First off, what is “bad”……Bad is something that makes me unhappy right now. If you ask a child who has just received his DPT shot to describe it, he would say it was a bad thing. He is not necessarily wrong. He is just speaking from a limited, short term, perspective.

Bad things happen. They happen all of the time. They happen to good people. I can’t justify them. I can’t always assign blame for them. It’s not fair. I can’t control them. All I can control is my reaction to them.

The most important outcome when bad things happen to me, and to you, is that the feelings that follow can crowd out the love that we need to give to God and others.

In the worst case, our natural and normal love can turn into anger. Anger at the people we should be loving is sad. Anger at God is a tragedy. It is a tragedy because it is purely self destructive. Do you think that your anger with God does him any real harm? It certainly harms you. Vengeance against the creator of the universe is self defeating………even if you are right……. and you aren’t.

I have struggled with the book of Job for a long time. Job was a good man, certainly better than me. God turned Satan loose on him and this wrecked Job’s life. What follows is about 40 chapters where Job and his friends try unsuccessfully to explain. Then, there is a conversation between Job and God. The gist of it is: “God is big and we are tiny. Things are going to happen that we will never understand.” Some of them will be good and some will be unspeakably bad. I believe that God has a purpose behind it all. Just like the kid’s DPT shot, the bad things serve a greater purpose that is beyond our immediate understanding. We need to be patient in our pain and this is very hard. In our pain we have to fall back on rules #1 & 2…….

LOVE GOD…….. LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR.

My oldest son Ryan lived a life that was rough. He spent many years in various forms of rebellion. Then he turned his life around. He had a daughter, he got baptised, he turned the corner……..and a few months later he died. How could God do this to Ryan? How could God do this to ME? I don’t understand any more than Job did………any more than the kid leaving the doctor’s office.

I believe that God has a plan that is larger than what I can understand. Maybe, there was something waiting for Ryan that God wanted to spare him from. Maybe God said, “Today, Ryan is mine. Tomorrow he may not be”. I believe that someday Ryan and I will sit down in paradise over a cup of coffee and that we will both understand. I bet that the coffee will be fabulous.

When bad things happen, we often ask the wrong question. We ask “Where did this bad thing come from?” Instead we should ask “Where is this bad thing going?” I believe that God is at work, even in the bad times, and that my current “bad thing” is working toward something good…………..even if I can’t see it or understand it from where I’m standing right now.

I have to believe that God knows what he is doing.

Ok, maybe despise is a bit strong. Think of the word Christian and jot down the first few adjectives that come to mind. If your list is primarily negative then it’s fair to say that you dislike Christians at the very least. Often, people who dislike, or even despise Christians do so because of experiences with Christians in their past.

Perhaps, You knew a Christian who was judgemental, who acted as though they were better than you, who implied that you were going straight to hell. Maybe they practiced a brand of Christianity that was an exercise in pain. Maybe they were legalistic, constantly quoting rules from the Bible. Maybe they handed you a booklet saying that Catholics are not Christians. Maybe they said that the problems that you face are a punishment from God because of something that you did……or your grandfather did. Maybe the way that they expressed their faith was just plain wierd. Once a Christian doggedly tried to save me in a public restroom. He tried to grill me about my faith to see if it met his standards……to see if I was following enough of his rules. (I sure hope he’s not watching the gate when I arrive). There are a lot of different ways to be a Christian. In a word…….it’s a big tent. Some do it very well……… others, not so much.

So……… if you are going to judge Christians, please don’t base your judgement on people who are doing it badly. Judge based on somebody who is doing it well…….somebody like Billy Graham or Mother Teresa. They are much closer to the heart of Christianity than the guy who acts pious or judgemental and then mistreats you.

Here are some simple tests to rate a Christian:

Are they acting out of love………for you?

Do they radiate joy?

If a Christian you meet fails these two tests, then don’t use them as an example of Christianity………… find a better model.

If you dislike Christians because of an experience in your past, maybe the picture of Christians that you are lugging around is inaccurate. Maybe you were exposed to somebody who just wasn’t doing it well……. and there are plenty of them. There is a very easy way to experience Christianity done well. Go to the source.

Get a copy of the bible that has the words that Christ spoke in red. Just read the red words. It won’t take long. Then you will see my faith as it was intended to be.

You will find that it is very hard to dislike the speaker.

I once dated a girl. She was really nice. She was wise, honest, kind, funny……..I could go on. The only trouble was that she was a serious, committed Christian………..and I wasn’t.

One day she asked me, “What are you afraid of……… that God will ask you to do something that you don’t want to do? ”

She hit the nail on the head. I was terrified, because I had plans for my life……and I realized that God had plans too. I knew that God’s plans trumped mine. I knew that getting tangled up with God might interfere with my plans. (What if he sent me to Africa?) I realized that if I was going to be the center of my universe……..if I was going to get what I wanted……….then there was no room for God. In a word, I knew that God is disruptive…..and I needed to get him out of my way.

I was, at my core, a secular humanist/Darwinist.

I finally broke it off……..because I could see that her Christianity might interfere with my plans for my life.  At the time my response to her made perfect sense. It still would……if I could just get rid of this disruptive God.

Enter Darwinism………if the universe is a giant biochemical accident, then there is no need for a creator……..no need for God. I can shove him aside and take over. In effect,  I can use Darwinism to kill God and then I can take over. This is the heart of secular humanism.

There it is. We can’t tolerate anybody else being in charge. So we use Darwinism and evolution to kill the creator. With no creator, we are the highest life form in the universe. We get to run things…….we are in charge. I think that this is the crux of the problem for the unchurched…… for the secular humanist/Darwinist. We are smart……. the smartest creatures to ever exist. We believe that we should be in charge. We make plans to further our goals. Our plans must be the best, because we are the smartest creatures alive.

