If God gives our blessings, why is he not responsible for misfortune?

Maybe this isn't the right place for this, if not, my apologies.

Why is it that we are told to thank God for our blessings, but we can't blame Him for the bad things in our life? If he is responsible for the good, does that not go to say that he is then responsible for the lack of good, or bad?

It comes up quite often, people say "but look what God has blessed you with!" And then I counter "well look what he has stuck me with" and I am told, it doesn't work that way, I have to be responsible for my own misfortunes, he didn't give them to me. Yet, He gets credit for the good? I don't understand.

God doesn't punish us with works of evil. God never said our paths would be easy. Trust in him doesn't guarantee immunity to all evil. We are given blessings, but bad things still happen. But the tricky part is taking those misfortunes and using them to help others . You can take misfortune and turn it into a gift.

I know christians who have had death in there families, loss of a child, cancer, businesses fail and yet they are still here. They still love the lord. They are helping others from the difficulties that have occurred to them.

A perfect example is..... I was raped many time by an older boyfriend as a teenager. It changed my life in a most negative way. But I have the Lord and had a trust in God when that happened to me. (though at that time I has strayed quite a bit) But in the long run 25 years later, I can see it as a gift. I have the ability to help others who have been in the same place as me, I am able to help other teenage girls see that they need to be very careful .

A friend of mine had cancer and he said that was the greatest gift he ever received (years later). He has been able to minister to those who are sick and in pain dealing with cancer, to those who are struggling, and to the families of cancer survivors. With out cancer coming into his life he would have never been able to help people in that way.

Bad thing do come out way it is human nature. God doesn't keep us from human realities, but we do have him to lean on in the face of disaster and hard ship. He is God not a Genie.

Hope that helps. That is just how I see things.

Where there is good, there is evil.
There is an opposite of God and that's a devil, or someone who creates misfortune upon others. God doesn't do it, his opposite does.
I do not believe that we are responsible for all of our misfortunes. I believe that there is both good and evil in the world and sometimes evil gives us a hard time, and sometimes God gives us blessings. It's not that we are bad people that God is punishing us or something. It's just that there is evil on earth and sometimes it finds it way to us.

The culture has a bias towards positivity or viewing the glass as half full rather than half empty. This is not strictly logical, but is an emotional defence. Many people find that looking at darkness or problems brings them down. They want hope. In my view, humans created a god so we could feel better about ourselves based on the belief that we were made in its image, whereas it seems to me actually it was created in our wishful image. Hubris. Anyway, it's simply a cultural bias. All cultures have blind spots and weak points. In general, people are ruled much more by emotions than logic, both personally and culturally.

My view of God is that Gods only power is to give love. God doesnt create disease or cause disaster, nature does that, but, when someone is sick or there's a hurricane, its Gods love that brings people together to help each other.

I try to avoid the dual thinking process of 'for every good, there is an evil'. It makes me choose sides and feeds divisions. It helps me to think of best possible outcomes in any situation. I think its called transcendence but it simply means not focusing on the negative and looking for and working at solutions. Simple awareness of problems is enough. Worry and rumination cause stress and stress is unhealthy so I try to avoid it.

Gods love has brought many blessings into my life. I dont blame God for society and what happens inside of it. I more likely would believe, if anything, that its a deficit of love, a disconnection from the greater good, which causes many of humanitys' ailments.

I realize that you can grow from your hardships - so is that your personal growth, or did he give you that gift? As for leaning on him, how can you lean on him if he is not there? And what if your misfortune only hurts others? Like for example, I am having a horrible time with jobs right now. I guess it helps others in that they get a job and I do not, but it is also causing my children to have a lesser life. How is that a gift?

So if there is good and evil, how come some people always get God's favour, and others the devil's attention? Why isn't it even?

If his power is to give love, then why doesn't everyone have it? why don't we all have friends, and supportive families, and partners?

> If his power is to give love, then why doesn't everyone have it? why don't we all have friends, and supportive families, and partners?

I wish our economy wasnt in the tank and sorry to hear about your job troubles.

Not to offend, but I dont see God as 'He'. Love is an emotion each gender has the capacity to feel. The number of people who truly cant feel love is very small. I dont have the exact figure of how many people that is, but I know from my own experience that most people feel love.

