whydoesgodhateamputees.com/god1.htm
Marshall Brain It would have to be a teacher's worst nightmare. You are standing at t he front of the classroom working through the day's lesson. Perhaps you and your students are studying verb conjugation, or analyzing one of Sha kespeare's plays. It is another normal day in the American education sys tem, and you have a lot of material to cover. A gunman ha s entered the school and is shooting at people as he makes his way down the hallway toward your classroom. If you were English teacher Neva Rogers at Red Lake high school, you woul d take immediate action.
ref You would tell yo ur students to crouch in a corner of the classroom to get out of harm's way. Then you would stand in the middle of the room and begin praying to God. According to student witnesses, Ms Rogers prayed, "God be with us . In a situation like this, it seems appropriate to pray to the creator of the universe. As an all-knowing being, God can see exactly what is happening, and he knows exactly how best to help. As an all-lovi ng being, God would certainly want to help. Why would an all-loving bein g want to see a group of students and their teacher shot to death? In addition, Jesus makes it very clear in the Bible that he hears and ans wers prayers. For example, In Matthew 17:20 Jesus says: For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, yo u will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; This message is reiterated in Mark 11:24 when Jesus says: Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you ha ve received it, and it will be yours. In Matthew 18:19 Jesus says: Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Jesus is God, and "Nothing will be impossible to you" is a straightforwar d statement. Neva Rogers has prayed, and Jesus has made her a promise in the Bible : God is watching and has the power to help. There is no ambiguity in Je sus' statements about the power of prayer. The gunman walks to Neva Rogers' classroom door and finds it locked. He s hoots out the glass panel next to the door and it explodes in a shower o f tiny crystalline fragments. The gunman reaches in through the hole he has created, unlocks the door and shoves it out of the way to enter the classroom. Dressed completely in black and measuring 6 feet tall, he is a huge, hulking apparition. He crosses the threshold of the classroom and looks at Ms Rogers as she prays. He raises the gun wi th both hands so it is pointing straight at Rogers' head. There is the gunman and his weapon faci ng Rogers and her God. What do you think God should do in a situation like this? Step back for a moment and look at this from God's perspective. God is all-knowing, so he is certainly watc hing Red Lake high school as events unfold. He hears Neva Rogers' prayer s, and sees the gunman pointing the shotgun at her head. Jesus has promi sed that God will help, and Jesus is sitting at God's right hand. On one side of the line is pure evil -- a sixteen-year-old who is obviously insane. On the other side is a deeply devoted, 62-year-old Christian woman of unbending faith in God. This is a showdown between good and evil if there ever was one. Think of all of the possibilities that an all-powerful God has at his dis posal. Perhaps the easiest thing would be to strike the gunman with a fr eak heart attack, aneurism or stroke right then and there. Hundreds of p eople die of heart attacks in the United States every day, so if God str uck him with a heart attack it would be completely undetectable. At this moment, police officers acros s the street are already responding to the emergency. They are trained f or this scenario and they are not going to wait for a SWAT team to arriv e because that would waste valuable seconds. God could direct one of the se officers straight to Ms Rogers. God could cause a police officer to burst into Ms Rogers' classroom just at this moment and kill the gunman on the spot. Non-believers would chalk it up to coincidence, but Christ ians would understand what really happened. If God has a desire to be a bit more spectacular, there are other possibi lities. He could send an ange l to stand between the gunman and the teacher and deflect the bullets. A meteor could crash through the ceiling, or a bolt of lightning, and str ike the gunman dead. Or the gunman could turn instantly into a pillar of salt -- God has done that before (see Genesis 19). There are a million things that an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God could do in thi s situation. God has all of these possibilities at his disposal, yet he uses none of t hem. The gunman looks directly at Neva Rogers with his 12-gauge shotgun pointe d at her skull. Unfortunately the gunman has a backup weapon, and he does not even hesita te. He points the pistol at Ms Rogers' head as s he prays and squeezes the trigger. He shoots Neva Rogers three times in the head and then o nce in the face for good measure. She dies instantly, falling into a poo l of her own blood on the floor right in front of her stunned students. According to Time magazine, what the gunman does next is remarkable. He a ims his gun at one of Ms Rogers' students in the corner and asks, "Do y ou believe in God?" By doing this, the gunman recreates a scene from the shootings at Columbine. At Columbine the student answered, "Yes" to thi s question and was shot to death.
ref A total of ten people died on that day at Red Lake before the gunman took his own life. The paradox A situation like this is deeply paradoxical. Chances are that you believe in God, and as a believer it is difficult to understand what happened a t Red Lake. Key Point In Mark 11:24 Jesus promises Neva Rogers that, "whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." In John 14:14 Jesus promises, "if you ask anything in my name, I will do it." Yet when Neva prayed for protection from the gunman, Jesus completely ignored her. Jeff Weise shot Neva Rogers in the head four times, and she di ed in a pool of her own blood. For any thoughtful person, the questions raised by this event come in a f lood. Why does an all-powerful God completely ignore the prayers and all ow ten people to die? Why does God save the student who denies God's exi stence? Why doesn't God strike the gunman dead at the scene, or help him earlier in life so as to complete derail the situation before it ever h appens? How could a loving God allow such perverse, needless and useless suffering when he clearly has the power and authority to prevent it? Wh y would Jesus make an unambiguous promise to answer prayers in the Bible , and then renege? How can God have answered millions of other prayers a ll around the globe on that day, while at the same time ignoring this hu ge tragedy and refusing to answer any prayers there? It is hard for us, as human beings, to know what to think, because Neva R ogers death is senseless. We have no easy way to penetrate the mysteries of the Lord. What we do know is that these deeply paradoxical situations happen all th e time, and there must be a reason for that...
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