Let us consider that God allows bad stuff to happen because there are better and greater things in his sight and plan.

One of the enduring messsges in the restoration period (see Ezra, Nehemiah, Zechariah and Haggai) is the need for Israelites to begin to see their discrimination as a huge barrier to Yahweh’s approval. The people began hating David’s family while he was still king. Solomon behaved in a way to cement the disapproval of David’s house. When they returned from exile, where they had every opportunity to see the ugliness of racism, they kicked their barriers to Gentiles into high gear.

The new ID

Every religious group seems to have a sense of itself as superior and sometimes exclusive. The Roman Catholic church once gave the impression that only Roman Catholics are Christians.  The Jewish people were taught to see the population of the world as us and them, Jew and Gentile.  There is nothing wrong with that until the us is always safe and beautifully adorned by God, and the rest as second class, lost and cursed.

The church is not like Israel, chosen because of genealogy. Pastors are not prophets declaring sin. A new and greater love has dawned and only the careless and willingly ignorant turn away.

(11) But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; (12) Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.

Hebrews 9:11-12

The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.

Matthew 12:42

But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple.

Matthew 12:6