I got the call last Saturday. “Aaron passed away last night,” the friend on the other end told me. I was in shock. Aaron was basically my age, and he had a precious 3-year-old daughter and a young wife. He was on the worship team at my last church. We had played, chatted, and worked together for over two years. How could this be? How could someone simply die like that in the middle of the night?
Aaron’s funeral was today. Apparently, he died of an epileptic seizure. There were nearly 1000 people at his funeral, and it was extremely emotional. How could God allow this to happen? Why didn’t He stop it? These questions have haunted me ever since I first heard the news, and I think I’m just now starting to come to grips with the fact that sometimes these things are just a part of life. Sometimes bad things happen to good people.
Aaron and his family
It struck me today during the funeral how differently I viewed these kinds of things now that I have been out of Gothardism for nearly 10 years. Within Bill Gothard’s ideology, there is a great deal of emphasis on the principle of “cause and effect.” Bill alludes to this fact on his own website, when he states that he has taught the Basic Seminar for 40 years “to help people understand the cause-and-effect sequences of life.” There is certainly some truth to this mindset. If I go jump off a building, I will fall. However, Gothard has taken scriptures such as Galatians 6:7 (whatever one sows, that will he also reap) and used it to basically say that if one follows Biblical principles, success will be the result. Unfortunately, life is not always so simple.
My friend Aaron was a good man, a good father, and a good husband. Sure, he wasn’t perfect. I also know a lot of rotten people who seem to be living the good life of fame, fortune, and wealth. They have achieved the “success” that Bill promises only comes from obedience to certain “principles.” How is that fair?
10 years ago, I would have been looking for the “cause” of God’s anger and judgment. I would have suspected some secret sin and tried to figure out why God would have taken him home. I would have been like Christ’s disciples in John 9, who in reference to a blind man asked Jesus: “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
The truth is simple: Sometimes bad things happen to good people. God sends rain on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45). Even Job, a righteous man, suffered mightily. However, the truth is that in the midst of tragedy and triumph, God’s grace is always there. Sometimes He allows these things to happen so that His grace is made perfect in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). Sometimes these things happen that His glory is displayed through our circumstances (John 9:3). Whatever the case may be, we as believers in Jesus know that “all things work together for good, for those called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28).”
Life is not always easily explainable. My opinion is that we shouldn’t really even try. God’s ways are so much higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:9). It’s in times when tragedy strikes that we should simply cast ourselves upon His sustaining grace, knowing that He will never leave us nor forsake us.
Let me leave you with the lyrics of a song sung at Aaron’s funeral today:
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
Your perfect love is casting out fear
And even when I'm caught in the middle of the storms of this life
I won't turn back I know you are near
And I will fear no evil
For my God is with me
And if my God is with me
Whom then shall I fear?
Oh no, You never let go
Through the calm and through the storm
Oh no, You never let go
In every high and every low
Oh no, You never let go
Lord, You never let go of me
I'm sorry for your and your friends' loss, John.
How true this message is! God doesn't base our blessings on our actions. It took me a long time to realize this, and it is still a struggle at times. Thank you for sharing and I am so sorry for your loss of your friend. God is using you and him also to speak His truths.
So sorry for the loss of your friend.
Thank you for sharing these truths
about God when the hard times come.
I love that song!
So true, thanks for sharing. I lost my sister last year and have struggled with it a lot ever since. God never promised that life would make sense, but He promised to be there in the middle of our hurts and joys. Even when we don't feel like he is there.
This is a critical truth. I think that understanding that "stuff happens" is essential to living a sane Christian life. We actually knew a family that lost a new born daughter due to severe birth defects , who received a letter from a lady (Gothardite) who suggested that the mom and dad might have caused this by leaving a church (rebellion). Talk about compassion....
Our family experienced loss early and often. But the non-ATI churches I grew up in treated death in opposite fashion. For example, my brother died 6 days after a car crash. ALL comments were along the lines of God sparing him from the world's troubles, or God wanting his company, or certainly God using his death to bring others to Christ...which did happen. So a very different cause and effect. Since I can't fathom the depths of God, I tend to keep it a little more simple...death's just a part of life. But when in my busyness I pass by or hear of a tragedy, I ask God to work in the mind-numbed hearts of those who are affected, to bring people closer to Him. Because those times will turn people's thoughts to Him...there's just nowhere else to look. And in looking, they may find. John, we're sorry to hear of your loss, and we pray that everyone's thoughts will turn to God (even in anger and hurt), and that your friend's children will grow in their father's legacy. And the same for all of our children.
This is so true. God is also sovereign and will take you when he sees fit. He doesn't do this with malice, it's just His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts. He loves us and does have a plan for us but that plan does have a limit on it. Live life to the fullest. It sounds like this man did that and is now in heaven. I'm sorry for type lose to the family and will be praying for them.
I'm sorry for your loss, John! I would have had those very same thoughts 15 years ago. But we now know that He sends His rain on the just and on the unjust. It's tough. But through it all, God is good. So very, very good.
Tragedy is hard, but in a legalistic mindset, it's terrifying. I still have trouble reaching out to those who are hurting, because I'm so scared that the same will happen to me. That's why it's so comforting to think in terms of "sowing and reaping." If I know what that person did to die early, then I can avoid it myself and for my family.
But sometimes there's no explanation. My own father, a good, kind, funny man, drowned when I was very young. I never knew him. Sometimes, that's just what happens. And I'm glad to have moved toward a more grace-filled existence that lets me show compassion without fear.
I am sorry to hear of Aaron's death. I'm glad you know the grace of God to help you through the grieving.
At what point in a person's life does a Gothardite stop looking for a secret sin or rebellion to explain why someone died? 60? 70? 80?
Wow, this is old, but SO good! I also lost my husband when he was 32 and I was 36. I saw a rumor about Wisdom Booklets saying stuff about some bad sexual behaviour(triggered by the Josh Duggar thing, no doubt) causes cancer. And that was the cause of my husband's death; same as this one, it just happened; we ate the same food, lived the same lifestyle(both of us were virgins at our wedding) and he got cancer and died and I didn't.
Becky's question is a good one I wonder about, now that Bill Gothard has hit 80.
And what a beautiful song! Thank you for sharing it.