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''DEAR GOD-
Why
did
you
Jet
Tornmy die?''
The letter was wriHen by
a young
boy named Peter. He had
been
taught about God- told God would protect, preserve,
heal. But his brother,
To mmy,
was dead. WHY? Why does
God allow tragedy? WHY do innocent babie s suffer? WHY
the caprice of tornado, hurricane or typhoon? WHY, if there
is
a
God, does God allow WARS , and CRIME, and automo–
bile . accidents? These questions hove perplexed the greatest
theologians for centuries
-
yet the answers are simple.
"W
HEN HE was hit by the car,
my mother PRAYED to
you to let him livc, but
you
wo11ldn't.
My little brother was
only two years old," wrote Peter to a
newspaper advic<: counsellor, "and he
couldn't have sinned so bad that you
had to punish him that way... you
could have saved my little brother but
YOU LET HIM DIE. You broke my
mother's heart.
How can 1 /ove you?'
Peter's grief was genuine. So was his
perplexity over the goodness of the God
of whom he had heard from his par–
ents, and the evil of the terrible acci–
dent that took his brother's life.
His young mind simply couldn't
accept it. Tommy was dead. But mother
had prayed. And God - the God he
had heard of who HELPED pcople, and
who was GOOD and
mercifttl,
had Jet
Tommy die.
If
He was God, He had the power to
STOP Tommy from dying, didn't He?
And Peter's mother had fervently ASKED
Him to, hadn't she?
Well then - WHY HAD Gon LET
TOMMY DIE?
Answer Unavailable?
The newspaper columnist had no
answers. He simply replied, "Suffering
by
Garner Ted Armstrong
of innocent people is something we
CANNOT UNDERSTAND."
But is therc no answer, then?
What about the agonizing tragedy of
East Pakistan, that giant catastrophe
unimagined in the worst nightmare,
that dashed perhaps nearly two MILLION
human beings to death?
What about the millions who died in
the Nazi torture camps? The tens of
thousands in Nigeria? The millions on
all sides during World War II? And
what about the untold, uoknown,
unwritten calamities that have befallen
human beings since time immemorial -
whether infant mortality, accidental
death, murder,
sic~ess
or war?
Are human beings, then, just like
animals - subject to the vagaries of
weather and nature, to the passions of
other humans, and to caprice?
Or IS there a God who COULD PRE·
VENT human suffering if He so chose?
Many theologians assume the answer
is unobtainable.
But WHY SHOULD
JT
BE?
Jf there IS a God, and most (certainly
not all) theologians profess to believe
in God, then would not that God !cave
a glimpse of His purpose, His PLAN, to
His own creation which He !oves?
Wouldn't God have REVEALED the
answers to human problems if
He'
truly
seeks to RELIEVE such problems?
God is Blamed
lt's a commentary on human nature
that we tend to congratulate ourselves
for our successes, and blame God for
our failures.
Jf
we fail, if a loved one is hurt, we
wonder why God "allowed" it to hap·
pen. \'(fhen we triumph, we can think
of many reasons why we did.
One atheist ( if there really
i.r
such a
thing) expressed a rather common
attitude.
"If
I
had the power to fashion the
universe and 'remake it nearer my
heart's desire,' there would be no blind,
no deaf, no dumb; there would be no
crippled, and each child born would
live free of disease and possess a men–
tality capable of withstanding all the
rebuffs of life. There would be no
deaths by accident. There would be no
earthquakes, cyclones or tornadoes.
Unless and until such a condition comes
to pass, when we may live free from
disease, sorrow and suffering, THERE
IS