Day 4: The Hinge of Fate

Get away from Christmas card sentimentality, and some troubling questions come up. What kind of a God would get his own kid out of harm’s way while leaving so many other children so exposed? Why didn’t God give all the parents dreams? Or, more elegantly, why didn’t He send Herod a nice heart attack? One of the most basic questions that people quite justifiably ask about God comes into play here: What kind of God could allow such evil and catastrophic things to happen? Why are innocents slaughtered and oppressed anywhere? If God is so powerful and He loves us so much, why are the historical records, and our daily newspapers, so full of violence, evil, and oppression? The classic Christian answer to this question, and here again standard Christianity makes a lot of sense to me personally, has two parts. The first is that God made us free; He did not want a universe of sock puppets praising and obeying Him. He wanted a world, not a computer simulation. The second point is that God is serious. When He made us, He meant it.