Q: Why does an all-powerful, omnipotent God play games with the little human microbes He created? Why bother warning and begging humans to stop doing bad things that He knows in advance they will do? Why create such a flawed creature in the first place? Instead of all the games and warnings, why not just eliminate the human flaws and behaviors that He does not like. Why does an all-powerful God allow and tolerate evil and injustice? The questions suggest perhaps God is not Who and what we think He is.
A: Friend, we will always/always have truckloads of questions about God and the realm in which He dwells, questions that will never be satisfactorily answered in this life. As ants may wonder about us humans, we are incapable of comprehending all there is about Him and His strategic ways. But we can rest assured He has given us a wealth of requisite insights in His Bible. Apart from this, we cannot begin to know, let alone understand anything about Him. For anyone who is a true seeker in his/her heart, diligent study and prayer about what He has already revealed to us will result in answers to our most basic questions. In fact, He pretty much guarantees this across the pages and ages of Scripture. 1
In His awesome and loving wisdom, God created both angels and humans with a free will, the ability to make decisions and experience their consequences, good, bad and ugly. He also created the law or principle of ‘seed, time and harvest’. I understand this law governs everything in both the physical and spiritual worlds, possibly except miracles. This includes our thoughts, words and actions. These are effectively various forms of seeds, each encasing spiritual DNA, akin to physical DNA, i.e., strategic code that governs the conditions and timeframe for these seeds to ‘produce their fruits after their kind’. Since God expresses great concern about ‘the thoughts/imaginations of our heart (our spirit)’, I imagine our heart’s motives may be critical aspects of this spiritual DNA. 2
We humans are inherently sinful. An understatement! Yet, in His Grace and Mercy, God has repeatedly warned us that sin has built-in consequences. Expressing (pushing out) the spiritual DNA of sin seeds activates the process of developing their particular fruits, just as planting and nourishing an agricultural seed activate development of that seed’s fruits.
In addition to His warnings, God has structured life so we can escape the final, full impact of our sins, namely, eternal separation from Him in a real hell. He has also provided a way for us to minimize, and at times escape some of the impacts of sins during this life. It’s call REPENTANCE through His born-again experience, and commitment to discipleship in Jesus as Lord and Savior. Apart from this, we all are subject to experiencing the fullest impacts of our sins, both in this life, and also in the hereafter. Moreover (and this is important!), in this life, we are also subject to the collateral effects of other people’s sins. From this, we see just how critically important the sin factor is in life, yet it is something we tend to ignore and avoid talking about across every human society!
With so many unrepentant, sinful people in the world, and with sinfulness becoming increasingly gross, imagine the seeds being strewn all over the planet, each with its specific spiritual DNA (conditions under which they will develop their fruits), and the likely collateral effects. While devils add to this mix by prompting us to sin, they are not 100% responsible for all sinfulness on Earth! 3
Further, add to this mix the fact that God, as Sovereign and the ultimate Judge Potentate, reserves His prerogative to judge sin, and to dictate any punishment He deems. While His heart’s desire is that we apply our free will to seeking after, and walking in what He calls righteousness, He has the options (a) to allow us to experience built-in, natural consequences of our sins, or (b) to direct specific punishments/judgments in response, or (c) both. He’s the ultimate Boss!
Here’s the problem: When the fruits of sin seeds show up like weeds in our lives, communities, nations and all over the world, we tend to blame and ask questions about God, the loving Creator Whose advice and warnings we totally ignored for the longest time. How wise is that?! But we who are wise (who are alive to God through His born-again experience in Christ, and who have His Holy Spirit as we practice our righteous walk) react quite differently. We seek and inquire of The Lord about the SEED and ROOT - the sin infraction(s) that effectively planted spiritual DNA in the unseen world in which spiritual seeds (good or evil) are germinated, incubated and developed into consequential fruits. 4 Unfortunately, to this kind of response, people who are not yet alive to God through Jesus Christ are effectively blind, deaf and dumb. They typically cannot or are unwilling to see, to hear, and are thus incapable of speaking about this more appropriate response pattern.
I trust this reply to your questions will give you much to ponder, and to decide about.
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1 ‘But if from there you seek The Lord your God, you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.’ (Deuteronomy 4:29)
‘I love those who love Me, and those who seek Me, find Me.’ (Proverbs 8:17)
‘You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.’(Jeremiah 9:13)
‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.’ (Matthew 7:7)
‘From one man He made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they [we] would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us. (Acts 17:24-28)
2 In Genesis 1:12, God effectively establishes the law of seed, time and harvest. His concern about the imagination thoughts of our heart is revealed in Genesis 6:5 and 8:21, and Luke 1:51
3 See: Zechariah 14:16-19. Even with satan and his host of devils and demons locked away for 1,000 years, these verses hint that mortal humans who will survive the tribulation will still be able to disobey Christ’s direct commands, i.e., to sin. It is very insightful for God to take 4 verses in His Bible to signal this to us.
4 2 Samuel 21:1-9 is an insightful account of David inquiring The Lord about a long famine in the land. God’s response pointed to a particularly gross sin seed. David was wise in finding a way to dig up and destroy its root. Check it out.
