Why Did God make me ugly Part 1 (Barbara’s story.)

If you type in “Why did God…” into google you will get a variety of anticipated questions like “Why did God make me Gay?” or “Why did God make me black?” Or “why did God make me so unattractive?” or “Why did God make me so dumb, or fat or short?” Why did God create a devil… and so it goes.

It is the “Why did God make me ugly” that I want to talk about. When I discovered this, I felt hurt for the people who needed to ask Google the question.

Let me say at the outset there is no group excluded from God’s salvation. There is no exclusion zone around the cross to anyone who comes. The last chapter of the entire Bible ends with words “Whosoever will may come…” This is an all-inclusive pronoun – the pronoun ‘whosoever’ excludes no one or any group – all can come to Jesus and receive salvation. “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden. ‘Jesus said. He also said, “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16(NLT). ‘Everyone’ is another all-inclusive pronoun.

When I felt the pain of the googled questions, I realized that generally people may not share their doubts with friends, relatives, rabbis, pastors or imams. They inevitably share them with Google. Every year there are hundreds of thousands of pointed questions, most of them coming from people who obviously believe in God. The No. 1 question about God is “who created God?” Second is why God allows suffering. This is the famous problem of evil. If God is all powerful and all good, how could he allow suffering? The third most-asked question is why does God hate me? The fourth is why God needs so much praise.

We could also ask questions like why did God make me blind or deaf or sick, or why did my child die and so it goes.

Eventually we find ourselves in the valley of solitude between the snow-capped mountain peaks of two eternities, asking the question of why is there suffering and pain in the world.

I can now tell this story because the characters have long since passed away. Barbara was introduced to me by a church member in Wollongong NSW about 40 years ago – I studied the Bible with her, and she joined a baptismal class in the basement of the church. She was eventually part of a group of 23 who got baptized in a river one Sabbath afternoon. But all was not well. You see Barbara had once been George, a married man with mature children. One can only imagine George’s torment and anguish that led him to perform his own sex change, with a Stanley knife in the shower. This is how George became Barbara.

During her bible studies and prior to her baptism Barbara became convicted, and relayed to me, that she felt she had done the wrong thing and wanted to go back to being George. I was young and hesitatingly agreed. She stopped taking the hormonal medication that had produced breasts and stopped facial hair and I baptized George wit group that day.

After his baptism I attempted to visit Him in the bed siter flat in an apartment block where he lived. For days he would not open the door. I slipped notes under the door etc. In due course, he let me in, and we talked at length. He recounted how he had been crying for a week. Eventually I made the conclusion and told him that when God found him, he was Barbara and I felt that is who he needed to be.

With a little foreboding I took the story to the church board and requested that we change his name on the church roll to Barbara, to my surprise and joy I found unanimous support and that’s what we did.

I can’t say that all went well after that. Barbara felt self-conscious coming to church and eventually stopped coming. I was moved away and lost contact with her.

Jesus made it clear on several occasions that the Devil (and his minions who followed him) are murderous lairs.(John 8:44). Jesus also clarified that Lucifer is the source of all suffering in the world. There is a war going on, and the Bible track’s that war from its beginning right to the end. God is outside time, and this is why He can enlighten us as to what is actually happening in our world. All of us experience that war in varying degrees. SOMETIMES WE ARE IN THE HEAT OF THE BATTLE.

 If we were to reflect on the question that never goes away, we would find that we are paddling our canoes onto a fathomless mystery. If we could understand God, He would cease to be God.

As a spectator I have serious problems with the way God does things sometimes. I stand on the sidelines of history and see things that cause me to scratch my head. I see events in the lives of others or even in my own life and I am left with the incessant lingering “why?” Many years ago now  I lost a son, a wife, my house and many other things besides.

Albert Einstein once asked, “Is the universe a friendly place” because the world does not explain itself. Faith is a willingness to trust God with the outcome of the future no matter what. I did, and I do.

An analysis of the Universe reveals that it has 2 faces. We receive mixed messages from nature. There are insurrectionary forces in our lives. We live in a world where weeds plant themselves. Gardens do not bring forth wheat, tomatoes, or corn. The natural world appears on the verge collapse.

So, back to the ugly question,

In the day of Instagram filters, snapchat, photo shopped pictures, abandoned homes and pressure from friends and family, it’s easy to feel deflated, to feel self-conscious and unworthy. Comparisons rob us of confidence and most of us are always comparing our lives to others – especially in the beauty department.

Why Did God Make Me Ugly?  Psalm 139:13: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Who created you, designed you, made you? God. But who caused the thorns on the roses or the weeds in my garden? Something happened in our world, and all is not well. Paul said in Romans 8, “the whole creation is groaning, waiting for its redemption.”

When my first son died I had to say that, ”I Accept That I live in a broken world where all is not well.”

As a science teacher I know that Psalm 139:13 is talking about the marvel of the human machine not the external appearance.

When I wish I were a little taller, or thinner, or my tendons a little stronger, I remember God was the One who designed me. This verse helps me with the question, “Why did God make me ugly?”

But this realization isn’t always easy. It sure wasn’t for one woman in the Bible as we will see tomorrow.