Questions and Answers, Part 13

Selected Scriptures

     Well, we want to have a little time for you to just share with me and I know I'm up here talking at you all the time and you never get to talk back at me.  So I want to give you an opportunity to do that.  What we like to do in these sessions is just let you ask questions about the church, something about the Bible.  It's not Stump the Pastor.  We want to get that straight at the beginning.  The idea is not to ask me questions I can't answer, but make me look good.  Ask me questions (laughter) that I can answer which will help a lot.

     Okay, there's a hand right up there.  Just stand up and...right there.

QUESTIONER:  I've always been interested in the mentally retarded, mental illness and all that and that's my general ____________.  The specific question I'd like to ask is what is the status of a mentally retarded person who has been mentally retarded from birth or maybe made a, I guess, what you'd call a vegetable.  Do...are they accountable to God for their sins or how did...why did God allow _________.

JOHN:  Well, you know, _________ you've asked me a whole pile of questions.  Why does God allow it?  I don't know.  You ask me why questions and I'm already stuck because I don't know why.  But I do know that God has His own purposes.  For example, in Exodus, chapter 4, "the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man's mouth?"  Just listen to this.  "Who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind?  Have not I the Lord?"  In other words, the people who come into the world with some handicap may be no less, or are no less the