Trying To Explain The Inexplicable By Greg Laurie

 

Trying to explain the inexplicable by Greg Laurie over at World Net Daily

A crisis hits hard. It hits fast. And it takes no prisoners. Sometimes a crisis is so epic that you eventually look back on it as a dividing point in your life. You remember your life before and after the crisis.

For Job, it was when his world came crashing down on him in one day. For Joseph, it was the betrayal of his brothers that changed the course of his life. For Jesus, it was when the religious leaders and one of His own handpicked disciples turned on Him.

A crisis is like a mighty and unexpected storm that overtakes your boat. And when this happens, the first thing we usually ask is, Why is this happening to me? What have I done to deserve this? At the outset, there are no real answers to questions like this. It is very unlikely we ever will have the answers to the whys of life – until we get to heaven.

In our minds, we may believe that we are somehow exempt from suffering. We just won’t have tragedy befall us. We won’t get cancer. We won’t have spouses leave us. We won’t have anyone we love die in any kind of accident. We won’t have problems with our kids. If that is the way you think, then it is time for your wake-up call. We cannot control these things. Crisis will come into our lives.

Ironically, I have had people say to me after the death of my son, “Why has this happened to you, of all people?” I find that to be a curious question, the assumption being that I somehow get a free pass because I am a pastor. But I live in the same fallen world as everyone else. And the Bible says the rain falls upon the just and the unjust (see Matthew 5:45).

I think it is very important not to make the mistake of always trying to find cause and effect for everything that happens. Sometimes if something bad happens to someone, we will say, “Well, they were bad people, and because of that, this happened in their lives.” That may be true. But sometimes bad stuff simply happens, and there is no cause and effect at all. That is because sin is in the world. And because of this, we have aging and sickness and disabilities and, yes, even death. But these things were never a part of God’s original plan.

On one occasion, Jesus’ disciples brought up the subject of a tower that had fallen on a group of Gentiles. The Gentiles were non-Jews – nonbelievers. Everyone knew about this tragedy, and the supposition was that it happened to these people because they were nonbelievers. So Jesus said, “Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem? No, and I tell you again that unless you repent, you will perish, too” (Luke 13:4 NLT).

Here is what Jesus was saying, in effect: “Don’t say this happened because they were sinners. You think they were the worst sinners? News flash: Unless you repent, you will perish, too.”

Bad things happen inexplicably.

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