Christians sometimes say things that are quite frankly based on bad theology.
For example, I have often heard Christians respond to the death of someone by saying: “Well, it was his or her time to go!” Really? And how does anyone know the mind of God well enough to make such a bold comment? At the very least, such a view smacks of one thing: Determinism!
It does not matter that Joe died of lung cancer because he smoked two packs of cigarettes forty years as if he didn’t have a choice not to smoke. Or, it doesn’t matter that Alice died of cirrhosis of the liver after a lifetime of alcohol abuse when she could have chosen to get help with her addiction and stopped her drinking before it destroyed her liver. I could go on but you get my point!
The Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians that we “reap what we sow” (6:7). So what does Paul mean by this? Well, our actions have consequences. Everything we do has repercussions. Our behaviors somehow come home to sit on our own doorstep. Stated as a figure of speech it means:
“What goes around comes around.”
Now I understand why some people think this way. They view God as all-knowing and all-powerful. Okay, I can live with that,. but it is a huge leap from believing in God’s all-knowing, all-powerful nature to God deterministically causing all things to happen, including someone's death.
So when I hear a Christian say that Joe or Mary died simply because it was his or her time to go it implies a deterministic understanding of God’s relationship with his creation. It’s a concession to the belief that nothing we do or don’t do can alter the timing of our own death.
Life happens and some lives are cut really short (possibly because of bad choices or someone else's mistake) where some (because of good genes or better choices) enjoy longevity. So please stop saying that anyone’s death was a person's time to go!
Neither of us has the authority to make such claims on God's behalf!
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