Coming To a Crossroad

So we're not perfect and the world is in a mess. That's nothing new, as tragic as it is. Nor is it new that we blame God for who we are, what this world is. Either he's incompetent or, worse still, he planned to make everything like this because it met some dark need to vent his anger.

The alternative, as I've been blogging about, is that he made us free, with the potential to rise up against him, and we brought chaos upon ourselves and our world by doing so. To be sure, we could blame God for that too, but that would mean that he should never have given us a desire for experimentation, for independence. And we do value our independence.

Problem is, it comes at a terrible cost. The Bible argues that, having chosen to defy God, we found ourselves unable to function on our own. Our very environment turned on us, though it retains a lot of its original beauty.

Thus, we come to a crossroad - blame God or blame our anscestors and ourselves. Ourselves? Let me suggest a simple test - when was the last time you did something selfish or hurtful, not because you had to but because you wanted to. You could have stopped yourself, but you didn't. In that moment, you confirmed that the flaw lies in our choices, not in some diabolical plan of the One who made us.

In the uneasy relationship we have with God, if we go on fighting him we'll fail to experience him, to grasp what he is saying to us and to ponder the mysteries of what he is not saying to us. To know him, we have to stop fighting him and ask, "Who are you?"