You Can't Blame God for Everything

September 25, 2024

Wednesday

Many people don't believe in the attributes of God. They can't reconcile God's holiness and sovereignty and the presence of sin. If God is all powerful and is in charge of the universe, He must either be very good but not holy or He isn't in charge. You will hear this in many ways by those who think they have proved the non-existence of God by openly opposing Him. They will say, "If God is real, then He should strike me dead because I curse His name." (Those words were actually hard for me to type.) They think that He will immediately bring retribution for sin if He exists. Think about it; if that were true where would any of us be?

Some will bring up the fact that there are two stories in the Bible that contradict who actually caused evil. 

2 Samuel 24:1 (NASB 2020) ¹ Now the anger of the Lord burned against Israel again, and He incited David against them to say, “Go, count Israel and Judah.”

1 Chronicles 21:1 (NASB 2020)¹ Then Satan stood up against Israel and incited David to count Israel.

These are telling the same story, yet one has God inciting David to number Israel and the other has Satan inciting David. This actually gives us clear insight (no pun intended) into how evil enters in. 

Many times we can see that God is addressed when He apparently had nothing to do with the tragedy that befalls those in the Bible. They come to Him because He has allowed it to happen. While God can never act evilly, He certainly can be said to have turned His face away from people. Each time He does, evil enters in.

God has never forced us out of an evil act. We are able to commit all sorts of evil when we want to. We run from Him. We escape from His day-to-day grace and do what we should never have done. He does not stop us. Could it be said that God caused us to sin because He let sin enter in? That's what a lot of people want to say. God, it is your fault because you didn't stop me. It is a weak argument but people still make it.

The Lord's Prayer certainly addresses this. It says, "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." Now why would it say this when we know that God will never tempt us into evil? In this prayer we are recognizing our own tendency to sin if we do not seek His face. We can easily turn toward sin and God will let us because He has removed Himself from our sin.

This is akin to blaming the chaos in the classroom on the teacher who left the room. Yes, it wouldn't have happened if he or she remained in the room but you can hardly blame the teacher for the students' rowdiness. It was actually in them before the teacher left.

So, God certainly allows evil by removing Himself. Satan uses this opportunity to act. I am just not one to blame God for this.