Early in the novel Shogun a band of European sailors fell into the hands of a fierce samurai tribe. After days of misery and after they were informed to their dismay that the samurais had decided one of the sailors must die. The sailors were to pick the man.
European moral traditions gave the men no basis on which to make such a decision. How do you pick a comrade to die? Finally one sailor, drawing on his meager Bible knowledge, suggested, “We’ll draw lots. We’ll let God decide.”
“Poor God,” another seaman commented. “The stupidities He gets blamed for!”
The man was right. We do give God credit for way too much. Insurance companies speak of hail and flood waters and tornadoes as “acts of God.” Devout Christians weep beside their loved ones’ graves and intone Job’s mistaken words, “The Lord gave; and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
“How could God do this to me, preacher?” one distraught sixty-year-old man asked as we stood at the foot of the bed where his aged mother had just died. I doubted that God was guilty. The Bible plainly says that Satan is “him who has the power of death,” but that beside was not the place for a lesson in the Biblical theology of death.
Why should God get all the credit when I break my leg on an icy sidewalk or come down with lumbago? Just what has God done to deserve such bad press? From the very beginning of the Bible men and women continually say,
“O, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.” But for some reason people forget His goodness and point fingers of blame toward heaven when any evil befalls them.
When we are hurting, we need to give God credit, not for afflicting us but for aiding us. He is “a very present help in time of trouble,” the Bible says. “He is the God of all comfort.”