Stop Blaming God

     Stop blaming God for the biggest favor He did the human race. Ironically, it is also our greatest curse: volition. Free will… The ability to choose… Our greatest gift: choices. Our greatest curse: the consequences of our choices. And, the consequences of our choices often benefit or burden those who come after us.

     When ever I hear a question in the form of “If God is all powerful, how come He let (X) happen,” I know I am dealing with an individual who has no understanding of the implications of two vital doctrines and their connection to volition: the doctrine of the will of God, and the doctrine of dominion.

     The Bible and the Christian faith are not cafeterias. When you try to pick and choose individual “menu” items, you end up asking uninformed questions like, “If God is all powerful, why didn’t He stop those terrorists from crashing those airplanes into the World Trade Center?” The Bible is a collection of inspired revelation that came together over a period of millennia and works together, from beginning to end, to reveal a systematic doctrine. You can not understand the parts until you have seen the whole.

     One of the first teachings of the Bible is that after the creation was completed God put the whole kit and caboodle under the dominion of man. God gave man sovereignty over the earth… and the responsibility to keep it and dress it like a garden.

     The story of man’s fall from grace illustrates the doctrine of the will of God. God’s will can be seen to work in three different ways: God’s overpowering will, God’s directive will, and God’s permissive will. So, at the very beginning, we have man having been created and given authority over the rest of creation and we have an understanding that the will of God is not expressed the same way in all situations.

      Enter volition. Volition without alternatives is like a lawn mower without a blade. The consequence of pushing or riding a mower over a lawn is supposed to be that the lawn gets mowed. No blade, no mowing. No alternative choices, no true volition.

     God created the heavens and the earth: God’s over powering will. He did not ask permission, He did not take a vote.

     When God placed man in the garden, man was to dress it and keep it and not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: God’s directive will, that is, DO take care of the garden, do NOT eat of the tree in the midst of the garden. God gave man a choice to obey or not to obey.

     “For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die:” Consequence. God put a blade on the lawn mower.

     “She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat:” God’s permissive will. He allowed them to disobey.

     Without the functioning of the permissive element of the will of God there would be no autonomy. Without the directive element of the will of God there would be no “manufacturer’s instructions” on how to use our “machinery” in the right way. Without the overpowering element of the will of God there would be no life… nor any miracles… nor salvation.

• Dominion – We, the human race, are responsible for our own mess.
• Disobedience – We are not automatons, we have real choices.
• Damage – We suffer the consequence of disobedience.

     If we are all just travelers on the road to kingdom come, maybe this physical life we now live on the skin of this planet is just some kind of boot camp to get us ready to function on a different plane of existence. If there is a glorious eternal life in a resurrected body of a spiritual nature, then all that we suffer here will fade away like a bad dream.

     Having suffered sweetens the taste of blessing. Having despaired sweetens the taste of hope. Having known great sadness sweetens the taste of joy.