There are many ways God communicates to us, but there are also many ways people are mistaken in thinking that God communicates. For instance, the most common response to tragedy is to wonder why it happened. In trying to find meaning in the loss, many people say, “Everything happens for a reason.” Since the next logical step is to try to discern that reason, people start asking, “What is God trying to teach me by this event?”
Unfortunately, there are two basic mistakes here. The first is assuming that God causes everything that happens for the purpose of telling us something. The second is believing that God is such a poor communicator that He would prefer such a method of speaking. On the contrary, when God speaks, it’s usually quite clear to the person He is addressing. And if the message isn’t clear, the most likely explanation is that it’s not a message at all, but merely an event.
So, are ambiguously phrased evil events a preferred medium for God’s voice? Well, in my experience, God is both more clear and more loving than that.
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- A philosopher and former agnostic who hosts a Christian talk radio show on AM 1360 KPXQ weekdays from 6pm to 7pm in Phoenix, Arizona.
2 comments:
On the topic introduced on the show today, "Is television good or bad?"
I think that televison is a tool of technology, so it is neither good nor bad. As a tool it has a lot of potiential to be either. What is of more concern is the programming one watches on the television.
I think that as a tool the television can be used in a fantastic way to build a person up through praise and worship. On the other hand it can be bad for the person who uses it to view things of a graphic or pornographic nature.
Prior to the advent of television people would sit around the radio to hear news, stories, and other entertainment. Television is just an evolution to the radio as a source of family entertainment. Prior to the radio people would still spend time sitting around telling stories.
Another problem one could consider for the television is the amount of time spent viewing. If a tool is to be good it needs to be benefitial to the user. Spending too much time watching and not balancing your life is a bad thing. The question we need to ask is, "Do we balance our viewing time or has television become an idol in our lives?"
My friends and I had a long discussion over this thought, and wanted to clarify a few things.
When you said "God causes everything that happens for the purpose of telling us something", did you mean "us" to refer to an individual, or to "us" as all Christians?
I believe that God does use the majority of the events in the world for the purposes of teaching someone something, and that someone might not necessarily be me all the time.
In that vein, it's hard to see anything as "merely an event". When put that way, it seems that God does not have a purpose for some things that happen in this world. As opposed to it being "merely an event", could it be that maybe God just hasn't revealed the purpose of an event to us?
I do believe that speaking through ambiguous events is not God's preferred medium of communication, but due to some believers' spiritual deafness, it is sometimes necessary to use something like that to get through to a hard-hearted person.
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