Comfort in God

The writer over The Devil is in Dem Books blog recently offered some salient points about what it would take nonbelievers to believe in God. Many of us nonbelievers agree that, for starters, we would like to see an amputee’s arm grow back. After contemplating it further, he thought to flip the question on his Christian interlocutors and ask: 

Do you believe that God could ever forsake you? What would that look like? Can you describe for me any scenario at all which would constitute God forsaking you? (bold in the original post)

Different Christians would likely answer this in different ways, depending on the denomination. “Once-saved-always-saved” Southern Baptists would probably say that as long as the person remains faithful to Christ, God will never abandon them, while other Christians would say that blasphemy is a bad enough offense to get the celestial ban-hammer. Still others might say that if a believer ventures far enough into sin and depravity — however that’s defined — there is a point at which (that point never being defined either) God will remove his protective hand and allow the person to go her own way. This latter notion crops up periodically whenever a major disaster hits a place like Haiti or Louisiana. Some evangelicals, like the late Jerry Falwell, will claim that God has abandoned a whole group of people similar to Sodom and Gomorrah. In some Christian circles, such an abandonment can take place on the personal level.

One of the points with which the blogger closes is given that God’s will and omnibenevolence is infallible, he could, in theory, abandon a Christian independent of any action the believer might take simply because that’s his will. Thus, all actions by God can be excused:

All criticisms of the character of the Christian God have been categorically disallowed because your starting point asserts that all he does must be good, must be loving. Since that is your starting point, your frame of reference, absolutely anything and everything which happens must be interpreted as God being faithful to those whom he loves. No matter how awful the situation, it’s God being good to you. Devastating hurricane? God is good. Child has cancer? God is good. Spouse dies in a car wreck? God is good. Minister molests several church members? People are bad but God is good. Congratulations, you have constructed a framework that necessarily precludes any criticism of God. He cannot be unfaithful to you. You have logically disallowed it.

I have thought about this problem often, and this, I think, provides yet another powerful argument against the kind of omniscient, all-loving God of the Bible. If God is the author of morality, and whatever his whims command can be categorically praised as “good,” no matter how heinous they may appear to us, then pretty much anything goes, and Christians are left worshiping a god who, if he in indeed in control, has willed that children suffer and die from bone cancer and millions perish in hurricanes and floods.

Thus, from a nonbeliever’s perspective, it’s disconcerting to hear about people taking comfort in God’s will for their lives and their family’s lives, when his “will” may include nearly unbearable suffering for some members of the family and abundant luck and fortune for others. The blogger rightly called the notion of God being faithful a “meaningless phrase:”

It really should bring little or no comfort when you think about it. Just ask the character of Job from the Old Testament. This concept of God was built in just such a way that no matter what happens, God is above reproach.

Read more here: The Devil is in Dem Books: Why God Cannot Forsake You.