Quote Two: Where is God?

Quote number two reflection under way. Here is my second quote I have found reading A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis:

When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be--or so it feels--welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.

Only on page nine, when I first read this all I could say was a big, fat, gigantic WOW.

JUST WOW.

Not simply because I could relate to what Lewis was saying, but because he writes in such a way that I have not found in any author grief-counsel authors. He is abruptly honest, doesn't sugar-coat the situation and doesn't make grief something it's not. Grief sucks.

Lewis just doesn't take into consideration when he wrote the book, but also the question: "Where is God through all of this?" And I totally agree. God shouldn't be taken off the hook by the weak argument that He gave us free will. According to Christian theology He is still God, still all-loving and all-powerful. He still has a chance to stop our suffering, but chooses not to.

Before all of this happened, when I found out the news that Jake had physically left my life here on earth, I had been extremely spiritual and in-tune with God. I prayed everyday, sometimes more and wrote in my journal specifically telling God about my day and trying to get closer to him. My intentions were good, pure and holy.

At that time I felt welcomed by God, and was absolutely sure He loved me, wanted to best for me and appreciated our unique friendship. God was one of my best friends, someone I could confide in and tell anything to. Boy did that change.

It's not that I don't think God exists-- I most certainly do. If I admit that there is evil and unjust acts in the world than I am claiming that evil in turn exists. But if God was nothing, how would I know right from wrong? How would I even know what evil was?

So, no. I do believe in God and in no way am I an atheist. My issue lies in God's credibility of being all-just and all-loving.

God allows bad things to happen to us, and allows terrible and horrific things to happen in this world. But why? Why does he let children starve on the streets, or mothers get raped and beaten in front of their child's eyes? Why does he allow people to starve to death and natural disasters to wipe out entire cities? My biggest example would be the Holocaust of the 1930s/1940s. How could God allow that to happen, so many innocent people killed and tortured for no reason?

I don't care what God's plan is and how he goes about it with free will. Torturing a child is wrong. Watching it and allowing it to happen is wrong. Ask anyone. If you saw a seven-year-old girl being brutally attacked on the street and did nothing about it, you would be just as bad as the person who was beating her. Because you did not stand up, and make known that what was happening is unjust. That is exactly what God does, he sits around and lets it happen. And I honestly cannot make sense of it.

Here lies my issue-- if a God who claims he loves us so much he knows the exact number of hairs on our head, yet he lets these same beings that he loves go through so much, I don't want to have anything to do with Him. If God is really like that, I don't want anything to do with Him. I don't care if I'm going to hell, I don't care if I am not being obedient. I think in this area he is wrong. And although I am blinded by earthly dimensions, there is no possible way anything could be worth just watching a child getting beaten to death.

I never doubted the existence of God, I just doubt his credibility and relevance to my life.