1)Yes, I left the letter i uncapitalized to be stylish.
2)Yes it is driving me absolutely bananas.
3)Yes, I am avoiding the real topic here.
Because of the way the world works, we humans have preconceived notions of things we deserve and we expect to get them. If a prize is promised to the winner of a sprinting competition, the person who wins expects to get that prize because it's fair. It would be considered rude or even cruel for the person who made the promise not to fulfill it.
Despite this, all our lives we hear the phrase "Life's not fair." It's one of those phrases that everyone knows without knowing where they learned it from. It's horribly annoying, actually, because we all know life's not fair and we all still
REALLY REALLY REALLY wish it was. This in itself we consider injustice at its highest level.
When I was little I learned about the creation story, just like every little kid who grows up in Sunday School. I've heard the story so many times that I know what thing was made on what day and that at the end of every night "God declared it was good." And I know that on the last day God made man out of the dust of the earth and that He saved the best for last because humans are His absolute favorite creation and we are made in His image which basically means we're the most important thing to exist. I mean, that's it, right?
I think we have this sense of entitlement because we're Humans and we're God's Favorite and we deseeeerrrrvvvveee to be treated as such. And we all have this driving question of "Why does God let bad things happen to good people?" that keeps so many people from Christianity and so many Christians helplessly confused. Because it's just not fair.
We think God owes us a good, comfortable, safe life as long as we're a "good" person and don't do drugs or get drunk all the time or hurt people. We feel like we need to be rewarded for all the "things we do for God" because that's what's fair. And I put that in sarcasm quotation marks because we see "things we do for God" as being good little Christians and tithing and going to church when half the time we do these things because we think they're what's keeping us from Hell.
I didn't think I thought that, but I'm starting to wonder. And wow, that is hard for me to admit.
Here's the bitter, hard truth. It's the point I've been avoiding for the past half hour I've spent writing this.
God doesn't owe us anything. It's we that owe Him every facet of our lives because without His mercy we would be as hopeless as a spider in a little girl's bedroom.
We are the most dirty rotten sinners ever to exist. Yes, maybe we tithe our money and do service projects and try our darnedest not to gossip, but we still secretly envy our best friends and look at stuff on the internet that we shouldn't and lord our extensive movie knowledge over others.
It seems to me that the "Why does God let bad things happen to good people" question is a fallacy because we aren't good people. We don't deserve anything that God may or may not give us.
I realize this may seem like a complete downer rant that only ends in negativity but hold on a second. Doesn't God still give us stuff anyway? I mean not 100% of the time, but sometimes? Yeah, actually, He does. No matter what He gives us, it's more than we deserve. And He gives us
SO MUCH STUFF. Not "stuff" in the sense of material possessions, but stuff as in life and community and second chances. And third and fourth and fifth chances.
We don't deserve that. If God withheld those things from us, that would be completely fair. So yeah, life isn't fair.
And that's pretty fantastic news.
-Lisa
