Why Didn’t God Stop the Abuser?

Why Didn’t God Stop the Abuser?

Among the million questions that come to mind for abuse victims, this is probably one of the foremost questions. 

When I get to heaven, I have a whole file of things that are unanswered questions…hard questions…things that were too big and too heavy to ever wrap my mind around.

 

Why does God allow evil at all?

 

 

I wonder sometimes: Maybe if I just keep nibbling at the edges of the truth, eventually, will I get to the core of it?  Here are a few of my nibbles:

• Suffering happens in this world, but it’s not because God designed it that way.  Everything God designed was five times good and very good.  In fact, it was perfect.
• Somehow for God to be Love and to be Just, He chose to make beings (humans and angels) who reason things out and have the ability to choose love and justice.  His perfection and His freedom to do as He wills means that this was God’s best and perfect choice to bring glory to Himself.
• Spiritual beings like angels chose too. For the choice to be real must mean there existed an alternative to be potentially selected as well.  Hence, evil existed as the anti-good.   The angels who chose to follow evil didn’t get an opportunity to repent.  No second chances for fallen angels.
• The Fall of Man brought about a whole host of evils for mankind—they are indeed Legion.
• Consequences wouldn’t be consequences if God preserved us from them all.  He’d be like one of those ineffective parents who promise consequences and never follow through.  God must allow the consequences for Him to be holy.
• The purpose of consequences isn’t to hurt or harm, it’s to help us learn to love, to do what is right, and to desire mercy and justice.
• People get hurt when people sin.  We hurt ourselves by our own sins.  We hurt others when we sin against God and neighbor.  God doesn’t like sin.  In fact, He hates it.
• When innocents are harmed, when the vulnerable are oppressed or injured, when loveless people intentionally inflict pain and suffering upon others, God is grieved.
• God is so grieved, in fact, that He did something about it.
• He sent Jesus.
• Jesus paid for our sins—those of little white lies and great big abusers.  All sins were heaped upon Jesus.  He received the punishment for the abuser.  He received the punishment for the liar.  He received the punishment for the con-artist.  He received the punishment for __(fill in the blank with any sin)__.  He paid it all.  Jesus paid it all.

I will continue my nibbling around the edges because the question of “Why me?” still remains unanswered.   And that is the question that is so very personal. 

I wish I had an answer for you.  I wish I had an answer for myself for all the difficulties God has seen me through.  “Jesus Paid it All” brings relief for the sins I commit and future judgment brings vindication for all the times I suffered unjustly.  But in the present day, all I can do is trust that God will walk with me, He never left me, the insults that were done against you and me are ones Jesus bore, too, and then we hold tight to that faith until the day God answers the hard questions showing how He was both loving and just all along–even in the darkest days we faced.