How ever many of you read this letter will probably not like it, it may cause you to feel uncomfortable, some may not even finish it.
My beautiful wife says that letters such as these, if I understand in part where it is going to go, are almost disrespectful, and I fully understand where she is coming from, for those who deeply love the Lord and continuously are thankful for even the smallest gifts from Him, cannot fathom, how shall I put it, this part of the Almighty.
Those who follow Him do not want to follow Him to places that could possibly cause even the smallest hint of a doubt about His eternal love.
I will start with this verse.
“Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” (James 4:17)
And I will place this one right beside it.
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” (Isaiah 45:7)
I am going to make this plain, simple, and perhaps far too blunt for some people. Can that first verse ever apply to the Almighty, or is it only for mankind? If there is One, and there is only One who is good, who knows to do good, but does it not, could it ever be said of God then that it is sin?
No, of course not.
Yet God knows to do good, and when we see evil occurring, when He sees pain and suffering, either being inflicted by someone, on another man or beast, whether intentionally or unintentionally, what we call an accident, and He not only sees it happening, but has the full foreknowledge that it was going to happen, and He does absolutely nothing to stop it, what would you call that inaction?
We cannot even begin to imagine how evil this planet is, and by that, I mean the people that have lived and died upon it for thousands of years now. We cannot begin to fathom the intense pain and prolonged suffering of both man and animals over those years, and if we do not do something about it when we have the opportunity to, then to us it is sin.
But the Most High, and not always of course, but the greatest majority of the time over all those thousands of years, has just “sat back” and watched it all happen.
And done nothing at all about it most of the time.
And if you are one of those people who only focuses on the love of God, His care and great concern for all of His creation, whether you want to admit it to yourself or not, everything that has been written here is a truth. It is part of who God is, it is who the Lord Jesus Christ is, it is who the Holy Spirit is.
He, as the Triune God, Creator of all reality, has not done what we would consider good each time.
He has not interjected Himself into every circumstance when suffering could have been averted by Him.
He has, as the unrepentant call it, let “nature” run its course.
Because He creates evil.
I said you would not like this letter, didn’t I? But if you can find in it anything that is not the truth, you let me know.
The next time you see a stray dog limping and starving, the next time you see a dead kitten on the side of the road, hear about what someone deserving of hell did to a little child, you remember this letter and test your faith.