Why Many People Hate God?
If you spend enough time with me, you’d learn that I’m a devout believer. When asked who do I love the most, my reply always goes to my Maker.
And, people always laugh at that and they say, “what is there to love about God? How can you even think of Him as someone to love.” And, one even dared to say, “God is not worthy of love.”
Regarding this, I had a conversation with one of my friends and that’s why I want to take a stab at it today.
The Reasons Lurking Behind This Hatred
Why hate the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God who graced you by breathing the breath of life in your mortal bodies?
This is kind of a loaded and potentially explosive question. I will try to be unbiased but I don’t promise you anything.
See, when this topic of religion comes up, I’m sure a lot of people would blame Satan for binding people’s hearts and creating that hatred in their hearts. Not that I deny he’s got a hand in this, but I want to highlight the reasons why people are unable to love God.
A World of Chaos
One of my previous articles focused on the rising unscrupulous cruelty of this world and how people blame God for these acts of sheer inhumanity.
I agree that today the world is a real mess, with all kindness and humanity gone and 98 % of people determined to bring destruction and chaos to the world.
If you take a look at the events of previous decades, heck, I’d say even those from the last few days, you’d see how generosity has been replaced with greed, honesty with corruption and love with hatred.
What I don’t get is how people can raise their accusatory voices at God in the midst of this dehumanizing world and these cruel acts.
I think this has been reverberating through ages, with people assuming God is responsible for the increasingly destructive nature of human beings.
Is God responsible for when you plunged a knife in the chest of a friend?
When you covet the wife of your brother, is God responsible?
One thing I know that God is responsible for is to grant you “free will.”
Should He be blamed also for giving you that freedom?
Why Is There Suffering?
Honestly, there’s not any pleasing answer to this question.
It is an undeniable fact that many of us are suffering in life. If you are not educated, you suffer. If you are educated, you also suffer. If you don’t have a job, you suffer. But, even if you have one, you still suffer.
I’ve come to accept suffering as a part of life.
Birth, growth and death… and all along the way, you’ve got suffering.
One way or the other, unfortunately, you cannot avoid suffering.
But, hey, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad.
Imagine how happy Italy’s national football team must have been when they won the UEFA EURO 2021. But, going back a few hours, or even a few days before their victory, think about all those obstacles they had to face in order to reach that winning position.
See, my point here is that before attaining success, you’ll have to go through hardships and sufferings.
There is no more explicit example of how Jesus suffered on the cross for people to be freed from the bondage of sin.
So, you will go through suffering, but it’s up to you whether you want to go through it with God or without Him.
A Strategy of Control
It pains me when people say they hate God because He only wants to control them.
It won’t be fair if I deny this controlling element, but it will neither be true if I say God’s sole purpose is to exercise authority over people.
The way I figure it is that there is always the need for some authority to better guide people in the right way. Take from the childhood phase, you’ve got your parents and other family members and at that adult stage, when your parents can no longer say, “don’t do this and don’t do that”, you’ll have control from the state, religion, mass media and peer pressure.
Sometimes, even that little inner voice will try to control you.
I’ve pondered on this for a while and I think each of us can only find the real answer within ourselves.
Recently, I came up with another possibility of people hating God out of their guilt of sins. However, I’m not going to get into this argument today. I’ll leave it for another day.