The Truth Behind Divine Intervention: Why Bad Things Happen

Dr. Douglas James Cottrell tackles one of humanity's most persistent questions: If there is a God, why is there suffering in the world? Drawing from decades of spiritual teaching, he offers a perspective-shifting answer that places responsibility squarely on human shoulders. "God doesn't allow anything—God provides everything," he explains, challenging us to reconsider our understanding of divine intervention.

The suffering we witness across the globe stems not from divine permission but from human choices. Dr. Douglas likens humanity to children with crayons who can create beautiful pictures or chaotic scribbles. When we look at wars, natural disasters, and personal hardships, we're seeing the consequences of collective human decisions, not divine punishment or neglect. This understanding doesn't diminish God's power but rather elevates our responsibility to create positive change.

Free will stands as the cornerstone of spiritual development. Without the freedom to make choices—both constructive and destructive—we'd be mere puppets, incapable of genuine spiritual growth. Dr. Douglas reassures us that prayer works powerfully when it comes from a sincere heart, especially when focused on opportunities rather than specific outcomes. Prayers for others carry particular strength, opening channels for unexpected blessings and guidance.

Ready to deepen your spiritual understanding? Join Dr. Douglas at the Hope Conference in Fort Worth, Texas (February 10-12), where he'll explore the DNA of your soul, virtue healing, near-death experiences, and more. Visit douglasjamescottrell.com to register and take the next step on your journey to spiritual awakening, where you can transform chaos into clarity and suffering into understanding.

Transcript

Welcome and Introduction

Announcer 0:00

Welcome to Wake Up with Dr Douglas James Cottrell, your source for helpful information, advice and tips to live your life in a mindful way in this increasingly chaotic world. For over four decades, dr Douglas has been teaching people how to develop their intuition and live their lives in a conscious way. His news and views of the world tomorrow, today, are always informative and revealing. To learn more about Dr Douglas, be sure to visit his website, douglasjamescottrellcom, where you can download self-help exercises you can do right in the comfort of your own home. And now here's your host, dr Douglas James Cottrell.

Douglas James Cottrell 0:43

Well, welcome to another broadcast. Here we are, les. It's been a while since we were on the air. You know things have changed in the world. What's going on out there? Are you surviving like everybody else, or are we feeling that pinch?

Les Hubert 0:59

Well, people are wondering, you know, with the earthquakes being so prevalent in the news, the big question is if there is a God, why is there so much suffering in the world?

Douglas James Cottrell 1:10

Well, you know that's a really great question. Over the years, as I sort of grew up, I was coming to understand. You know, the Sunday school, the teachings. The invisible man in the sky was watching over you and if you did something, you know that wasn't right, that was a sin, you might go to hell for that, and you know you had to be very moral and correct and goody-goody. And, of course, nobody killed that kind of life.

Douglas James Cottrell 1:40

So as you go through life, I went to church, I went to Sunday school, matter of fact. I had the privilege of going to two or three different churches the Baptist, the Salvation Army, and I'm not even aware I was born or sorry, I was baptized, my mother, where I am, and then my wife ended up and I married a Catholic and I became very, shall we say, multidimensional when it came to understanding the interfaith of these different places. So I had a very basic, what I'd call ordinary background, as all of our listeners more than likely have, whether you're Hindu or Muslim or you have natural native beliefs or things like that. I've looked at them all and they're all saying the same thing. Basically, we're all trying to be good people, we're trying to understand the spiritual path, have a spiritual life and do the right thing so that when we pass on that, we're going to go to those wonderful places, heavens, dimensions in the universe and our soul will live on forever. So along those ways, those paths, I should say, we come, almost all of us, to a point where why does God allow so much trouble and difficulty and horror and pain in the world? If God is a loving and just God, how can that possibly be? How could God allow this? Well, the first misnomer is God doesn't allow anything. And if we accept that that God doesn't allow anything and substitute that God provides everything, then all those people a moment ago were saying what are you saying, dr Douglas? And I'm saying this it's like God provides this classroom, this university, this place we call earth, this world, and in this place, everything that we need to advance our soul to a higher awareness, to illuminate the spiritual understandings of the Christ consciousness or of any other religious icons, teachings, that of love, unconditional love.

Douglas James Cottrell 3:47

And as long as we believe in one God, and one God only, we can understand that there is a supernatural intelligence. I call it virtue, that's what it says in the good book. And so this virtue permeates and flows through and it goes everywhere. It has an intelligence that is timeless. It's in the ever-present moment. So it knows the far past as we understand time. It understands the far future as we understand. It knows beyond our comprehension of knowing.

