PART 2
Why does God let bad things happen ?
Welcome back, to the 3rd episode of “ be the change” ... I know that I haven’t introduced myself to you yet, but part of what the message that I received when I was starting to work on this was that I was to be an “ invisible hand”… which to me meant that who I am would not play a role in the message that I was to share with you.
This is about you… and not about who you are, but about who you want to be… who you were meant to be.
“Be the change that you want to see in the world”- Ghandi
The good news is, that you won’t have to quit your job ( unless you’re an assassin or something),…. But you do have to make a choice and make a change….The bad news is, that sometimes, the hardest choices to make are the right ones. But that’s life right? Nothing new there.
What I will promise you is that once you follow through with this… it will not only change your life, but will change the lives of those you love most, and eventually, it will start to change the world …and that’s how we’re going to save it.
Just take the rest of message that I am going to be sharing with you over the next few weeks and apply it to your every day life; and remember, everybody fails sometimes…. Its learning to get back up that important and learning the lesson that matters.
Now before we move on, it is crucial that that you understand a few important things.
God has unwavering faith in us. He believes that we can still change. You can do this.
God is not the cause of your pain, he is one carrying you through it… He is not the cause of your suffering, He is the source of your strength…and why He allows bad things to happen to people?… Because we all have free will, and ( unfortunately) sometimes the free will of others is just as damaging to us, as our own. . . A few years ago, When the terrorist group kidnapped all of those little girls in NIGERIA, I felt broken and helpless ( I think I spent about a week crying) … and I had never questioned God but I couldn’t help myself, and, with love and yearning to learn, I asked Him … “ Why, do you let these things happen to these innocent children?… Can’t we just save them? Isn’t there anything you can do to remove them from their situation?”… God replied in a question…. He said “ What about other children, who are being hurt in the same way, in other parts of the world?” … I said …. “ Yes, them too.” Then God asked “ And how about the children who are being neglected?” … I started to see where he was going with this, but I continued…. And said “yes, them too”…. “ And how about children in the world that have not enough to eat?” God asked… this time, I stayed quiet…. I already understood His answer. But, God continued “ where do you draw the line?… When do our actions turn into a violation of the free will of man?” At this point, I had heard everything that I needed to hear, and I understood more deeply than our conversation had even reached. I understood…. I finally understood why. God would never do anything to hurt you, He hurts when you hurt…but as any good parent would do, you must sometimes let your children suffer the consequences of their actions so that they learn as much from their failure and wrongs as they do from their successes and rights. And in the case of this world, we also learn from the failures and mistakes of others. At times we learn life’s greatest lessons from our biggest failures, the important part is learning to take the lesson with us.
That being said, its also important that your mentality about this life changes, so that this process becomes more understandable and manageable. You see people walk around thinking that life is supposed to be easy. And that the harder you work, that the easier life will be… the problem is that the that not really what life is about. Our purpose, isn’t to become more rich or famous or powerful…The life that you live is all about learning and growing…. It’s like a school, except that instead of getting better at math or reading, we are supposed to be striving to become more kind, more accepting, more forgiving…. So your life was not intended to be easy….it’s work…. And, most of the time, good choices will make for an easier life, whereas the wrong choices will make life more difficult. But all the while teaching us something…And, of course, you have to take into account that the poor choices of those you surround yourselves with also have the potential to affect you. ( And thats also exactly like when we are in a conventional classroom). It has always been the hope for humanity, that man would learn to avoid the difficulty by avoiding poor choices, but as we all know that has not been the case.
And by the way, for those of you who find yourself in seemingly “impossible” situations… just do your best to slowly move through this, because it was meant for you too. No matter what you have done in the past, and no matter who you have been…. It is who you become that matters
well.. let’s start with why we’re here, what we are supposed to be doing here, and why God doesn’t interfere with our choices.
So here’s a simple scenario: someone comes to you for help or advice. . . and you give it. Say, It works for them. Then what?… they’re coming back the next time they have a problem because you did such a great job helping them solve it the last time. You know, after years of hearing about all sorts of problems, I saw a pattern; A behavioral pattern of sorts. Everyone’s pattern is different and each individual's pattern ends up causing the same type of results in that person’s life ( just in different situations). Nobody worries when they get good results but what about when those behavior patterns result in something negative, or something that complicates their life a little more than they’re comfortable with? Well, that’s when they come looking for help, and I realized that I had to find a way to stop giving people solutions to their problems, and instead, help them learn how they can resolve it themselves so that they would be able to change their own outcomes in the future. You see, by solving their problems for them, I was becoming a part of that persons negative pattern, instead of giving them the tools that they needed to change their old patterns into new ones. While its always easier to give someone something, rather than take the time to teach it, I remembered the old Chinese proverb that says:
“ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime”
You see, by solving someones problems, all your really doing is teaching them how to depend on you…Now take a minute to think about that. We just unwittingly stumbled upon an important actuality… the understanding of why God doesn’t interfere in our decision-making or when we end up paying the price for the bad decisions that we made, regardless of whether they negatively affect us or others. The choices we make are like the ripples that are created after a single drop of water hits the surface of of a liquid, and we can’t depend on God to step in and put a stop to those ripples, or keep that drop of water from ever hitting the surface. If He did that, all we would learn is dependancy, rather than our learning to make the right decisions for ourselves.
So the purpose of life is to get to a point where we change our patterns of behavior into those that will make the life that we are living as easy as possible. Naturally, The deeper of a hole you are in the harder it will be to climb your way out… but the important thing to remember is that there IS a way out you just have to be determined enough to get there.
In order to change my patterns, I worked on one positive thing at a time. Once I had mastered it, I moved on and built on it with the next one. I did that until I had completed every last one. I’m not saying that I don’t fall here and there, but the falls are seldom and its become really easy to get myself back up and move forward. Anyways, I wanted to share the tools that I used to make that change within myself, and like I said before, the change that occurred around me just by my changing my patterns and perspective.
I have to remind you once more that this series is about changing yourself… not others… You cannot change or control how others think, feel, or behave… your one choice and your one responsibility is yourself and , of course your children, if you have any. After all, they’re the ones that we are leaving this world to, so leaving them with the right tools is essential in their being able to navigate life with as much ease as possible. A great scholarly education is important and may help them make enough money to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, and maybe even have a nice car, but none of things will matter if they don’t have peace and happiness; and those are only two of the things that money can’t buy. So, you want to give your child the best of everything? I hope each and every one of you starts with character. Because in the end, it will be the only thing that will help fulfill them.
That being said, starting next week, I will give you the first tool that you can work with. I will present the tools more or less in the order in which they were presented to me.
One more thing… “practice makes perfect”… And, its important that you know that You won’t always succeed when trying to change the way that you see things or how you react to them… so when you do mess up, just get yourself back up and turn your failure into a lesson. You can Change how you choose to view your failures and successes, so use every lesson that you learn from both, to make you a more kind, more compassionate, and a better person.
I’ll leave you with a final quote for today:
“ If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he pray(s) for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for the family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other?” - BRUCE Almighty