Heavenly Love

Why does God allow innocent people to suffer?  Why doesn’t He intervene when He has to power to?

So Adam and Eve are strolling in the garden, tempted by the serpent, choose to sin, and God doesn’t intervene.  He lets them make their sinful choice, even though their choice causes pain and death to others.

Cain gets mad, kills Abel, and God doesn’t intervene.  He lets Cain make his sinful choice—even though the choice causes pain and death to another.

As a matter of fact, God makes a habit out of NOT intervening when people make sinful choices, even when those choices hurt others and even cause death.

Jesus’ miracles—they’re not really interventions either.  He takes the results of sin and fixes it.

So where does the idea come from that gives a person the expectation that God will intervene and save?

I mean, why bother praying for the hurting if God has already determined to allow the results of sin to play out without intervention? 

Because there is intervention, it’s just after the fact.  He won’t be a puppet-master, so he won’t interfere with the choice, but He will cushion the blow after the choice has been made.  Adam and Even sinned, but God provided a way for reconciliation.  Cain killed Abel, but God provided a safe haven for him.  Abraham and Sarah usurped God’s plan for a son, and God cared for Ishmael.

The choices made, the choices of the “evil people” in the world, are allowed.  Because they are sons and daughters of God.  And they were given the choice to follow or rebel.  They chose rebellion, and their choices hurt other people, and their choices hurt God.  But God-given free-will doesn’t mean that He allows you to choose your own path only when it doesn’t hurt other people.  For some crazy, inexplicable reason, He has allowed us to choose our paths, hurt each other, hurt Him; and He won’t stop us because it’s our choice. 

When “evil people” hurt “innocent people”, God doesn’t only feel sadness for the injustice done to the innocent person.  The “evil” one is also His child, whom He loved and died for.  And as he counts the tears and feels the pain of the injured party, he also desires with all his Heart that His rebellious child will turn in repentance toward Him.

It’s not easy thinking this way.  I don’t want to expose the humanity of those who do evil, or God’s love for them.  I don’t want to love them.  I want to hate them for what they do.  I want to keep them at a distance from me.  I don’t want to think of them as babies with mothers who loved them or children who maybe had bad things happen to them.

Father, I know what You are telling me; I know that You want all people to be reconciled to You.  That if those who have hurt me would turn to You, ask for Your forgiveness and trust in Your Son, that you would lovingly embrace them.  And if they don’t, it will give You no pleasure, but great pain, to dispense justice to the rebellious.

In either case, forgiveness is through You, as is justice.

Father, pry my hands loose of the hate and feelings of injustice that I cling to.  Hold me close, so that I will hold tight only to You.  And keep me from the sin of pride, thinking that I am better than the “evil” ones; after all, I am the rebellious child too.

peaceful sleep

We had wretched thunderstorms this afternoon.  Winds and torrential rain…the forecast included the word “tornado”, which is not exactly comforting. 

I had laid down for a short nap and my cat, Binky, and puppy, Charlie, decided to join me.  With one curled against my back and the other against my stomach, we rested quite comfortably until the winds picked up and the rain began beating against the bedroom windows.  I woke, startled, but the two of them remained peacefully sleeping.  The thunder rolled, and their ears would turn, but their faces remained placid, their eyes closed.  Charlie continued to snore little puppy-snores, his mouth gaping.

I continued to lay there and watch them for awhile, enjoying their tranquility.  Eventually, much to their consternation, I disentangled myself.  As soon as I arose, Binky shot off to hide in the closet, and Charlie got up to follow me around.  Serenity was all gone.

It felt good to be the harbinger of peace.  Knowing that I was the reason that they felt so comfortable in the midst of a terrible storm made me feel satisfied.

I struggle with peaceful sleep myself, so when I see it, I want to grab it.  Recently, I’ve been trying to sleep without any type of medication or sleep aid.  It’s not easy for me.  I have nightmares, bad ones.  The storm is within me, beating me down.  I wake myself up, screaming and flailing.  I wake my husband up.  I say things that make no sense until he hears the context of the dream.  I shake and cry.  He puts his arms around me and holds me, but that is often not enough.  Sometimes, he has to shake me over and over, saying please, please; stop dreaming whatever you’re dreaming.

So it’s ironic to me that these two little animals find peaceful sleep at my side.  Why?  To them, I am their master.  I give them good things.  I feed them.  I give them affection.  I care for their needs.  Sometimes I do things that they don’t understand, things they hate (like clipping their nails or giving them pills).  But they still trust me implicitly.  They know me to be kind and loving.

If I could sleep snuggled next to my Master, could I be calm and quiet?  Isn’t that a real possibility?  Is He not all around me all the time?  I am tired of being tired.  I want to rest peacefully next to my Master just as my pets rest next to me.

Certainly, my Father has shown me unequivocally, that He gives me good things, that He loves me, that He cares for me.  Even though I don’t understand.  Yet, still I sleep fitfully.  I want Him to be my sleep-aid.

I don’t have answers.

Verschränkung

My son is writing a research paper on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (his choice).  This morning, he veered slightly off-topic and read some information about quantum physics and Schrödinger's cat.  He brought up a few things that confused him over lunch.  As a former physics teacher, I relished the ensuing discussion.  

For those of you who didn’t spend their free time in college tweaking lasers for fun or salivating over Patrick Stewart in reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation(“tea, earl grey, hot”); allow me to explain. 

Schrödinger’s cat is a famous thought experiment: 

poor kitty!

