I am neither a theologian nor a philosopher, but I am sure a citizen of this earth filled with a lot of questions. Just like everyone else, I ask the most difficult questions hoping to have a clear cut answer. However, the difference between my questions and others’ questions lies with the fact that my questions are asked with faith and hope, while others ask out of anger, frustration and rejection.

In times as these, where the radio cannot stop dishing out statistics of victims of terrorist attacks, people tend to ask if there is a God. I can’t say how many times I have talked to God on this topic. My conversations with him in the past nine years often go something like this “Lord, you are the Almighty who loves and cares for your creation. You are all knowing and you perceive the thoughts of man, yet why don’t you do the impossible, when I know that you are the God of impossibilities? Why did you not stop the terrorist from killing all the innocent people? Why did you allow such pain on people we are trying to share your love with? How will they accept that you love them, when their present situation has just widened the gap between you and them?”

In the past, I used to as the question “why me” when bad things happened to me. It became so prevalent that one day, a friend challenged me. He said “if you always ask, why me, then to whom would you like the bad stuff to happen to?” I felt like a stake had been driven through my heart. I had never stopped to ask myself such a question. In reality, nobody wants to undergo trials in their lives, yet everyone wants a pain free life, which is not a bad idea.

Where does suffering come from? Many religions have through their own philosophies explained the origins of sufferings. Buddhism for example said it is as a result of man’s attachment to worldly things. Christianity sees suffering as a result of many different circumstances. Christians through the Bible have replicated that disobedience, rebellion and unfaithfulness towards God’s commands, which are the guiding principles to a peaceful society, can all lead to suffering. Hinduism views suffering as punishment for misdeeds committed during their lifetime or past lives. Islam believes it is a way of submitting to the will of Allah. Judaism believes that suffering is caused by a weakness in one’s devotion to God.

The Bible which has become the most precious book in my life, teaches about love. It gives the first command to us, which is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Then it gives the second command, which is to love our neighbours as ourselves.

Based on the reality in our different home countries, we can say that the world has rejected God in their daily lives and refused to understand his desire for us. They have looked at him as one who takes pleasure in their sufferings, rather than one who shares in their sufferings. The Bible says in John 3:16 that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whosoever believes in him, will not perish but have eternal life.

Isaiah 53 depicts Christ suffering on our behalf. “Who would have believed what we now report? Who would have seen the Lord’s hand in this?” (Vs 1) Unbelieving as the Israelites in those days, we reject God’s love, his mercy and his peace. Not many people believed and still do not believe the truth concerning God’s presence in every situation in our lives. “We despised him and rejected him; he endured suffering and pain. No one would even look at him- we ignored him as if he were nothing. But he endured the suffering that should have been ours, the pain that we should have borne. All the while we thought that his suffering was punishment sent by God. But because of our sin, he was wounded, beaten because of the evil we did. We are healed by the punishment he suffered, made whole by the blows he received” (vs 3-5).

Isaiah was a prophet who testified to Christ’s suffering whom he had never met, but he knew God and had walked with God doing his best to help his people know him. God has shown his constant love to a people whose hearts were harden and God revealed to him his plan in the future. Out of love, God gave the people hope and that hope was and is Jesus Christ who came over 2000 years ago to fulfil that which Isaiah had spoken of. If we cannot understand such a sacrifice, how can we understand love in its true form? If we cannot understand love, how can we show love in its wholeness? If we cannot show love, then how do we expect the chaos in the world to end?

In the Old Testament (OT), God stood up for the people and defeated their enemies. However, we look at his actions today as an act of murder. Though many do not believe that there was a flood (Gen 6-9), God did annihilate the world of evil, by drowning their unrelenting hearts to turn back to the purpose for which they were created, which was to be in relationship with God. Although God showed grace by delivering Noah’s family from the flood, man’s defiance continued. After the flood, man came up with the brilliant idea to build the tallest building, namely “Tower of Babel” and to call themselves gods. All the while, they kept God aside, refusing to acknowledge their relationship with him. Left on their own, they used one another and created slavery. God punished them by giving them languages, so that they could no longer come up with outrageous ideas that could seriously erode love on earth.

However, these people dispersed and adopted various customs, which widened the gap between them and love. Whatever, they wanted, they took through violent means. They no longer paid heed to God and did as they pleased. Is there a difference between those people in the OT and our world today? Can we say we are different from them?

