Suffering In UnSilence

There are two extremes when it comes to suffering that seem to be the most commonly observed reactions.  Either someone over dramatizes their "despair" and insists everyone look upon the great injustice that they have been subjected to, or, they stoicly and privately "grin and bear it".  The attention seeker and the hidden pain.

Hurt and pain, in these extremes, exists for personal gratification through attention, or, it is without point and so must be pushed down and hidden because who cares.....

What if neither response is a correct response to the meaning of suffering?

What if suffering is a beautiful purposeful experience that points to a greater hope than even a removal of that suffering??

Colossians 1:24 points suffering in a much different light than we often allow ourselves to believe;

Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. 

Paul, writing here, does not whine and ask for sympathy, neither does he pretend everything is ok.  Instead he rejoices!  And why does he rejoice?  Because it is in his suffering that he is fulfilling the message of Christ's hope to his readers in brilliant technicolor.  He IS NOT saying that Jesus didn't do enough on the cross, but that in Paul's joyful and hope centered response to suffering he is making tangible what the power of the Gospel is all about.

When suffering is about US, we gravitate to the unhealthy poles of extremism.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ is that ALL suffering belongs to the finished work on the cross.   Earlier in this letter Paul makes it clear that from Eternity past to Eternity future all things are under the Lordship of Christ.  Even our suffering.  Even our pain.  Even our breath.  Even our death.

Starting with this truth, we see that what we are suffering through is not outside of the control of God, as if He has been rendered powerless and incompetent in the face of great tradgedy.  But that instead this, even this, is working towards a great weight of Glory in Eternity.  

The most powerful testimony to the Goodness of God is not that God lets you win the lottery, or your cancer is healed, or that your children come home, but that your heart can sing with a joy that is not defined by the momentary circumstances of our lives.

Paul understands something that I wish I(and others) would embrace more completely more often.  Offering the Cross to the lost, and freedom to the slave, is not an offer to money, health, and material blessing.  Instead, it is an offer to suffer for the sake of a hope that surpasses suffering.  The Colossians were not going to be encouraged in a lasting way by Paul saying, "look, I started following Christ and my pain in my side went away, my shorter leg grew longer and I found money in my couch".  Surely this would be enticing for a while, but when the brokeness of life caught up with them they would see the lie for what it is.  Paul did not offer quick fixes and temporary blessings, he said, "Look at how I suffer, and how even in my suffering I celebrate the goodness of a God who gave up Himself for my sake".

We often "sell" our church, our beliefs, our faith, on the premise of "look how great it is here!!! look how happy we are!!! look how much better off our lives are now that we are "in"!!!"  Instead, we should follow Paul's example.

To weep with each other.

To face difficulties with each other.

To be honests about our failures and imperfections.

And in the midst of it all point to the Cross that stands over it all and calls us to lie down along still waters!  To be joyful that even our very suffering declares the power of the Hope we have in Christ.

Even when it is good, we can be selfishly angry about it....

Prosperity Gospel, Shifting Cultures and a Theology of Suffering

My son thinks I am a bully.  I know this because he told me so.  After punching him a few times and taking his lunch money I was shocked to hear him express this sentiment......Well, that isn't exactly what I did.  What happened was, and you can help me judge this decision, he had not eaten his vegetables at dinner so he couldn't have a sugary snack.  Therefore...BULLY. 

There is a tendency in all of us to desire things that aren't good for us.  At its heart this is simply a way of saying "sin".  We are image bearers of God, and that indicates that we are therefore designed as a reflection of the character and nature of God Himself.  When He gave His law to us it wasn't just a random list of do's and don't's, but instead a reliable witness and testimony to His very character and the outflow being our design parameters. 

The nature of sin is such that we are in constant conflict with our divine design.  Scripture tells us that our "flesh" is at constant war with God.  Our very deepest felt and innate desires too often betray this truth; We are broken.  And this brokenness, by its very definition and character, separates us from God. 

So what do we do when confronted with the reality of our brokenness?  We do two things that seem radically different, yet are different sides of the same self-centered destructiveness.

