Who Is to Blame?

And His disciples asked Him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?" Jesus answered, "It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him." (John 9:2-3)

These disciples asked a loaded question in that it was based on false assumptions about God. However, they were not doing so in a spirit of trying to reinforce or impose their preconceptions on others but simply from a lifetime of ignorance of the real truth about God. Because of this Jesus responded differently to their question than He did to many of the questions of the leaders who intentionally desired to ensnare Him in His answers. For the honest questioner who is willing to have their opinions altered with new insights Jesus is always eager to reveal more about the Father to them.

However, we are in no less danger of misinterpreting the words of Jesus than the people were back in His day. Many are tempted to read this passage and jump to the popular conclusion that God is in some way responsible and to blame for many of the tragic things that happen to us in this world. They believe that He simply creates such opportunities so as to throw His weight around and get our attention. However, the influence of such false notions about how God relates to us are devastating in their effects on our hearts. Yet this thinking is so pervasive in our culture and religion that it is impossible to escape the effect of them on our assumptions about why things happen in life, especially tragic things. This is the very reason that Jesus came to this earth – to set the record straight and to challenge all of these allegations against God's reputation.

The disciples based their assumptions on the commonly accepted teachings that if a person had such a handicap as this man suffered with that it was a clear sign that it was caused by a curse from some specific sin and that someone was clearly to blame for that sin. They believed that God gets easily offended by certain sins (generally sins that rank high on our list of offenses) and that because God is all powerful that He inflicts specific punishments arbitrarily either on that person or on someone close to them to vent His anger about their infraction.

Jesus bluntly refuted those assumptions in His answer to His disciples, yet ironically we are still prone to missing this point altogether by turning Jesus' answer around to justify the very thing He was exposing as a lie. And how do we do that? Let me explain a little.

How many times have we observed the reaction of some Christian to a tragedy by rushing in to say that God must have some higher good in mind or He would not have caused/allowed that to take place? Say a car runs over a child and the mother is standing there distraght with anguish trying to make sense out of the insensible. A well-meaning Christian rushes up to her and tries to comfort her with the words, “Don't worry, God must have loved your child more than you do. Because He needed them in heaven He took them home to be with Him. You can be happy that your child is in the arms of Jesus now so there is no reason to be so sad.” What a slap in the face, not only of the grieving mother but even more so to God as well!

While conceding that the Christian with such a 'testimony' might think they are doing God service, in fact their twisted ignorance of the truth about God, about death and a number of other vitally important things about reality are actually perpetuating the lies and insinuations of the enemy rather than improving God's reputation. They are actually creating more doubt than faith in God as being a loving, caring, compassionate heavenly Father. Our own hearts have little doubt that human love, especially that of a caring mother, would never stoop to such insane, illogical and sick behavior as we so often ascribe to the motives of our heavenly Father. In portraying God as inflicting or even allowing tragedies specifically to manipulate our affections or our obedience to Him is to reinforce ancient accusations of Satan but does nothing to cause our hearts to really trust God's justice, fairness and love.

I have been watching reports of the terrible tsunami in Japan over the past few days and my mind and heart struggle to know how to relate to all the vast suffering and anguish that I glimpse taking place in the midst of all that tragedy. Sadly I am sure that there may be many Christians who might use this event to claim that this must have happened because maybe the Japanese are not willing enough to become Christians, or maybe that these affected cities were somehow more wicked and so they deserved to be punished by an angered deity who finally got so offended He could not contain it any longer. And while I have not yet heard any of these sentiments expressed publicly yet, I am painfully aware of the potential for such blasphemy because of the sick, distorted ideas about God that are so prevalent and that run deep in the hearts of many who live more in fear of offending God rather than embracing the light of truth about Him as revealed in Jesus.

