A Look at Suffering - Part Eight - A Look at Us...

Up 'til now, we've looked at God and his "role" in suffering in the world.  If you haven't read the previous posts, I suggest that you do - just so things are in context.

Through the previous posts we now know: that we know very little.  Very little about what is truly going on in the world.  Sure, we know it isn't how it's supposed to be, but we don't fully know why it is the way it is.

Nor do we fully know why God can stop some evils from happening and not others.

But we do know: Evil is NOT God's will.  And that we can trust God did what he could and that He CAN bring good out of evil.

What we have yet to look into is our role in suffering.

This isn't a fun one to look at.  We'd rather not admit that we do very little, in the grand scheme of things to alleviate the world of evil.  Nor, would we like to admit that we allow for it to exist and happen.

We hate that it happens...but what do we really do about it?

We point our finger at God and ask him why he doesn't do something about it.  Or we shrug our shoulders and say it's just "God's will."

There is a benefit to that: it relieves us of any and all responsibility.  Evil isn't our fault, it's only the fault of evil people.

But is that true?

Is that what Jesus taught us?

I would argue that our actions/inactions have much, much more to do with suffering than we would care to admit - even under duress!

After all, aren't we all good people?  We certainly like to think we are, and some people even tell us we are!  We don't condone evil, in fact we condemn it!  I shake my head at it when I see it on TV and say, "How awful."

I can hardly see any conceivable way that I  have anything remotely to do with the evils and tragedies in the world - especially the big ones, like genocide in Darfur...heck I'm waaaaaaay across the globe, right?

We might not like to, but we do have to admit it: we allow evil to exist and happen every day.  Our inactivity from doing good, strengthens evil.  When we turn a blind eye to injustice.  When we say, "That's someone else's problem."  When we chose not to help someone because they look like a drunk, or a druggie, or...

Heck, I can list twice as many reasons I "SHOULDN'T" help someone than why I "SHOULD."  Some days - more than I want to admit - the shouldn'ts win out.

But if we are truly followers of Jesus: there isn't anyone who falls under the "shouldn't".  Nobody doesn't deserve help.  There are no reasons not to help when you can.

Either we are all God's children, thus all one family, or we are not.

God didn't give us ANY wiggle room.

Cain asked, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

The answer is YES!

And we can't truly start to help people until we are honest with ourselves regarding the lack of LOVE we give and the amount of EVIL we allow.

Evil doesn't have to be grand, big, headline making tragedies...evil can, and is, a snide remark, a flip of a finger, a word said to hurt, a slap across the face...

No, we don't have to get down on ourselves - that helps no one - but let's not just shrug it off either.

As the saying goes, whenever you point a finger at someone (even God) there are three pointing back at you.