This is the message from the New Life Center in Cedar Grove, WV, a small community just outside of Charleston, the capitol of our humble little state.  Evidently, some folks are offended by the display, here’s the scoop from the Charleston Gazette:  Satan hates a Kanawha County church, and the church has a billboard that says so.

Now personally, I’m not offended by the message.  I would be honored for the Devil to count me and my congregation as an enemy, after all… the Devil is bad.  A radical message to put out?  Maybe, but Jesus was pretty radical with the messages He put out too.  So am I supporting this church?  Well, as a Christian who tries to live by the precepts of the New Testament, one of which says “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities (Romans 13:1),” I feel obligated not to support this group’s advertisement.  You see as one who is asked by God to obey the laws laid down by the civil authorities of the day, I cannot support the New Life Center’s sign, due to this civil rule:

WV Code: §46A-6-102. Definitions (M) The act, use or employment by any person of any deception, fraud, false pretense, false promise or misrepresentation, or the concealment, suppression or omission of any material fact with intent that others rely upon such concealment, suppression or omission, in connection with the sale or advertisement of any goods or services…

So as a citizen of WV, I can’t support such false advertising tactics as this church is using ;)

Maybe I could buy the next billboard down the road and put something like this up:

Praying for the true enemies of Satan everywhere,

In the first article in this little series (this being the third), I began the subject of ‘why do bad things happen to good people’ by speaking of the recent death of Jim Shaw.  I then went on to say that something like this is most certainly not a part of God’s plan.  I meant that, and I believe that, but I would like to now append a caveat. 

I was looking at some of my brethrens’ blogs on a popular social blogging site and ran across the site of a family member of brother shaw’s.  In a post speaking of the tragedy, she had posted the lyrics of a song which says “… and it surely is a part of God’s great plan.”   Well, that seems to go right against what I said earlier, but in reality it does not.  I believe that both statements are true, so stick with me and I’ll attempt to explain how this seeming contradiction coexists.

Here is the first statement that I believe is fact:

God is good (psalm 100:5) and loves decency and order (1 Cor 14:40). 

And here is the second:

Murder is not good (Exo. 20:13; Rev. 21:8; etc.).  

If God is good and murder is not, then God cannot use murder as part of His plan.  (Note:  Murder is separate and apart from the death penalty, as these are not murdered out of any sinful intent, but are ‘deserving of death’ due to civil crimes, see Acts 25:11; Romans 13:4)

Now here is the third statement that I believe does make this part of God’s plan. 

God is there to help us work things out that He did not have in store for us.  Let’s look at Romans 8:28:

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

To me, this little verse sums up what God is all about.  He wants and desires good for us… However there is a great swarm of chaos, disorder and evil in this world (the leviathan! see the two prior parts of this series…) led by the Devil who ‘walks about seeking whom he may devour’ (1 Peter 5:8).  God cannot shelter us from this great beast at all times, for the leviathan is made up of folks like you and me, free agents who can choose meekness or murder at our own discretion and whim.  So where is God when the leviathan strikes?  When murder takes a loved one or a drunk driver paralyzes a healthy young person?  He is there, and He is just as angry about it as we are and He is ready to help.  He is ready to begin mending the rip in the fabric of our lives and push us ahead in His plan for us to have goodness and decency in our lives. 

David saw Him there, even when David was immersed in the deepest, murkiest shadow.  This is the great theme of the beautiful and oft quoted, Psalm 23.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me…   Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the LORD Forever.” (psalms 23:4,6)

So it is not God’s desire for us to go through torment and grief and anguish and heartache, but He knows that in a world filled with humans able to choose evil, its going to happen.  But God does not abandon us in these times, he is right there, he follows us through the shadow.  “Goodness and mercy shall follow me,” says David.  While evil may touch us for a time, God is following close behind to lend a hand, to restore goodness, and to get us back on track. 

I love the idea that God is working out everything for my good (according to Rom 8:28).  Evil comes in, takes me down a notch, but it can’t keep me down, because somehow, God is working to make sure that that little glitch ends up working towards my good.  It is almost laughable that the Devil, the Leviathan, the evil mindset of man, whatever it is cannot truly keep us down.  He tried to get Job down, but Job’s latter end was better than ever! (Job 42:12).  He tried to take Jesus down, but while he succeeded in bruising Jesus’ heel, Jesus bruised the Devil’s head (Gen 3:15)!  It’s almost like watching Wile E. Coyote trying to annihilate the roadrunner time and time again and being outwitted at every turn.

