This is some pretty disturbing stuff, isn’t it? Well, those Holocaust concentration camps were very disturbing as well. When we see millions of people starving to death in a nationwide famine or dropping over with flu-like symptoms, it’s disturbing. When we see whole cities being bombed off the map and men massacring each other on the battlefield, it’s disturbing. In the Bible, God tells us that He’s the One responsible for all of it. So now we get to that million dollar question: What’s His point?

There are two ways that Christians act utterly absurd when it comes to discussing God’s role in mass killings. First, they try to deny that He is even involved—that is the height of lunacy. But once they finally do acknowledge that He’s involved, they act like the whole affair can be simply explained with some trite statement like, “He must have been mad at the people who died.” Here is more lunacy. You can’t be sure of God’s reasons for one soul dying, let alone millions. God has a long list of reasons for why He kills souls when He does. You can be familiar with some of the items on that list, but you can’t ever pinpoint which reason was motivating God’s actions in a specific event unless you receive explicit direction from Him. For the most part, God just isn’t going to tell you why He’s doing what He’s doing with another soul, because He considers it none of your business. God doesn’t even sit down and fully explain why He does what He does with you, so it’s more than a little absurd to stand around declaring that you know exactly why certain souls were gassed to death in Nazi concentration camps while others were not. The reality is that you don’t have the first clue. What you do know is that there is never any “one size fits all” answer in these scenarios. The best we can do is talk about probabilities.

The vast majority of souls in this world will never submit to God’s Authority while they are here, therefore they will end up in Hell. This is a reality that has been true since the very beginning: most humans reject God. Now once we die in a state of spiritual rebellion, God’s feelings towards us become intensely negative. “Unconditional love” is an utter delusion that we’ve invented to please our egos. God has always taught that His love is extremely conditional. We all start off being loved for free—we’ve done nothing to earn it. God chooses to love us just because He wants to. But He then says that this period of generosity will come to an end if we don’t treat Him with a certain level of respect. He also promises that our time on this planet will be extremely brief, yet none of us will know exactly how much time we have. Some of us will only be here a matter of days or hours. Others a few years, others will live to a ripe old age. But from the eternal perspective, even living to be a 110 is a mere flash in the pan. These facts put all of us in a rather urgent situation. If we defy God for too long, we might suddenly find ourselves struck down by Him and out of chances to repent. How does God feel when He is killing off defiant rebels? Angry, disgusted, vengeful—it’s a very negative combination of passions. How does God feel when He is killing off souls who sincerely care about pleasing Him? He’s very delighted with them and eager to bring them to their reward. What are the chances that every soul who got gassed in Nazi concentration camps was sincerely seeking God? Zilch. The far more likely scenario was that there was a blend of defiant rebels, hardcore believers, and carnal slackers. We could say the same for all the casualties of both World Wars and for all of the groups that we listed previously. Once you start dealing in massive casualties, it is quite unrealistic to suggest that everyone had the same spiritual attitude towards God, therefore it is ridiculous to paint God as having one emotion towards the whole group. God never loses track of individuals in a crowd. If you scoop up some sand on a beach, you see a handful of sand, but God sees a mass of uniquely shaped sand crystals which are each interesting in their own way. In the same way, when you read about mass casualties in the news, you start lumping all the souls together under some irrelevant label like “the Jews” or “the plane crash victims” or “the soldiers.” But God sees individual souls and His feelings towards each of those souls vary widely depending on how each soul is currently responding to Him.

Understanding that God always views us as unique individuals helps you to understand how personal His actions in each life are. It simply doesn’t work to say “all the Jews in that town were dragged off to the Holocaust,” because in real life certain Jews were hidden away in basements by people who were trying to take the high moral ground. How do we explain these anomalies? How do we explain why some survived the concentration camps and others did not? How do we explain why some were able to forgive and move on, while others were permanently crippled? The answer is that God’s care of each of us is extremely personal and strategic.