Why Didn’t God Keep My Son From Being Killed?

Devastated and Demanding of Answers That Would Stop my Heart’s Emotional Bleeding

I have a real heart-felt reason to question the existence of God, Todd Von Koerner, was my oldest son, He was 56 years old ridding his cherished Motorcycle home, He hit the retaining wall of the exit ramp while coming off the freeway. He was hurled into the cement barrier cracking open his skull and thrown back into traffic where he was run over by a follow-on car. The only good news came from the policeman who said that it appeared that He had died instantly.

It was more than just the death of my son; it was the death of all the things we never got to do or see. I had just retired two weeks earlier, and I had big dreams of doing things with and for him that I was unable to do while running my International Consulting business. In a moment and in the flash of an eye, all my dreams and aspirations were gone! I was helplessly devastated!

Then it gets worse. Then comes the onslaught of the world’s hardest and most damning of questions. How could God have allowed this to happen? I am a devoted Christian, I believe in God and His son, Jesus Christ, to whom I have given my life. And is this what I get? Is not God said to be all-loving? If so, why would He have allowed this to happen? Is it also not said that God is all-powerful? Could He not have intervened and prevented the accident from happening? It became a horrifying conundrum. Either He is not all loving and didn’t want to stop the accident, or he is not all-powerful and could not have stopped the accident from happening. Or worse yet, perhaps both are true! And if true, I’m left without a God.

The only small sliver of hope left in a gory and disgusting mess like this, is the possibility that it isn’t over, and there is more to this awful ending than what I see and am being told. For I hear a faint but steady whisper coming back from eternity that Todd and I will be together again in a place called heaven, and we will pick up exactly where we left off.

But for me to hear, or much less, even believe that whisper, the questions of God’s love and God’s power demand answering. If they continue to be doubted, then the existence of heaven itself is also questionable. My sanity could not allow these questions to be ignored. There needed to be clear and logical answers or my life as a Christian is a complete farse and based on superstitious fairy tales. I will not bet my life on a “baseless wish.” So, I feverishly began praying for wisdom and common-sense answers that would withstand those middle-of-the- night debilitating doubts that destroy both my rest and peace of mind. Either I believe in God’s love and power, or I do not. There can be no in-between.

To get clarity and a steady and strong peace of mind, I have spent the last four months since Todd’s fatal accident praying for wisdom and searching the scriptures for answers to my haunting questions about God and eternity. I wanted to share with you the results of this make-or-break initiative of my faith. Instead of putting my findings into a heavy academic document, I’ve elected to put my discoveries and conclusions into a Story that is easy to understand and transforms a sober life & death message into an enjoyable narrative with a happy ending.

The Story of Man

(Based on Biblical truths, Biblical inferences, answered prayers and God-given common sense)

Note: No religion anywhere in the world has a story anything remotely like this and that addresses and answers these unmatched poignant questions raised by my son’s tragic death. And it must also be noted that this story’s reality is only available to those who hold to the Christian faith. No religion, cult, or philosophy provides these wonderful promises and potential realities that are based on our faith in the redemptive work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This makes this priceless story unique and one of a kind. And it alone answers my questions giving me the certainty for experiencing the healing of my grief and the excitement for what is ahead in my future. Here are some of the many questions this story of stories answers.

Why People?

It all begins with who the Bible calls “Father God”, not some abstract haphazard “big Bang” that sets off a chain reaction of random happenings, No, it begins with an intelligent God creating and installing everything from macro complex revolving solar systems down to Micro life sustaining particles all of which clearly depicts an intelligent and exacting design. And this God (my God) is repeatedly described as an all-loving God that is motivated by “unfailing love.” And that love of His, demands an object for His love. So, God made people in whom He could invest with His love. His motivation can best be seen and understood by seeing what is reflected in the marriage of a Man and Women who had thoughts and yearnings, just like their Father God, who designed them. They have a talk around their evening dinner table about how much they want to start a family for them to love and find enjoyment. It would give them a feeling of achievement and fulfillment, and it would make their lives “complete.” Likewise God, who originally exhibited as having this exact same motivation when He realized that His nothing short of a spectacular creation of a total universe was missing something with whom He could have a mutual loving relationship, so He created us human beings in His likeness. Based on His big picture, His world design, His creation of people in his likeness, and His proactive love, it is the only rational and logical reason as to why people exist. Simply stated, we were brought into existence for His loving pleasure! We became the objects of His love. Or stated more specifically, I am the created object of God’s love.

But why would He create people who could and would commit wrongs?

