Anything Good

When we wonder how it is the God can allow such bad things in the world or why bad things happen to good people or all of that, I think that we are showing our hand. I think we are revealing our own misunderstanding of how deeply we ruined things when we sinned. I think we have no idea how big a deal our sin was and how completely we altered what God had created, in a massive, cosmic way. I think we have absolutely no understanding of the bigness of our choice and its consequences.

Christ’s work on the cross shows us just how big a deal our sin was, because it shows the great lengths it took and what quality of person it took to bring about a solution. If Christ's death was the only sacrifice that could, in goodness, match the bigness of our evil, then that should show us how HUGE our sin is.

This should result in a life with God as an act of thanksgiving – not because he’ll smite us, but because we are so thankful for the grace we didn’t deserve – rather than a performance, our lives should be a thankful offering, once we understand where we were without Him.

For God to have created something so wonderful and for us to have ruined it as deeply and powerfully and colossally as we did, we should not sit and look at bad things that happen and wonder how God could allow this. I think, if we understood the extensiveness of our sin, we would sit and wonder how God could possibly inject anything good. The fact that we are surprised and disgusted at bad things, as if they're so unfair, is proof that we don't understand the depth of what we did.

For God to have provided a way for us to spend a happy eternity, that is already immeasurable grace. I think it would be WAY MORE than fair for him to say, "I am going to make a way for you to have a good and happy eternity, but because you did such a bad thing, I am not going to worry about your life on earth. Go ahead and have the horrible, evil, pain-filled life that you chose, I'm not going to do anything about earthly life, but because I'm merciful, I'll let you have a good eternity, I'll make something good out of the more important of the two." Absolutely more than fair. But He goes beyond that! And takes steps to even heal our lives here! And we wonder why there is anything bad left, as if it's His fault? The fact that we would either blame Him for bad or feel ourselves entitled to anything good is proof of how blind we are to our own choice of evil. And just how huge that was.

The mystery should not be that God could ever allow anything bad but that He could ever possibly inject anything good.