“But WHY do I even HAVE to be a fellow-sufferer with Him?! I DON’T feel happy about the evil parent God gave me, I have spent thousands and thousands of dollars in therapy, years of my life have been taken from me, and I screwed up my step-son in the process, I mean royally screwed. He won’t even talk to me, and I think he’s justified in his bitterness. Why won’t God just make it better?!”

When I don’t like the way things are, it is important to be clear as to what I think would be a better way for God to have arrainged the universe and to conduct himself. In the above, painful situation, where should God have intervened? To prevent the evil parent from being evil? Perhaps their evil was, in part from their own parenting. Where does the intervention begin, by not making Eve and Adam since he knew they would screw up? Or should he have taken away their freewill and made them behave. In that case their obedience would have been like a “Stepford wife” robot. God doesn’t want to be married to robots, that’s a disgusting idea.

Should he have intervened to not let the evil parent’s deeds cause so much damage? If God turned all weapons into Nerf toys that could do no harm, again, how could we learn to hate sin? How could we retain any meaning to our choices. We would not hate sin and hunger for righteousness because of the good that comes when we do. Instead we would behave because there would be no point to not behavine becausee God would block the impact of any sin we did.

It is not the consequences of sin that make it terrible, it is the sin itself that separates us from God. If we could sin comfortably and it did not affect us or our family and we could just slide comfortably into hell  THAT WOULD BE WORSE than having a world where sin produces pain and suffering.

Should he have stripped you of your freewill so that you did not pass on the damage to your stepson? Should he have prevented him from being bitter?

I would love to direct God to immediately remove my son William’s freewill so that he would never drink again and would love God and God’s ways. I would love to not have to periodically wonder if he is alive or dead, but I daily thank God for the painful gift of choice that has impact for good or evil. If, and when, William choses God it will be because he wants to and it will count.
My wife was terrified of being a wife and mother and confessed that, if possible, she would have let God make her be a good wife and mother taking away all the struggles arising from her upbringing.
If I could live my life over, I would live it very differently, but being thick-headed and stubborn, God is still teaching me things that would have made a huge difference if he’d shown me earlier.

To make it even more puzzling, Hebrews 11 points out that some people are filled with faith and still are murdered or starve to death. God allows others choices to have impact on those he loves even though they are serving Him faithfully.

The New Covenant of God with me is not that I will have everything turn out comfortably if I obey him, but rather that I will remain in his love, he will dwell in me and fashion me into his own image and take me to be with him forever.  It’s not so much that God lets me suffer and he could just change things and everything would be fine. This is a valley of tears and suffering flows naturally from people’s choices, if God intervenes willy-nilly there will be other consequences that are even worse, ie. pretty comfortable but pointless robotic lives.

When I am mad at the reality sin has brought, I thank God for my freewill , remember that it is better to wade through the cesspool with him than alone, and actively make myself available for him to work out healing in the present situation through me, crying out to him HELP, THANKS, SHOW ME YOUR WILL.