God, or Fraud?

“So, how are things?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Happy yet? You fill that hole deep down inside you? Or do you still need more?”
“Look, if you’ve got a problem with what I’m doing, why haven’t you used your quote-unquote ‘powers’ on me?”
“I told you, that’s not how it works.”
“Right, I forgot. You’re a fraud.”

In this exchange between Ted and the Lorax in Illumination Entertainment’s film, The Lorax (2012), we begin to see the heart of Ted harden against what he is wrongfully doing. He started out by chopping down just one Truffula tree to make his revolutionary Thneed. The mystical Lorax warns him against chopping down any more trees, lest the powers of nature (that he wields) overtake him. However, after promising to not harm any more Truffula trees, Ted heads to town to sell his product. Though not an instant success, eventually people start demanding Thneeds, and to keep up with the demand, Ted goes back on his promise and starts cutting down more trees. Just before the last tree is cut down, the Lorax confronts him and they exchange the dialogue quoted above.

In many ways, I feel that people view God the same way.

I think many people know that they aren’t perfect. I think they understand that they are sinful. And I also believe that some even believe that God is there, in a vague sense, at least. But believing God is there doesn’t lead to salvation. We also need to believe that God is inherently and perfectly good; that His goodness is enough to catch us when we fall, forgive us when we sin, and set us back up on our feet. And that’s where the train derails.

How could God be good with so much injustice in the world? They look at their own sinful lives, and see the wealth and things they’ve acquired, and conclude that if God isn’t intervening to set the world to rights, He must be a fraud. So that begs the question: is He?

If, like Ted believed of the Lorax, God is a fraud, then it makes sense why bad things happen to good people. That may be one of the most asked questions about the Christian faith: why does God allow bad things happen to good people? That screams of injustice! But, I think when it comes down to it, the question on their hearts is really the opposite: why does God allow good things to happen to bad people?

If we really are such terrible sinners, an authentic God would use His almighty powers to intervene, right? We’d be slain on the spot, if we got what we deserve! We know that we deserve it; and yet, here we are, living the American dream and enjoying the wealth and abundance of that dream.

We ask God the question, “Look, if you’ve got a problem with what I’m doing, why haven’t you used your quote-unquote ‘powers’ on me?”  And then, He replies with, “I told you, that’s not how it works,” (The Lorax, 2012).

That’s not how it works. He doesn’t use His powers to kill us off because He loves us. In fact, He used His powers 2000 years ago with the hopes that we’d find life. He doesn’t want the bad people to be dead; He wants the bad people to be RESTORED back to who they were created to be. And Jesus Christ is His means of doing so.

By bearing our sins on the cross, Jesus gave us forgiveness. By rising to life again, Jesus gave us reconciliation; a chance to have a relationship with a God who loves you so deeply. That’s the Gospel. But there’s one catch: we have to believe that God is good; that His character is good and perfect.

And that’s hard to do in such an unjust world! Listen to what Solomon says:

“There is a futility that is done on the earth: there are righteous people who get what the actions of the wicked deserve, and there are wicked people who get what the actions of the righteous deserve. I say that this too is futile.” - Ecclesiastes 8:14 (HCSB)

How can we believe in God’s goodness when His justice seems all upside-down and backwards? Because He promises to set things to rights in time.

“I also saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged according to their works by what was written in the books.” - Revelation 20:12 (HCSB)

He loves us so incredibly much, that He gives us an entire lifetime to find Him. He is so patient. He desires that everyone would discover the incredible life that He offers through His Son, Jesus Christ. And so He allows our crazy world to spin on, instead of destroying it, because it will be brought to justice… but He is pushing back the deadline as far as possible so that as many people as possible can find life. He grieves when people die, and don’t know Him. That’s why good things happen to bad people; it’s a sinful, broken world, so sin is why justice is perverted; but if God intervened now, so many people wouldn’t get the chance at life, and that is a risk He won’t take.

We can trust God isn’t a fraud because of His promises. That is what faith is sometimes; believing God’s Word when we cannot see the fruit of it. That’s one aspect of what it means to #LiveItLikeJesus.