I found myself angry with God last Thursday night. Karen (my wife) and I broke some difficult news to Elijah (our firstborn: otherwise known as Number 1) and he took it very hard. We decided that we would likely be changing something about his future which he very much did not want changed. As he wept and pleaded with us my heart was breaking. I very much wanted to go back on our decision (which is, we hope, for the best). However, sometimes tough decisions need to be adhered to.
Where my disappointment and bewilderment with God comes in is here: God regularly sees His children weeping and pleading in pain. As a Father, His heart must regularly break. He often allows us to walk through pain because pain and suffering are His tools for shaping us. I get that. As a father I need to allow our sons to walk through difficulties because they build character. No argument.
A major difference between God and me though is that God has the power to deliver us from any situation while I, as a human, am very limited in what I can do. If I could fix Elijah's situation without any pain to him I most certainly would. Why does God not save us from pain while also shaping us to be more like Christ? That is my dilemma.
Perhaps we can find an answer in this way: God most certainly could have created beings who were robotic in their demeanor - perfectly obedient and unable to stray from what is right. Instead He made us - beings capable of making moral choices. In His wisdom, He chose to create human beings who could accept or reject Him. Maybe, just maybe, under these conditions, in the absence of compulsion, the only way for some lessons to be learned is through pain.
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