God is working it out for your good folks!  Whatever your trial is, don’t give up, God isn’t punishing you, He is there to help you… but you have to do your part too!   What was Job’s first step for recovering from a depth of loss and pain that we can scarcely imagine?    “Gird up now thy loins like a man,” says the KJV or, “Now prepare yourself like a man,” in the NKJV.   To paraphrase in the modern JW translation, “Job, its time for you to get up, stop being a wuss, and face this thing head on!”

Are we ready to do that?  It is easy to blame God, go into an eternal deppression, and end up losing our everlasting soul.  Endgame:  Satan +1.  It is MUCH harder to snap out of the feeling-sorry-for-ourself-ness (allowing for a reasonable amount of grieving and recovery of course), get back up, and face the world and wait for God to lead us back into the good life. In this scenario, however, the endgame is much more pleasant:  An eternity of good with an unbreachable gulf betwixt you and anything that could possibly cause you sorrow.

So:  Evil - NOT God’s plan…  Getting you back on track afterwards - God’s plan

Know that if you’re out there suffering right now, stop blaming God and ask Him to help.  Tell Him you want His goodness in your life again and you’re willing to do your part to get up and get out there and find some good as well.  If you trust in God and WAIT for His plan to come through… things are gonna get easier.  Cause the ‘latter end’ for those who love God…  Its all good.

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In a recent article titled, “Why do some people resist science?”, psychologists Paul Bloom and Deena Weisberg grope for some psychological problem to explain…. me.  A grown-up-who-ought-to-know-better still believing that things have purpose… kinda pitiful, ain’t I?   Here is an excerpt from their article that will explain the title of my post:

…One significant bias is that children naturally see the world in terms of design and purpose. For instance, four year-olds insist that everything has a purpose, including lions (”to go in the zoo”) and clouds (”for raining”), a propensity that Deborah Kelemen has dubbed “promiscuous teleology.” Additionally, when asked about the origin of animals and people, children spontaneously tend to provide and to prefer creationist explanations.

A ’significant bias’?  You have got to be kidding me.  In a world of biases, at least Christians like me admit our bias upfront, that bias being, “God said it and I believe it.”  But am I supposed to believe that these two scientists, while talking about those with a bias towards creationism have no bias of their own?  Why would they have entered into such a study in the first place, I wonder?  I am willing to stake a picture of Ronny Wade with an afro (a priceless posession), that if these two were intellectually honest, they would answer that, in their minds, the only explanation for ‘promiscuous teleology’ among those who ‘prefer creationist explanations’ is some dimwitted childhood psychological phenomenon that we have failed to grow out of… a significant bias, if you ask me.

Now come on everyone, let us hold hands, sing Kumbaya, and “persuade children and adults that the institute of science is, for the most part, worthy of trust (see the last sentence of their article).”  I actually agree with that statement, it is just the activist scientists out to prove evolution is 100% true and religion is a mental disorder that I have a problem with.  Phooey.

Sticking with my pathetic 4-year-old worldview in which things have purpose,

/Here is the convenience-age explanation of what this article is about, written in text-message-ese and graphics for those that can only digest information in tiny misspelled chunks.  (I strive to cater to a wide audience)

//I have not forgotten the series on ‘why bad things happen to good people’ this article just distracted me, must be that 4-year-old ADHD that I also haven’t grown out of…

So God speaks.  But His answer is not the account of sin that Job asked for… it is quite different.  First of all, God says, “Gird thyself up like a man.” (Job 38:3).  This pretty well shatters the effiminate image of a God who is all soft words and loving gestures.  God is love, no doubt, but God loves masculinity as well and at this point in time, Job needed to muster up every bit of manhood he could scrape together because he was about to get a ‘talking to’ of Jehovic proportion.  But enough of that aside (for now).

Next His answer takes a turn. [vastly condensed paraphrase of Job 38:4 - 39:30] “Tell me Job. How does this old world work? How is it that I make the sun come out each day? How is it that I formed the ocean and made its boundaries? Take me to the place where darkness lives. Show me the place where the snow and hail are stored!  Where are you when the wild animals are in labor?  Where are you when the lion cubs are hungry?  How would you have done it?  Where would you start?  ANSWER!”

