The horrible murders in Virginia leave us with more questions than answers. OBC Ladies Daily Devotionals presents Devotional EXTRAS, a short series to consider some questions and answers from a spiritual standpoint in light of Monday's horrible event.
By Sandy Ditoro
Yesterday I was asked, “We know that God is all powerful, then why did He not stop Monday’s shooting?” The query was in reference to the Virginia university incident and I have thought about this inquiry a lot since yesterday. Here is the way I understand it and my answer to the question:
When God made man, He gave man a Paradise home to live in. What was Paradise like? Relevant to this question, there was no death, no pain, no separations caused by death, no sin, no consequence of sin, and no innocent people suffering because of the sins of other people.
It was not God who caused man to lose his Paradise home. God wanted man’s home to always be Paradise. We are made in God’s image. (We reason with our minds. We are not like animals who respond only by instinct.) A part of our natural makeup (since we have the ability to reason and are in God’s image), is that we also have been given the power of choice. It was not God’s desire for us to be robots.
Think about it. God exalted us above all His creation when He made us in His image, when He gave us the ability to reason and when He gave us the power to choose. When He crowned us with these awesome attributes, He also gave us a dominion over which to rule. The most important area in each human’s personal territory is his own heart which he alone controls through free will choices.
Paradise would have remained perfect if it had depended only on God’s side of the equation. Man would have forever lived in Paradise. God has the power of choice too and He always has chosen only to do Good.
As we know, man has never been able to always choose to do good. There is none righteous, no, not one;...They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable;There is none who does good, no, not one.” (Romans 3:10a-12) Is this God’s fault?
It is not God’s fault that man chooses to sin. If, therefore, it is not God’s fault that man has sinned, then it is not God’s fault that man has to suffer the consequence of sin, for our own and for the sins also of others (No, we won’t go to Hell because of the sins of others, but we will suffer in many ways because of the sins that others commit). Monday’s horrific shooting is an extreme example of how people can suffer because of the sins of others. God had nothing to do with causing any of this suffering. The man who did the shooting will take the full blame for this crime on the day of judgement, not God, not his parents, not society. He had the power of choice. He chose to do evil.
Think about this. You and I suffer because of the sins of other people. God has also suffered because of man’s choice to sin. God the Father suffered separation from His Son while Jesus came to earth to die for our sins. He suffered as He watched His Son in agony on the cross because man chose to sin. God, the Son, suffered because man chooses sin. He suffered separation from His Father and He suffered death on the cross.
Does God blame you or me because of the suffering He has endured at the hands of evil people? Of course not! We then should not blame Him for any suffering we endure at the hands of evil people.