God And Sociopaths

There was a situation in the Old Testament in which the Israelis wanted a king. God was not happy about that, but He obliged. He got them a king named Saul, who was quite a bad king. He allowed them to have what they wanted to have, and He allowed them to live with the consequences.

God would do that in some situations. When I was a teenager I wanted my life to be free from violence. It largely has been; but there have been situations in which it would have been better to endure violence than it was to endure the things that I have endured. My desire was obliged, and it was met with consequences.

And once one is met with the consequences of one's choice, one realizes why God wanted it as He wanted.

God is God both of compassion and righteousness. Some people have one or the other; some have neither; and some have both. I went from someone with neither to someone with both. Jesus has worked on me to teach me both. Some people think that any number of people – such as the “sociopaths” and the “perverts” - are incurably evil. I say that just about no evil is incurable.

In many cases the problem is not one of personality at all. In many cases the problem is one of conviction. There may not be cure for “sexual perversions,” but there is a cure for acting on them and it's called self-control. There may not be a cure for sociopathic tendencies, but there is a cure for acting on them, and that is understanding the consequences of one's actions.

So we see some actual sociopaths rising to the top of corporate hierarchy and others who are not sociopaths being treated terribly under the claim that they are ones. Generally we will not find evil where we would expect it. Usually we would find it where we will least expect it. Many men who become terrible to their wives wear a genial front, and everyone thinks that they are nice guys. They use these skills to con women into being with them, and they use the same skills to convince others that they are the good guy and that the woman is bad.

Why did God choose Saul? Probably because He, once again, was unhappy about the Israelites wanting a king and wanted them to face the consequences of their disobedience. God was happiest when Israel was run by the judges. Israel was never a democracy. For most of its time it was either run by kings or by alien rulers. God has been invoked in defense of both monarchy and democracy. However God's way appears to be that people should be run by Him.

So if you are particularly insistent sometimes God would grant you what you want, but you will have to deal with the consequences. And once you do you will know why God wanted things the way that He wanted them to be.