Why God Lets Children Get Cancer – Part II

Dear TEAMS,

My last post to you began the discussion of Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen?  In it, I counseled you to really get at the heart of what your hurting friend is really dealing with.  In the end, they need to know you care.

As for the theological/academic answer to that question, I have found it to be brusque and hard but nonetheless Truth.  God does not need to be defended.  I am reminded of the movie A Few Good Men and the dialogue between characters in the courtroom:

Col. Jessep:   You want answers?

Kaffee:   I think I'm entitled to.

Col. Jessep:   You want answers?

Kaffee:   I want the truth!

Col. Jessep:   You can't handle the truth!

The Truth is that God didn’t mess up this world, we did.  He created us with the ability to make powerful choices, and every choice we make in life either creates life or it doesn’t.  Choose to smoke 20 cigarettes a day, and you’ll probably get lung cancer and die from it.  Even if you’re a nice guy, the life of the party, the best friend of everyone you meet.  God, who created magnificent lung tissue that extracts what we cannot see from the air we take in and a body that then distributes those elements all around without our having any control or knowledge of it, entrusted that lung tissue to us for care.  But somehow, the smoker is absolved of all blame when they didn’t hold up their end of the bargain?

God entrusts a person with financial or property wealth and the person thinks of nothing else but to spend it on his own pleasure, so much so that at the end of life, the surplus is gone.  Three generations later, his young, widowed, great-granddaughter who is the sweetest person anyone has ever met would love to be able to buy a house for her children but cannot, and laughs at her situation, wondering what it was like for this unknown ancestor to have enough to get through a day.  And God is blamed that this good woman is in her situation?

Hundreds of years ago, an ancestor wandered into a place of higher naturally occurring radiation, or was incapable of eating a balanced diet, or was a cussed son-of-a-gun and drank himself silly and caused genetic mutation that was carried and built upon throughout time.  Perhaps even more descendants of his made terrible choices as well, adding to the likelihood of DNA damage.  And a young boy born to lovely parents contracts brain cancer at 12 months.  But all of a sudden, there is no anger at stupid choices that there is no proof of, but anger at a God who there is proof of?

Just what exactly ARE we responsible for, if not our choices?  And when we are a victim to one or more person’s bad choices, why aren’t people really focused with their anger at the people who made the bad choices?  And why is it that the people who generally ask these questions don’t entertain the possibility that there have been thousands upon millions of things that they have been spared from because of the very nature of God that they are now calling into question?  

We cannot have it both ways.  We cannot get angry at God for not stopping the drunk driver that killed the newly graduated, responsible high school student but then dismiss away the times we made the bad common sense choices and believe we “got away with it” because we saw nothing bad happen.  Nothing bad happened because of God’s Mercy, not because you are God and made it that way.  Why is it deciding to have unprotected sex that didn’t result in pregnancy or STD (if only that was all there was to it!) is seen as us dodging a bullet, and not an act of God’s mercy?  

Make no mistake; God set up the world to be a place of beauty and compassion and about Him.  Not because He is a self-absorbed, self-centered SOB, but because He has always been, always is, and always will be.  He spoke one word, and life and our world was created, full of mysteries and wonder and beauty that we cannot fathom with our merely human brains.  He set up the laws we live by, both legal and unspoken.  He is the ultimate authority.  But to blame Him, when He is the originator of all we find good in the world?  Is that even logical?  Again, if it’s God’s fault, do you really believe you are walking through this world completely innocent and absolved of blame?

So, how do you reconcile the fact that children get cancer (or insert whatever you wish that is tragic), through no fault of their own?  Well, truly, I think that is the wrong question.  Just think about it logically:

• Will answering this question keep children from getting cancer ever again?
• Will answering this question heal the child of his/her cancer?
• Will you accept the answer if you don’t like it?

Because the answer to the question of why there is evil in the world is that there just is.  We Christians frame it as “we live in a fallen world.”  I defy you to tell me there is not, because I’ve got a whole lotta tangible proof around me.  I have found as I see more of life that the most successful people in life acknowledge the existence of evil, but choose to focus on the abundance of blessings they DO have.  Hence, the Facebook status that realizes the luxury that the worst thing in your life right now is bad traffic, or that people disagree with you politically.

What I finished in my message to my friend on Facebook: 

All I know is that God weeps with us and cares and is walking beside us. He made us strong, and I believe He delights to see us rely on that gift in these hard, character-refining times. He is more there than we know, protecting us from far more than we can see or imagine, and showing new mercies to us every morning.

Love,