The second year students at uni are doing a project with Aardman animations at the moment.  It is a 20 second video entitled “Uncnditional love”.  I am secretly a little jealous, because I would love to have a go at this project.  Anyway, as you can imagine, a title like that has sparked off some interesting debates.  I had to seriously bite my lip when listening in (ooops) to a conversation between one girl and my tutors, who were unanimously agreeing that the love of God was conditional not unconditional and that religion was a load of rubbish.

One tutor was talking about David Attenborough and how he gets hate mail from creationists.  When asked how he responds to it, he stated that he talks about a worm that is only found in the eyes of African children, which causes them to go blind.  If God were real, he would not allow that apparently.  I REALLY wanted to join in at this point…

Firstly, creationists sending hate mail…  Don’t be such blethering idiots.  How can hate mail sit in alignment with the message that we profess to believe?  Hate mail does not help anyone.

The worm, suffering and the conversation that ensued…  Here is a really difficult topic of debate and one that almost every single person uses as a ‘get out clause’ when arguing the existence or non-existence of God.  The thing is, God DOES allow suffering.  There is no question about this, because suffering happens.  The only question is, since suffering happens, does this mean that God is not real?  Well let’s look at it this way.  If God is real (as I believe), then it follows suit that the devil is also real and it is he, that is the cause of the suffering, alongside you or I and our ungodly character traits (greed, selfishness, pride etc).  If God is not real, then nor is the devil and the only cause and perpetrator of suffering is you or I, which is not a comfortable thought.

What Sir David is saying, is either that the image of God that he has built up in his mind, would not smite these African children with a disease, so therefore he cannot exist.  Even if he wasn’t inflicting disease upon them, he could stop it from happening couldn’t he? Well yes he could.  But our perspective is so narrow.

The bottom line is that human beings have free will.  Whatever we think, they will do what they like.  The queen reigns over this country, but the prime minister is the one with influence over the way people live.  Unfortunately it is similar in the heavenlies.  God reigns over his free-range people, but the devil (thrown out of the heavenlies) has influence over the way people live.  Often the way people live causes and allows suffering.

It is all very well to pick out the example of eye worms in Africa, as it is a terrible thing.  But what we fail to recognise is that everyone is on a journey to death from the moment they start living.  Something will get all of us in the end.  For some it is sooner, with a painful illness in the meantime (it might be eye worms in Africa but it is cancer and heart disease in England), for some of us, we will just go to bed one night in old age and never wake up.  Your choice is whether or not you decide that you are on a countdown clock from birth to death, or whether you are going to live and carry on living even after you die.

God does love you unconditionally.  Where is there anywhere in the Bible that states a condition for God’s love?  There is lifestyle advice, like a parent gives lovingly to a child, but it doesn’t mean that He doesn’t love you.  He might even hate some of the things that you do, but like a parent to a child, He still loves you.

We were not designed to be robots that say “I love you God I will do what you say”.  We were born with a choice.  God or the devil?  Heaven or hell?   It really is that simple and transfers to every decision that you make.  WIll I be greedy and increase my business by pouring chemicals into the food of my cows, later causing human CJD and consequently, a lot of suffering and death?  That is not God’s fault, that is my fault.  I am not going to blame God for ‘allowing’ that, but myself.  We know full well that we are ‘allowed’ to do anything (even if it results in us being locked up in prison), so we have to stop banging on about God being responsible for ‘allowing’ things to happen and take responsibility for our actions.

I cannot explain why, sometimes,  a baby is born and then dies.  I cannot imagine the pain that it causes to a family of good people who experience it.  What I do know is that life is a bit like a tree.  It grows new shoots, some are blown off by the wind and some are cut off by people.  Some live, blossom, die and fall to the ground, where they become the seeds of new life.  The tree always remains.

John 15:

I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener….  Remain in me, and I will remain in you.

Then it says: “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  THAT is unconditional love and that is what Jesus did for you and for me.