I then received a Private Message from the same guy, asking me how God could allow babies to be born with defects, etc. I may be repeating myself with this one, but it's same song, third verse. By the way, his wife is pregnant with their first child, pre-ultrasound. There was concern in his post :
I'm glad you PM'd me. I was afraid that you'd think I was picking on you.You have to know that I've asked myself those questions until I can't ask them any more. I'm no theologian, but here goes.I think that sin, defined as separation from God, exists and affects everything we know. That includes genetics, be it from pollution, poor choices, or our gaining knowledge and expertise with manipulating it without ethical consideration. The Old Testament describes "the sins of the fathers will be visited on the subsequent generations" (something like that, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about). I think that this was a way of stating that our actions do have consequences, but I don't think it means that we can take liberties in ascribing stuff we see to prior things we might not approve of, if that makes any sense. Speaking personally, we had our daughter when my wife and I were both 40. The possibility exists that the DS was a result of our age. Does that make us responsible? Yes, in a way. How many healthy babies are born to 40+ year olds in this world. A lot. Am I being punished for something, or did I just win some sort of twisted lottery? Should I feel guilt about what may or may not be, ultimately, my fault? I sincerely don't know.It is so easy to get messed up by semantics. I once thought, "will I recognize my daughter in heaven, if she is "made perfect", would I be able to know it was her? Then I thought the reverse - would she know me?" - as I'm pretty imperfect here, too. How am I to know that she is not more "God-like" than I am, with her simple mind, capacity for love and acceptance that she shows everyone?Just as one can stare into the stars of the Milky Way in the desert (something I love to do), I think that our lives, sin, our direct choices, those things that we can't control, the good that we do, weaves a web that we can't really unravel. That's the best explanation I've come up with. We do the best (usually) with what we have.There's too much that happens, I think, that defy any explanation. That goes for miracles, as well as the bad stuff. I sat in a Sunday School class, about 10 months after Emma was born, and heard an old friend give God the glory for helping his family find his daughter's retainer that week. It made me kinda wonder what the hell I did to deserve this, if you can understand that. One more thing. To your first question, I think he allowed it when he introduced sin into the mix. He wanted us to have a choice to love him or not, which meant accepting/allowing the consequences of us choosing not to. I don't think it's fair, and I hope to hear an explanation from Him myself, someday.I hope all is ok with your child. My testicles lurch up into my body every time my son runs across the street in front of our house. Worrying is part of being a good parent.Does any of this make sense to you?
