Remembering and Wondering Why

Anne Frank Memorial Boise, Idaho

This week marks a week of remembrance for those who were victims of the holocaust.  Ceremonies have been happening around the world to commemorate one of the blackest periods in the world’s history, lest we forget how low man can sink in the treatment of his fellow man. We watched a Masterpiece Theater presentation of Anne Frank’s diary.  And once the show ended, one couldn’t help but wonder how and why something like this could ever have happened, and yet it did. 

Many grasping for an explanation of horrors such as this try to lay the blame at God’s feet.  Whether it’s an illness, loss of a family member, earthquake, or some other tragedy, I have often heard someone remark, “How could a just and loving God allow this to happen?”

I think it’s easy to forget that God’s original plan was one of peace, harmony, and perfection.  The Garden of Eden, where he first placed man was a place of love, provision, without any guile, strife or sin. 

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. ⁹ And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.   Genesis 2:8-9

God had a friendship and a relationship with the man and woman he had created.  It was man that ruined this perfect setting, the relationship with God, and it was he who brought all the things we abhor into our world.  God had provided so much and yet kept one thing from the man Adam and his wife Eve.  God asked Adam and Eve to not eat of the Tree of Knowledge and like most humans this became the one thing they appeared to have obsessed about and eventually they finally ate some of the forbidden fruit. Aren’t we all attracted to the things we can’t have?

So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. Genesis 3:23

The story could have very well ended there. Man receives his just reward for disobeying God and as a result is separated from God forever.  But it doesn’t end there, because God is a God of love.  He wants us to be reconciled with him so that we can once again have a relationship with him just like the one he had with Adam and Eve prior to their disobedience. The path of reconciliation is through his Son Jesus.

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Romans 5:9-11

I don’t want to appear too critical of Adam and Eve. I see myself in almost everything they have done.  Often times we have a nice label for it such as “Human Nature”.  We brush things off by saying, “Oh well, that’s just Human Nature.”  It’s because of this Human Nature that I am so thankful that God has provided us with his Son, the great reconciler.  Knowing that there’s nothing I could do to level the score for the things I’ve done wrong, I gladly accept Christ as my savior, reconciler and true path to the presence of God our heavenly Father.  Access to this path is not exclusive but open to anyone who wants to be reconciled with God.  You can take that first step towards God by committing yourself  to Christ and the salvation he offers.