Before you keep reading: This post gets heavy. I talk about loss (including child loss), suicide, sexual violence, and the harm certain religious language can cause. Read gently, skip it if today isn’t the day, and do what you need to protect your peace.

I’m going to say something that might shock those of you who know me personally. I was raised in the church. Not by my parents; they mostly believed in letting us choose. My grandparents, though, were all in, and we went to church with them often. I’ve possibly mentioned that I did a lot of Vacation Bible School, too.

All that to say, I do know God, Jesus, and the Bible. Yes, I’ve read a good portion of the bible, and I have skimmed all of it. I had a hard time continuing an in-depth read when I started catching all the hypocrisy, but that has nothing to do with this post, so I’ll move on. I have, at one time, accepted Jesus into my heart and life, so that I could be “absolved” of my sins. I was around 10, so make of that what you will.

I overheard a snippet of a conversation today, in which the gentleman on the phone uttered one of my least favorite sentences. “Oh, that’s too bad. Well, it was God’s will.” I actively stopped listening after that because my brain started running with all the things in my life, and the lives of my close friends, that have been “God’s will.”

The Christian God is almighty, he is loving, and he cares for us all. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, for whosoever believeth in him shall have everlasting life – John 3:16. What a crock. Be so for real. Have you actually read that bible? God is so great, until we, the people, make him mad, then he wipes us all out, and we have to start over, again and again. That is a slight exaggeration. He only wipes out the majority of the population once, with a flood. But he threatens to do it at least two more times, but not with a flood. He also wipes out Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19:25). God killed Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas (1 Sam 2:34, 4:11), Herod (Acts 12:23),  Uzzah (2 Sam 6:6-7), and Onan (Gen 38:9-10). So, he loves us all, as long as we love him. If we don’t love him, we are sinners, and the penalty for sin is death. Definitely sounds like a kind and loving god.

So, then, by the standards of “God’s will” it makes perfect sense for a baby to die, for a young child to get cancer and suffer for an unknown period of time before it claims their lives, for people to be raped, for good people to hurt while bad people don’t, all because if we don’t love him we deserve to die.

I will admit that part of my issue with this particular sentence is the number of times I heard it, along with “he’s burning in hell,” after my brother took his life. And again, when my mom died of a brain aneurysm just 18 months later. Or almost 23 years ago, when one of my best friends lost her brand new baby. How about when I was raped? I “opened my heart and accepted Jesus into my life,” so why would it be God’s will for me to be raped? Or the multiple sexual assaults I have endured in my life, many as a child? According to the church, the bible says that is all I have to do. Accept him as my lord and savior.

Anyways. This was clearly just something I needed to get off my chest, and I apologize that it got a bit heavy. I do hope, though, that the next time you think that your response should be “it is/was god’s will,” that you will remember that the phrase is very little help, and might even hurt. Even those with a strong faith don’t want to hear that their savior wanted them to suffer.

This isn’t an attack on faith, and it isn’t a demand that anyone believe what I believe. It’s a plea for care. Words matter, especially when someone is hurting. Saying “it was God’s will” might feel like closure to the person saying it, but for the person grieving, it can feel like their pain is being justified instead of acknowledged. If someone is suffering, they don’t need a reason for it; they need compassion, presence, and the space to feel what they feel without being told it was meant to happen. If nothing else, I hope this makes you pause before using that phrase and choose kindness over certainty.

As an extra point, I’m adding a link to a Facebook post about how to help those in crisis/loss moments https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1GsCPpE8yy/