Is God a Sadist?

Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as a mortal sees? –Job 10: 4

Why should we pray to a God who has created Sufferings?

Very often we ask, “If God is omnipotent then why does he need our prayers? If God is all-knowing, then why should we pray in order to tell Him our feelings and desires? If God is perfectly good and just, then aren't our prayers asking Him to help others pointless? Doesn’t the act of prayer show God’s limitations? After all, why should we pray?” Well, the answer is simple, "we should pray in order to know/receive/understand the answers to the above questions from God because prayer is the only means of communicating with God, who is a Spiritual being.”

God is omnipotent and doesn't need our prayers but a person who knows God will not stop praying because he knows that God is kind and merciful and is always willing to listen to our cry. In the words of a famous person, "Man cannot work without God and God does not work without man." It’s not that the omnipotent God needs our prayers in order to work, He has designed everything in such a way that He does not will to work without the involvement of man (through prayer). Note that there is a great difference between the words need and will. Any person who thinks logically would ask, why can’t the omnipotent God work independently? The reason is the most important attribute of God, The Bible says, “God is Love”. If we take a view of these things from God’s point of view we will find that God has two options before him either to do everything independently or to do everything by involving man in it (shared participation). Which do you think is the option that a Loving God would choose to take? Certainly he would choose to work in conjunction with man. That’s why God doesn’t will to work without the involvement of man, through prayer. He involves mankind (our prayers) in everything He does because his nature is Love. Even though God is omniscient, he still responds to our prayers because his love for us is unconditional.

Our prayers may not change His plans for us but prayer does prepare us to know and acknowledge His plans. Prayer helps and prepares us to receive God's purpose of the things that we do not know and also about the things that we cannot change within our ability. Prayer does not denote God’s inability but instead it helps us to understand how God has limited himself, despite his limitless power, for the sake of communicating with his creation - who has very limited knowledge of His attributes, plans, purposes and sometimes even questions His existence because He doesn't intervene in their lives in the way they expected or wanted to.

If we think from the Biblical stand-point; when God created man and placed him in the garden, man could communicate with Him directly because at that time he was fully aware of his own spiritual reality. By spiritual reality I mean to say that man knew that he is a spirit being. How many of us are born with a realization that we are spirit beings and not just physical bodies? In fact, we start thinking about our spiritual existence only when others begin to point it to us. Why so? The Bible says that this is because we are spiritually dead due to sin. How and where did this sin originate? From the Bible we understand that sin originated when mankind rebelled against God in the garden of Eden. God had told them that they would die if they ate the forbidden fruit, but they still went on to eat it and as we all know they did not die physically; they died spiritually and hence lost the awareness of their being spirit-beings. This is evident from the fact that man felt ashamed of his nakedness only after committing the act and not before it. The resultant spiritual death that passed on from generation to generation is the reason why we are born without spiritual awareness. This condition is reversed when a person asks for forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ. A person who believes that Jesus Christ has paid the penalty for his sins becomes born-again spiritually. God promises that he would fully restore those who are spiritually born-again even to the state in which Adam and Eve could talk with him directly, after the judgment and the resurrection of the dead. Until that time prayer is the only means of communicating with God!

If God is Love then why did he create Sufferings?

Another question that one would ask is, “If God loves us so much, then why did he create sufferings in the first place?” If there were no sufferings, then would anyone bother to pray? Well, the Bible says that God did not create sufferings it’s the work of the Satan. Naturally we would then ask, “Why did God create the Satan?” According to the Bible, God did not create Satan. In fact, he created a beautiful angel named Lucifer. Lucifer used His freewill [the ability to think, decide and act independently] to rebel against God and became Satan. One would then ask, “If God is omnipotent and omniscient, then why did he allow the angel to rebel?” The secret again is hidden in the most mysterious attribute of God, Love. If we look at these concepts from God’s stand point we would find that he had two options in front of him before creating the angels. He could either create them with a free-will or without it. Which do you think is the option that a loving God would choose? We all know that love is selfless. Then, certainly he would choose to create angels with a free-will, rather than without it. So is it sensible to put the blame on God for allowing the fallen angel use his freewill?

A man once asked me, “Well, if God who is full of love knew that the angel would fall then why didn’t he stop him?” I answered with a counter question, “Well, what use is a freewill if a person (in this context, angel) has no freedom to use it?” On a different occasion another person asked me, “Well, God knew that the angel was fallen, He also knew that this angel would become the cause of sufferings for mankind, then why didn’t he punish the Satan then and there? Why is he still waiting for the end of the age? Well, he could have spared mankind all these sufferings if he had punished Satan at that very moment. So, do you still think that God loves us?” I added a few more questions to make his argument look even stronger. I asked, “If God knew that the angel would become a source of sufferings to mankind, then why did He allow this fallen angel to enter the garden in order to tempt mankind? And why did He move away at the crucial time to allow the Satan a free access? Above all, why did He plant that dreaded tree in the center of the garden and why did He create man with an ability to hear Satan’s voice and an ability to make his own choice?” Once again the answer for all these questions is found in Love that one crucial characteristic of God which makes him different from every other creature. 

If we examine these questions from God’s point of view we would find that he had two options before creating mankind. He could either create them with a free-will or without it. Which do you think is the option that a loving God would choose? We all know that love is selfless, and it compels a person to take risks and make sacrifices. Therefore, a loving God would certainly choose to create mankind with a free-will rather than without it. And, as we all know it’s the freewill that gave man the ability to make his own choice.

Then, why did he plant the tree, permit Satan to enter the garden and move away from the garden at the crucial time? We all know that any ability is useless if we don’t have the circumstances to use it. For example, learning English would be meaningless if we live (and plan to live) in a society where no one else will ever speak this language. Similarly, a free-will would be of no use if there were no circumstances to use it. Therefore, God planted the tree, permitted Satan to enter the garden and moved away from the garden at the crucial time in order to create circumstances for man to use that free-will. We all know the rest of the story. Mankind used the free-will to rebel against God for its own destruction. God in his righteousness was forced to curse and punish mankind whom he loved, because of their sin. But even in this curse our loving God had concealed a promise to redeem mankind from eternal sufferings and the consequences of their sin.

In Genesis 3: 15 he tells Satan, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel." This is in fact, the first mention of the gospel and of Jesus Christ in the entire Bible. You might have missed it because the name Jesus isn’t in the text, but he is there, nonetheless. Jesus is the “seed of the woman”, who would one day come into this world in a most unlikely fashion. I like to think of this verse as the top of a wide funnel. When the promise was given, no one could have imagined the coming Jesus Christ.

The “seed of the woman” simply meant that he must be a member of the human race. But after the flood the line was narrowed to Noah’s descendants, then later to Shem’s descendants, and later came to rest on one man–Abraham, the father of the nation Israel. This was passed on to his son Isaac, to Isaac’s son Jacob, then to Jacob’s son Judah. Centuries later the line was further narrowed down to the house of David. Finally, approximately nine centuries after that, the line came to rest on the firstborn son of a virgin named Mary. What started with the whole human race has narrowed to just one man–Jesus Christ. He didn’t come in the usual way; he came by means of a virgin birth. No one before or ever since entered the world as he did. Thus he is the ultimate “seed of the woman” since no man was involved in his conception.

Written by: Dr. Manoj Kumar Khatore

Copyright © 2012 Dr. Manoj Kumar Khatore

http://shalomchristianministry.org/