Is God Killing Our Loved Ones?

As I sat down in confusion wondering why my mum died, many people came to console me and the majority of the Christians among them said similar things: 'God gave and he has taken'¦'. I would have said that God must be very wicked but we were taught to always respect God and I strongly believed then that whatever happens to me was working together for my good. This helped me to deal with the pain but I never stopped wondering if God is the one that is killing or taking our loved ones.

All over the world, 'God gave and he took' has been a common way to console the grieved. And many preach it without realizing what that really implies. It literally means God killed them. It means the sickness, the rape, murder, or whatever that lead to the death of the person was from God. For many years, people have been saying this and even writing it in obituaries without really thinking about the implication and meaning of what they are saying. They say it while holding the bible without realizing that what they are saying is unscriptural.

We should be careful of what we say to comfort people who have experienced the loss of a family member. It would be better to remain silent than to say 'It must have been God's will', 'God allowed it to happen for a purpose' or 'God gave and he has taken'. I understand the difficulty of not knowing what to say in times like this. Yesterday, I called a sister who lost her mum and I was totally unaware of what to say to her but I knew it is better to say nothing and just identify with her than to indirectly blame God. The bible also told us how to comfort brethren whose loved ones died in the lord. The scripture says that we should comfort them instead with the promise of resurrection.

GOD IS NOT THE ONE KILLING OUR LOVED ONES. People say it happened because God allowed it. But that is not true, so many things happening around us have nothing to do with God allowing it. God is not the one running this world. God cannot help many terrible situations in this world because his sovereignty is limited by spiritual and universal principles. Many things happening in the world including some of the ones you have been told to be God's will are not God's will. The scripture shows that many things happening in the world are grieving God and He wishes they are not happening.

When Lazarus died, the 'God gave and has taken' sermon was probably preached before he was buried. People would have told Mary and Martha that it is God's will for their brother to die. But Martha said to Jesus, 'if you had been here, my brother would not have died.' (John 11:21). She knew that Lazarous did not die because God wanted him to die, he died because they lacked what it takes to prevent his death. When Jesus came, he knew God didn't take or kill Lazarous. He knew death was an enemy, and he went ahead to return Lazarus back to life. All over the scripture, death was presented as something bad, something to be rejected, something to be destroyed. People die sometimes because we couldn't resist death as something from the enemy.

Finally, death is not the end. God is not the one who took our loved ones but the bible made it clear that he will receive them if they were on God's side before their death. You don't need to blame God for the death of your loved ones or to get mad at Him, instead, you can comfort yourself with God's promise of resurrection. We can trust God and his promise to take us to a new heaven and earth where there is no death, and no sickness.

When Paul was writing about death, he said:
'And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope. For the Lord, himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the believers who have died will rise from their graves. Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever. So encourage each other with these words.' (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)