Douglas James Cottrell 4:25

The human consciousness cannot be defined but virtue. That supernatural mind knows what it is because it created it, and so, as we understand that God has provided everything, then it's kind of like looking at little kids making a painting. They can pick up the crayons and make a really nice picture, maybe a little crude, maybe the lines aren't so straight, but at least it's a nice picture. Or they can make a mess, they can scribble all over the paper and that scribbling, that represents chaos. And that chaos in there somewhere is that painting, that house the little kid would have put down as a drawing and will at some other time in the future. But in that moment it's chaos.

Humans Create Problems, Not God

Douglas James Cottrell 5:17

So to the question why does God allow the bad things to happen? Well, allow the bad things to happen. Well, god doesn't allow them at all. We allow them to happen. We are the problem. We are in that state of chaos. We're scribbling and scribbling and scribbling and expecting to see a portrait, one of those famous painters, one of those portraits that have come up from a famous painting. We expect that, but we're not willing to work towards it, we're not willing to help each other to provide it. And so when we see these long suffering circumstances in life, there is always behind it humans, human mind, human nature, human emotion. There is something going on that when humans change, the bad things go away.

Douglas James Cottrell 6:14

Let's say, during a war, that's really bad, that's horrific, that's human nature at its worst, gross indecencies. The most inhumane things happen to people during war to justify their side's opinion as being right and the other side's opinion as being the enemy's opinion. So somewhere it starts and we start scribbling away and bloodshed occurs, atrocities occur, bad, bad, bad things happen. And then in a moment, at the end of the war, somebody signs a piece of paper and the two sides agree not to go to war again, usually when they're financially bankrupt, or when they run financially bankrupt or when they run out of soldiers, but usually it's the former rather than the latter. So what does God do about that? Well, I could see it now. God just kind of watches and provides things, and I'm sure if God was watching, god is the most patient divine being in the world to watch his children scribble on paper to the extent of the atrocities and the pain and the suffering that they're causing each other. So God doesn't allow anything to happen or not to happen. God provides everything. It's what we as human beings do with it. And if we come to that understanding, then we know there's the sin of omission as well as the sin of commission and we can stop bad things.

Understanding Free Will and Choice

Douglas James Cottrell 7:48

Now, human nature is basically good. We know when there's a fire, the first responders come. They don't know who the people are, but they're ready and willing to risk their life to go in and save people in a burning building. We know when bad guys are out doing bad things, the police are out there attempting to keep order and to catch the bad guys. We know that when there are atrocities and people are being bullied, that there are social people who have social graces and skills doctors and teachers and they try to intervene and stop the bad guys, the aggressors, the bullies, physically restrain them, but then they go to teaching them, rehabilitating them or somehow negotiating or convincing them that what they're doing is not a good thing, it's causing problems and they don't need to do it and then they try to find out why that person is causing the problem. That's human nature in action. That is our spiritual quality, our attention to trying to help each other, to find out why people do bad things and then to help them not do bad things. Not by convincing them or by threat of punishing them to go to jail or something worse than incarceration. That usually does the trick for those people who inflict pain to receive pain. They know better.

Douglas James Cottrell 9:14

But somewhere in there, the answer in all the things I've just said is that God doesn't cause these things to happen. Now, in a good book it says I am the Alpha and I am the Omega, I am the beginning and I am the end, I am the creator and I am the destroyer. God does not punish. God simply says you have everything in front of you. And I say God says what I mean is the rules. If you will, god has provided that here. You have everything in front of you. Whatever you do in order for your divine soul to understand, whatever you put out, send out, is going to come back and you're going to feel the other side of what you've done. And that, by example, is the fastest way a spiritual being can understand or comprehend that what they just did was wrong. They feel regret. They maybe are punished somehow. They feel regret they maybe are punished somehow, but that regret that they feel is the most important thing, because then they've now realized they've made a mistake and they're on their way to something better. That something better is their spiritual development.

Douglas James Cottrell 10:30

But while we're back and forth with each other, a lot of pain can be caused, but God doesn't allow it to happen. In other words, the implication is God could stop it, but then God wouldn't have given us free will and free choice. God would be a puppet master and making us dance, pulling the strings, and then, at the end of our spiritual journey, pulling the strings. And then, at the end of our spiritual journey, what will? We be? Puppets in a box. But the life we have chosen, the gift we have been given free will, free choice and life in this physical existence, in the world that we know it, we should be grateful for our lives. And then we need to find out how to get along with each other so that bad things aren't tolerated or allowed.

Les Hubert 11:19

So this is all about feedback. In other words, we've got to realize that we own this and we've caused this, and it's not God, it's us, and it's the universal God speaking back to us saying you know, get your act together, so this stuff will stop.