1-  We become legalists who take the Law as a personal challenge.  The promise and the goal of being a legalist is that we will; 1- Make ourselves right before God, and, 2- Be greatly blessed by temporal rewards because we are doing everything right.  This second part is most easily associated with what is called the prosperity gospel(notice the purposeful lower case g). 

Both practices of legalism are just different versions of prosperity teaching.  You do this, you get that.  If you DIDN'T get that, you are just not trying hard enough.....God finds your lack of faith....disturbing.....

2- We become Grace Abusers who reject the conviction of God's truth and place personal satisfaction and fulfillment of felt desires as the highest achievable standard because if, "God is all about love and Grace, he obviously wants me to be happy...."

Grace Abusers are just prosperity gospellers without any effort. 

It is of no small coincidence that as the 20th Century saw the growth of the prosperity gospel we also saw a rapid change in the moral compass of western civilization, and particularly America.  As we elevated personal satisfaction and happiness to a sacred place it is no wonder that the greatest modern heresy and bigotry is apparently practiced by those who say, "No!"

The Gospel of Jesus Christ has been co-opted as the get rich scheme of eternal self-pleasure.  If something makes you uncomfortable, calls you to reject something you enjoy, deny yourself and pick up a cross, it must be, by definition, wrong.  Mean.  Sinful. 

A gospel that promises temporal pleasure, whether materially, emotionally, relationally, or otherwise, is a gospel that will not sustain or survive. 

The truth of the Gospel is not found in the measurable and quantifiable "blessings" experienced by those who have put their faith in Christ, but it is instead found in the place where suffering and pain are met with joy and peace.  In John 16 Jesus makes a clear promise to his disciples, and to us as well. 

"I have told you these things, so that you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart.  I have overcome the world!"-- John 16:33

The context of John's 16th chapter is that those who are following Jesus can expect there lives to be more clearly marked by suffering than by personally experiencing victory.  Phrasing is everything.  Jesus does not end this warning with, "Do not worry, you shall totally overcome".  Instead he points to Himself and the ultimate hope and victory that is ours beyond this life because HE HAS already overcome.  He does not give ANY indication that this secured victory will translate into temporal successes. 

The modern Church has lost an essential theological bulwark.  A robust Theology of Suffering.  By this I do not mean some sort of wallowing and depressing resignation to be miserable.  The theology of Suffering is a recognition that life is broken and the World is in opposition to God, and those who follow Christ will not only still experience the temporal struggles that affect all people, but they can also expect spiritual challenges. 

But what did Jesus says in John 16:33??  He has overcome.  Our hope, the Gospel, is that even in the midst of great suffering, whether emotional, physical, relational and otherwise, God has come down, Jesus has carried that pain and the Holy Spirit dwells within us as a deposit of our faith and the source of our strength to face all things with Joy.  To, as Paul put it, count all our losses as gains for the sake of Christ! 

When we elevate personal comfort than all manner of things will not only become accepted, but, even advocated for as being "good".  That which was once evil is now contended for as good....When you or I believe that Christ's purpose was to make me comfortable today I have laid the groundwork for exactly that. 

Christ told us to count the cost.  And many walked away, because it cost them too much they thought.  But let us remember, "But to who else would we go, YOU have the words of eternal life"-- John 6:68.

 



From a good read on a Theology of Suffering

 

 

Proof is in the Pudding

CS Lewis wrote that for us to say we love our neighbor, but then to avoid them, is not love at all.  If we are to truly love our neighbor, we are to act in accordance to what love is.  Active, engaged, sacrificial.  He goes on to say that when we begin to discipline ourselves to behaving AS IF we loved them, we will soon discover that we have truly come to love them.

Lip service is what we are most comfortable offering to people.  What we are most comfortable offering to God.  Telling your spouse, "I Love you" is easy.

But the words do not make it true

Affirming with words all the truths of Christianity is easy.

But it doesn't make you a Christian.

There is a funny little truth about the way we are wired.  Actions drive our feelings.  Feelings rarely create consistent action.  When the butterflies of new love wear off, we are left with nothing but the decision to either, by an act of the will, continue to live in love, or, to not. 

