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)

Jesus' followers asked him, "Teacher, why was this man born blind? Whose sin made it happen? Was it his own sin or that of his parents?"

Jesus answered, "It was not any sin of this man or his parents that caused him to be blind. He was born blind so that he could be used to show what great things God can do." (ERV)

Ever since sin entered this world we have been confused, especially when God tries to speak with us. When God asks us questions we have so many false assumptions about what He is thinking that we come up with answers that are nearly irrelevant. And when we ask questions of God, most of the time our questions are along the wrong lines or are based on assumptions that are contaminated with false views of God and how He feels towards us.

These disciples were asking their question of Jesus based on a very common but mistaken premise. They believed like most people do, that where there is evidences of a curse that there must be a corresponding offense that is inducing a punishment. And since God is the ultimate One in control and is assumed to be in charge of balancing the scales of justice, then whenever someone is suffering what is assumed to be a punishment, there must be a specific sin committed by someone somewhere that brought such wrath of God down upon them. The disciples were looking for someone to blame because everyone assumes that that is just the way life functions and how God relates to disobedient offenders.

One of the very first symptoms of the confusion that sin brings happened when God questioned Adam about why he was acting so strange all of a sudden. God asked some simple and respectful questions of Adam in an attempt to help him reason through what was really going on. But because of the intense fear, shame and distorted false ideas about God that now filled Adam's mind and heart, instead of answering the question honestly he immediately moved into the blame game.

Blame is one of the main pillars of Satan's government and is one of the most successful ways he keeps people trapped in delusion and denial. Blame is the main technique that Satan relied on all throughout his rebellion in heaven to deflect attention away from his own lack of integrity and create doubts about God's integrity. This tactic has remained his chief defense for the rest of his existence, and because sin has infused all of us with the nature of the great accuser, our natural response whenever there is a problem is to immediately look for some way of shifting responsibility away from ourselves through blame.

If Adam had simply answered God's question to him honestly, he could have admitted without prodding that he had disobeyed. But he was not experiencing terror induced by lies about God that now filled his heart, created by insinuations about God that he and Eve had been infected with by the enemy. Adam now assumed that God was looking for someone to punish violently for this offense and so he attempted to shift blame onto Even instead of speaking truthfully. In essence, Adam was telling God to kill Eve for the offenses they had just committed, because in his heart he assumed that it was God who was going to carry out the sentence of death that He had warned them would result from disobedience.

The power that motivates all of us to play the blame game rather than accept responsibility for our decisions and actions is our fear of punishment and death. This is the very same motivation that drove Adam to turn and betray the most lovely woman ever on this planet, one that shortly before he was madly in love with. Blame is a sure symptom of the effects of sin and it even undergirds one of the main philosophies of our day, evolution. The observed instinct of self-preservation at any cost to others around us is one of the results of sin in our hearts. Self-preservation above love was the new element that was introduced into the universe by Lucifer later turned Satan, and is the very essence of sin itself.

The instinct of self-preservation that drives all of us and is expressed in selfishness is the power behind the blame game that all of us are tempted to play whenever anything threatens our happiness or especially our reputation. Our hearts naturally desire for others to trust us, to think good about us and to like us. Because we have absorbed the lie that love has to be earned, we assume that God cannot love us unless we are free of blame for disobedience. Just as Adam and Eve assumed from the serpent's lying inferences about God that God intended to kill them if they disobeyed Him, those same inferences about God and His supposed treatment of disobedient children still drives our lives and distorts our relationship with Him today.

It is now one of the foundational assumptions of religions of all flavor that someone has to be to blame and must receive punishment for offenses. Our whole mindset about justice is infused with the notion that someone has to pay for breaking rules. It is all part of our debt mentality that shapes our view of reality. If someone disobeys a law, then there has to be a corresponding punishment that must be inflicted that will settle some imaginary score, that tips the scales of justice back into balance.

But where in the world did this whole notion of balanced scales come from anyway? If a person carefully reviews the history of God's interactions with His people (taking into account the fact that God had to 'dumb down' his communications to meet people where they were at times when their superstition and ignorance made them incapable of relating to anything close to heaven's reality) then this idea of balancing obedience and disobedience on some imaginary scale and the use of arbitrary punishments and/or rewards is a completely absurd concept.

It is true that people for thousands of years assumed that God invented this idea of arbitrary punishments connected to crimes. It is also true that one might come to that conclusion when reviewing the laws of Moses that were given to him by God. But this often fails to take sufficiently into account the circumstances and the surrounding cultures of the times in which all of this took place. It also fails to take into account things that God said many centuries later in retrospect about those instructions and how they miserable failed to accurately reflect God's true desires for His children on earth.

