Why Does God Allow Goodness?

Relax, this isn't an altar call ? and there's no GoFundMe link at the end for a collection plate. ??????

This is actually about leadership - the mindset, discipline, and concomitant overarching vision ?? one needs to administer true leadership that lifts all boats in a rising tide.

You have to admit, "Why does God allow goodness?" isn't a question most people ask.

Plenty demand to know, "Why would a loving God allow suffering?" ??

But nobody wonders why He allows goodness. ??

The question of suffering isn't without merit, but neither is it one that has some deeply hidden answer buried under centuries, nay millennia, of ancient history-mystery that archaeologists just haven't found.

It only takes one leadership-oriented mind ?? to inquire - and the answers will come.

Leaders of any stripe eventually face the test of whether or not they can look beyond.

• Beyond appearances, scars, character flaws and failure.
• Beyond their own misgivings, past experiences, interpretations and agendas.
• Beyond the safety of casual acquaintance, and into the murky depths of meaningful relationships. ??
• Beyond the chasms of tremendous risk with no escape route, to the horizon of impossible heights, where rewards dwarf fears - but only in hindsight.

When you ask, "Why does God allow suffering?", at this stage of history, you're repeating an empty platitude. From empty questions, you should expect empty answers. Predictably, God answers with silence. ??

Here, in the 21st Century, after 6000 years of recorded history - wherein no such time of love, peace, harmony, light, joy, health and boundless opportunity has ever existed wholesale for all of humanity ... you can really only conclude:

• God either doesn't care, doesn't exist or simply doesn't actually have the power to stop our suffering,

OR

• There really is a spiritual war going on, which crosses over into the physical world, with hostile forces bent on our destruction, making use of every means available to dispirit, dismember and destroy every human life. ??

Now we're getting somewhere.

If you go with Option A, which is what most people think, consciously and/or subconsciously, you get ... more of the same. Silence. The worst part is that the question will still be there the next time suffering comes home to roost on your doorstep. ??

However, if we're open to consider that we live in the middle of an epic love story set amidst a long and terrible war (Option B) ... we already have the answer of why God allows goodness.

From there, it doesn't take much to understand why suffering occurs ... but what'll blow your mind is why God doesn't stop it. (That's for another article though .. wouldn't want to spoil it!)

The point is, leaders ask questions no one else thinks to ask.

They also do things no one else will do, in ways no one else thinks to do them.

Forgive the Biblical example if you aren't exactly the Kingdom type ... it's just an illustration.

I can't think of a better example than how my spiritual life deteriorated over a number of years, because I started asking the same questions everyone else asked ...

... when all that time, I could have believed and acted in ways no one else does. ??

Try the question on for a moment.

Suspend your experiences, assumptions, judgments and emotions. If you could think this way ... would you see things a little different?

Would you begin to see value in your present circumstances, however adverse they are?

Would you entertain the notion that the very next thing that normally upsets you ... doesn't have to?

Would you still prize order and control like the finest gold, while avoiding chaos and unpredictability like the plague? ??

If those questions aren't resonating with you, that's okay.

Understand, however, they symbolize the reasons you're either not in leadership (but wishing you were, and wondering why no one chooses you - which is because you're not ready to be a leader) ...

... OR that you are in leadership (and wishing you weren't, because no one listens to or follows you - which is also because you're not ready to be a leader).

Leadership begins with leading yourself - to destinations no one else sees, believing things no one else believes, and through disciplines and actions no one else takes.

So let's put off the badmouthing, the whining and the sarcasm ... and let's become the leaders we're meant to be.