Your Dying Spouse 177 - Is God Really Good?

We're linked with Messy Marriage's Wedded Wednesday, a great marriage resource!

When bad stuff happens to you, it's a lot easier to maintain your spiritual equilibrium than when it happens to someone you love.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Barb's Dad had a massive stroke over the Fourth of July Weekend. The prognosis is really fluid; stroke does not lend itself to easy predictions.

And I asked myself, where is God in all this? Dick is a great guy; he was widowed in 2013, and has found love again with a wonderful, warmhearted woman. Why this?

What on Earth are you doing, God? If You allow all that happens, and yet ensure that it happens 'for our good', where does this fall?

One argument I've heard trotted out is that 'bad' things happen to prevent something worse from happening. It sounds plausible when you're late for work and pass a traffic accident on your way in,one that you could have been involved in, but I don't think it's a good idea to present to the bereaved mother of a toddler who's just been hit by a car...or to a woman whose Dad may never talk again.

It's a fallacious argument because it starts from the end and backfills. It takes as a given that God is good, and then does what it has to to reinforce the conclusion. It hasn't proven anything. It's merely a form of special pleading based on an unquestioned assumption.

Another argument is similar in that it makes the point that this experience is what the individual in question needed for growth, and that the 'no harm' clause is one that takes an eternal view. This is a bit more robust, and certainly more of an adult argument.

There are still problems. The obviously begged question as to whether the lesson could have been less severe is essentially meaningless, because we don't see the 'eternal' part of the picture. We cannot have or even understand all the facts.

But the meaningful question is that many of these extreme experiences seem to be tests, because what some would call a refining fire burns many people to a crisp. It gives the impression of God saying, Well, you didn't measure up, so adios!

Does God test us like this? perhaps, but some of these tests are thus viciously unfair, and would certainly justify a question as to His mercy.

To me, the only robust argument is the one that accepts the necessity of free will, both in our hearts and by extension in the natural world. Free will lets us choose God, or reject Him, and it certainly covers the randomness of the world in which we find ourselves.

God is therefore not the agent of our miseries, beyond having set up a Creation that must, for internal consistency, include them. He is here as our support and comfort, and we're supposed to turn to Him in faith when the night gets too dark to bear.

There's no 'guide to getting prayers answered'. There's no formula, because to supply some kind of hidden secret code would completely obviate the need for faith, and destroy whatever understanding we have of Jesus' sacrifice. He died horribly, in the temporal sense; and for us to use coded prayers to escape bad things is rather a slap in the face to His pain.

Miracles? yes, the y happen, and I have seen them, but I believe that miracles are contextual. They are performed for a purpose, and reading the Gospels tends to support this. Jesus did not set up a series of mass 'miracle services'. He healed here and there, to prove a point, and to reinforce His role.

So, is God good? To me, the answer's a resounding yes, because he's helping me comfort my wife in faith, and in the hope that however this plays out, one day she'll be reunited with her beloved Dad, freed of any and all infirmities.

Forever.

If you have a mment, I'd like to ask you to visit Change.org to consider a petition to free a 'death row dog' who has been separated from his family for ten months over a misunderstanding. Marley was saved from Afghanistan by a US serviceman; please help make sure this story doesn't end in needless tragedy!

If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.

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