Day 616 - February 21 - Good vs. Bad

I've been pondering something all week, trying to get my head around it a bit, and I'm going to use this blog to try and put my thoughts into some sort of cohesive whole. I hope you don't mind too much...

The other day I was catching up on Jacob Kirkendall (his story is here), and I was reading a post by Jacob's older brother, Rob. Rob is in college down south, and he and I seem to think a lot alike. We have the same sort of spin on events, and we both seem to share perspectives, so we've struck up a conversation through our computers. Anyway, I read a post by him wherein he is pondering and questioning a number of things - why these young, vital people are injured so severely, how that honors God, what kind of God is it that allows these sort of things - these kinds of questions. You can link over to his blog posting by clicking here, if you're interested...

Basically, Rob was asking why bad things happen to good people - how many times have we heard that question? That question gets asked by people like you and me, it gets asked by people in pain, it gets asked by intellectuals as a sort of tentative argument against the concept of a "good" god, sort of an "If bad happens to good people, how is that a sign of a loving god?" kind of thing. And over the last twenty months, I've asked those questions over and over again. And I wanted to discuss with y'all my response to him and his questions.

He called the day his brother was injured "evil". He stated that Good Friday wasn't "Good", because that was the day Christ died. I understand that - I've had those same thoughts. But the more I have thought about it and prayed about it, in light of some of the lessons I've learned on this journey, I think those thoughts are wrong. Not wrong as in "morally crooked", but wrong as in "incorrect".

You see, I've come to the conclusion that we, as humans, are fundamentally incapable of effectively judging what is "good" and what is "bad". When we try to decide that, most of us use the same yardstick - how it affects us personally. If it makes us feel better, then it's "good", and if it makes us feel worse, it's "bad". Take a second to apply that thought to your reactions to the things in your own life and you'll see that I'm right. Lose a job? Bad. Have a healthy baby? Good. Eat bad calamari and get sick? Bad. Enjoy a wonderful dinner with friends? Good. Run down a beach and get paralyzed? Bad. Have less people show up in the church meeting? Bad. Have more and more people showing up instead? Good.

You see, all those judgements are based on how they affect us, and that means the judgements are fundamentally flawed, because of the subjective basis of the measuring stick.

Let me give you an example - when Connor was at Valley in San Jose, he was in isolation because of MRSA and psuedamonas. He was cleared of it and it was just one more day before we could quit wearing all the extra protective clothing and he could be in a room with other people, and we were looking forward to being released from these restrictions. That day, the doctors came in and told us they had found references to a third highly infectious bug he had and he'd have to stay in isolation. We were really frustrated. How could this bad thing happen when we had been praying so diligently that he be released from these restrictions? For two days, as they waited for test results, I railed on about how wrong this all was.

But - they moved us down to rehab during that time, and Connor was placed in a single room instead of the group dorm setting the other patients were in. And the day after we moved down, the results came back and he didn't have the third bug at all - but they left us in the single room.

God used the third bug to bless us with privacy and security in a place that has none. And yet I was convinced of the wrongness of the thing from the start.

I learned then that I really don't have a clue when it comes to judging "good" and "bad", because the only measuring stick I have is my own viewpoint, and that is necessarily subjective.

So what does that mean to you, and me, and Jacob and his brother? Well, I don't think God looks at the things that happen to us as either "good" or "bad" - I think He sees them in light of His purpose, which is to move us into conformity, or the likeness, of Christ. I also think He wants us to see them that way, too. I think that God lovingly and compassionately tends to his children like a gardener tends to his garden - pruning, weeding, trimming, fertilizing; all with an eye to the goal of the perfectly designed and laid-out finished product. And that means that although the plant in question at the moment might try to tell you otherwise, the act of pruning an errant branch is no more "bad" than the acts of watering or fertilizing.

If you believe, truly believe, in a loving, compassionate, omnipotent God, the things that come into your life aren't - they cannot be - simply "good" or "bad". They're all happening for a very distinct purpose, along a very distinct plan, guided by a very capable Hand. So when they come along in your lives, seeing them as good or bad is really improper - they aren't good. And they aren't bad.

All they are, all they can be, is glorious. Not in the sense of a bright and shining light, but in the sense that they exist to bring glory to their Maker.

I think God calls us to live our lives seeing that. To get off the human emotional rollercoaster and trust that He really does know what He's got planned.

I'd even go so far as to say that God doesn't see Good Friday as evil - I'd say He sees that day as the moment in time when He cut a living branch from a dying plant, and grafted it into a new Vine - full of hope, and promise, and a glorious future.

Not an evil day at all.

Eric

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