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A girl whose boyfriend had broken off from her came to me for counselling. Her question was why God had allowed her to get heartbroken after leading that boy to her in the first place. Why did she think that it was God who had brought him to her? An assumption that God is the one who causes everything to happen. If such people are asked the question whether it is God who causes evil to happen to them, one common reply is that by permitting such things to happen to them, ultimately He is responsible. This comes from a lack of understanding about how God works with us.

A parallel problem some Christians have is to think that whatever happens to them has a spiritual reason. In this way some Christians imagine that any sickness they have must be because of God's anger towards them, or even because of some ancestor's sin. This was what some disciples of Jesus thought when they saw a man born blind. Jesus told them that (in that case) it was not because of anyone's sin (Jn.9:2,3). (We know that some things can happen because of sin too.)

All things that happen to us are not from God, but many of them are the natural effects of living in this world. We can become sick just like others, face a bully in school, have evil people hurt us, our marriages can go wrong, we can lose a job, die in a natural calamity, etc. If we are children of God, what cannot happen to us because God keeps a watch is that we are tempted beyond our ability (1Co.10:13). Another thing is that even when evil things happen to us, God turns them around to do some spiritual good for us (Ro.8:28,29). God teaches us how to deal with life on earth in a godly way that we become stronger and wiser to be able to handle life's challenges in a better way (Pr.3:5-8).

When God created man in His image, one of His characteristics that He shared with us was sovereignty, in a limited way, as He did with other parts of His nature. This is our free will to decide what we would do. This makes it possible for us even to disobey God and resist His advances towards us. We have misused this freedom in this way and so do others around us. We suffer when we do wrong and also when others do wrong to us. Of course, our freedom is limited and God keeps a watch over us and protects us from severe harm (Ps.37:24). But He does permit a certain level of trouble to come to us from Satan, evil people and natural causes. Where we go wrong is if we assume that God is the one doing everything that happens to us.

We are the ones who have done all the evil that we have ever done, and we deserve punishment in hell. It is no use trying to justify ourselves, make excuses or put the blame on our parents or others. The sooner we accept our blame, the earlier we can experience salvation. Others who have done evil to us will have to give their accounts to God. Let us stop blaming God, but learn from our mistakes. Let us study the word of God and learn how to live in a godly way in future.

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