I sometimes hate that God answers my prayers.
It was years ago, as a naive young’un at UF, when I began to think I had a decent grasp on the world. I’d finally unraveled the enigma of my parents (and adults in general) and hungered for deeper mystic revelations.
Foolishly, I asked God to let me see the world the way he saw it.
Boy, did he answer.
Toward the end of my sophomore year, I became aware of the global human trafficking industry, the systematic use of human beings as products for consumption by people with money. Sometimes human trafficking takes the form of coerced labor, but, more often, it seems that human beings are used as objects of pleasure.
Perhaps the word “trafficking” means nothing to you.
Fair enough.
I’ll put it into words that may resonate a bit more with our statistically driven news stream.
There are more slaves today than there were during the entire transatlantic slave trade.
Take that in for a moment.
In light of this, I ask the question: Why would a loving God send people to hell?
Simple. He answers prayers.
I’ll never forget the story about a girl who was a sex slave in an Indian brothel.
Each night, tourists and sleazy men would violate her repeatedly as her pimp’s pockets fattened. In the middle of this, she somehow heard about the God who judged evildoers.
Every night, she prayed that she would be liberated from her forced misery. She petitioned God for justice. One day, he answered.
International Justice Mission found the brothel, had her pimp arrested and prosecuted and worked to change the legal infrastructure in her area. Google it if your jaw is still on the floor.
I find the massive disparity between perceptions of judgment intriguing.
If you’re a postmodernist thinker earning a degree in the West, the idea of eternal damnation may make your stomach turn.
Evil is probably something that you experience on the occasional movie screen.
However, if your entire existence has been marred by abuse, something in you longs for divine judgment.
Personally, I’d prefer a God who was all hugs and tummy rubs, but God is not a pansy.
He is a lawgiver.
I am speaking strictly in the Biblical sense, of course. The Bible outlines the character of God clearly. God is good at loving people, but he also loves goodness. Because he loves that which is good, he hates that which perverts it.
It pleases him to settle accounts, like the judge who hands down a sentence, knowing that justice has been served. He patiently watches as we pillage and plunder, pollute and rape, gossip and ruin, lie and steal and, ultimately, make excuses for it all.
We stand in his courtroom and audaciously hold him in contempt. We reason that it’s unfair to be sentenced for one offense, as if that would hold up in an actual court — as if we’ve only done wrong once.
He prescribes a path that is scorned and disregarded at every turn, holding back his wrath from the people to whom he longs to be a father.
He listens as we defiantly cry “my will be done.”
He is patient, but there comes a day when the judgment hits the house.
God hears the cries for justice, and he emphatically says “yes!” He is good at answering prayers.
Heaven and hell are the answers to the prayers that we have prayed our whole life.
Heaven is the response when we pray “your will be done.”
Hell — well, you get it.
Ryan Galloway is a religion senior at UF. His column appears on Wednesdays. You can contact him at opinions@alligator.org.