I imagine Job was pretty humbled by this reminder of God’s majesty… but… How is this an answer to Job’s question of why he deserves to suffer? It is not.  Neither is this an example of God bullying Job with grandstanding in order to skirt the issue. God is simply showing Job what a stupid and meaningless question this is. That sounds harsh but it is true. Look at the wonders of the world that I HAVE MADE Job, and you expect to understand why you suffer?  Do you understand anything about how this world works, and yet you think you can puzzle out why good people have to suffer?  It is a laughable prospect when put in this perspective.

His answer continues in a way that is again unexpected… Job 40:8-14.

Would you annul my judgement [to allow good people to suffer]? Then YOU try it Job. You try to bring justice about in just the right ways, you bring disaster to the unrighteous and prosperity to the righteous without any muddling of the two… You make sure and give everyone just what they deserve and make everybody happy… go ahead Job, just try it. (anyone seen Bruce Almighty? This makes me think of the scene where he decides to make everyone happy by answering ‘YES’ to all prayers and the result is that millions of people won the lottery and they all ended up with a buck or two…)

And finally, God reveals the painful truth about chaos. Even He cannot harness it at every turn. Read Job 41:1-3. The Leviathan. Real or mythological I am not qualified to say of a certainty, but I have my theory.  We can safely say that in stories of Job’s time and throughout mythological tales, the Leviathan is used to denote chaos and disorder. I believe God’s speech is revealing some truths about the power of chaos through the figure of leviathan.

Chaos is the Devil’s territory, God loves order and walking orderly is part of obeying Him! (1 Corinthians 14:40)  But men have a choice whether they want to obey God or not.  So many have chosen the Devil’s path that Leviathan has amassed a great power.  Look at Job 41:9-11. No hope of overcoming the beast, God says! I think this includes God Himself, He is saying, “Who is mightier than I? But even I must reveal to you this:

Job 41:12-17.  “I will not conceal his limbs, His mighty power, or his graceful proportions.   Who can remove his outer coat? Who can approach him with a double bridle?   Who can open the doors of his face, With his terrible teeth all around?   His rows of scales are [his] pride, Shut up tightly as with a seal;   One is so near another That no air can come between them;   They are joined one to another, They stick together and cannot be parted.

“…I will not conceal what a mighty foe he is in fact:”

 Job 41:33,34.  On earth there is nothing like him, Which is made without fear.   34 He beholds every high [thing;] He [is] king over all the children of pride.”

The great beast of chaos and disorder has no fear. He beholds every high (good, decent) thing (including God) as nothing and is king over the proud… and poor Job, he played right into his beastly hands in jumbling up words against God without an ounce of understanding.  (as an aside, I do believe God can and will destroy this great beast, but not without destroying the earth as well [2 Peter 3:10] and until that time, under the power of ‘leviathan’ the world will wax worse and worse [2 Timothy 3:13])

So, why do we need God, when He does not have the power to stop chaos from entering into the lives of His very own children? Because He is the only hope among chaos. In the midst of chaos He is the order. A lighthouse in the storm… not taking the rocks away, but striving to guide us around them.

From the very beginning, God has tried to arrange the world away from chaos! See Genesis 1:1,2.  He sought to seperate out the light from the dark, the sea from the land, to give shape to the formless, sense to the senseless… He still does the same today. Why does suffering exist? Because chaos has always existed, sin opened the doors to allow the devil to lead us into chaos through our own choices, and now we all have to suffer through trials and tribulations whether we’re good people or not. There IS such a thing as bad luck. But there is a saying that, “we can make our own luck”. While I don’t necessarily agree with this, God has given us an escape from the disorder and the ‘bad luck’ if we choose to accept His way.

At a peak time of chaos and corruption. God sent His son. A light in the darkness. John 3:16-21. By coming into His light, we can find order, we can see clearly our own deeds and learn how to order them, to be righteous to live in the light.  So will you be part of the light, leading men to peace and order, or will you become part of the great beast, Leviathan, destroying God’s work and bringing havoc into the lives you touch.  The choice is yours.

Perhaps I’ll write more on this topic, as there is plenty more to say.  Anyone have any thoughts on the subject?  Let’s talk about it!

