|
Consider the goodness of God.
In order to do so, we must first understand that God’s view of
life and meaning and eternity may not always be the same as
our own perspective on such things.
For example, we may often read or hear,
with a comfortable nod of the head, passages in Scripture which say things
like:
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the
earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts."
(Isaiah 55:8,9, NRSV)
But how often do we consider the message
and all it is offering to tell us? Are the thoughts and plans and
purposes of God really that different from our own? And if they are, in
what ways might they be different?
When bad things happen, what does it
really mean?
It is an easy and common thing for human
beings to feel both the stresses and the grief caused by difficult times
in life, and to then conclude that God has turned His back on them. And
it’s true that He will and does sometimes hide His face, the bright light
and vibrant hope that we enjoy in His smiling Presence.
When God appears to have forsaken us, the
clouds of despair will quickly gather across the skies of our lives,
shutting out all or part of His warmth and light from our hearts. We may
even sense the certainty then of "evil times" or calamity coming upon us.
And when the times do turn bad for us, and
we lose our position, our income, or a dearly loved one, or our home, or
even our nation, we will certainly know that the hand of God has allowed
such things to happen.
Is it possible that God can truly turn His
back on us and send sorrows and destruction on the very people He claimed
to love? Is it possible that the God proclaimed by countless saints, and
in the Holy Scriptures themselves, as good and righteous and fair and
merciful — that the one and only living God — could actually reward our
struggling faith with ruin and darkness and destruction?
Yes, it’s possible. And we know from the
Scriptures that it happens, even if we have never experienced such things
in our own lives.
No one was more perfect in every way and
obedient in faith than the man Christ Jesus. Yet He also cried out from
the cruel agony of the cross, "My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?"
You may think it unfair to use Jesus as an
example, since He was God's own son who came to save us. But if God will
allow His own beloved Son to suffer such loss and even death itself, then
who are we to think that we should escape?
Remember Martha?
In our eagerness to be happy and in our
busy preoccupations with daily life we may become like Martha, the sister
of Lazarus, who loved Jesus and believed in Him, yet had her own well
thought out plans of how her life should unfold. It didn't take much to
upset such perfectly laid plans, such carefully timed and arranged
details.
A perfect example is the one we have in
Scripture, where Jesus came to visit their home. Martha had the visit
planned. Her sister, Mary, messed things up when she stopped working and
sat down at the feet of Jesus to listen to what He had to say. Martha soon
found herself struggling in vain to keep the whole program on schedule.
Finally, she complained to Jesus, urging
Him to make her sister get back to work. After all, there was plenty to
be done to make Jesus' visit complete and perfect.
Jesus, however, did not agree with
Martha's assessment of things. And He didn’t tell Mary to go back to
work. Instead, He reminded Martha that Mary had chosen something finer,
having chosen Jesus Himself: His Presence and His instruction.
Anthills on the front lawn don’t remain
forever.
Like busy ants building their anthills in
the corner of the yard, we go about our daily affairs, seldom thinking
much of God's greater plan for us, for our neighbors, for our generation,
and for the universe itself. It’s certainly normal for us to be this way,
since we’re not God, and since we have no way of knowing God's ultimate
plans for everything. (Or do we?)
Our daily struggle tends to be basic,
mundane, earth-bound. In fact, we care about the very things Jesus told a
generation of first-century Jewish people not to be overly concerned
about. Interesting, isn’t it?
But maybe His teaching (Sermon on the
Mount, for example) was just for those Jews and not for modern
Christians. Or then again, maybe the Lord's Words to those Jews who faced
such difficult times were central to God's message for all human beings in
every generation — Jew or Gentile or Christian.
Is anyone feeling the stress?
I know that I’m often stressed about
money, about the house, the car, the job, about the local and national
economy, stressed over the wars we face and about the happiness of my own
children and grandchildren. I’m also made miserable by the children in
Haiti who have so little, and by the people in India, Africa, and the
Middle East who face starvation and the loss of their very homes.
I pray for myself and others that God will
intervene. I want God to do something.
Granted, many of these things are be taken
care of as I and other people do something intelligent and caring. And
most true believers do get involved in making their own lives, and the
lives of people around the world, better.
Is God always good and kind?
Still, we may wonder what God is thinking
about when so many human lives are being ruined by war, by cruel political
leaders, by disease, and by natural disasters. If God is good, then why
is there so much misery in the world?
Why do I face such difficulties in my own
life? Is my faith increased by struggle and loss?
And what of the billions of people on
earth? Is the faith of suffering of Africans, Palestinians, South
Americans, and countless others in India, China, and around the world made
stronger by their distress, loss, and death?
Isaiah, Habakkuk, Micah, and other ancient
prophets of God wrote about such things, and saw such times come upon
their own people Israel. You may be surprised to know that they also
struggled to understand.
Jeremiah vividly recounts the horrible
suffering in the destruction of Jerusalem. The words of the Book of
Lamentations preserve images for us as clear and as dreadful as any modern
video of a community and people destroyed by war. One passage states:
"My eyes are spent with weeping; my
stomach churns;
my bile is poured out on the ground
because of the destruction of my people,
because infants and babes collapse in the
streets of the city.
They cry to their mothers, 'Where is bread
and wine?'
as they collapse like the wounded in the
streets of the city,
as their life is poured out on their
mothers’ bosom."
(Lamentations
2:11,12)
The facts recorded in Scripture and in all
of human history make one thing clear: God permits and sometimes even
brings about human suffering. He who is our shield and place of safety
may also be the very one who strikes us down, or permits our calamity, as
in the case of Job.