Such deep confusion and misinformation about God was blinding the minds of everyone on earth that God chose to send His own Son to explicitly reveal the truth about how God feels toward us and even more, to demonstrate that God is not involved in the blame game like we have always assumed He was. But at the same time He also allowed us to act out our mistaken assumptions about justice operates, based on the presumptions in the blame game, to unleash all our rage, bitterness and hostility on Jesus. Sinners did everything possible to shift the blame for their malfunctions onto Him and to kill Him with all the torture that could be imagined. In fact, Jesus even additionally took upon Himself all the pain and guilt that humans could not heap upon Him themselves. He did this by embracing the results of sin incurred in the heart of every sinner who would ever live and allowed all that blame, shame and pain to suffocate the very life out of Him.

Why did God allow all of this to happen to Jesus in such a public demonstration of hostility? It was to unmask the truth that the whole basis of what we call justice, a system that relies so much on finding someone to blame and then attempting to balance the imaginary scales by heaping pain and punishments on them, is all a dead-end trail, a futile attempt to fix our pain and problems. But at the same time, by allowing us to pursue that logic to the very end and seeing the futility of settling scores by inflicting pain on others, He uniquely absorbed all the power of the hostility that sin has produced in humanity. Thus Jesus earned the right to bring in a reign of grace in its place.

The whole notion that God operates His government based on blame and punishment is an idea introduced by the greatest accuser of God. Satan has so skewed our assumptions about justice that it is impossible for us to grasp the reality of heaven and how God relates to His created beings. Our only hope is for serious divine intervention into our thinking and perceptions of reality. We have been so immersed in false assumptions about God and about justice that nearly everything we think and assume is hopelessly tainted and distorted. Unless the Spirit of God brings new light into our thinking and we become willing to release our many false beliefs about God, some of which we cherish as foundational truths, we have little chance of ever becoming ready to live in the true kingdom that operates on very different principles.

Over the past few years I sometimes have caught glimpses of the radical nature of the principles upon which heaven operates that seem so strange and out of sync with how we normally assume things should operate. Because we have such limited and confused ideas about God and reality, we tend to squeeze the words and the revelations of the true reality into our own mold and redefine them to fit what we assume, to fit our model of religion and relationships. This forces God to have to use different approaches and different expressions to try to break through our false premises and seek to attract us into believing the good news about how He wants to relate to us. But again we try to force His words into our molds and make them fit our false assumptions about what God is supposed to look and act like and again He has to adapt His communications to get our attention.

Jesus came to reveal the truth about how heaven operates and how radically different God is from what we have usually assumed He was like. Only as we immerse ourselves in His perfect reflection of the Father do we have any hope of having the light of truth open our eyes to new insights and bring our hearts into alignment with the atmosphere of grace and peace and truth that we were designed to live in originally.

Jesus refused to endorse the blame game that religious people assumed God used. Jesus does take our situations and use them to reveal the real truth about God through His interventions that often disrupt and expose our false assumptions about Him. Jesus flatly discounted the whole notion that God is the one out to settle a score by inflicting punishments and pain on people for their sins. God is not the one who is to blame for all that we suffer here on this planet despite all the accusations of His enemies and friends alike. Sin is the cause of all the malfunction and sin is at root of our attempts to live apart from the only Source of life available to us.

Jesus came to reintroduce life and health and joy and proper relationships back into this planet that was lost when our first parents believed the lies of Satan about our heavenly Father. Jesus came to correct the assumptions we have about justice and our belief that punishments somehow even imaginary scores and debts. Jesus came to expose the total fallacy of the blame game and to reestablish the truth that love is the basis for true life, not our confused notions of justice.

Jesus chose to use this blind man as an example of the truth about how God relates to messed up people in sharp contrast with our many assumptions about God that are based on lies of Satan. Jesus chose this man to reveal in both his body and his ensuing testimony a fresh revelation of how much better God really is from what we have always assumed about Him.

Work In You

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. We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work." (John 9:3-4)

Jesus was not going to use this man to work on his life; Jesus was saying here that the works of God would be seen in this man. What a difference!

How often do we mistakenly think that God is wanting to work on us, maybe to help us change our bad habits, to make us look good and become a nice Christian. So we set about seeking to access God's strength to quit doing the things we think are sinful and may even join up with a group of people who are very skilled in keeping up appearances. We learn all the techniques of how to keep up the appearance of being a good Christian man or woman; we learn the rules, the traditions, the formulas and even how to perform routines that we call worship. But all the while our hearts are shrinking under a heavy load of fear or guilt or may be crusting over with pride. Our spiritual eyes are oblivious to the life-charged scenes of a reality that is all around us but inaccessible to our awareness.

