Read this first: http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-910282?hpt=hp_c3
Jamie Nguyen's fantastic commentary (first posted on Facebook):
Let me start by saying, I am a Christian, and I primarily teach my children what I believe. With that said, I do my best to teach them about atheism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, etc. They are free to ask me any question and I will answer it to the best of my knowledge and if I don’t have the answer, I ask my brother…LOL…or research the answer for them.
This article really caught my attention because I realize Christianity is a dying religion. And if people don’t speak-out about logical ideas of who God is and what He expects of us, it will not survive many more generations.
God allows us the opportunity for life. That does not mean that life will be free of hurt. Lives lived can be short-lived, difficult, sad even; but life itself is good. Anyone that has children takes a risk in whether or not that child will make the best choices. God, like a parent, does his best to guide us, and I believe he makes every effort to persuade even the most violent criminals to turn away from harming others. The news shows us how many people turn away from God’s beckoning, but it rarely publicizes how many people turn away from hurting others and do what is right and just. Just as we do not force our children to be heterosexual, Christian, righteous, etc, God does not force us to be his servant.
God does not wish death on anyone. Now I believe God to be omnipresent, that does not mean I believe God is omnipotent. I don’t believe in predestination. Even Christ rushes to judgment in Matthew 15: 25-27,
25 The woman came and knelt before Him. “Lord, help me!” she said. 26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.” 27 “Yes, Lord,” she said, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
27 Then Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
What do we learn from his reaction? Well, his humanity gets the best of him at first, but when he listens to the woman, he realizes something. His position with the Jewish people is so much bigger; his position is with God’s world, not just the Jewish people.
When we ask questions like, “Why did God allow this to happen?” it is very similar to Christ on the cross, Matthew 27: 46,
46And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" that is, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"
What makes us most human also makes us most like God. Do we not change God’s universe for the better when we return a wallet with someone’s week’s pay into the customer service desk? When we place our hands over a bleeding stranger to help save them? When we give something to someone with no intentions of a return? But we don’t hear of these circumstances every day, and I guarantee they happen more often than not. We do God’s work even if we don’t give him credit for the action.
If we are made only for survival of the fittest, there is no reason to love, there is no meaning in the word “forever”, and we certainly have no reason to lie to our children and tell them everything will be okay when they go to bed at night. Because there is no guarantee that everything will be okay. If what we do matters, and if our existence makes a difference in the universe, then God must exist. Otherwise, we are lying to our children; not everything will be okay, because the “everything” we are referring to will be gone at some point. The earth will not be here forever, and the love we may feel for that child is only evolution trying to cling onto what is left of human existence.
God is life; that does not mean life is always fair. Just because one has been “good” does not mean they will receive good in return. Look at the Book of Job. The man has done everything he feels is necessary to do God’s work, but he ultimately loses everything (his possessions, family, health, etc.). Let’s face it, Karma just isn’t a reality. Good things don’t necessarily happen to good people, and bad things don’t necessarily happen to bad people.
We are not in a fish bowl with God taking care of the tank. God is with us. And when God cannot convince evil to not harm us, he suffers with us. He is the only one who knows our sufferings and encountered the experience just as we do. I was once told to think of it as, “when someone rapes a child, they are not only killing the life of the child, but they rape God as well.” The universe is a different place when something so horrific takes place. Steps back have been taken for peace in the world. The only justice is in the “suffering servant.”
God has given us the opportunity to teach our children the difference between right and wrong. I fall short of being the “best parent ever” all the time. I trust that my kids will look at moments in their life and see how wonderful the world can be. Because if these moments matter, if my children take each of these moments seriously, if our existence makes a difference, then we cannot take full credit for the universe and of how truly awesome it really is.
The Bible, priests, nuns, monks, prayers, religions, etc. contain contradictions, and can be fallible; but does that mean that we should discredit the existence of God entirely? Do we discredit Einstein entirely for what he got wrong, or do we look at what he got right and make sense out of it? Learn from it?
The writer says “religion should stay at home or in church where it belongs”. I beg to differ. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind, but I was once a skeptic and I still am sometimes (there are no guarantees). When God was introduced to me in a whole new way, my life began to make sense. I wasn’t a book that was already written, in fact, I wasn’t a book at all. A book may eventually be lost, but not me. Nope. My existence, as well as my children’s existence, changes God’s universe forever. And our memory never dies. It stays forever in Him, and with Him.
So if my child asks me, “Where is heaven?” I’ll say, “I believe heaven is where the best parts of us stay forever with God.” When someone asks me, “Why did God allow this to happen?” I say, “God tried to do everything possible to keep evil away, when that did not work He tried to save as many people as he could, and when some still suffered and died, God suffered along with them.” If someone says to me, “Is God fair?” I would say, “It’s not about what we don’t have. It’s about what we do with the life that God has given us.”
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