Why
Does God Allow Wars?
More
people have asked me this question than any other: Why, if there be a
God, does God allow wars and all this human suffering and anguish? Why
such terrifying world conditions as we face now?
People put it
to me this way: If God is good, if God is love, if God is merciful, he
wouldn't want people to suffer like they do on this earth, would he?
And, if God is Almighty, if he has all power, he could stop it. He
could prevent it. Then, why doesn't he?
I want to make plain to you what you may never have heard or thought of before.
The
God I believe in—the God that I know exists, because I can prove it!—is
the God who created all things. He is the Creator not only of matter,
but also of force, of energy, of all the laws that exist: the laws of
chemistry, the laws of physics—spiritual laws as well as physical laws
to regulate man's life and man's happiness.
God created man in
his image, and for a purpose that almost no one seems to understand.
Did you ever stop to think and wonder why you were born?
What is this purpose that God is working out?
In Genesis 1, beginning with the 24th verse, God said: "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind. . . ."
That is, the little puppy grows up in the image of its parent dogs, same form, same shape.
And
now, the next verse: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after
our likeness. . . ." In other words, after our form, our shape, our
image. God is reproducing himself!
God has endowed man with powers that no animal possesses.
An
animal can't design, originate, plan and execute, using free volition,
and then carry out or execute what it has thought out and designed and
planned. A bird builds a nest. Gophers dig holes Beavers build dams.
But did you ever realize that one beaver dam is like another? And that
they have been the same from the beginning? Every bird builds the same
kind of nest that its kind of birds have always built.
We have
been given some of the powers of God. Thank God, he limited our powers.
Look at how we've misused what God has given us, and think what we
might have done if God had given us more power.
The next point
that I want you to realize is this: The first chapter of Genesis is
telling us only of a material, a physical creation, not of a spiritual
creation. Man is the clay model. God merely made the clay model to
begin fashioning something greater that he has in mind.
In
Genesis 2:7 we learn out of what God made man. God is Spirit. But he
didn't make man out of spirit. Rather, "The Lord God formed man of the
dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life
[the word breath comes from the same Hebrew word that refers to the
breath in the nostrils of animals]; and man became a living soul." It
doesn't say that man has a soul, but man is a soul.
We're the
clay model. God is the Great Potter. So we read in Isaiah 64:8: "But
now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter;
and we all are the work of thy hand."
Not so long ago, I was in
one of the great potteries in England, where very fine bone china is
made. I noticed a potter making vases with his hands. I talked with him
for a while.
He said that it took him 30 years to learn how to
do it. He is a master craftsman. The clay, noticed, had to be of just a
certain thickness. It had to be plastic, too, so he could move it and
bend it. It had to give and to move in his hands. If it was too stiff,
he couldn't use it, if it was too thin, he couldn't do anything with
it. It had to be just right. That's the way we have to be:
plastic!—yielding in the hands of God, just as that clay yielded in
this man's hands.
God made us free moral agents. And God made us
so that we can resist—we can stiffen up and harden up against him—or we
can accept him and we can yield. God made us so that we must choose on
that point. God is not going to do anything with us if we resist.
So, then, what are we? We are an unfinished piece of God's workmanship!
Creation
was not completed in the time of the garden of Eden and the creation of
Adam and Eve It was only begun there. That was the material, the
physical creation. God was, then, only beginning his real
creation—which is a spiritual creation—of creating something spiritual
out of man who has been made mortal, out of the dust of the ground.
We
were born, all of us, from Adam. Adam was not in the spiritual image of
God, as most people seem to think he was. He lacked God's perfect
spiritual character. He was not made of the same substance as God. Adam
was made of the dust of the ground but God is Spirit.
So far as
composition is concerned, we have only been bearing the physical image,
not the spiritual. But we are in the form and shape of God. We can
receive his spirit, his character and bear his image, spiritually. God
is reproducing himself! I wonder if you can begin to realize that
wonderful truth.
And so, now, what is God? God is perfect, spiritual
character. That's what he is. God has all power, but what God is, is
perfect, spiritual character. Character cannot be automatically created
by fiat. Neither can character be inherited from father or mother to
child.
What is perfect character? Character, perfect character,
is the ability of a separate entity to come, first, to the knowledge of
the truth, and of the right as opposed to the wrong; and second, to
make the decision to choose the right instead of the wrong; and third,
to exercise the will and the self-discipline to do the right instead of
the wrong.
God is the perfect character. God has all knowledge.
God always chooses the right. God never does wrong. We were put here to
build character until we become like God. Animals have instinct, but
animals do not develop righteous character.
