Time and again lately, when I chat online and when I talk with people in person about spiritual things, the subject of why God created the earth comes up. Today I heard some pretty awful clips from a bit by comedian George Carlin about God. He says that he tried to really hard to believe in God but that in view of the state of the world (he names things like wars, murders, rapes, torture etc.) he expects more from a supreme being.

That's pretty much the same argument I've been getting time after time lately. "If God is so loving, why does He allow so much heartache and pain to exist? Why do innocent people suffer so much?" Perhaps Mr. Carlin should look to someone else for the answers to such questions.

The Scriptures teach us that God created the heavens and the earth and everything in them for His own perfect glory. It also teaches us that only He had life "in Himself" and He wanted to share His life with others. Truly, the creation is a demonstration of His glory, His love, His grace, His goodness, His mercy, His wisdom and His power.

When He created man the Bible says that He created man in His image. Man was specially create to be compatible for fellowship with God, to worship God and to glorify God. Man is supposed to glorify God as an exercise of his free will, with his mind and from his heart. Man was meant to know God, and His goodness. In response, man was to love God, choose God and be obedient to Him. There is that free will thing though. If we didn't have free will, how would God be glorified.

God created man with the ability to choose, and choose he did. Man chose sin over obedience. So the next question almost always follows, "Why did God allow sin?" God in His sovereignty, by His will and for His purpose with His foreknowledge allowed men to have choice. He spoke all of it into existence in His wisdom without being the cause of sin.

A lot of people have "issues" with that fact on the face of it. But the real issue lies somewhere else. Nothing is ever our fault. Uh huh. Comedian George Carlin makes light of the fact the "an invisible man in the sky" has "ten things He doesn't want you to do." That is the real issue. The Law of God. Mankind, for the most part, has simply not kept it. Anything but. Because mankind has an selfish problem, a short-sighted obedience problem, the world has wars, murders, rapes, tortures, etc.. That isn't God's fault, it's man's fault.

Don't worship other gods, don't make idols, don't use God's name in vain, keep the holy Sabbath day, honor your mother and father, don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't lie, don't covet other people's stuff. I wonder why George Carlin should have any objection to abstaining from those things? What is wrong with God not wanting us to do any of those things. Because he is willful like all men, and he is unwilling to repent, and while he is missing the point about just whose fault the state of this world is, he should think about what sort of place it would be if everyone kept the two greatest commandments, which Jesus taught summed up all of these:

'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' Matthew 22:37-39

Yes, Mr. Carlin should look to himself, and ask himself, "What would this painful world be like, if he and we all, as the stewards of God's creation, just obeyed these simple words?" It would be the world that God intended it to be.