How does one endure grief and pain? How does one manage it in life? Where do we go for answers when we suffer ourselves or when we see those we love suffering?
“Just be there for them… just be there for them in their need.”
1. The question of pain and suffering provides the greatest challenge to belief in God. In a discussion between scholars the issue of a world torn by suffering is often described as an insoluble trilemma. The argument by skeptics is positioned by first posing three basic claims that are adhered to by a Christian and then showing these claims to be irreconcilable. At least, they insist, these claims as they define them must be held by a Christian:
• God is all-powerful: He can do anything He wills
• God is all-loving: He cares with an intense value for His creation
• Evil is a reality: Suffering is an all-pervading part of this world.
At face value, it is obvious that the ideas are indeed at variance. An all-powerful God can do anything He pleases, and from our perspective, the loving thing to do is to ease the pain of someone you love. Yet evil and suffering occupy a major part of our human experience; God has not removed them. These assertions together make no sense. This is the trilemma.
2. God, who exists in the eternal, in creating time and people, gives us the backdrop to the story and enough information so that we can know how this story will end. The true seeker after truth has enough clues to enable him or her to endure through time what is of eternal value, and see in reality and experience the triumph of truth over a lie, of love over selfishness. It is the ultimate triumph of the sacred over the profane. Neither is imaginary, and neither can be explained without the reality of the other.
3. Pain is a real indicator for a better purpose, and both tell us that when an underlying malfunction is real, the symptomatic issues, though secondary, are warning lights of what needs to be fixed. The worst kinds of diseases are the ones where there are no symptoms that indicate the fatal effect is doing its deadly work.
4. Imagine you are taking a path that zigzags up a hill, rather than running straight up, because of the steep angle of the climb. As you climb, at times you seem to be moving farther away from your destination at the top because you are angling across the mountain rather than going straight up. Yet in reality you are actually moving closer to the top all the time. Add to this one further component, that it is also true that the shortest distance to a destination is not always the best route because the most important experiences are often missed. One can quickly see how our journeys in life contain ready examples of traveling toward the destination we seek along a path that is not always free from impediments or obstructions or pain, and that often this is the better way to go. Freedom from pain is not the only indicator of whether or not something is beneficial.
“The emotional and psychological pain was unrelenting, and the physical results from the stress and mental pain were devastating.”
5. When Jesus asked the twelve disciples closest to Him whether they too would desert Him with the rest of His disciples, Peter replied for all of us down through the ages when he said, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” (John 6:68). Where can one go for an answer? This is where the Christian message stands tall above any other teaching on pain and suffering and goes beyond any other answers to our problem. The intellectual answers are important. But intellect alone cannot help us navigate the minefield of pain and suffering. Other worldviews also offer intellectual answers. But Christianity alone offers a person.
Ideas cannot bring lasting meaning, comfort, or hope. Only a person can. At the core of every one of the responses we will offer is relationship with God—the freedom to enter into that relationship and the empowerment to live in the fullness of life that only that relationship provides.
CHAPTER 2: A RESPONSE OF FREEDOM
“Suffering is necessary. It is impossible to live a complete life without suffering. If life is to be fully understood and lived, suffering is necessary”.
1. It has always been interesting to me that when Job cried out to God for answers to his pain and suffering in the book of Job, God began His personal response by going back to the beginning of time, asking Job how much he knew about how things came to be. “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” (Job 38:4) God asked and then moved directly to the created order. The point is clear that if God is the author of life, He has an answer to suffering. If something indeed came from nothing then nothing is really the answer to suffering. But if we are the creation of a personal, moral, infinite, loving God, then He will have the answer for us. Through the ordeal of losing everything he had except his life, Job found that all he needed to know was to keep his feet on the ground and his mind above the clouds. It was through the valley of his darkest nights and fears that he labored for his answers.
2. The argument that God is the author of life is presented with three assumptions:
• Nothing physical in this universe explains its own existence
• Wherever one sees intelligibility, one assumes intelligence
• God has intervened in history and in moral reasoning.
Who, then, is the Creator? In the Christian worldview, He is the nonphysical, intelligent, moral, and personal first cause of the universe who, in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, revealed Himself to mankind. If science struggles to explain life and if attempted explanations require billions of years to transpire, the least we can do is give the Christian the same privilege of eternity and of the nonphysical to build a coherent worldview.
With God as the prime mover, an explanation for everything else can be found. G. K. Chesterton said that the sun is the one created thing we cannot look at, but it is the means by which we look at the rest of creation. Like the sun, it is the spiritual that gives light to and explains everything else.
