O how I wish I were a theologian, able to rattle off chapter and verse of scriptures. If I were, perhaps I would be able to answer my son, a tortured soul who was born with ADD, bullied through his school years horribly, and who now has so much anger and pain locked in his heart that all he can see in the Father I love is an unfair God. How many times he has thrown it in my face, that if God is all powerful, then how could He have allowed sin to even exist, why would He create sin if He did, indeed, create all things, which has led to so much pain, heartache, and suffering.
To him, the usual answers are trite, empty, and meaningless. Others would consign him to an eternal burning hell for his blasphemy against God, but as his mother, I weep inside for his pain and inability to yet see, and know that God is far greater than I, with mercy beyond comprehension, and I trust Him with my son.
I held the hand of my brother six years ago as he died, after having endured a year of agony from cancer. It was the most horrible thing I have ever lived through, to watch someone I loved so dearly taken from all of us. He had accepted Christ many years before, only to have been kidnapped and beaten and raped, yes a man that was raped, and it sent him into a tailspin. Before his death, he rededicated his life to Christ, but with all the insane doctrines I had studied, it launched me on a journey to understand death, and hell, and eternity. I desperately NEEDED to know, NEEDED assurance, because I could not endure the horror of mentally seeing him in some horrific torment because he did not meet this or that doctrinal rule.
Tentmaker honestly saved my sanity, explaining the depths of God's love and mercy as laid out in scriptures in ways I had never before seen. Through the teachings here and elsewhere, Father has been working healing in my own mind, my soul, my spirit, from the years of hell on earth I've endured myself. Forgive me if I stumble in typing this, as tears flow in sharing my heart with you.
I'm no theologian. I cannot quote chapter and verse at will, though how I wish I could. All I know is that Jesus is my lord and savior, that He paid a price I could never pay, I have been purchased with a dear price, a treasure beyond measure, and there is not one jot or one tittle that I can add to what He has already done from before the foundations of the world.
Yes, my body will die someday, in fact I die daily, and pray that Christ will live in me more fully each day. But my soul has been redeemed by the Redeemer, not because I am worthy, but His love makes me worthy, not that I can brag, but that God in me can be and will be glorified, both here on earth and in the life to come. That is my meager understanding, perhaps it falls far short of a theologian's essay, but it is from my heart, a heart that has been shattered repeatedly in this life but is full of love for my God, my Father, my Redeemer.
How to communicate this to my son, I do not know, but I leave it in my Father's hands. I put my trust in God, I do not know all things, I am but an average person, but I know Father will work it all out.