Once again, the answer to this question is woven into the sophisticated design of who we are. We, His people, who were deliberately and intricately created in His likeness, contain the answers to some of the most profound questions pertaining to life. We most often look at God to discover ourselves for He told us, we have been made in His image. But it is equally true that because of this same likeness, we can also look at ourselves to discover and see what God is like! And therein lies some of the clearest answers to some of the most complex questions pertaining to life.

Allow me to illustrate, do you remember the first time your mate told you that they loved you? Of course, you remember! Why, because it was a powerful, validating, and compelling moment in your life to have someone tell you that of all the people in the world, they are in love with just you! This matchless moment in your life illustrates that for which God was looking when He created man with free volition, the right to choose. One cannot choose to love you unless they can also choose not to love you. God did not want robotic and mechanical love from people unfree not to love. For love to be satisfying to God, and satisfying to us, these following realities must be met

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Both God and we want to be loved for who we are. We want others to see and be drawn to our unique goodness. To experience gratifying love, we need to become special to someone who values that for what we can and are choosing to offer and bring to them. For us to be loved for who we are, we must be appreciated for what we are and what we can and will do. And for other’s love for us to be treasured, we need to know that they equally had the choice to reject us, to not love us, to diminish us, to ignore us, or even to detest us. Therefore, God needed to create mankind with the ability to hate and reject. For love to be real, hate and rejection must also be equally real. For someone’s love to be meaningful to both God and us, by contrast, hate and rejection must be equally hurtful to both God and us. Love is only good because it is contrasted with the bad of hate and rejection. The wonderfulness of love is so good because the awfulness of rejection is so bad. All of this adds up to a simple guiding fact, for God to experience the satisfying love for which He wanted , He had to create mankind with both the capacity to love and the capacity to hate and reject, and have the ability and freedom to choose which to do. Once mankind was created with both the capacity to do good or do evil, the table was set and the door was purposely left open for bad things to happen, and they did.

Now what happened since the door to evil had been left open?

The war was on, and battle number one had already begun, and it was dutifully recorded in the third chapter of the Bible which contains “The Story of Man.” With Eve created along with that built-in ability to choose either right or wrong, Satan was quick to put her to the test. She failed miserably and Adam immediately followed in kind. Satan had just handily won his first battle, but God was quick to state that although Satan would win many battles, He would NOT win the final war.

But Satan’s winning that first of millions of battles with People, changed and ruined the quality of life on planet earth forever, the very place where all of us would live. That is, until the end of time. Real damage had been irreversibly done and the earth would never be the same. The pristine Garden of Eden was now no more. Human hardships and suffering were launched into the very fabric of daily living. Atrocities from a “cursed” earth’s environment along with brutalities of a depraved human race were set in motion. Man’s evil knew no bounds, wars and mass killings are filling history books, Uncontrolled sexual perversion resulted in tortured rape and uncontrolled greed enslaved tortured human beings. Life was being replaced with slow but sure death; callused humans reaching inside a mother’s womb to dismantle and destroy innocent life. Demons were set free to devour all that is good and replace it with pain, agony, and defeat. Life had now become hard. And all happenings surrounding each of us were blindly marching us inch by inch forward to our own graves. The beautiful sounds of nature and life were being drowned out by a sickening drumbeat of destruction and death. Life had now become elusive. Death is now inevitable. It is always just a matter of time, be it an accident, a contrived murder, an infectious disease, or a broken heart, our death is inescapable. Living has become no longer easy nor safe!

So, what did God do about all of this horrible awfulness?

Immediately after Satan notched his belt with His first battle victory that resulted in the corruption of planet earth along with the corruption of the hearts of all mankind for all times, God, who was not caught off guard, instantly responded by unleashing the strongest force in all of the universe, His unfailing love. The same love which authored and propelled all of creation into existence was now re-aimed at a fallen Human race and a cursed planet. It was now “game on.” It was the beginning of the war of all wars, the war between Love and Evil, between God and Satan. A war that would inch-by-inch, piece-by-piece, thought-by-thought, and willing heart-by-willing heart where God would begin rescuing and restoring that which had gone horribly wrong in that initial battle for men’s souls in the Garden of Eden. Even as Iwrite this, the cries of misery can be heard from those currently being taken captive by Satan’s ongoing deceitful lies as He plunders unsuspecting hearts and ruining their lives. Satan is using the exact same strategy that He deployed on Eve and Adam where He purposely and deceitfully blinded them to the goodness of God by convincing them to see themselves as deprived victims of God.

The chief scourge of all scourges is Satan’s ability to continuously get us people to fall prey to “victimhood” thinking. For once He gets us there, He can easily push us one small step into feeling entitlement which is the core motivation for man’s rebellion to God. But God, seeing this dangerous perversion of reality, immediately took all necessary steps to unveil the greatest rescue operation in the history of mankind.