3. Since it is most logical that God is the author, the inference is that there is a story. There is a script. In the last chapter I asked whether there is a story that is true and comprehensive in dealing with the facts of evil and suffering. I believe that there is, and this story has a beginning and a culmination point: worth and worship. These terms are tied into love and forgiveness, which in turn are undergirded by the gift of freedom. But let’s stay with worth and worship for now. Those two simple words summarize the story. This really should not be surprising. We all seek essential worth right from the time we can relate and express. Watching a child grow up and watching a child go wrong is often all about self-image and self-esteem. Belonging and value are not just characteristics of things; they are first characteristics of people. Life has essential value. Every life has worth, imbued with the image of God.
But in that essential worth, we have the responsibility to understand the Creator’s design and purpose. That purpose is to enjoy the true nature of love and relationship, which are to be found only in Him. All other loves and relationships are meant to be a reflection of that perfect love and relationship.
Truth is primarily a property of propositions, and when you rearrange them or toy with the words or change the meaning, you redefine reality. This was the malady of free choices at the dawn of human existence. “Did God really say…?”
4. Sin is the cause. A disconnection from the spirit is the result. Pain is the symptom. The worst judgment upon sin is more sin. Bereft of the presence of God, the isolation is rightly called death. Fyodor Dostoevsky said that hell is the inability to love. I can take it one step further: Hell is the self, isolated from God. His Word has been violated, His presence has been lost, and the pain we feel is that of being alone.
5. God has a general purpose for life and a specific purpose for each of us in knowing His presence in our souls. He communes with us there. The physical is indicative of the spiritual. The naturalist experiences great loss by limiting himself to matter and denying the world beyond it. The great loss of the pantheist is in attempting to ignore the body, the material, and see only the soul. Why are so many songs that are written preoccupied with love? Why is there always a “broken heart,” when we actually mean that our emotions are torn? Is it because we are searching for the touch to the soul that comes only from knowing the reason for our being? No matter how the naturalist focuses on science or the pantheist on detachment from the material, the people of this world cry out for meaning and purpose in their existence.
6. The context of the entire book of Job—the book in the Bible that deals most with this subject—is pain. “Why?” Job asked from various vantage points, but not once did he question God’s existence. He struggled with wanting to know God’s purpose and understand His ways. Job wondered about the purpose of his own existence, but he never questioned God’s existence. Deep within he ultimately recognized that outside of God there were no answers, just haunting questions.
So the failure we see in the story of Job is the failure of friendship. Then comes the answer of God. God’s answer was not propositional, but relational. And that is what Job most needed. He simply needed to know that God was with him through his ordeal… that God had not abandoned him.
7. Pain can easily produce the sense of being abandoned. The presence of someone who loves and cares can most persuasively counter that fear. God’s words were important to Job, but most important to him was the assurance that God was with him through it all, revealing Himself to Job at the most critical moment. And Job said, “My ears had heard of You but now my eyes have seen You” (Job 42:5).
Calvin Miller sums it up well when he speaks of answers that come in the form of words and other answers that come in the form of God’s presence:The sermon and the Spirit always work in combination to produce liberation. Sometimes the Spirit and sermon do supply direct answers to human need, but most often they answer indirectly. Most problems are not solved by listening to sermons. The sermon, no matter how sincere, cannot solve these unsolvable problems. So if the sermon is not a problem solver, where shall we go for solutions? Together with the Spirit, the sermon exists to point out that having answers is not essential to living. What is essential is the sense of God’s presence during dark seasons of questioning… Our need for specific answers is dissolved in the greater issue of the Lordship of Christ over all questions—those that have answers and those that don’t.
8. Our greatest gift from God is freedom. Our greatest blessing is His presence—perfect love and relationship. On this basis I move to two converging conclusions:
• First, the real malady is within us. The brokenness is in you and me. And because of that there are two ways God can enable us to cope with suffering: He can completely remove the pain by answering our prayers every time we ask Him to remove an obstacle. But think about that. Problems will forever remain intrinsic to the human scene. Do we play God and demand that the evil be removed at every occurrence? That is asking for the logically impossible if love is to be supreme; God doesn’t want us to love Him for what we can get from Him. The other way God enables us to cope with suffering is to change us from within. He changes our hearts and walks with us through the deep waters. This is the greater miracle when compared to the mere changing of circumstances. Only a change within us can keep intact Paul’s three excellencies of faith, hope, and love.
