How many times have we uttered or heard the following phrases?

It was God’s will for that to happen. It was only through God’s grace that I was saved from the accident. We must honor a loving God who cured your illness. Thank you God for keeping us out of harm’s way.

Let’s cut the crap, and be honest with ourselves. If God is responsible for the “good” stuff, God must also be responsible for the “bad” stuff.
If God is good and all powerful, how can it be that God’s grace is bestowed upon some while others are left out in the cold? Why is it that some are saved or cured through God’s grace while others are stuck with disabling diseases or die horrific deaths?

There are four possible reasons:

There is no God and it is just random stuff happening.

God may be there but is uninvolved.

God is playing favorites.

God doesn’t care about our results.

Atheism believes the first. Stuff just happens – It’s random, and we need to deal with it. Agnosticism believes the second. We don’t know whether God exists, but in any event God seems uninvolved. Religions all around the world believe the third. “They” are God’s chosen people – “They” understand the one true path to God, and have been bestowed with the “right” formula for God’s grace. This is the same “favoritism” that is often used to justify war, violence and condemnation.

So where does that leave the fourth? There is a spiritual philosophy, called process theology, that believes God is interested, not in the results, but the process. That God created life to experience itself through us. God is the energy behind the birth, change and death cycle – energy that cannot be created nor destroyed, but simply made to appear that way through the process of change. God doesn’t care about the “good” and the “bad” because they are not “real.” They are labels created by humans who are attached to results.

It is nonsensical to me that those who believe in a loving God that created life also believe in a God that cares about results. If God invented the life process, God invented “death.” If God invented death, God invented change. We know that sickness is part of the death process. We know that ups and downs are part of the change process. So why are we thanking God when those things are delayed from occurring? Why do we say it is God’s will that the inevitable did not happen at that moment?

We need to be honest with ourselves. God does not care about results. It is we who do. It is we who have labeled things “good,” and it is we who have labeled things “bad.” It is we who are attached to results. And maybe, just maybe that has something to do with our inability to experience “on Earth as it is in heaven.”

All that being said, however, there is a scenario where God cares about results. But it may not be the “God” you are accustomed to. Tune in next time for that one.

Timothy Velner is a husband, father, attorney and author living in Minneapolis. You can follow his daily blog – a series of discussions between the worry-self and the present-self at – thespiritualgym.me