The continuous resistance to a higher power is a venom in our DNA, which claws at our heart, enabling us to defile the one LOVE we wish to establish. In the book of 1 Corinthians 13, the Bible gives us a vivid explanation of what true love is. Love is patient, kind, and does not envy nor boast. It’s not proud, does not dishonour others, is not self-seeking, is not easily angered nor does it keep a record of wrongs. It does not delight in evil, yet rejoices when truth is spoken. Love protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres and it never fails.

When a seventeen-year-old takes a knife and stabs people on a train, is he demonstrating love? When an eighteen-year-old takes a gun and kills people in a commercial centre, is he showing love? What of 260 girls or more who are forcibly taken away from their futures and loved ones and turned into something they are not? Taking a man’s life because he looks different in colour than you do not demonstrate love, but create feuds. How can we wish for love when we are unable to understand love?

For thousands of years, God has chased after us to help us know the best way to help ourselves and our societies. He had used the flood, used the Tower of Babel and taken out nations.  When we analyse God’s command to the Israelites to rid these nations of everyone including women and children, we should focus on the context. What were the practices? In order to stop the practices, God took out whole nations who were sacrificing young girls and children to their gods, and using young girls for prostitution in their temples to serve their gods. Why would God take out women and children as well? What happened when Saul disobeyed and did not take out King Agag. As a result, Esther in the book of Esther had to risk her life to save her people who were about to be annihilated by Harman a descendant of Agag. Hatred had been handed down through Agag’s seeds. Yet, because we always want to be right, we labelled him as a murder, when he only stepped in to stop the very practices that we fight against today.

What are the practices that we ourselves despise? We despise human trafficking, child prostitution, child soldiering, child marriage, human sacrifices, terrorism, drug abuse, corruption, and you name the outrageous crimes. Why then do we ask God where he is? Do we honestly think God is unware? He has been fighting our rebellious nature from the beginning of time. The mistakes our forefathers made, caused our generations not to establish the kind of relationship God had created from the beginning.

In order to restore that relationship without violence, God gave up his own son to take away our sins. He wants to re-establish our relationship with the world, but because of our devious plans and ambitions, we refuse to recognize his supreme power. Many have gone as far as saying he does not exist, and as a result many reject him with questions such as “if he truly exists, why is he doing nothing to change our situation? If he is all powerful, why does he not stop all this chaos?”

God’s love is not forced upon us. He offers it to us knowing it won’t be easy, especially when our hearts are bent on rejecting him just as our forefathers did and created their own ways of seeing the world. Knowledge and reasoning has eroded God’s presence in our lives, but a part of God remains in us, because we were created in His image (Gen 1:26). Sometimes we do something wrong and our conscience pricks at us. The good news is that your conscience is the part of God, which remains in us no matter how far away we run from him.

In order to rid of the voice inside that gives them counsel, many people devise many evil plans and numb out the good in them. They intimidate others, manipulate and use massive force to subjugate and control them. Rather than loving one another and repenting from their sins, they device philosophies that would suit their actions and justify them. Furthermore, they would choose to become jealous and envious towards their neighbours and set a meaningless race for materialistic gain, which was never God’s desire for us. At the end, those who would like to enjoy some peace and quiet get caught up in the fight becoming a bargaining chip for those who are fighting. What then can we do?

There’s a lot we can do to change the way our society functions. If we are unable to change, we can teach our children the act of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentles and self-control. We could learn from our mistakes and help them change history and not follow in the footsteps of those they see today. They could read into the history of the past and change the history of tomorrow. Help our children understand the word love without dwelling on the sins of the past. Rather than judge children through their parents’ sins, we should help them shape their own characters. Love looks not at the wrongs done in the past (1 Cor 13), but looks at the possibility of change. God has shown it to us in so many ways and we are the ones reluctant to embrace it.

Bad things happen because we have locked up consciousness and developed hideous ideologies that would satisfy our ambitions at the expense of our neighbours, families, friends and country. Every single person should take a look at the demon within them and see how they can fight it. God has been fighting alongside us all, in one way or another and we have been too absorbed with our desires to challenge the inner demon.

I am but a simple observer and I write as my heart leads. I do have the right to write, due to a number of challenges I have encounter in my own life, and have found true love rather than revenge on the world and God. If you hurt others because you have been hurt, then you are no different from the perpetrators.