Yet verses like this one are used to justify such inane assertions on the part of many Christians. They point to these words of Jesus and interpret them through the miserable filters of counterfeit religion to reinforce a notion that God intended this man to be born blind so that he would be there years later so Jesus would be able to display His power in front of others. The problem here is not that God used this circumstance to reveal truth about Himself publicly, rather the problem lies in the notion that God desired or intended that this man be blind and even may have caused it in order to give Him opportunity to then reverse the curse and make Himself look good in the process.

This sick thinking about God that pervades much of Christianity, indeed much of humanity, is no different than the logic used by individuals who sometimes are discovered setting fires so that they can look like heroes when they 'discover' the fire and join other firefighters in putting out the blaze. There are times when firefighters themselves have been found to be doing this very thing and the only explanation offered was that they wanted more opportunities to fight fires in order to prop up their self-image and sense of worth. They were addicted to the thrill of using their skill and enjoying the drama of fighting a fire to save someone's property or even their lives.

When we learn about such stories we recoil with horror and disgust, and rightly so. Yet some of the same people who want to put such a person away in prison as a criminal and punish them harshly for such insane logic and behavior, these same people can turn around and try to claim that God does essentially the very same thing all the time and that somehow it is supposed to be O.K. when He uses this tactic. But it is no more righteous for God to employ such twisted logic than it is for humans to do so, and to claim that He does so only tends to turn many away from ever wanting to come any closer to knowing Him if these claims about Him are actually true.

The real truth is that God is not behind all the tragedies of this world despite such claims written into millions of insurance policies ascribing natural disasters to be 'acts of God'. This screwed up logic may be very widespread and unchallenged but it is still just as insane and false nevertheless. Those who knowingly spread such malicious gossip about God will be found to be very guilty in the day of revelation and judgment and will not escape the consequences of such evil slander. But even then it will not be God who will condemn them or harshly punish them for such slander for He will be found to be better than everyone has made Him out to be. He will simply allow the consequences of sin to fully mature as people themselves see the real truth about all of God's actions. That is another topic and although related I don't want to take time to further explore that issue here.

So, if Jesus is NOT saying that God is the instigator of evil in order to create opportunities to display His power or impress people with His superiority, then what was Jesus trying to convey here? What was Jesus saying about God that are so obscured by the polluted ideas from false religion? Why did He say that this man's circumstances presented an opportunity for God to display His works?

This is not a simple issue to explore and easily uncover the truth that satisfies our deep suspicions and questions about the fairness of God. It will take much more examination than I have time or space for right now. However, it is not because I want to skirt the issue or gloss it over that I narrow down or summarize what I have been learning over many years. I believe these kinds of questions need to be exposed publicly and discussed openly and honestly if we really want to come to know God and have a heart-level trust in Him that will not bring shame to His reputation.

One thing I am convinced of is that far too many of our religious explanations about situations and doctrines rely far too much on human illogic and unchallenged dogma than on honest grappling with the core issues at stake firmly founded on the Word of God. We are too quick to defend traditional interpretations of Scripture and are loath to question what we assume are established doctrines that block us from thinking clearly about many ethical dilemmas. Nearly everyone has this resistance to keeping their beliefs open for revision and updating, yet if we are not willing to challenge our paradigms then we quickly become trapped in bigotry and prejudice and cannot move forward with increasing light of God's revelations about Himself.

For example, in the above illustration of a child suddenly being killed in a tragic accident, the popular but unbiblical teaching of a soul immediately going to heaven or hell upon the death of a person's body induces the illogic used by that well-meaning but misguided Christian trying to comfort the mother. Because they feel compelled to align their answer with preconceived beliefs about life immediately after death (or in essence that we don't really die when we die, the first lie of the serpent to Eve), then such disturbing platitudes are invented to try to rationalize why God might cause or allow such a mind-bending, gut-wrenching event of senseless tragedy to take place.