Jeremiah, for example, goes on to say:
He has filled me with bitterness,
he has sated me with wormwood.
He has made my teeth grind on gravel,
and made me cower in ashes;
my soul is bereft of peace;
I have forgotten what happiness is;
so I say, "Gone is my glory,
and all that I had hoped for from the
LORD."
The thought of my affliction
and my homelessness is wormwood and gall!
My soul continually thinks of it
and is bowed down within me.
Lamentations 2:15-20, NRSV)
Why does God allow (or even cause) human
suffering?
I suppose we could spend a lot of time
debating why. According to Scripture, human suffering is ultimately
rooted in sin and in the curse of sin. Every generation, every nation,
every family (and every human soul) tends to bring a good measure of
trouble on themselves, without any help from God (or evil spirits, for
that matter).
What about the devil?
God alone is King and ultimate ruler of
the universe. Nothing happens, good or evil, without His permission.
Satan hasn't the power to bump a bumble bee without a nod of approval from
the Lord our God. Satan’s power lies in deception more than anything
else.
Is there a good reason to hope, then?
While some or all of the reasons why may
be a little beyond us to understand, we can see from daily headlines that
God does allow bad things to happen to all kinds of people, and to even
the most innocent children. And yet the Spirit of God speaking in every
prophet and in all the Bible — and even in our own hearts — assures us
that God is good, and kind, and loving, and free of every evil motive.
In fact the prophets of old, just as we do
today, often speak out in the face of their own fears and their own grief
and loss. They say some of the strangest things when faced with the
greatest calamity and suffering.
Isaiah says, for example: "I will wait on
the LORD, Who hides His face from the house of Jacob; And I will hope in
Him." (Isaiah 8:17, NKJV)
The prophet Habakkuk writes this:
"When I heard, my body trembled;
My lips quivered at the voice;
Rottenness entered my bones;
And I trembled in myself,
That I might rest in the day of trouble...
Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the
fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls —
Yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
The LORD God is my strength;
He will make my feet like deer’s feet,
And He will make me walk on my high
hills."
(Habakkuk 3:16-19,
NKJV)
And in his prophetic descriptions of
Jerusalem's downfall, the prophet Micah goes on to say:
"I will look to the LORD;
I will wait for the God of my salvation;
My God will hear me.
Do not rejoice over me, my enemy;
When I fall, I will arise;
When I sit in darkness,
The LORD will be a light to me.
I will bear the indignation of the LORD,
Because I have sinned against Him,
Until He pleads my case And executes
justice for me.
He will bring me forth to the light;
I will see His righteousness.
Then she who is my enemy will see,
And shame will cover her who said to me,
'Where is the LORD your God?'"
(Micah 7:7-10,
NKJV)
The message of the prophets is clear: The
Lord Himself will be a light to me in my darkest hour. The Lord Himself
will take up my case and plead my cause, even though I have brought ruin
on my own life. While it is true that God hides His face from Israel, I
will nevertheless put all my hope in Him.
And it goes on. Remember Jeremiah, above,
who wrote of the awful destruction of the men, women, and children in
Jerusalem (people he knew and recognized from daily life)? Immediately
following the second passage I quoted above, Jeremiah says:
This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.
Through the LORD’S mercies we are not
consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
"The LORD is my portion," says my soul,
"Therefore I hope in Him!"
The LORD is good to those who wait for
Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.
It is good that one should hope and wait
quietly
For the salvation of the LORD.
(Lamentations 3:21-26,
NKJV)
What is it that gives such passionate hope
and joy to God's people — even when all is clearly lost? And what is the
joy spoken of in Hebrews, in the passage regarding our Lord Jesus, when it
says:
"...looking unto Jesus, the author and
finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the
cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the
throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners
against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls."
(Hebrews 12:2,3)
What kind of joy could Jesus have had
looked forward to as He endured the rejection and betrayal, the false
judgment and final condemnation, the mocking and beatings, the torment of
the crown of thorns, the brutal dragging of His own cross through the
streets of Jerusalem, and then the horrifying agony of crucifixion?
What kind of promise or hope exists to
bring us joy or any expectation of a good ending in the face of total and
absolute humiliation and destruction?
What God sees and knows.
First, we must remember that nothing about
this age is absolute. Not our riches and comforts. Not any of our
fleeting superiority and popularity as a group or as individuals. Not our
strength, wisdom, or knowledge. And most certainly of all, not our death,
not any of our losses, or momentary humiliations.
I think Paul sums it up best of all when
he writes: "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not
worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us."
(Romans 8:18, KJV)
Not even worthy to be compared. Or in the
most vulgar and common terms: simply ain't no comparison.
For the end of this lifetime, this planet
and universe, this entire age of existence is at hand. A new time is
coming and will soon be upon us. And many precious souls have already gone
from this bitter place to wait there for us. Jesus says that in that
place and time, the first (in this world) shall be last. And in that new
place, the last (here) shall be first.
In all our planning, stressing and
praying, we dare not forget that God has a plan. His great plan is truly
perfect and good. And a day is coming when all the goodness and power and
justice and mercy of God will be fully displayed for all to see, no longer
shrouded or diluted by the tragedy of human sin, or physical death, or
human suffering.
In that day, we will all of us rejoice to
see the true perfection and goodness of our God. And we will rejoice in
that goodness for all eternity.
Jim Sutton
|
