Freedom to Choose

H. Kushner attributes bad things happening to good people as an implication of being made in the image of God, where choice is found in the character of God. Choice is also at the heart of Wm. Paul Young's The Shack as the explanation for the presence of pain and evil. Young's approach differs from Kushner's because choice is essential to a loving relationship. God by creating beings to enter into a reciprocal love relationship created the possibility that the relationship might not be reciprocal. God took the risk of loving us knowing we might choose not love to God in return. For God to create us to only love God and others without the possibility of not loving would have us more robotic than human. Consequently it is not choice that makes us more human and better image bearers, but choice in the context of love. Anyone out on the dating circuit knows the dangers of loving someone and the possibility of not being loved or even liked in return. It is easy to see why creating humanity in God's image was a high risk move.

Having said that, having our independence and insisting on having that independence from God, we get truly angry at God for loving us enough to give us what we wanted.

What we really want God to do is not to intervene when we do the things we want to do, and love whom and the way we want to, but to jump in there and either correct our poor choices, or protect us from the consequences of someone else not loving, or their painful and evil actions. The down side of this is where does accountability lie? When things go well and we love well and are well loved, we get the credit, and when things go south relationally and other ways, God gets blamed. If God is good, and really loves us then God will or should intervene. God's failure to intervene is frequently taken as a sign of God not being good or loving.

The irony is that the possibility of pain and evil, of not loving responses is a direct consequence of God's goodness and love. It is also clear that God has more in mind than sitting back as some jilted lover, but wishes to open and deepen that relationship and correct the destructive outcomes centered in ou r unloving choices to God and to others.