This is great………. as long as Darwin was correct.

But, not so great…………. if Darwin was wrong…….if there is a more intelligent being out there……..if there is a creator.

The problem is that God is smarter, not to mention kinder and more generous than we are……. the problem is that God has a plan for us that is better than our own. We just can’t see all of the outcomes.

What I know now, is that God’s plan is a plan for my well being…….. and the well being of those around me. In order to profit from God’s plan, I have to step a way from the center. I have to put God……. and his plan……… in the center. My ego, my hubris must take a back seat.

In a way, this is the most important decision of your life……Darwin’s accident………..or God’s intelligent design.

In his novel, “Slaughterhouse Five”, Kurt Vonnegut describes the end of the world. (A great book BTW).

A Tralfamadorian test pilot panics, pushes the wrong button and the universe vaporizes….not just earth……. the entire universe. As a hypothetical, imagine that this actually happens. There is nothing left but an endless cloud of subatomic particles, nothing larger than a proton. Visualize this cloud for a minute……….minute subatomic particles floating in a black sea of nothing for as far as you can imagine. This is essentially what the scientists tell us existed right after the “big bang”.

Now, ask yourself this question:

“After the Tralfamadorian disaster, do you believe that this cloud of subatomic particles, floating in an endless sea of nothing, will spontaneously reconstitute the earth and everything in it just as it is today……all by itself…..purely by random accident.” Remember……..we are talking about the real world, not a theoretical construct.

Choose one answer:

YES
NO
IT’S POSSIBLE BUT IMPROBABLE

If you answered YES, then you are a secular humanist/Darwinist.

If you answered NO, then you are a creationist.

If you answered POSSIBLE BUT IMPROBABLE, then things get complicated. You are exploring the boundary between improbable and impossible. In the real world, there is no clear line. What is theoretically possible may be practically impossible. The theoretical world and the real world are often not the same.

So, we go to the next question:

What is the probability that the universe and our earth will spontaneously reconstite themselves after the Tralfamadorian disaster?

1 chance in 10
1 chance in 100
1 chance in 1,000
1 chance in a million
1 chance in 10 to the 50th power.

As you can see, you reach a point where improbable effectively becomes impossible. Some statisticians use 10 to the 50th power (10 with 50 zeroes). This is great theory……..but 10 to the 50th is hard to apply in real life.

I find the Tom Clancy analysis more useful. In his book “Patriot Games”, a spy tells his boss something (and I’m paraphrasing). The boss says “how confident are you?” The spy says “I’m not absolutely sure”. The boss says, “nothing is absolutely for certain…… but, are you sure enough?” By that the boss means “are you sure enough to act based on the information?” This is probability made practical.

So……….. are you sure enough that the universe will spontaneously regenerate itself after the Tralfamadorian disaster to reject the possibility of an intelligent creator?

Are you sure enough to reject the possibility of paradise………of hell?

This week’s post is the second half of a 2 part series. If you haven’t read “plan a”, go back and read last week’s post.

Have you ever had this conversation?

Turn right in 100 yards
Uh huh

Turn right in 50 yards
Uh huh

Turn right now
Nah

Make a u-turn at 48th street
Yeah

Make a u-turn at 46th street
I don’t think so

Make a u-turn at 44th street
Where’s the volume control?

Make a u-turn at 42nd street
Can somebody shut her up!

Make a u-turn at 40th street
#@!%&^*

Recalculating

I don’t claim to know whether God knew that we were going to mess things up from the start or whether he was surprised by our behavior. But, if you compare the old testament with the new testament, it is pretty clear that God has done some “recalculating” in order to deal with the reality of our situation.

I call this plan b.

The reality of our current situation is that God had a plan for us that was ideal (the garden of Eden……or ….. plan a). Unfortunately, we had other ideas that have resulted in the messed up world that we live in today. We try hard to fix things…… but they just keep getting worse. I try to extrapolate our current path into the future and I have to say that I’m not optimistic. I generally avoid this topic with my kids……. but they tell me that my generation has wrecked things for them. They will have to clean up our (that is the baby boomer’s) mess……or at least try to. The reality is that they probably won’t do any better at it than we did.

How has God handled our behavior? What is God to do with rebellious children? He has a problem strangely familiar to any parent of teens.  From my limited perspective, he has a few options.

1. Burn it down and start all over.
2. Compromise himself….. that is……lower himself to our level.
3. Find a “workaround”…….sort of a detour that leaves the mess in place but allows us to ultimately get to where he…… and we want to be.

Christianity teaches that God chose option 3…… and I’m glad he did. Option 1, the cosmic “redo”, and option 2, a God who behaves as badly as we do, are not very appealing.

So what does option 3…….. “plan b” …….look like?

God clarifies and simplifies the rules:

He sent a mentor, Christ, who teaches “love God and love your fellow man”. Hard to argue with that.

Christ takes possession of all of the wrong that we have done, that we are doing, and that we will do.  A pretty sweet deal.

I don’t know how this works. It seems to be a deal between Christ and his Father. But, the result is that…… from God’s point of view……. we are made clean.  It almost feels like a trick……….. but if it’s good enough for God………it’s good enough for me.

There is a condition.

We have to humble ourselves, recognize Christ’s gift, and ask for it.

Plan b is amazingly simple………. and yet hard. We are not by nature humble creatures. We believe that we are the center of it all…… and we don’t want to give that up…. even in the face of overwhelming evidence that we have messed it all up. Our inability to step away from the center of the universe and to humble ourselves before the creator……. that is to say……..our arrogance ……….is all that stands between us and the destiny that we were created for.