• Second, the pattern of the story makes sense. The narrative goes from the fact of our brokenness to a Savior who entered into our suffering and brought us the hope of His eternal presence. This is how I see the story summarized:
Where there is the possibility of love, there has to be the reality of freedom.Where there is the reality of freedom, there has to be the possibility of pain.Where there is the reality of pain, there is the need for a Savior.Where there is a Savior, there is the possibility of redemption.
Our problem is not that we are immoral. Our problem is so severe that it cannot be solved by morality alone. Only the Creator of our souls who gave us our essence can lift us to the plane where we see the Savior’s wounds as our redemption.
9. Love and forgiveness, worth and worship—all are conditional on freedom. It is these that form the components of growing with Jesus Christ and finding in His presence hope that transcends the moment and lifts our hearts to the eternal. If people become skeptics about God in response to suffering, we must assume that the antidote, pleasure, must mean perpetual happiness. But that is simply not the case. Chesterton suggested that meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain. Rather, meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure. In short, both pain and pleasure are experiences that remind us that without God, neither can be explained.
10. I couldn’t help but think of Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:1–44). This family at Bethany was very special to Him. He was the friend they needed the most when Lazarus was dying, but He wasn’t there. So when Jesus did come, their biggest question was why He hadn’t come before Lazarus died. He assured them that He was indeed the One who could and would still rescue Lazarus. “We know You will do that in the final resurrection,” they said, “but had You been here, this death could have been prevented.” And the Gospel writer tells us that Jesus stood by the grave and wept. Then, with the authority Jesus alone had, He called Lazarus forth from the grave. The power He had, He displayed. And the sorrow He felt in the face of the death of a friend was not hidden either. Why the tears? Why the heartache? He knew He was going to raise Lazarus from the grave. I suspect Jesus must have wondered, How do I explain to them that when they reach their destination, the pain will be gone?
Tears are part of our stories, but our eternal destination point is hard to explain to us because we know only time and cannot understand eternity. But He will get us there.
CHAPTER 3: A RESPONSE OF GRACE
1. Sometimes we do need explanations; as a philosopher, I’m fully committed to that. But other times we just need to know that there is someone who understands what we’re going through and cries along with us.
2. I also recognize that for some of you, the Church has been guilty of wronging you in some way—of causing you to suffer or of failing to be there for you when you needed it most. The Church is my family. I love it, and I am so grateful to be a part of it, but we make mistakes. Very often we have failed to live up to the love that Jesus calls us to. Before saying any more, I want to apologize on behalf of my family, the Church, and to ask for your forgiveness for any time that we have been the cause of suffering in your life. I hope that will never be the case again, and I hope you will give us another chance to earn your trust.
3. The response of freedom highlights the culpability of human persons for the suffering of this world. Free choices against God, free choices against one another, choosing hate or indifference toward those we were created to love and defend—this is the root of so much of the brokenness that we find ourselves in and that we find in ourselves.
4. We find a story of people who deep in their hearts know God, and who also know what He has asked of them. But then they hear this voice in their ears: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1). And they begin to doubt God. They begin to doubt that He knows what’s best for them; they begin to doubt that He is for them; ultimately, they begin to doubt what He has actually said—His Word. God dressed Adam and Eve Himself, so that they would not be ashamed, foreshadowing that one day He would clothe us in Christ (Galatians 3:27), with the best robe (Luke 15:22), with power from on high (Luke 24:49).
Right from the very beginning, it is in God’s response to suffering that we see the love of God most clearly, a love that refuses to give up on us even when we cause great suffering.
I believe one of the reasons that God created and sustains this world, despite its suffering, is because He wants to love you, and me, and all of the people who will ever live.
5. Imagine how radically the history of procreation would be altered if God miraculously removed our propensity to moral evil, or if He miraculously removed our vulnerability to natural disasters and the suffering that they cause. Imagine how radically procreation history would be affected by even slight changes in the workings of our natural world, let alone the major changes that would be required to eliminate all suffering. In sum, had the possibilities for suffering in this world been very different, events would have unfolded so differently that an entirely different community of people would have come to exist. And therefore “we,” as the individuals we are, never would have lived. We often wish we could take some piece of suffering out of the world while keeping everything else the same. But it doesn’t work that way. Changing anything changes everything, and everyone.
6. So here’s a theological hypothesis: Why is suffering allowed to continue in our world? Perhaps in part because God desired to create a specific community of individuals, and allowing suffering made it possible for Him to get precisely the community He desired—a community including you, and me, and every person you see walking down the street. Why didn’t God create a world with no possibility of suffering? Why didn’t God give up on this world when it fell into great suffering and create one with less suffering instead? Well, He could have, but a loving person is not always drawn to being in relationship with those who suffer least.