Combine one false doctrine with even more, like the popular belief that God is directly in CONTROL of every situation and that everything has to be viewed as God's will for our lives, then we find ourselves assembling various popular beliefs that are often in contradiction with each other and creating theological explanations that attempt to justify evil which in fact has no justification. Most of our explanations for tragedy in our lives rely on false assumptions about what God is like and how He feels about and relates to sinners or to saints.

Do we seriously believe that God deliberately caused this man to be born blind so that Jesus could come along many years later and show off His miracle-working power to draw attention to Himself? Do we think that God is so sadistic that He cares nothing about all the years of anguish and pain and deprivation that this man suffered not to mention the shame, suspicion and guilt heaped upon him and his parents from the preconceived notions of his society and his church caused by their false beliefs? Are we willing to embrace such a sick picture of God who is not even as compassionate as we are in caring for our own children? Would we treat those we love the way we sometimes accuse God of treating us? Or are all these insinuations part of a scheme of the enemy to totally discredit and obscure the truth about God and keep as many as possible from discovering the real truth about Him?

The fact is that the truth about God is often discovered deep in our own hearts far more readily than it can be found in the teachings and traditions of churches, sad as that may be. And while it is true that there are many lies about God embedded in our damaged hearts caused by tragic events that have happened in our lives, it is still in our heart and our spirit where we are most likely to encounter the subtle but insistent presence of God's Holy Spirit seeking to dissuade us from believing such monstrous evils about Him and to draw us out to question and challenge these assumptions. We need to give God a chance to show us the real truth about love, about justice and about the true nature and character of our heavenly Father.

When we allow the Spirit of God to outfit us with new spiritual glasses, then the Word of God will suddenly take on totally new meaning and life hidden within these pages suddenly springs out and allows us to see reality and heaven in the attractiveness that is actually true. The real problem of sin is not that we are doing bad things that offend God but that we believe wrong-headed notions about God that justifiably make us afraid of Him. And it is the mission of Jesus to unmask all the lies about God that have kept us away from Him by revealing to us the real truth about God's passionate love for sinners and His passionate hatred of everything that keeps us afraid of and separated from Him. God's greatest desire is that we will come to see His trustworthiness so clearly, that we will finally begin to believe real truth about His fairness rather than the false allegations of the enemy that constantly misinterprets every situation. He seeks to draw us to embrace His love, believe the real truth about Him and throw ourself upon His grace and mercy and forgiveness.

The bad things we do are not the underlying problem that most needs fixing and forgiving no matter how obnoxious they may be. The way we treat others and even ourselves in sinful ways is merely a symptom of a much deeper problem. Our actions and words are only the outward expressions of a picture of God that is imprinted deep in our hearts. Until our inner distorted picture of God is healed it is generally fruitless to attempt to manage and control or suppress the outward symptoms of our malfunctioning behaviors. When the heart is healed then the outward life spontaneously begins to express a new dimension of life and all of our relationships are also dramatically affected.

The Bible uses language about this with terms like righteousness, sanctification etc. Jesus once said that if we would seek first His kingdom and His righteousness that everything else would be taken care of for us. To seek His kingdom and righteousness means to pursue the real truth about the way God relates to His creatures and to begin to appreciate the real truth about God's character in contrast to what we have always thought about Him.

When we begin to better appreciate the real righteousness of God then we will see clearly that it is not God who causes tragedies to occur in order to give Him chances to show off His power. It is the scheming, lying, hate-filled enemy of God who is behind all of the pain and suffering and sin that takes place on this planet. God is not the one to blame for all of these tragedies, but the amazing thing is that He has the ability to transform any of them to result in even greater good in the lives of all who respond to His drawing and choose to trust in His goodness even when everything around is screaming the opposite. (Rom. 8:28) As we learn more and trust more in the goodness and fairness of God, our trust releases Him – gives Him permission in the spirit realm – to take charge of our circumstances and in time weave them into an amazing tapestry of beauty that will come back to bless us and others as we allow Him fuller access to our lives.

We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world. (John 9:4-5)