The religion of Jesus is a heart-oriented religion. We have largely obscured that truth by emphasizing the external aspects that result from a genuine heart change and go about trying to produce those external symptoms by trying to achieve them directly without the real cause in place. But as we do this our hearts wither and we hide while the pain we feel deep inside is ignored and we desperately seek ever more earnestly to force our lives to comply with the requirements of God's kingdom.

This blind man may have learned some amazing techniques for navigating his way around town and may have developed unusual keenness in some of his others senses to compensate for his blindness. He may have even become so adept at getting around efficiently that at times he might have even fooled some who were unaware of his condition into not realizing that he was blind. Just so, no amount of skills learned or knowledge amassed about religious subjects can produce the kind of sight that is needed to fully function as we were designed.

Blindness will always prevent one from ever even coming close to what a person can do effortlessly if they could just receive the gift of sight. A person who can see clearly does not have to think about all sorts of alternatives and live in constant fear of unseen dangers around them. With healthy sight they can move with confidence and not worry at all about stumbling over obstacles in their path. And far more than that, they have the incredible privilege of enjoying all the rich benefits of color and movement and dimension that one is aware of only if they have at some point enjoyed the gift of sight.

Jesus was not intending on offering this man a very advanced method of compensation for his blindness that would give him advantages over every other blind person on earth. Jesus wanted to do a work on the inside, to literally repair or provide what was missing in his head that had prevented him from enjoying all the emotions and the freedom that comes from having normal eyes. Rather than providing this man with insight as to what was meant by the names of colors or more effective descriptions of the world around him, Jesus wanted to give him the ability that God had intended for all humans to have but that had been deprived of him when he was born.

Of course the real issue that Jesus was trying to bring to people's attention was the reality that all of us are just as blind spiritually as this man was physically. This man had been blind all of his life so he had absolutely no clue as to what people meant when they talked about colors or any number of other subjects that most of us take for granted. Unless a person has experienced such a dramatic transition as this man did, they cannot begin to imagine the intensity and shock of passing from total darkness into the full tapestry of sensory joy available from so many things that most people take for granted.

The only way this could happen for this man was for Jesus to provide miraculous healing in providing sight from the inside for him. Additionally, there was nothing this man could do to earn this gift from Jesus. All he could do was to accept what Jesus did for him and then to cooperate with the very simple but strange instructions that Jesus gave him to fulfill his healing. But the most important thing that Jesus emphasized here was that the real work that had to take place was inside. And that work could not originate from human effort but had to be God's work.

...so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

But interestingly, the work Jesus may have had in mind was even more dramatic than his physical healing from blindness. As the rest of this story unfolds I see a compelling demonstration of this man's witness for God that is rarely seen in anywhere. This man's spiritual boldness is a powerful and dramatic testimony for Jesus and it disrupts the religious establishment so thoroughly that nothing is ever the same again. It gets both Jesus and this man's family in big trouble with the authorities and ends up getting himself kicked out of church in the process. But the privilege this man has of entering into fellowship with the Son of God personally is worth every minute of it and far more.

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12-13)

The Works of God

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)

A lot of questions come to my mind that I really want to know more about. I want to know God's reasons for these statements, to have the mind of Christ, not just nice-sounding explanations. I am seeking to listen as openly as possible for whatever He might reveal to me through this passage.

What does Jesus mean when He talks about works of God?

What is He referring to when He speaks of a day? A night?

What period of time did He have in mind when He referred to when He would be in the world?

What does He mean when He says there will be a time when no man can work? Of course that is inextricably linked with the answers to the first question.

So far I see some clues on the surface. Jesus and His disciples had just encountered a man in very sad condition, one looked down on by many around him and viewed with suspicion by the religious people of his day. With all of his disadvantages (that Jesus said were not brought on him because of anything either he or his parents had done) Jesus was clearly moved with compassion as He always was whenever He was near people in need.

So it would only be reasonable to assume that the works of God must be closely connected with motives of compassion. And having said that, I am reminded that compassion without works is a charade, an empty profession, a symptom of hypocrisy. (James 2:14-20)

I feel quite exposed along that line even now. As I watch the horrific scenes coming out of Japan over the past week after the triple tragedy of earthquake, tsunami and atomic meltdowns, I wonder why my own heart is so desperately lacking in compassion. That really concerns me.

