A little Discomfort

There are things about the way God works that makes people uncomfortable. Things we would never understand, things that are part of His nature but never discussed because doing so would make us question the very core of our understanding of who God is.

I had a discussion with a friend recently, about the death of someone we both knew. I suggested that knowing this person, there is a possibility that God allowed his death for the sake of those he was mistreating. My friend shut that idea down, saying that God is too kind to kill one person for the sake of another because He loves us all.

Here’s the thing though…God has done it before.

When the children of Israel finally managed to leave Egypt and Pharaoh and his soldiers went after them. God parted the red sea so that the children of Israel could cross but when Pharaoh and his soldiers continued to pursue, they drowned in the red sea. God killed all of those people for the sake of the children of Israel…did He not? He wanted the children of Israel to escape and move on to their promised land. Should we then say that God loves everyone except Pharaoh and his soldiers?

Let’s move on to 2^nd Kings Chapter 2 vs 23 and 24. The prophet Elisha is walking along the road to Bethel and some youths started mocking him. He turns around and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the Lord and two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

To deny that this was an act of God is to deny the power of the name of the Lord. Are we then to say that God loved everyone except those 42 youths that were mauled by bears? 

I have a couple of real life examples that I have witnessed of this same type of situations, but I will not include them here because I know someone will accuse me of reading into things. I prefer to keep the examples biblical. 

We need to remember that God does not change. The same God who did all these things, is the same one we worship today. We tend to forget or ignore the parts of Gods character and actions that make us uncomfortable. We are a lot happier thinking that God is all love, all mercy, all forgiving, and has no wrath and no anger. We have created a God that suits our beliefs rather than accept the God that is, has always been and will always be.