Christian Atheist: He's Not Fair

As part of our Christian Atheist series, we've talked about not knowing God, being ashamed of your past/not being sure that God loves you, and pursuing happiness at any cost. This week, we're talking about when you believe in God, but think that He's not fair.

(Source)

Is God always fair? In what ways? I'm not thinking in the sense of having a car to drive or enough money to buy a candy bar, I'm going a little deeper than that.

I have a few examples:

1. Job. There is a great summary of the book of Job here, or you can read it here. Basically, God and Satan talk, and God lets Satan take everything away from Job that God gave him, just to see if Job would still believe in God.
2. Paula Merrill, one of our youth leaders, was diagnosed with Thyroid Cancer 2 weeks after graduating college and 3 months before getting married.
3. Katie Moore, Josh Merrill's sister, was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer (one of the more deadly cancers) 4 months after giving birth to her first child.
4. Shane Billings, Amy Hogue's brother, stepped on an IED on a volunteer mission for the Marines, and has been struggling through surgeries to save his foot.

 ¹ As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. ² His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  ³ “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.
~John 9:1-3 (NIV)

²⁴ A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.” ²⁵ He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”
~John 9:24-25 (NIV)

There are three facts:

1. We don't deserve good things
2. Good things happen to bad people (us)
3. God is present in your pain

Just because these bad things are happening, it does not mean that we are alone in the event. God is with us through the pain, whether we realize it or not. The reason that we have to experience pain in our lives is so that we can show the works of God, as the first passage says. In the story of Job, Job never stopped believing in God, and he got his possessions back. In the story of Paula, after surgery and one treatment, she is basically cured. In the story of Katie, after surgery, the doctors found that her situation is very unique, leading her to be virtually cured. Shane's story is currently in progress, but the IED did not full explode, and rain let the mud take most of the impact. In each of these stories, there was a tremendous amount of pain that each individual experienced, but God was present at each step.

It's very hard to understand, but luckily, we don't have to! All that we need to know, like the blind man, is that we were sick, and He healed us.

We started the evening with singing the song below during music. It's a great songs showing that the bad things that happen to us are from God too, and if that's how we find God, maybe it's not the worst thing in the world.