I wonder why I am not mightily stirred with an overwhelming desire to do something tangible to contribute in some way to lessen the great pain and suffering the whole world is witnessing there. I wonder why, after so many years of seeking to be a better reflector of God's love and grace and compassion that I still don't spontaneously react to such opportunities like I know Jesus would do if He were in my place. Is He in my place? It makes me question how shallow my real convictions must be, how spineless my profession is, how short the roots are of the plants Jesus is trying to nurture in my heart given the ineffectiveness of my spiritual insights to influence my heart reactions to real-life chances for unselfish service.

We must work the works of God as long as it is day; there is a time coming when that will no longer be possible. That sounds very frightening, alarming and ominous.

When Jesus mentioned being the Light of the world as long as He was in the world, what time frame did He have in mind? Was He speaking only of the time He physically would be here on earth, or some other point in time when He would no longer be with us? If He was speaking specifically of His physical presence, then much of what Christianity teaches today would be invalidated, for we believe imperatively that Jesus is yet today the Light of the world. So it would seem that whatever this day is that He refers to in His statement must extend beyond the time when He physically returned to heaven at the time of His resurrection.

But clearly Jesus was making a strong statement here about a time that was coming when in some very significant way He would no longer be in this world. In what way would He not be in the world any longer? And how important is that for my life?

Does that mean that there is a tipping point in history when life will never ever be the same again as far as possibility for character development is concerned? Was Jesus speaking of a point in time when our ability to be transformed through means of allowing God to channel His grace and love through us will no longer be available, when our characters are so fully matured and set, either for good or hardened in selfishness that there is no more hope of changing direction?

I read about just such a time in the book of Revelation when everyone will from that point forever remain in the state of character that they have cultivated by their choices. And he said to me, "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near. Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy. See, I am coming soon; my reward is with me, to repay according to everyone's work." (Revelation 22:10-12 NRSV) Is this what Jesus had in mind when He said the night is coming when no one can work?

Jesus said we must work the works of God while it is day, before it is no longer possible. What is the sobering reality behind these words? Why are we to work the works of God in the first place? To impress people with how good we are? To attract others influenced by our works to have a desire to want to know God better because of us? Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:16)

I wonder if maybe a far more significant reason for God to have us demonstrate His works is that as we participate in demonstrating what God is really like by allowing Him to work His works through us, that very experience shapes our identity, our motives, our thinking and creates within us a new mold at the deepest core of our being that causes us to take on the family resemblance as children of God.

It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. (Revelation 19:8)

In verse three Jesus stated that this blind man, from His perspective, presented an opportunity for God's works to be displayed. What about me? I still feel very much like I am spiritually blind in many ways. I still sense that the more I learn about the truth of the gospel and gain insights from the Bible that my own heart and life are far from displaying the works of God, that I am a very dim reflection of the character of God at best. I feel very ashamed at times (when my awareness level seems to be functioning more effectively) of how selfish my life is, of how insensitive I am to the needs of those around me, of how much my own heart is out of sync with all the things my mind has been absorbing from the Holy Spirit and the Word of God for years now. It would seem I may be a prime candidate for Jesus to display the works of God through just as was this physically blind man long ago.

I talk and write about things that are thrilling, fascinating, enlightening and profound. Yet it seems that my own heart still feels numb, intimidated, fearful of what others think about me and far too unresponsive to the things that seem to be so clear to me in other areas of my brain. I have an increasing sense of a deep need and longing for my own conversion, for a radical new birth experience, for a whole new dimension of life where my heart and my head will be congruent with each other instead of the dissonance that I so often experience. I want Jesus and to be filled with His Spirit.

Father, You know all of this. In fact Your Spirit is the one I know is bringing all of this to my attention. You desire my full conversion far more than I do, but that is something I cannot arrange for myself. All I can do is to keep trusting You and Your timing and Your methods for bringing me into fuller harmony with Your character and connecting me with Your heart.

Again I ask You to do whatever is necessary to move me closer to You, to reveal Your heart to my heart much more openly and to transform me into a more credible reflection of the compassion that so far seems mostly obscured to me but that I know with my head is what You are all about. I cannot convert myself or change my character significantly except to make it worse. I ask You to implant Your Spirit in me, to sit in the control seat of my heart and to take charge of my priorities. Capture all of my affections and loyalty and set about living Your life from inside of me so that Your works will be what others see when they look at my life, my influence and even my face.

Do all of this for Your reputation's sake, not for mine, for that is the only thing that is really important.

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)