Douglas James Cottrell 11:33

It's us understanding those basic rules and premises. If you step on the gas in an automobile, the accelerator, the car moves forward. If you step on the brake, it stops, but if you just get inside it it doesn't go anywhere. And God has provided the vehicle that's just sitting there how we step on the controls on the accelerator to go forward, on the brake to stop, put the signals on, take that steering wheel and steer us down that highway of free will and free choice. Who's in control? We'll be right back after this short break.

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Does Prayer Really Help?

Les Hubert 14:07

You know it's interesting because we're always looking for somebody to blame. And I remember listening to a motivational speaker. He used to be a Navy SEAL and he said years ago you know, if you could own it you could fix it. And that's a big pill to swallow when you realize all the stuff that's happening in the world and we have a huge say in this. And if we didn't, how could we ever learn to better ourselves? But we really need to get on with our involvement in this and realize. Now. The other question is which is second half of this is does prayer help? I mean, there are so many people that say you need to pray for the world, you need to return to God. Does prayer really help in easing what's going on out there?

Douglas James Cottrell 14:47

The short answer is yes, Remember. God is a loving and just God, and God is our Father. We are brothers and sisters in our religious points of view are brothers and sisters in our religious points of view.

Douglas James Cottrell 15:00

And so, as we, like all children, get lost, we ask back something like Father, please help me. Daddy, show me the way. Mommy, I'm lost. I need to cling to something that's going to show me the example, you know, kind of guide me along my life path. And so, as we understand that, as a parent would love a child with great love, god loves us just as much. So the idea that we're not left hanging, we're not out there, kind of okay, you've got your free will and free choice good luck. No, we have this ability to communicate with God. Good luck. No, we have this ability to communicate with God.

Douglas James Cottrell 15:42

Prayer is talking to God and in states of contemplation or meditation, where you're quiet and you're listening, revelations will come back to you through your meditations that will inspire you, that will have ideas occur to you that will allow you to invent something or to work through a decision or a solution, and you'll be able to have direction as to what to do for your personal gain, always for your personal betterment and gain. So prayer works. It has to be sincere and it can't be God, take this away from me. God, I'll promise to be better, can't make deals with God. You know, if you do this, I'll give 10% to the church and I'll be a goody-goody. The rest of my life Doesn't work. But if you pray for opportunities, if you pray for certain people to help you, if you need a lawyer, for instance, and you pray for that lawyer to take on your case or to help you that's what prayer is all about. You're asking for something specifically to be done. If you're praying for more money in your bank account, then pray for ways and means to be of more service that you can give, the best service you can give and expect to be well paid, and the money will end up in your bank account. But when you pray to god almighty and I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm going to sound like I'm talking in both ways here when you pray to god almighty for money, money can end up in your bank account without any effort whatsoever. That can be somebody gives you a tax return. The government says here you got a thousand dollars you were supposed to get. It could be somebody that you sort of knew down the street who sends you an inheritance of a few thousand dollars. It can be the bank discovers oh, we made a mistake and here's $500 back.

Douglas James Cottrell 17:32

It can be all kinds of random sort of chances going on, but the point being is that these occurrences are provoked, they're accelerated, they're brought forward to the surface by your prayer, by asking. But otherwise ask for opportunities and if you want to meet somebody, here's the best, god Almighty. If you're a man, god Almighty, god Almighty, please, from your infinite supply of women, please send me one. If you're a woman, you say please, I wouldn't mix it up. If you're a woman, you say from your infinite supply of men, please send me one and let them be friendly, whatever, whatever, whatever. And then you finish it off by saying please send them to me, the sooner the better, and help me recognize when that future spouse is here at hand so I can take advantage of that opportunity.

Douglas James Cottrell 18:26

Pray for opportunity. So yes, prayer really works. When you pray for somebody else, it's even more amplified. You pray for their health, their well-being, you pray for the success of their operation. You pray for their well-being that they're going to do well at work, that they're going to do well in life. Those are prayers that are about something else happening and all the coincidences and the chances and all those things that come to them. So prayer really works.

Douglas James Cottrell 18:54

It's very powerful, but I want you to come to Texas. I want you to see what's going on. I want you to understand virtue and listen to these podcasts. We've been talking about the spiritual journey and if you understand it, you'll get down that pathway a lot faster than the one you've been on. This is Douglas James Cottrell speaking. My good friend Les Hubert is here tonight. We've been once again exploring the human consciousness and attempting to understand our search for God, our understanding for truth, and tonight we were aided and assisted with our producer, paul Hughes. We'll see you all in Texas or right here on the Wake Up podcast. Take care, my friends, wishing you health, wealth and peace of mind.

Announcer 19:42

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