Despite my tendency to procrastinate, I would like to respond to some fairly recent articles published by the Red Deer Advocate on the religion page, the first of which appeared Saturday, Aug. 16 entitled Wrestling with disaster, suicide and god. (Re. the lower case “g”: indicative that whoever wrote it did not ascribe deity status to God, or a typo?)
The author of the article obviously does consider God deity, providing accurate defense of Him on many counts.
However, I found it devoid of any mention of the Bible, generally recognized as God’s Holy Spirit-Inspired Word and therefore worth paying attention to.
No reference was made to the free-will of mankind, to whom God clearly gave dominion over the earth in Genesis 1.
Nor was there any reference to the information in Genesis 3 indicating that rather than being thankful to God for all the blessings they were free to enjoy in the Garden, Adam and Eve (to whom we are all ultimately related) immediately made use of their freedom of choice to disobey God, thus transferring dominion to Satan, later referred to in the Gospel of John 12:31 as “The Prince of this world.”
Sadly, man’s willful independence from God has exponentially increased under the influence of Satan, and the world is increasingly reflecting it. God ultimately sent a remedy in the person of Jesus, and “Whosoever will may come,” but not recognizing that we will either be ruled by God or Satan, (largely because of the latter’s deceptions), the tendency toward attempting to be our own ‘gods’ prevails!
God is not the author of evil disasters such as suicide and disease — Satan is. And his ability to deceive and remain hidden make our very evident God (nature reveals His presence every day) appear to be responsible for it all!
Satan will oppress to the point of torment, but if we turn toward God His Love will enable us to choose freedom.
Suicide, motivated by feelings of futility, worthlessness and hopelessness, may be a way to escape the pain of dealing with Satan-oppressed living, more than a desire to die.
Many of today’s disasters are directly related to man’s love of money and rejection of God and family and community responsibilities, which have negatively affected our culture.
I won’t be the first to warn that money will do us absolutely no good if we carry on polluting the earth with garbage and plastic residue and continue the practice of fracking the earth’s structure to secure more oil. (A practice long suspected of precipitating earthquakes.)
Not to mention the ongoing destruction of many lives and families through abortion, divorce and dog-eat-dog lifestyle standards.
Don’t blame God. Part of our ‘dominion’ mandate is to carry out lives that are at the very least benign and at best beneficial to others.
God is Good. He created the world and all that is in it. To reject Him and His values will only ultimately bring about our own downfall.
Jeanette McKenzie
Red Deer