The Answer to Everything

 . . . you put all things under his feet . . . 

 - From Psalm 8

Well, maybe not everything. But these  seven words pretty much address the major objection of History's Scoffer: "Why would a loving God . . . ?"

Why? Because God put man . . . humanity . . . in charge. Of everything.

God shouldn't have had to get involved at all. We have a conscience. We know right and wrong. Even a purely evil person understands this. And in those days (week? years?) in which God walked with Adam and Eve, and maybe their children, in the Garden of Eden, surely He instructed them in all things. 

He didn't leave us without the goods to do what needed to be done. All we had to do was prove ourselves worthy of the trust He placed within us, by putting all things under our feet. 

Good teachers let their students fail, and God is a Good Teacher.

You can even take God out of the picture. Impersonal Nature did the same thing: gave us the ability to choose. And we even defy Nature, by setting ourselves above the rules that govern wild creation. We don't have claws or fangs, yet we kill. We were given the ability to choose NOT to take what we hunger for but can live without, yet we take it anyway. We have wisdom and knowledge. But we turn against it with impunity, time, after time, after time. 

Why, indeed? Why would a loving humanity allow . . . ?

This morning on Facebook, someone asserted that the cause of all of the world's problems is health and money. That's the partisan assessment that adjudges one group of people while leaving the other group innocent.

But God said from the start, that we all are responsible. And that the root causes of everything wrong with the world are selfishness and a short-term focus; a desire to serve yourself first, and to have everything you want now.

Which breeds distrust of others . . . which leaves hunger never fully satiated . . . which leads to even greater evil. 

It's all under our feet. It's up to us.