Trying to write a decent and orderly blog, amongst the chaos of the internet,

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What sense does it make that the person who robbed him had to kill him?  Surely if they could overpower him to take his life, they could have easily overpowered him and restrained him instead, leaving him hurt and frightened, surely, but leaving him alive… and yet the attacker made the choice to take another man’s life, altering the lives of many, shattering our feeling of safety, perhaps shaking our faith a little too?  Or a lot, even…

If you are trying to puzzle out what sense this makes and what part it plays in God’s plan, I have some advice for you.  Don’t.  There is a mistaken belief out there that every little thing that happens is part of God’s plan and I for one do not buy it.   Read on –>

What sort of God writes into His plan the death of a faithful old saint in such a horrific manner?  How can we call it God’s will when a child is struck and killed by a drunk driver or a father is taken by cancer leaving his family broke, broken and providerless…  I must tell you folks, If my father, mother, grandpa, etc, had been killed in such a way when I was young and I was told that, “Its all part of God’s plan” (as is often heard in an attempt to comfort the grieving) this would not kindle within my soul a love for God but would make me bitter towards such a barbaric deity.  Even as an adult, if the bible told me that such things where God’s doing, I would be hard-pressed to overcome the feelings of repulsion… but luckily, I don’t have to.

When our lives are shaken by the chaos and disorder of the evil that pervades this world, we need to know that this is not God exercising revenge upon us for some sin we have comitted and it is not God simply throwing rocks at us because He can.  This all boils down to an age old question that pops into our minds often as we go through this world.  Why do bad things happen to good people?  The reason that this is an age old question is because it is a very hard one to answer.  But I believe the answer (or as close to an answer as we can get with our human minds) lies within the poetic language of the book of Job.

In the book of Job, I believe we have a representation of ourselves.  I am Job.  I battle to make life good for myself and my family, I zealously persue righteousness… and yet very often, bad things happen to me and I have to be honest with you… it really makes me mad.  Job found a disturbing attitude lurking within himself when tragedy came his way.  It was the attitude of, “God! I know you’re up there enjoying this aren’t you!  You’re just a big ol’ bully underneath it all!”  (See Job 9:11-12) You are Job too, perhaps…

Or maybe you are one of the misguided souls.  Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar.  Great friends… until they open their mouths.  They are good intentioned and believe themselves to be righteous (in fact, they believe themselves more righteous than Job because he is being punished and they are not… and we often have this feeling ourselves, no matter how misguided… perhaps one of my readers of higher intellect than I will be able to recall the name of the psychological phenomenon where you have a feeling of elation in the wake of someone elses tragedy because it happened to them and not to you…) but they are just plain wrong and in their attempt to comfort and bring understanding to Job, they instead run him over with a Mack truck (figuratively of course), much like those at the bedside of a victim of some terrible circumstance who tries to comfort them by saying ‘it must be part of God’s plan.’  “If so,” the injured one ought to be thinking, “I don’t want to be part of His plan anymore.”

Or maybe you are Elihu.  If you are, know that I thank God for people like you.  Elihu who could see the bigger picture.  Elihu condemns the speech of both Job and the three friends and asks if they truly waited for God to speak or did they just jump in and ‘multiply words’ against God without knowledge? He implies that even if it were true that Job was righteous and did not deserve this suffering, that he has now become a sinner in putting his righteousness above God’s own and calling God unjust. (Do we compound our sin in trials instead of looking for God to comfort and strengthen us?)

Or a darker allusion… Perhaps you are Leviathan.  An untameable beast that wields destruction, chaos, and disorder as its weapons of choice.  The man who attacked Jim Shaw was part of Leviathan, ripping through the fabric of decency and order put in place by God, and choosing instead to work evil, are you part of the problem?  Leviathan is not an easy beast to control… even for a powerful and loving God who is attempting to thwart Leviathan and work every thing out to the good of His children (Rom. 8:28)

God makes up the last cast member in the book of Job and the things he has to say are well worth making note of and doing a little deep thinking on.  I know, I know… deep thinking is not my strong suit… but I’m going to attempt it… another day… in another post.

Until then, know that God loves decency and order, and has no love for the madness of this world, a world that looks less and less attractive each day to those who love Him and know of the place He has prepared for us.

Love and prayers to the Shaw family, and other victims of the evil in this world,