When we wait until we "feel" like something to do something, those feelings and those actions become ever more spaced apart.  Consistently applying the will to act in accordance with the behaviors we know to be true and right, develops the feelings and allows them to grow over time.

This does not mean "resigning" oneself to misery and obligation.  A willful act of love is actively aligning your heart with you behavior.  Begrudgingly forcing something grows resentment.  Engaging the whole self towards acts of love changes us from the inside out. 

Christian's are not called to have feelings about God.  But to live in accordance to the truth about God.  Life is messy.  It can be tragic, and broken.  There are times when our pain and frustration will cause us to say, "No more, not today, I can't do it." 

These are the most important times for our internal(and eternal) development.  When the deck is stacked against us, how do we respond? 

"The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart and saves such as have a broken spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, But the Lord delivers him from them all."

- Psalm 34:18-19

 

I bet you missed something when you read that. 

 

It doesn't say WHEN deliverance will come.  The act of Christian faith is to not to always have the answers RIGHT NOW, or, to have an easy care-free life, but to be rooted in the hope we have in the promise that is found in the Cross. 

 

And that takes a daily act of the will. 

 

Our hope cannot be based upon some previous feelings of bliss and heart racing palpitations of early love.  Because those things fade.  And if that is all you hoped in, you will be crushed when difficulties arise. Instead, in the person of Christ we have a promise that doesn't erase the struggle today, but points to the hope of every tomorrow.  When we begin to be shaped by this, it changes our behaviors today. 

 

Let me challenge us in two ways....

 

1- Are you waiting to feel good about God before you hope in God?  That will get you no where.  Make a decision to actively seek Him even when it is not easy, and you will find your hope. 

 

2-  This is about us as people living with people as well.  What relationships are you struggling in right now.  Can you begin to stop trying to change how you feel, but change how you act?  Your relationship doesn't need jump started feelings, but a new way of loving.

 

 

Why We Suffer

Are you human?  If the answer is no, how in the world are you reading this?  If you answer yes, then the reality of life is that at some point you are going to hurt, suffer, weep.  And you may be doing so currently.  But why do we suffer?

Sometimes the answer we lean on is that the world is simply cruel and indifferent.  But if we believe in God, we struggle with the whole concept of suffering.  Why me?  Why this?  Why now?  Why God, why??!!

For a broader picture on suffering it is helpful to study the history of God's chosen people, the Jews.  Outside of some brief moments of peace and prosperity they have had a whole lot of suffering.  At the end of the monarchial period the entire nation of Israel is destroyed, uprooted, and marched off into captivity.  After a number of generations pass, they are finally given the freedom to return home and rebuild, but only as a Vassal state.

The book of Malachi, the last book before the New Testament, challenges me to have a whole new view on the root of my suffering and despair.  It starts off with this accusatory tone, "Don't you really love us God?!?!"  They are just completely indignant.  Why have all these bad things happened to us?  Why are we so sad and in so much pain?  Our suffering is a clear indication that you aren't keeping up your end of the bargain!! 

God responds quite simply.  He says, I love you, don't doubt it!  But before you get all self-righteous about things, lets talk about what YOU have been up to. 

Being a parent is a frustrating job in a lot of ways.  Especially when your perfect little angel begins to accuse you of being a "bully" and a "stupid unfair baby".  Which I have been hearing a lot lately.  Why do I hear these things?  Have I been a bully and an unfair stupid baby?  No, no I have not. 

My 4 year old son does not like getting in trouble.  He absolutely detests it.  Even when he admits to his bad behavior.  Like any loving older brother, he shows his love to his 2 year old sister by; Not sharing, pushing, hitting, yelling at, etc.  All of which are unacceptable behaviors.  There is this very odd logic he employs in his self-righteousness.  His sister picked up a toy that he was not using....but happened to be "his"....and he went and took it away from her.  I proceeded to request he give it back, or get in trouble.  His response?  "You are a bully, you are being unfair!!!!"  When this continued, he was sent to his room without any toys.  Which led to more accusations of my unfair meanness. 