I think its the conditions of existence that prevent some people from experiencing thier love to the fullest. I believe the conditions of existence can improve but it isnt a magic trick by God that will do it. People have to choose to access thier love and put it into action. Many of lifes experiences move people away from love because love is commonly perceived as being open to being harmed, but it isnt love that harms, its the misunderstanding of what love is that causes harm. That makes it difficult for people to come together with love. It isnt God to blame but human nature for the misunderstandings.

Good question. A believer will always find a way to rationalize anything that happens.
Assuming that there are gods and devils is the biggest assumption one can make. Assuming that they fit your religious conception might be the second biggest assumption. To each his own. There are Egyptian hieroglyphs dating from ~3000 BCE. Might as well assume that somewhere in the cosmos there are gods/goddesses with cat heads from that writing. It's older than anything in the bible.
Religion is kind of like a buffet... people pick and choose what appeals to them

Hi ReddSN,

I don't want to make it sound like I know it all or that I have it all together because the truth is, I am still learning and still growing. Anyways I wanted to share this with you to help you understand something important. The most important thing is that we all have to stop what we are doing sometimes to think and to remember our place before God. We have to remember that God is God, the creator of the universe and of us. In Jewish history, a servant can not complain for what the master does not give. He can only thank the master for what he has. Without the master, the servant would starve to death. That may sound unjust or unloving at first, but the truth is that we are all sinful and unworthy of God's love; yet, he still give it to us graciously.

Here is a great bible passage to explain this principle. Matt 20:1-16 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5 So they went. “He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ 7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’ 8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’ 9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

Most people have the wrong intentions when it comes to believing in God. It breaks God's heart when we only believe in him for the things he gives us; the truth is, all he really want is a relationship with us. If you think about it, all the great fathers of faith in the bible and today are those that believe regardless of economical status or situation. When we understand that, it will help us in our journey to be a mature believer that walks by faith and not by sight. Hope that helps. =)

My apologies for the length of this post. Its natural for people to "thank God" when things are going well. Since my inlaws are a different faith - one thing I like about their philosophy is.....they'll say "thank God" when things are going bad too. They still can feel sad or grief, but they don't blame God. I also think life just happens sometimes and bad things happen to good people. I don't think of them as punishments.

For example my father died of cancer when I was 2, leaving 5 kids under 16 at the age of 34. He was a good person and there's no explaining why it happened. Babies also die. I try my best to make the best out of bad life circumstances, similar to what Big Mama said. This is where the belief of thanking God (being grateful) comes in - its "making lemonade out of lemons" and appreciating things could be worse. For those who don't believe in a higher power - they can focus on being grateful during hard times and this calms the emotions.

I also believe life is journey of learning and we can choose to become bitter or better people. When my brother ended his life 5 years ago, I made the conscious decision not to let it ruin me. Instead I use him as an example to live and teach others how to cope with emotional pain. I've also learned a lot from my marriage problem - its been the toughest thing, coping with my resentment and pain. I've learned that I can still find some compassion even the person doesn't deserve it.

The other day when I was standing in line at the grocery store.....there was mother with a 9 yr old boy with Down Syndrome. I'm sure some families think its a disadvantage knowing they might have a child with this, but some families consider it a gift. This little boy was bursting with happiness and he was extremely helpful - putting all the groceries in the conveyor belt. He then said "look mom I'm all done". The he ran to help her bag the groceries....he was anxious to help. When the cashier gave them the change, he said "thank you and have a nice day". He was the most helpful and polite child I've seen and I told the cashier he was a "sweetheart". The cashier said "look at him" and he was beaming.

Yes there are awful bad things done on purpose and I can't explain them, but all we can do is try to be strong and make the best of it. I firmly believe we can learn important life lessons if we look for them. Its easy to be accepting and grateful when life is smooth, but we can also be this way when life throws us curve balls because it can always be worse. This doesn't invalidate the pain, it just makes it more tolerable. I didn't wake up this way but learned this from the negative experiences. There's also days where I'm weak / feel sorry for myself.

Thank you for all your responses everyone. While I can comprehend what all of you are trying to say, I just can't wrap my head around it fully. Maybe I'm just not in a place in my development where I am able to fully understand, without asking "why me?" or saying "it's not fair!"

Its true ReddSN - its a journey to reach a place where you heal and maybe realize you can learn from an experience. Most who've endured pain, have gone through the "why me and its not fair" stage. If a person ends up growing from the experience....they go from feeling like a victim to a survivor of life.

I'm closing this thread at this time with a reminder of our community guidelines

Thanks