Turning to Satan, God said, “You started something buddy that I will finish. Your days are now numbered because I will not abandon the People that I have loved into existence. I will spare nothing, even my own son, to rescue them from your Hell.” And from that day forward, God began to deliberately, and intentionally intervene in the course of history and human affairs to eventually bring us to His only Beloved Son – Jesus. He painstakingly sparred no details so that when Jesus arrived, a 4,000 year of a documented trail containing over 150 prophecies in numerous events, places and peoples could be irrefutably authenticated when Jesus came and announced who he was and why He was here, “I am the way the truth and the life and no man comes to the father but by me. I came to seek and to save those who are lost.” Every turn of the archaeologist’s spade reveals yet more undeniable proof that the Bible is a divine recording documenting God’s rescue plan for His beloved human Race.

What role did and does Jesus play in this whole messed-up world?

In your wildest imagination or dreams, has anyone ever done these things to and for you: (He did all of this for Todd)

    • Decided to create an earth, but thought of you and all your needs and wants first?
    • Populated the entire world with things He knew you would personally love and that could make you both marvel with amazement and have happy fulfillment?
  • Wanted to bring you alive into existence, so selected the exact time and place in which to make you a living being. A place and time which had the greatest potential for you to achieve an ultimate and personal sense of relevance by becoming His friend and partner in being a blessing to the world filled with suffering?
  • Wanted you to feel and be important, so He endowed you with special gifts and is providing you opportunities to develop and use them?
  • Knew that at times you would be a knucklehead, so he provided you a means for obtaining personal forgiveness and restore your innocence to take away your guilt and shame?
  • Knew you would need companionship, so He brings the right people at the right times to be your companions and walk with you through hard times?
  • Knew you would get lost, so made a provision for you to be guided by His personal Holy Spirit?
  • Knew you would get discouraged so, in advance, he directed that inspirational love letters would all be packaged neatly in a book, called the Bible?
  • Knew you would get lonely, so He asked to be invited to dwell permanently in your heart?
  • Knew others may want to hurt you, so He watches over you every second of every minute of every day for your entire life?
  • Knew you would get into difficulties and would need help, so He stays constantly glued to your personal one-on-one prayer line just waiting and wanting to hear your voice?
  • And finally, who never once has ever been mad at you nor has never once looked at you in disgust and turned away?Well, only one person did and does all these things and more, His name is Jesus. And no one cares for you and loves you like does Jesus. This whitepaper is dedicated to bringing you and Him closer together by clearly defining His role. If that happens, you will leave after reading this more loved than before you began.

So where was God when My son Todd crashed on his motorcycle and died? Todd, like all of us was born into that cursed world described above where injustice and death are the normal order of the day. But Todd, like all of us, was hounded by Jesus and His personal love for him. Jesus is not willing that anyone should perish, but that all should come unto His saving grace, so Jesus welcomed my son with open arms the day Todd accepted Him as his own personal Lord and Savior and I had the supreme privilege of baptizing him. That decision of Todd changed everything for both Him and for me, for all eternity.

As His father, I was worried sick when Todd made some bad decisions and ended up paying big prices in both his health and in his living conditions. But through it all, he kept his love and belief in Jesus as he charged forward in a life where he was carrying some pretty heavy crosses. I, and his family were all worried about him. I was worried sick about him and his future of ill- health. I thought life was getting harder for him and the walls were closing in. But through it all He joyfully played those happy songs and hymns on the piano showing his contented smile. Make no mistake about it, He was in love with Jesus!

And that’s when it happened. In a moment of time, and when God thought Todd had had enough, God allowed him to crash and die. So where was God? He was right there to receive Todd into his forever loving arms. Instantly his living pain was eradicated, His eternal future was bright and compelling, and most importantly, for the first time in a long time, Todd was totally and irreversibly free from pain, sickness, depression, and worry. In short, Todd was home and with Jesus. He was snatched out of a life that was getting increasingly hard for him.

And where did that leave me? I immediately went into deep grief where I missed my son, his almost daily texts, his videos of playing an endless stream of piano tunes and sending them to our family. But I came to realize my grief was for me, not Todd. The more I raised up above my own self-pity, the more I rejoiced with Todd in his new home. Would I want him back, yes for me and the things undone and the things we didn’t get to do. But that would not be fair to Todd, He would be the first to say, I want to stay here with Jesus, don’t ask me to come to you, but rather, when its time, come to me! I’ll be waiting for you at heaven’s door!

LaVon, Todd Von Koerner’s dad

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