He accepts that what he is doing is not appropriate, but then he disconnects from his behavior when he addresses my actions(his consequences).  It is as if they are two completely unrelated events.  He wants to behave however he wants to behave, and he wants me to behave however HE wants me to behave.  And when I don't, I am the bad guy.

This is the story of Israel that God gently lays out in the book of Malachi.  Of course I love you.  But look at your obscene behavior.  Over and over again you sin and break the covenant.  But in the very middle of all of this the most important point of all is made.

Malachi 2:4
⁴ And you will know that I have sent you this warning so that my covenant with Levi may continue,” says the Lord Almighty.

At the heart of God's love and Israel's consequences is this essential truth.  Consequences exist to fix the relationship!  Why have you suffered Israel, why has God allowed it and will continue to allow it?  Because His ultimate heart is to restore the intimacy between Himself and His people. 

Why do I punish my son and give him consequences?  BECAUSE I love him.  If he grows up to be a disobedient, sister hitting, rule breaking, bad attitude adult, he and I will have, at best, a strained relationship.  My love for him is the driving force for my willingness to give him a bit of suffering.  A taste of suffering(time outs, lost privileges, a spanking or two(or 100)) now is how we eliminate greater suffering later. 

So why do you suffer?

I can't speak to every nuance of every situation that you deal with, but lets walk through a basic perspective.

God loves you.  Everything that can and does happen in your life is driven by the fact that He loves you, and that His greatest desire is not for your temporary "comfort" level, but the restoration and building of intimacy between you and Him.  If we don't start here, nothing else that follows will make sense.

The primary sources of suffering in our life are generally self-caused.  Specifically, we sin.  Not only does sin carry with it natural consequences(driving drunk could kill you and others, or, get you put in jail), but it also has spiritual consequences.  The sense of peace and blessing we experience in the context of a healthy relationship with God can, and often will be, removed. 

To make sense of "spiritual" consequences lets compare it to marriage.  If you say something mean to your spouse, they probably aren't going to leave you, but if you have ever felt the cold sting of rejection and anger you know what I am talking about.  It is an uneasy place to be when you know your spouse is frustrated with you.  That is a simple way of thinking about spiritual consequences.

God loves us so much that He will let us flounder around in these consequences of our behavior.  Not because He just loves punishing us.  But because He loves US! 

If you are suffering and hurting, you have to be honest with yourself.  Are there sins and issues in your life that you aren't dealing with?  Even if you think they are private and secret.  God loves you so much that He will let you hurt until you accept that it is time to heal.

God loves you so much, His heart is not for you to suffer.  But He loves you enough to LET you suffer so that you can come to the one place where suffering can cease. 

 

 

When the Rains Come Down, the Floods Come Up

Matthew 7:24
"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who builds his house upon the rock."

The other night I was hanging out at my wives place of employment waiting for her to get off of work.  I was sitting at the bar, nursing my diet Dr Pepper, when a regular of the place sat down next to me and started to chat.  Over the course of the conversation it came up that I was a Pastor.  After apologizing for his cursing(which I don't really care about), he asked me how I am able to encourage people when the world is so messed up. 

In the parable of the wise man there is an unstated accepted reality; The rains will come.  It doesn't say, he built his house on a rock so there were no storms in his life.

CS Lewis once said that our problem is not that we don't believe that God will see us through storms, we are just worried about how much it will hurt while we go through them.  We have bought into a philosophy of life that tells us that the highest ideal in the human existence is "happiness". 

This is a terrible lie.  This is a destructive lie.  It is a goal that when we set our sights on obtaining we are guaranteed to never possess it in permanent consistency.

What is happiness anyways?  How do you define it?  And there is the problem.  How do YOU define it?  While there is nothing inherently wrong with the experience of "happiness" it is an ambiguous and subjective concept that is constantly in flux. 

When I was about 13 years old my best friend and I spent an entire night sleeping in shifts so we could complete an entire video game in one sitting.  It was awesome.  If you asked me if I thought staying up all night to play video games was something I wanted to do this weekend, I would want to vomit.  As I have changed and grown and my priorities have evolved, what made me happy when I was 13 would do the opposite for me today in my 30's. 