Character involves
such characteristics as love and patience, humility, tolerance, mercy,
wisdom, initiative and right doing through free choice. So, God of
necessity made man the clay model. He made man a free moral agent, so
that man must make his own decision. God has decreed that we must
decide. He doesn't force us to obey him or come under his government.
There
could be no character any other way. And to do that God had to allow
man to do wrong. Now, get that! To fulfill his purpose, God had to
allow man to be able to do wrong.
Character must be developed by
experience. It can't be created automatically. Experience requires
time; and so God set apart a total of 7,000 years to carry out his
purpose.
The first 6,000 years—as there were six days of
material creation—are for man's way of going contrary to God. Then
there is going to be a 1,000-year day of spiritual rest, when Jesus
Christ is coming to rule this earth God's way and rule it with a rod of
iron. The whole world will be full of the knowledge of the Eternal God.
God's
law or way is love. Love is always away from self—not toward self.
Never lust or anything of that sort. The opposite way is lust and
greed, that's all toward self—vanity! And it leads to the system in
this world—competition and strife—yes, the getting way, the
accumulating, the taking way.
And that is the cause of wars. Why does God allow war and human suffering?
We
have competition. Everything is competition is this world. Everything
is carried along on the selfish, the getting, basis—greed and vanity.
To prevent the evils of competition and wars today God would have to
cram his religion down our throats. Our way, the violation of the law
of God, the law of love, is causing war, human anguish and human
suffering. God had to allow it (to let us have our own way) in order to
fulfill his purpose of creating holy character.
The only way
that God could stop war would be to stop the cause. He would have, in
effect, to cram his religion down our throats—down the throats of all
humanity.
There wouldn't be any free moral agency; there
wouldn't be any character and God's purpose could never be fulfilled.
That's why God allows wars, and that's why God allows suffering. To
prevent it would be to prevent the very purpose that God is working out
here below.
Do you know that man learns by suffering? Did you
ever hear of anyone learning that the stove was hot by putting his
finger on it? We do learn by experience. And do you know that Jesus
Christ learned by experience?
Turn to Hebrew 5:8-9. "Though he
were a Son, yet learned he [Christ] obedience by the things which he
suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal
salvation unto all them that obey him."
Experience develops
character—either good or bad. If we're going to have good character it
comes through experience. If we develop bad character — and man has
done that, of course—God provided for that too, because "God so loved
the world, that he gave his only begotten Son" that we can repent. We
can come to him and have all of the sin forgiven. We can be given
a new and a clean start, receive God's Spirit, and let the power of God
come into us and clean us up and make us what we ought to be.
Job
understood this. Turn to Job 14:14: "If a man die, shall he live again?
all the days [answered Job] of my appointed time will I wait, till my
change come." He was speaking of a resurrection when he was going to be
changed. "Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee. . . ." And, do you
know that Jesus said, "The hour is coming, in the which all that are in
the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have
done good unto the resurrection of life. . . ." (John 5:28-29).
Job
said: "Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee. . . ." Here is the
point I want you to notice, ". . . thou wilt have a desire to the work
of thine hands"—the last part of verse 15. In calling him from the
grave in a resurrection, Job said, God will have a desire to the work
of his hands. Job knew that he was an unfinished piece of God's
workmanship. Yes, man is the work of God's hands.
I want you now
to notice Ephesians 2:10: "For we are his workmanship . . ."—we, of
course, means Christians in New Testament language. "We are his
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works [not very many
people believe that today], which God hath before ordained that we
should walk in them." Yes, in good works. That's in the New Testament.
The
spiritual creation is still going on today. That's the purpose of your
life—to learn that very lesson. To repent of your wrong ways, your
sins, to accept Christ as your Savior; and to start on the way that is
the way of character, the way of good, righteous, holy, spiritual
character—the way of God. And that you can become the very born son of
God.
Only those who overcome and grow in this life—after we do
repent, and after we are reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, and
after we have received
his Holy Spirit and are walking by his Spirit, will reign with
Christ over the nations. "He that overcometh [said Jesus], and keepeth
my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: and
he shall rule them [the nations] with a rod of iron" (Rev. 2:26-27).
And then again in
Revelation
3:21: "To him that overcometh [Jesus said] will I grant
to sit with me in my throne." He is going to rule the entire world; and
we, if we qualify, are going to rule with him. We're going to be kings
and priests with him. He was the firstborn of many brethren. You can be
one of those brethren!
Personal from the Editor by Mr. Herbert W, Armstrong ThePlain Truth Magazine Feburary 1986 