Recently, I received from a long-time friend, the following letter to an editor:
In three short months, just like He did with the plagues of Egypt, God has taken away everything we worship.
God said, "you want to worship athletes, I will shut down the stadiums.
You want to worship musicians, I will shut down civic centers.
"You want to worship actors, I will shut down theaters.
"You want to worship money, I will shut down the economy and collapse the stock market.
“You don’t want to go to church and worship Me, I will make it where you can’t go to church”
“If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
Maybe we don’t need a vaccine, Maybe we need to take this time of isolation from the distractions of the world and have a personal revival where we focus on the only thing in the world that really matters. Jesus.
It’s time for the nation to turn their heart’s back to Jesus and pray. Read your Bible.
To me, this understanding of God’s character is shocking!
Here is the reply I sent to my friend. Please tell me what you think.
Well (name of my friend), I guess a lot of people think God brings harm upon people in order to “teach them a lesson” so that they will behave better.
But I am a Christian, and I believe what Christ taught about the character of His Father. He taught that the Most High God is kind to both ungrateful people and to evil people.
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. (Luke 6:35)
I believe Jesus’ words above any modern ideas that God teaches people to be righteous by bringing a life-destroying virus upon them, or even above what the writers of the Old Testament wrote about his bringing plagues upon Egypt.
Not only that, but the apostle Paul taught that it is God’s kindness that is meant to lead people to repentance (Romans 2:4). I think Paul would have been shocked if he had known that professing Christians would one day teach that God would bring a life-destroying virus upon mankind in order to remove the pleasures that they enjoy or that they “worship” as (name of writer of letter to the editor) claims, and that that would lead them to repentance. Indeed, I have heard non-believers say that if God does such things to people, they want nothing to do with Him!
With love in the Altogether Lovely One,
Don