Maybe God wasn’t interested in only perfect people. Maybe He wasn’t looking for the most impressive creatures He possibly could have created. Maybe He was just looking for someone He could love. And maybe, He just found Himself—amazingly and against the odds!—with an overwhelming love for us.
The weight of suffering is sometimes so great that it causes us to doubt the goodness of life; only God can ultimately lift that weight and put our doubts to rest.
7. Problem of suffering is different from—though fully consistent with—the claim that much suffering is due to free human choices. According to which God allows suffering because it is through dealing with suffering that we form our characters and live more meaningful lives overall.
8. The fact that God knows the details of the future does not mean that He directly causes future evil and suffering. Even more so should it be unsurprising if the God who knows the number of hairs on our heads (Matthew 10:30; Luke 12:7) is able to know how the future will unfold without being to blame for all of its badness. Second, that we would not have existed without suffering does not mean that we cannot one day exist in a suffering-free heavenly state. Third, nothing that I have said implies that God does not regret suffering, or that choosing to allow suffering is an easy choice for Him. Nevertheless, I believe it is a decision made out of love—love proved by the readiness of the Creator to suffer alongside those He creates and to see them through that suffering at any and all costs.
CHAPTER 4: A RESPONSE AT THE CROSS
1. The loving parent is not the one who never allows suffering in a child’s life. The loving parent is the one who is willing to suffer alongside his children. In creating this world, God didn’t merely accept the cost, but He suffered the cost. In the height of irony, it may be the famous atheist and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who said it best. He wrote,
"The gods justified human life by living it themselves—the only satisfactory [response to the problem of suffering] ever invented".
2. Even as He hung dying, Jesus was first concerned not with His own life but with His mother’s life, and with making sure she would be cared for after He was gone. The final thing Jesus did on the cross—as He was struggling to take His last breaths—was to love the man next to Him (a criminal), and to promise that man salvation in response to his repentant heart and his trust in Him. It is recorded that “when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how He died, he said, ‘Surely this Man was the Son of God!’ ” (Mark 15:39). When they saw how Jesus died, they knew that Jesus was divine, because when you are pushed to your limit, the real you comes out. And what came out of Jesus was a display of love that was absolutely divine.
3. Why was Jesus so perfect in death? Why did He die with such utter integrity?
• First, Jesus came to do one of the only things that can make a difference to someone in the midst of terrible suffering: to join them in their pain and suffer alongside them.
• Jesus’ ultimate reason for suffering and dying on the cross was to save humanity from our sin, to take our just punishment on Himself, so that we could be free.
• He died for our shame. Naked on the cross, Jesus took upon Himself every time we’ve been mocked, every time we’ve been spit on, every time we’ve failed. He took upon Himself every time we’ve been abused, exposed, ignored, overlooked. When He put on human flesh, Jesus literally clothed Himself in all of it.
Sometimes it’s hard for us to appreciate the truth about our own sin until we encounter someone holier than ourselves.
4. More amazing still is the fact that God responds this way even though we haven’t just been fighting with each other, but with God Himself. Every time we throw a punch—whether literally, or by words, or by indifference—we fight against God, too, because we throw a punch at someone He loves. And our fighting is also directly against God, because so often we prefer to be our own gods—when we know what God wants, when we know that He knows best, and yet we deny Him anyway. The deepest betrayal is sin against the One who loves you best. And though time and again we deny Him, at the cross God chose us. Love at its very best. Justice demands judgment. Love demands mercy. Only at the cross of Jesus do we find both. Only at the cross do we find perfect love and perfect justice in perfect intersection. That is why Jesus came. That is why Jesus was ready to die.
“Do not be afraid; you will not be put to shame. Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated. You will forget the shame of your youth”… Instead of your shame you will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace you will rejoice in your inheritance… and everlasting joy will be yours (Isaiah 54:4; 61:7).
5. In both how He died and why He died, Jesus presented to us an extravagant and unparalleled display of love. He is the surgeon who is willing to give up His life to heal what threatens our lives—suffering, sin, shame. He is the doctor who is willing to die so that His patients might live. And therefore we can trust Him. We can trust Him because His display of love is overriding evidence that there is a good explanation for the allowance of suffering, even when we are not in a position to understand that explanation in full.
No comments:
Post a Comment