On Acceptance

Yesterday after church we were talking about Lego and one of my friends asked if it makes a difference to me that he was born with all of his 'issues', rather than them being the result of the abuse he suffered as a newborn. They were all horrified when I said I wish that his Mom had been the one to do all of this to him. (Now, to be fair, I think some of them forgot that he actually was beaten, so it sounded to them like I wished he'd been abused). Obviously, the abuse was horrible - no one would wish that on a baby. People think tiny ones are easy to break, but they are surprisingly resilient. It would have been much easier for Mom to have given him brain damage than it was for her to break his leg. And that would have been easier for me to deal with.

After 3 years of doing this, of asking why God lets these horrible things happen to my kids (and thousands of others around the world), I've reached a tenuous balance between Divine will and Free will. We're all given the abilities to run around doing whatever we want, and a conscience that tells us which things that we want to do are right. If we require a good God to prevent all forms of child abuse, where do we draw the line? Soon He's going to have to intervene when I want to stay in bed all day instead of playing with my kids, or spend money on another book I don't really need rather than helping out my colleague who is broke this month. If you take that kind of thought to its logical conclusions, it would turn us all into robots, and what's the point of that?

I can just about cope now with the things that are allowed to happen to my kids, with the beatings and neglect and molestation and starvation and burning and the general lack of love. I still hate it, and it still destroys me for a couple days after we get a new baby, but I don't blame God for it. I blame sinful humanity. And I believe that God loves these kids enough that he will still give them chances in life. That they have hope. And, especially, that they have hope for eternal life. Because, as Paul says, our present sufferings pale in comparison to our future glory.

But what about when it really is all on God? Nothing that is wrong with Lego is the result of anything his parents did wrong. His problems originate in the womb, where God was 'knitting him together'. They aren't genetic, Mom didn't drink or use drugs or eat the wrong things. Holoprosencephaly and CP (in most cases) are simply "flukes of nature," or, in a Christian worldview, surely we have to say that this actually was what God wanted for this child. How do you come to terms with that? How is that a "good and perfect plan"?

The answer is simply this - I don't know.

However, you can't allow one example to define how you view God. You can't take what happens to your child and allow it change how you see God. Because these things were happening to other children around the world long before Lego was born. If I believed God was good then, in the face of other people's suffering, why should the fact that it is now my suffering change my worldview? Surely that is the height of egotism. No, if God is good, then God is always good. So, somehow, I have to believe that God will "work all things together for good".

Even now, there are glimmers of blessing hiding in the many layers of curse. Lego, unlike the rest of my children, will never understand that his family rejected him, that we are not the people he was supposed to be with, that our skin is different colors, that people stare at him and whisper when we go out. He is allowed to reach heights of happiness and laughter just by his aunties stroking his face, or putting him in a carseat, or tickling his tummy. Delight will come easily to him, he will never be cynical or jaded. And I believe that God will someday welcome him into heaven with open arms, where he will be able to run, and play, and see, and recognise the wonder of his Saviour.