Has God Failed?

A young man works long hours and has a long commute to work. One evening, coming home late and exhausted he falls asleep at the wheel, crashes his car and ends up in traction in the hospital. Has God failed?

While in the hospital he has some time to think and re-examine his life. He realizes how easily he could have died. When the pastor visits he decides to prepare for eternity and asks Jesus to come into his heart and gains a whole new perspective on life. During rehab he meets a young physical therapist named Judy. They develop a Christ centered relationship, fall in love and are happily married. Has God failed?

A young woman has an unhappy and abusive childhood. In her search for happiness and acceptance she becomes addicted to drugs, alcohol and cigarettes. In her search for love and through her own indiscretions she becomes pregnant. Has God failed? Unwilling to face the consequences of her moral dilemma and following he reasoning that it would be unfair to bring a new life into her world, and it is her choice, she has an abortion a the free clinic (sponsored by Planned Parenthood – now there is an oxymoron). Has God failed? As a result of the abortion she contracts toxemia and nearly dies. Has God failed? While in recovery she is visited by her godly aunt who has been praying for her. She realizes what a disaster her life has become and wants to get out of it but does not know how. Through the witness of her aunt she realizes her lost condition and cries out to God for forgiveness, salvation and deliverance from the drugs, alcohol and immoral life style that has bound her. When she is well enough she goes to church with her aunt and really enjoys the services, the people and the presence of the Lord. The next Sunday she goes again and is even more excited about what God can do in her life. She decides she wants to be a missionary and help the poor and starving in Africa. Has God failed? The following week she meets some of her old friends. They talk a while and the next thing you know she is popping a few pills and taking a swig of Jack Daniels that just happened to appear. Her aunt continues to pray but never sees her in church again. She dies before she is thirty, her body racked by drugs, alcohol and venereal disease. Has God failed?

11:15 Saturday morning a young man answers the door to find a middle-aged man with a church flyer in his hand inviting him to church. The young man’s grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher and though he loved and respected his grandfather he thought his religion was a little “over the top” and did not sync with reality. As far as he could tell God had failed. People suffered for no apparent reason, innocent children were abused, even by those who claimed to be Christians, there was war, crime, natural disasters… the world was a mess. If there really was a God he had failed and He didn’t want anything to do with Him. The young man was polite but voiced his opinion briefly. After a short exchange he took the flyer and said “goodbye” and closed the door. Had God failed?

The obvious, but not so objective answer is “No.” God has not failed. We accept the assumption that God cannot fail. Our theology will not allow it. He would not be the God we claim and love and serve. If He failed then He would have to be some lesser god that would be unable and unworthy of our devotion.

God cannot fail. But He created a world that is riddled with failure – death, pestilence, destruction… Isn’t that a failure?

If it was wrong to give man a choice, the ability and privilege to make his own decisions and the responsibility to live (or die) by them, then I suppose God has failed. However, if in that freedom of choice or “free will” mankind were to choose God and to live rightly before Him how much more glorious that would be!

So who has failed? If you have to blame someone for the woes of the world who should it be? The one who made it all perfect in the beginning or the one who “chooses” to mess it up?

Incidentally, failure is a very subjective thing. Often our greatest successes are built on multiple failures. An experiment is typically a series of controlled failures that are adjusted and repeated until the desired result is found. If we are wise our failures teach us what to avoid whether personal, social, national, historical… We should be able to learn from our mistakes.

God does not fail. People do.

Every choice, every action, every decision will set in motion a chain of events with its own inevitable conclusion. All the chains are woven together in a fantastic tapestry of the moment. We affect it continually. It flows with the currents of time like a large flag billowing in the breeze. But where a flag is a two dimensional surface being folded into the third dimension of depth. We live in a three dimensional world that is ever “unfolding” through time.

The earlier scenarios are fiction except the last one. Yes, that middle-aged guy was I. But the events depicted, with some variance, have happened and are happening all the time. People meet and fall in love under the strangest or tragic circumstances. Others are freed from sin through faith in Christ but allow themselves to become bound by it again to their own destruction. Some are embittered by a philosophy of anger toward God and hopelessness in life. There are many other stories of tragedies as well as blessed lives. Has God failed some and been overly generous with others? God is not willing that any should Parrish but that all should come to repentance. He is also unwilling to force His perfect Will upon us because He loves us and desires that we love Him in return. God does not fail. But men and women fail to love Him and obey Him and one bad thing just leads to another.

RLH