No Bicycle? No God!

Hopefully, this Post will be the only time I capitulate and write an entry to Cheaper Than Therapy based on a comment or question someone raises in the "comments" section. This is my Blog. I am going to write about things that either interest or irritate me. However, ANONYMOUS struck a nerve with some of you last week by suggesting that God is either lazy, cynical, or just simply not interested in this Planet. So, hopefully, this will be the first and last time.

This argument (question) truly bores me. Seldom a day passes that we do not hear someone, some where say "How could a loving God blah de blah de blah de dah?" The presence of cancer, war, poverty, hunger, and AIDS seems to weigh heavily on the heart of the atheist/agnostic and gives him all the proof he needs to deny God's existence or to prove that God has no interest in this world. I find these musings quite tiresome.

A friend of mine claims to have formulated his earliest ideas of God as a 10 year old, when the 10 year old girls living next door got brand new bicycles. When he asked them how they managed to get these new bikes, they replied that they simply had prayed for them. My friend explains that his personal prayer life took off in ways that one could not imagine and NEVER, EVER did a new bicycle show up in his driveway. Lesson learned---No Bicycle? No God!

Anonymous has formulated his idea of God in much the same way. Since circumstances on this Planet are not meeting Anonymous' EXPECTATIONS (he didn't get his bicycle either) God either does not care or does not exist.

In his book, The Shack, Young sums up man's dilemma here on Earth when God is speaking to the main character and says, "Your world is severely broken. You demanded your independence, and now you are angry with the One that loved you enough to give it to you."

FREE WILL! Instead of creating robots that have no choice but to serve Him, God gave man free will. God gave man his independence. And seemingly man has been pissed off ever since! I'm just too tired and too annoyed to go through the whole story. But even a cursory reading of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden should be enough to grasp what man HAD and what he decided to DO with it.

Furthermore, Anonymous suggests a "smiting or two" might be in order to clean this planet up. That sentiment was echoed in a YOUTUBE video I saw one time and cannot locate again, for the life of me. The speaker was addressing the question of "Why would a loving God......?" This gentleman said that we are asking the wrong question. The question is not "Why would a loving God allow pain and suffering?" He stated, with no apology, that the proper  question should be, "In view of what I thought, said, and did just yesterday alone, why did God not strike me dead in my sleep?" A "smiting or two" might be in order, alright. I'm just not sure who deserves the smiting. Maybe Anonymous knows.

I'm not picking on Anonymous. He and I have a lot in common. My good friend Shoe says that he "wakes up agnostic every morning, until he remembers how important it is to establish a little conscious contact with God." I wake up the same way! At my very best, I wake up self-centered and agnostic, wondering what this day has in store for ME.

Fortunately, on most days, I remember that God gave me FREE WILL. And on the days I determine that I should turn that will back over to His care, I seem to have a much better day. Coincidence? I think not!