Throwing Out God
Have you ever felt the seething rage of anger towards God? The kind of anger that stems from deep hurt and disappointment, leaving you wondering why a benevolent God would allow such pain and suffering to happen. Perhaps your struggles have driven you to the brink of despair, where the mere thought of forgiveness seems impossible, and the very foundation of your faith is in question.
If you’ve ever felt this way, watch to the end, and this video will give you amazing hope with new perspectives you probably never thought of.
Allow me to introduce you to a man who knows this pain intimately. He was a daredevil, a thrill-seeker, and a man who lived life on the edge, until one fateful day, when his hang glider crashed into some trees, leaving him paralyzed and trapped in a wheelchair with only the limited use of his right hand. His life became a living hell of unending physical, mental, and emotional agony, threatening to crush his faith in God.
It’s difficult to fathom the sheer depth of suffering he endured, from needing a handicapped accessible house, to requiring assistance with the most basic of human needs, such as bathing, changing his diapers, and even being rolled over in the middle of the night to avoid painful bedsores. His once-joyful existence was reduced to a never-ending cycle of helplessness and despair.
But this man refused to give up. He fought with every fiber of his being to regain his mobility, praying and trying every therapy known to man, with countless doctors, yet nothing seemed to help. In his darkest hour, he cried out, “Why would God allow so much suffering in this world?” It was a question without an easy answer, a question that challenged the essence of his faith.
Like most of us, this man used to believe in Santa Claus. As children, our brains are wired so Santa and God are kind of alike… Both are invisible, wise, and concerned that we do good. Suddenly we find out Santa is pretend. So, we throw our belief in Santa out the window, but are told that God is still real. Then, as we get older, we experience trouble, sickness, or injustice so we ask harder questions about God, but rarely get the answers we are looking for because we don’t know who to ask, or how to ask.
In the end, our child-like faith is as deep as our theology ever gets. We have calculus sized questions, but only addition sized answers. My paralyzed friend felt like he never got answers that satisfied him and never did regain the use of his legs or his left arm. So, he eventually blamed God for his accident and it didn’t take long for him to become bitter as he refused to forgive God for all his troubles. Finally, left without answers, he ultimately discarded God the same way we discard Santa.
There is no doubt his situation was tragic. And no one can blame him for questioning, blaming, or getting mad at God. But when we look closely, we cannot help but see how his life of rock-climbing, hang-gliding, and risk-taking had become his idol. Perhaps without even knowing it, his lifestyle had become the most important part of his life. He longed for it, talked about, lived it and today admits how he worshipped it, until his lifestyle became his god.
Now this might sound strange to say…. But discarding that god was probably good. The god he threw away was a god he wanted to control – like a genie in a bottle god. A genie who says, “Your wish is my command.”
When his genie god was unable to give him the life he so badly wanted, it left a huge void for him. We can only imagine his emotional and spiritual emptiness. But the truly good news was how this new void allowed him to open his mind and heart to embrace the true God – who is way bigger than any Santa or genie. The true God, the God in the Bible, is also way bigger than our questions and loves when we sincerely seek his answers… Even when the answers seem impossible.
Just think about the true God for a moment. The founder of Christianity, Jesus, left the glory of heaven and came to earth as a vulnerable baby, born in a backwater village of an oppressed people during a time of great unrest. Jesus, our God, was ridiculed, mocked, beaten, tortured, and killed. Most of his followers for the next three hundred years were also killed in unthinkable ways.
Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33) and there is no doubt he was right. Sometimes these troubles are overwhelming tragedies that we just cannot understand – especially when we are in the middle of them – so it’s normal for us to ask, “Why God? Why?”
I can only imagine how people must have walked past Jesus as he hung on the cross. The very Jesus who had healed them. The same Jesus whom they had placed their hopes in. And as they looked at his bloodied, disfigured and dying body they would have shook their heads and cried those same words: “Why God? Why?” Then, in anger against God, in judgment of God, and unforgiveness toward God for all the injustices of life, they would have cried in despair, “What good could ever come of this?”
There is no doubt God’s ways are far beyond our own. And sometimes, we may never know the answers to our questions. But one thing we can always know for sure, is God loves us so much that he sent his only son, Jesus. So much worse than God himself dying for us, he allowed his son to be crushed and broken for us. With this, there is no doubt God truly loves us.
When life throws hard things at us, Satan encourages us to doubt God. But perhaps today is a good day to doubt your doubts. Maybe we can look at things from the opposite view as to what Satan encourages as we examine, “What good has ever come from my anger toward God?” Or “How have I improved my life by throwing the true God out of my life?” Or “How do I benefit by choosing to not believe in God.”
The facts are that Satan wants us to blame or discard the true God when our little genie god stops performing. So why would we choose to believe Satan – or believe in nothing – if we have questions about God or of life? Disbelieving in God over bad circumstances is like flipping on a light switch, and because the bulb is burned out, we get angry and say, “I knew I could never believe in electricity.”
A better solution is to start by knowing that it is good to question. It’s good to wrestle with God. It’s good to doubt, as long as we also doubt our doubts.
Maybe it is also a good time to learn more about God, so that we actually know what, who, and why we are questioning. After all, how can we decide to be mad at God, or decide to never forgive God, or believe there is no God if we don’t know anything about him and our understanding of him is only as deep as Santa Claus.
The truth is that God loves you so much. It’s more than we can even imagine. That’s why we want to bless you with our FREE book, “Why Wait to be Happy?” that will help you discover who God really is, and how God truly wants your happiness.
