When I was a kid I must have frustrated the daylight out of my parents by asking silly, outlandish, nonsensical questions that no average person could possibly answer. Questions like “if we could see in the 4th dimension, could we see all the way around the world?”, or “how big is the universe?”, or “if I were to fall from the edge of the universe, would I ever hit bottom – and if I did, what would be on the other side?”, or one of my favorites (since my dad worked in the airline industry) “can a plane travel fast enough to never see the sun set?”
That last question I got an answer to, as I eventually learned that it was something close to 1600 km/hour at the equator! Alas for the others, since this was long before the days of Alexa, science programs, or google, I’m sure mom and dad must have been rolling their eyes each time I asked. It was my mom that gave me an answer once that has stayed with me these many years, however, when she said “that’s a question you’ll have to ask God”. This simple reply of my mother’s triggered something deep within that I can talk to God, and I can ask Him anything! What’s better, because He is a living God, I can expect an answer back!
So it was that recently I had a very interesting conversation with the Lord on His choice to create people. I wanted to know, if He is omniscient and knows in advance whether or not a being He creates will go on in life to actually reject Him rather than choose Him, why does He then bother to go ahead with creating them? I mean, I was really perplexed thinking about it! The bible tells us that broad is the way of destruction, and narrow is the road that leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14). That means the majority of people that God creates will reject Him, His love, and His free gift of eternal life together with Him.
Is it because God is cruel or heartless or unjust, and does not care that those He creates will choose destruction? No this is not the reason, because each one of us has the choice of what road we will follow, and we alone are responsible for the choices we make. No, that wasn’t why I was questioning this. I was questioning because I know God is love, and so I was desiring to understand how His heart of love could ever make the decision to create a life that He knew would not choose Him in the end.
So then how could He stand to watch it happen, knowing that our choices could possibly lead to such deadly consequences? Wouldn’t it be better if, knowing a person would not choose Him, to never create them at all? So I began to rummage through all the things I remember hearing in past in order to try and figure this one out. Was it because every person throughout history has an impact and role to play that will bring about the unfolding of history itself, I wondered, so in the end, good or bad, it takes us all? If that were true, couldn’t it all be accomplished some other way? No, it wasn’t that either.
Have you ever felt like God is tapping you on the shoulder to try and get your attention? As I sat there pondering my own thoughts, it was as if He was doing just this. Tap, tap, tap… “Yes, Lord”, I asked? “I have the answer”, He said. So I sat quietly, breathing in and breathing out, waiting to hear Him speak to my spirit. As I spoke the words out loud, the answer came. “Because of His great love for us, He wanted each of us to have the right to have the choice to love Him back”. It’s as simple as that. If He never created us, we would never have the choice. Even though for Him this becomes very painful to watch as so many choose to reject, it is because His love for each and every one of us is so immense that He chose not to have it any other way.
Thank you, God, for your heart of love.
Alabastersky 