God is downright scary some times. You better not mess around with God. “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). “Our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29). “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). We live in a world cursed. It’s frightening and downright depressing in so many ways. Thousands of children die of starvation each day. It’s not their fault. Babies are born severely deformed. Children are constantly harmed in awful ways. “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,” the Lord says (Rom. 9:14).

Throughout the Bible we read about just plain awful stuff. Adam and Eve mess up once and get kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Cain kills Abel because of religious jealousy. God drowns most of humanity. Male babies are thrown out to die by Egyptian midwives. Abraham actually takes his firstborn son up on an altar and lifts a knife to sacrifice him, only to be stopped by an angel. Water is turned to blood. Egypt is covered with frogs and gnats and pummeled by hail stones. All the firstborn babies of the entire Egyptian country die in a single night. God plans on killing Moses. What the heck did they do that much worse than many others? Whole clans are swallowed up by the earth for lack of respect of leadership. God rejects Saul as king for sparing one man in the midst of the slaughter of a whole nation, and then he sends an evil spirit on him for good measure. Jesus cursed a fig tree because it had no fruit on it—and it was not fig season! On top of that an eternal fire awaits not only those who completely reject God but even those who don’t get it right. Yeah, this is just a few things.

And, then, we’re supposed to reach out to him and love him. I want to hide a lot of the time. God scares me. How can God let babies starve? How can God let people be butchered? How can God let people put their babies’ eyes out so they can get more money begging? Why are so many mentally ill? Why do promiscuous people and people who don’t even want kids get pregnant and godly people who pray fervently and spend thousands of dollars and unbelievable (and often embarrassing) effort to do so and don’t? Why are there so many poor and homeless? Why are the “little” people the ones who get hurt in war and famine?

How could God let his only Son be butchered by tremendously wicked people? Why does he let us cry out in the pain for sickness and potential loss of loved ones and still not bring our desired remedy? Why does he let Christians suffer at the hands of evil unbelievers? Why do so many live in the darkness of what is at best false Christianity? Why did my mom, who was a sweet, beautiful woman have to die, while others who were patently wicked get to live?
I really don’t know. Mostly, I have not much of a clue. “The secret things belong to God.” And, after listening to lots of others try to explain it, I don’t think they do either. What I do know is that God is not one to be jerked around. What I do know is that God is tenacious and it’s unbelievably tough to witness one-trillionth of what he watches daily! I wilt just looking at just isolated incidents of it.

And, what I do know is that there has to be a purpose for all of this because nothing in nature can otherwise begin to explain it. Some seem to be able to just ignore the pain and suffering and questions. I’ve never been able to do that. It slaps me in the face daily. It starts every day when I read about it in the Bible God gave me. And, then I usually read the paper. Wow! I have to fight for my faith.

Sadly, own dad was frightening. He was the son of an alcoholic and lived in the toughest of times—a depression, two world wars, etc. Part of the “great generation.” He worked hard. He clearly had a learning disorder and graduated high school at 20 years of age. He was a fighter. Literally. I saw parts of several of his fights and the results of several more. We chased a car to a bar late one night because the driver cut a little close to us when passing. He wasn’t nice to them when they got out. My dad shot countless dogs. He shot my brother’s and my two German Shepherd puppies because they caught chickens. Then he told us about it. We had a bird dog we named “Buck” because his top teeth got knocked out by a car. He made the mistake of getting mange. After I left home, when we were moving my dad to another town, my dad killed him with an axe because he didn’t have a gun handy (his more merciful method of killing unwanted pets) and felt it best to put him down right there in a ditch along the road. One night at a friend of my sister’s, he got mad over a board game and when he and I were driving home, he once reached a speed of 100 miles per hour. It was on a gravel road. Oh, yeah, and he told me he ought to just kick me out of the car while driving that fast. That’s just a sampling to make my point. No doubt my upbringing skewed for the worse my challenge of relating to God. I have had to fight for my faith my whole adult life.

Some time the platitudes and often, what seemed to me, the silly answers of Christians has only made matters worse. I know it’s that way with many others. These thoughts are often the 10,000 pound elephant in the room everyone is trying to act as if it weren’t there. It’s there. We have to deal with it or it will make fools of all of us.
So, how do we relate to such a frightening God—a God who can zap us with a single word? A God who holds our fate in his own hands? A God who has prepared Hell for those who don’t please him? A God who expects us to give everything and will accept nothing less? A God who has ordered the annihilation of whole nations? A God who tolerates unbelievable suffering? Read Part 2.