A cat is in a steel box, along with a Geiger counter, a mildly radioactive substance, and a flask of poisonous acid.  The substances are rigged such that if the radioactive substance emits a particle that is registered by the counter, a hammer will strike the flask, and the acid will be released, thus killing the cat.  If left alone for an hour, one cannot be sure whether the cat is alive or dead, so without looking in the box, one might say that the cat is both equally dead and alive.  It is indeterminate until one opens the box, which changes the reality to either dead or alive.  (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat )

 It sounds ridiculous, but is supposed to be an analogy for quantum molecular structure.  The theory is based on the idea that nothing actually changes until it is observed in some form.

Jacob asked me what I thought about the unobservability of substances, if I thought they could co-exist in two separate states.  And it was strange; after all these years of wondering about that poor dead/alive cat, I finally figured it out.  This whole thought experiment, this whole theory is based on one premise:  That there is such a thing as being unobservable.  The cat can never be both dead and alive because he is always observed by God.  It’s a flawed experiment because it assumes privacy where there is none. 

Then it struck me:  There is no alone.  There is never any privacy.  It’s a little freaky.  Yes, always being with God is supposed to make me feel safe and secure.  But sometimes I just feel creeped out.  When I was in college, I had my own bona-fide stalker.  He’d call me up, tell me what I was wearing, where I went, who I’d talked to, what I’d eaten for lunch.  It was scary.  I don’t like being watched.

But being watched or observed and being together are two separate things.  God is not a mere observer, a “peeping tom” into my life.  He’s here with me because I am His creation.  He’s interested in me.  He wants to be part of my life, and is only waiting for my invitation.  He wants my thoughts, desires, and actions to synchronize with His, but He will not force.

So I wonder:  Do I want to be alone when I feel like I want to be alone?  Or is it some latent desire to commune with my Father, away from distractions?  I’m not sure that I want to share my thoughts.  But I’m not sharing them with a stalker, a regular human, or even a “good” person.  I’m sharing them with Perfection.  Perfection that wants the best for me.  That knows the best for me.  That already knows my thoughts anyway.

Schrödinger coined the term “Verschränkung”, meaning “entanglement” to describe his thought experiment.  The cat was tangled between two states of being.  But perhaps there is a different type of “Verschränkung”; becoming so bound up in my Father as He is in me, that I no longer feel observed, I become entangled in Him.

not good enough

 Certain verses in the Bible rarely, if ever, have sermons or books written about them.  They are confusing and distressing, and we prefer to forget about them.  Recently I read one of these passages:

Abraham married a second time; his new wife was named Keturah.  She gave birth to Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah….  But Abraham gave everything he possessed to Issac.  While he was still living, he gave gifts to the sons he had by his concubines, but then sent them away to the country of the east, putting a good distance between them and his son Isaac.  Genesis 25:1,2,5,6 (MSG)

 Abraham the polygamist?  Sure, we all know about Hagar, and it’s easy to excuse Abraham for that—after all, Sarah pushed her onto him.  And the new wife is fine; Sarah had died.  But what about the other concubines?  Where did they come from?  How many were there?  Obviously, he was sleeping with them, because he was having sons with them.

There is no mention of God saying anything to Abraham about this practice; no chastisements, no gentle reproofs.  There is just this small footnote at the end of his life.

I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks now, and have reached several conclusions.  First, it is probable that there were significantly more women than men because of the war-like society.  A woman who was not under the protection of a man was most likely in serious danger.  Could it be that God allowed the (lesser?) sin of polygamy to protect women from greater abuses?

Also, as I read the Bible, I see the gentle unfolding of God’s plan.  He doesn’t barge into Abraham’s world, exposing His entire plan, requiring an immediate overhaul of his life.  Even today, He continues to make Himself known more fully.  As Father, He doesn’t require that His children completely understand Him.  Instead, He moves toward His children, communicating with them where they are.  Abraham had a limited time on earth to learn about the nature of God.  Perhaps there just wasn’t room for that particular issue to fit in.  Who am I to say what is most important?

I find that on further inspection, this Bible passage gives me hope instead of distress.  And this is why:  There are multiple references in the New Testament of Abraham being in heaven, spoken by Jesus Himself.  So if someone who was obviously imperfect, needing correction, misguided, and partially hindered by the cultural norms that surrounded him was invited into heaven, then there’s a place for me, too.

Reading about Abraham’s life doesn’t give me warm, fuzzy feelings about him.  He put his own feelings before that of his spouse.  He played favorites with his children.  He misled people so things would be easier on him.  Sound familiar?  Need a mirror?

Abraham didn’t “get” into heaven.  He was invited, not because he was good enough (because he most certainly was not), but because he believed.  He had boundless faith in God; trusting Him in all matters, whether it was his work, his children, his wife, or his other relationships.

Look at what Romans chapter 4 says about Abraham:

So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, our first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things?  If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for it.  But the story we’re given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story.  What we read in Scripture is, “Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point.  He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own.”…We all agree, don’t we, that it was by embracing what God did for him that Abraham was declared fir before God?

We call Abraham “father” not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody…Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do:  raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing…But it’s not just Abraham; it’s also us!  The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless.  The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.

I like the wording: “Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point.”  Am I entering into what God is doing for me?  It brings to mind the imagery of a beach, entering into the water; dipping in a toe, wading in, perhaps walking along the shore for awhile.  How many of us stay in the shallows, where it is safe, when God is begging us to enter fully into the water, where the waves will envelop us and we have no choice but to fully trust God?

Father, like Abraham, I am not good enough.   I pray that I may also have the faith of Abraham.  Grow my faith so that I may enter into your plans for me; so that I may swim with you.