Newspaper Bible Study And The Reprehensible God

Bible study in the newspaper: it strikes even our friends in Australia, with all of its inanity, non sequiturs, and asinine anecdotes. Most of these “lessons” usually revolve around someone dying or being abandon by God, only to discover that God had always been with them, even in their toughest times. The disgusting nature of these “lessons” are always lost on the writers. Here is an example of some of the more reprehensible messages put forth in the newspaper Bible study.

I too have felt that God abandoned me when I needed Him the most, and yet in my battle to find answers to the many perplexing questions that confronted me, I found that God was always with me, but because my eyes were blinded by demands that relied on my understanding, I could not see Him.

I remember when my husband was diagnosed with cancer. Despite our desperate prayers for healing the disease steadily progressed, and in my pain I would sometimes cry out to God “whose good does this promise apply to?” I do believe that God allows us to ask these somewhat arrogant questions in those times of deep pain, and also that we will receive an answer – when we are willing to listen to His truths.

Today I can testify that God’s promise that ‘ALL things work together for good’ has become my anchor. It’s the rock on which I stand when I feel that the boat I’m travelling on is being swamped in the stormy lake, and that I’m struggling with the storms of adversity on my own.

Recently my youngest son died of a brain tumour, but the journey through this storm was different – because I knew Jesus was in the boat with me, and if He was asleep, it was because He knew that our Father would keep us safe. It is in these times of darkness and overwhelming sorrow that we need to be fully assured of God’s unchangeable attributes, and that our loving heavenly Father will never allow anything to happen in our life unless it can be turned to good. Then we will be able to run into His outstretched arms of love and trust Him despite the circumstances.

Why must people feel that in the end, everything bad that happens to them because they didn’t “see” God like they were supposed to? If there was a god and his demands were incomprehensible and one of your family members died because of the misunderstanding, then that god is one evil bastard.

What the writer is saying in the opening paragraph is that bad things have happened to her (like her husband and son dying), and the reason that she couldn’t find the meaning in them at the time was because she required actual understanding. It’s amazing how quickly the search for answers can be given up for the old “Gods Will” canard.

I am sure the author has suffered greatly due to the loss of her husband and her son. I couldn’t imagine going through something like that. However, I also couldn’t imagine turning my mind over to a non-existent deity that seems to be content on letting my loved ones die horrible deaths. Of course, she isn’t content with identifying this as a belief, she has the ultimate knowledge.

The secret, I believe, is in the first three words of our verse ‘AND WE KNOW’. It’s in knowing God and His love for us that we become confident in His dealings with us. I do not believe we can or will see all things working together for good, unless we trust God with an intimate knowledge of His character of absolute love and absolute goodness.

That says it all. However, she was right about one thing; God’s attribute are unchanging. He was, is, and always will be a sociopath.