Finding God

Growing up, I was an atheist. I didn't believe in God and I didn't want to. Christianity had nothing whatsoever to do with me. After he raped me, I was convinced there was no God. After all, if He did exist, why did He allow this to happen to me? I just couldn't believe a loving God would allow this to happen.

Not believing in God also meant that I had no reason to try and better myself - I had nothing to strive for. I was extremely self-destructive.

It was my housemate JW that suggested I should go to something called 'Christianity Explored', a kind of class where you learn about God and Jesus and can ask those tough questions. Going to that class was the best thing I ever did. Something inside me changed. It felt like an emptiness in my soul had been filled. I realised that He does exist, and that He does love me.

God's love and strength is what keeps me going in those dark days. He is what gives me the strength to carry on. He is the reason I want to better myself.

As I said in yesterday's entry - I still have days that I stumble, but instead of giving up, His love and forgiveness means I can get up and try again.

You may ask how I could have changed my mind so drastically and in such a short period of time, especially as for the first 22 years of my life I was an athiest. I wrote an article about that, so if you're interested, you can read it below. I would also suggest reading 'Mere Christianity' by C.S Lewis.

Here's the article I wrote:

People ask me how I can be a Christian when there is so much suffering in the world. We are bombarded by the effects of suicide-bombers, murder, rape and natural disasters from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep. So many deaths, so much suffering. Surely a kind, loving God would not allow this? The answer to that question is not a simple one. It is not an easy one.

Firstly, you must look at why there is suffering in the world. Is it God’s doing, or is it a consequence that we as humans must suffer for all the sins before us? Our whole world is made up from cause and effect – you throw an apple up in the sky, it will come crashing back down to earth. The same goes for everything we as a human race do. You pollute the environment; the younger generations will suffer by living in a dying world. You kill someone; you will have to live with yourself and have to shoulder the grief of your victim’s family and friends. You cheat on an exam; you will have to face being kicked out of college. Whatever you have done, you must live with the consequences. Expecting anything less would be asking for a free pass. If your choices have no negative consequences, what is stopping you from repeating yourself over and over again? How do you learn from your mistakes?

Many people, when faced with their own mistakes and wrong-doings, beg God for forgiveness. Are they really asking for forgiveness or are they asking God to fix their mistakes, to stop the natural law of cause and effect? If you do something bad and that gets changed into something good by God, how are you learning anything? The only thing you then learn is that if you do something bad you get rewarded by God. If He were to grant everyone their wishes – how do we learn from our experiences? Not only do we first curse the name of God by either denying Him or judging Him, we then expect Him to fix the problems we have made for ourselves. “Since you object to what God does, can you expect Him to do what you want?” Job 34: 53

By asking God to help us, we are asking Him to stop the natural law and to save man from man’s own actions. We are asking for a miracle. Of course miracles happen, of course God can perform miracles. Jesus cured the disabled and Jesus himself rose from the dead. Miracles are about suspending natural law – they happen every day, if you are just willing to look for them. But you can’t expect God to stop every bad decision that man makes. You can’t expect God to perform miracles because you have made the wrong judgment call.

The question that I am then often asked is, why does God allow us to make these bad decisions? Why give us the power to destroy ourselves? The answer is simple. God gave us free will and with that free will comes great responsibility; responsibility to do the right thing and the chance to learn from our mistakes and wrong-doings. He gave us free will so that we can choose how we live our lives. He gave us free will so that we aren’t robots, so that we experience emotions. If we had no free will we would not feel love and joy. And you can’t feel love and joy without feeling pain as well. It was with the free will that God gave us that the first sin entered the world. Because of that sin, we experience shame, embarrassment and humiliation. Because of that sin we experience pain - and only with true pain comes true happiness.

You may ask me how on earth I can think this way. I have been told that nothing bad must have happened to me – surely only someone who hasn’t suffered can say ‘by experiencing pain we experience happiness’. What pain can a middle-class white girl have really experienced? So let me tell you a bit about myself. Like many people, I have seen those closest to me die. I have experienced grief. I was also sexually exploited as a child and I am a rape survivor. I have experienced pain, and by experiencing that pain I have become a stronger person. That pain has also brought me closer to God.

We are owed nothing in this life. Life – and God – should not bend over backwards to ease our suffering and to make our lives easier and happier. You only need to look at the story of Job and his suffering to understand.

Job was one of the most faithful servants that God had when Satan asked Him the question “would Job worship You if he got nothing out of it?” Job 1: 9. Satan took everything from him – his family, his wealth and his health, to which Job responded “I was born with nothing, and I will die with nothing. The Lord gave, and now He has taken away. May His name be praised!” and “When God sends us something good, we welcome it. How can we complain when He sends us suffering?” Job 1: 21 and Job 2: 10. It is easy to worship and praise God when we experience happiness. But is that really worship, or is that our arrogance in thinking that we are above sin, that we deserve all the good things that God has to offer? Do we learn anything if we have never had to work for anything in our lives?

“God teaches people through suffering and uses distress to open their eyes” Job 36:15. Only by suffering and loss can we know that we serve God for the sake of serving God – not by gaining health or wealth. Serving God is not a ‘quid pro quo’. We do not serve God for our own well-being. We serve God because He created us, because we owe our lives to Him. Through suffering we learn that faith can grow, through suffering we learn that God is our only refuge – in this world and the next.

And yet... despite all the suffering that we endure in this life, God loves us so much that He sent His only Son to be tortured and to die for us. He sent Jesus to suffer and be killed for us, so that He can take away our sins. He did this so that we can live eternally and know true happiness and peace by being with Him.

We all feel that we are suffering – all of us, at times feel that we are being judged unfairly; that no sin we have committed warrants the pain that we are feeling. So the next time I feel that I’m suffering through no fault of my own, I will not curse God’s name or tell Him how He can help me. Instead I will ask how I can help Him and be thankful that I have been given the opportunity to be that much closer to Him.


Me