At the time of this writing, Russia is invading Ukraine. It’s March 4, 2022. Many readers have sent me emails or messages asking why God doesn’t just stop this war.
If you believe God exists and you believe God is all-powerful, it may seem quite perplexing why God would let one group of people hurt or oppress another group.
If you believe God can control the actions of any human being, you might wonder why God has not smited the aggressor in this war, or indeed any war of the past.
But why stop with war?
Why doesn’t God just snap his ethereal fingers and end hunger?
Why doesn’t God heal the sick and dying?
Why doesn’t God end slavery and human trafficking?
Why doesn’t God rescue victims of violent crimes before they are hurt?
If you believed in God and you believed God was capable of anything, you might think God is being unnecessarily cruel or callous towards the people of Earth.
You might start to wonder if God is punishing people for displeasing him. You might even start to wonder if somehow the people being hurt deserved punishment and only God knows what they’ve done.
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know that I don’t believe God controls anything on Earth. I believe Earth (and the universe) were created to give our souls a place to experience physicality. I believe we have free will and we are not merely Fate’s puppets.
I believe that we as a people must design and co-create the world we want to live in, and people have different ideas of what that looks like, so that’s in conflict.
The world is the way it is now because the people in the world now have created it to be that way. The way the world is now, someone in power in one country can order their troops to attack people in another country.
The only choice after that is how we respond. Do we, as a people, allow acts of aggression to stand or are actions taken to stop the aggression, or sanction the aggressor, or prevent war from happening in the future?
Everything that happens on Earth involves action and reaction, choice and consequences.
If enough people decide to stand against war, then war will be eradicated. If enough people stand against hunger, then hunger will end. If enough people put resources and energy into medicine, people will live longer and healthier lives.
So we can’t look to God to fix the problems we created. We must look to ourselves. We must create in the world what we want to see in the world. Whatever happens here on Earth is our responsibility.
So don’t ask what God will do to end war. Ask yourself what you are willing to do.
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Recommended article: God Walks the Battlefield
