God's Will in the Rain

I want to return to Weatherhead's book, The Will of God, for another post.

I quoted from this book a few weeks ago, using the sentence, "Surely we cannot identify as the will of God something for which a man would be locked up in jail, or put in a criminal lunatic asylum."

I also like this quote: "What sort of God is this, who of his own intention, not through circumstances thrust into life by ignorance, folly or sin, but of divine intention, pours misery undeserved and unhappiness, disappointment and frustration, bereavement, calamity, and ill health of his beloved children, and then asks them to look up through their tears and say, "Thy will be done"?

The short answer is that God does not -- "The intentional will of God means the way in which God pours himself out in goodness, such as the true father longs to do for his son."

Often, though, I think people walk around with the impression that God rains suffering on his children "for their own good." I think it is a mistaken belief that just because God can salvage a blessing from horrible circumstances, that he must have CAUSED the horrible circumstances, just to create the blessing.

If, for instance, I were to take the example that I used in the previous post about this book, the birth injury of our younger son, and say that God caused that to happen so that J would develop determination to overcome challenges, or a stubborn refusal to be limited by his circumstances, then I would be speaking nonsense.

Weatherhead explains that evil does not create goodness -- tribulation and difficult circumstances do not give birth to God-given gifts. It REVEALS them. He states that these same qualities could also be revealed as a response to goodness.

I think that if we come to believe that God punishes us for our mistakes, brings horrible calamity upon us "teach us a lesson" or leaves us in desolation so that suffering can "make us better," then we create a God who is heartless, and who "needs evil to produce good." How could we rely on a God such as this? How could we come to develop a close relationship with a God such as this?

God's intentional will for us is GOOD. In horrible circumstances, he strengthens us, he blesses us with gifts to help us through the storm, and he never leaves us alone. In the cold and in the rain, we can rest assured that GOD LOVES US.

Sometimes we have a twisted idea of what love means, but thankfully, God does not.

Image: Butterfly on flowers outside of St. James Place this evening.