen of those have been life-altering “rather-not-have-been-here-for-that” days. That’s a little less than .000015% of my time here on earth. The rest of the time? The rest of the time has been filled with friends, family, pets, a warm place to sleep, always enough food, more clean water than I could ever use, clothes on my back (and in my closet), breathtaking vacations, moving moments that made my heart soar, laughter that made my belly hurt, doctors/medicine that saved my sorry butt on more than one occasion, staggering daily insights, and countless amounts of grace – followed by even more mercy.
What good is God?
WHAT GOOD IS GOD?
My answer to that question? That’s easy…
AMEN, AMEN and AMEN!!!!!! Couldn’t have said it better!!!
Yeah, we may have to work on the…uh…”language” still a little bit, but the point?
COMES ACROSS LOUD AND CLEAR.
What you say is absolutely true. I think it was Christine over at Abbey of the Arts who once said something along the lines of creation being better than our finest theology.
But you know I don’t think these people asking the question WANT to have a convincing answer. They prefer to dwell on the tragedies. Hmmm.
Glad I prompted this thunderous outburst though!