We change. Sometimes we change daily.  When our goals for life become "to be happy" we have set for ourselves an impossible standard that leaves us always coming up empty in the ultimate sense.  If I based my future around the fun experience of staying up all night playing video games what would my life look like today?  When happiness becomes the standard we become arrested in our development and are locked in a spiral of ever decreasing experiential happiness.

Happiness, as it is most often sought for, is ultimately a selfish pursuit.  If happiness is the goal, it is rare that others will be brought into consideration.  And even acts of perceived selflessness are rooted in feeling good about oneself, or, helping create or maintain a personal image that gives happiness.  And, when there is no longer a direct sense of happiness being experienced by the selflessness that had previously been shown, it will come to an end. 

This goal of happiness does not protect against the ravages of the storms that the world throws at us.  We will all suffer at some point, if we aren't suffering now.  The foolish man builds his life on the sifting and ever changing sands of "happiness".  When life creates change, when circumstances eliminate the source of where you sought happiness, or, if the former source of happiness is now a source of pain, you are lost.

How do we help people(and ourselves) in a world that is full of such crap?  Where is encouragement found when this world is such a mess?

Our ultimate goal needs to be Truth.  The Ultimate, capital T Truth, is found in God and God alone. 

When we become rooted no longer in self, but Truth, there develops a sense and experience of security and peace.  The self is going to betray you.  The things you seek after for visceral momentary feelings of "happiness" will turn on you.  Instead, plant yourself on the unmovable foundation that does not remove storms, but takes the rain that floods and makes it rain that grows.

What are you seeking?  Are you seeking happiness, or truth?  If you seek happiness, you will have neither.  If you seek truth, you will have both.

Storms are coming, are you really prepared?

Why does God allow Evil?

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

- Epicurus [341–270 B.C].

                You have not been in many arguments about the nature of God and the reality of suffering and evil in this world if you have not come across this quote in some form.  It was one of the most significant “stumbling blocks” that is employed as an argument against God’s existence, or, more specifically, the existence of the Biblical God.  All good questions deserve a good answer.  And I would say that this is one of the best questions that has been asked of Christianity in 2,000 years. 

                So how does one begin to justify the seemingly contradictory existence of a self-proclaimed Good God and the existence of evil and suffering.  This is an inevitable challenge for us to wrestle with due to our core beings.  We naturally gravitate towards wanting to do good things for people we love and want to help them avoid bad things happening to them.  In Matthew 7:11 Jesus even observes that even evil people will give good things to their children.  If we are to believe that we are Children of God, it is natural for our first response to our lack of good things, or, the perceived lack of good things for others, seems to be painting a picture of God not being half as loving as even an imperfect parent!

                As I mentioned in my preview post for this blog, this week I am assisting in the officiating for the funeral of a 22 year old man.  His death came as a shock to everyone in his family.  Especially his young mother and 14 year old brother.  They are currently embroiled in the soul scorching pain of losing someone immeasurably close and valuable without warning.  It is understandable in the midst of their grief to be questioning how God could allow something so tragic to occur.  For them, it is not a philosophical exercise to contemplate the Goodness of God in the midst of this time, it is the most challenging moment in their lives.  They are not able to find solace in the intellectualism of the class room philosophical lecture or the spoon fed spiritualism often spouted from a pulpit.  Their needs are much more practical and immediate.

                Where does God enter into this story?  How do I, in the role of Pastoral counselor, speak to them in a way to help lead towards peace?  Before I can answer the details of God’s Goodness existing in tandem with the worlds evil, we first must deal with hope.  And where is hope to be found?  It is found in the end of the story.

                When people complain about an uncaring Deity who turns his head away while we struggle here alone they are doing so by only focusing on one aspect of the character of God and God’s plan in the bible.  It is an incomplete process to proof text scripture, pull out quotes about God being good, turn and compare it to the “reality” we perceive, and trumpet that as proof of the bible being untrustworthy and God untrue.  If we are going to glam onto statements of God’s goodness we also have to look at what he promises us in the context of his goodness.

               

                Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.  I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down  out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.  He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

                  He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the    thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.  Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.

                                                                                                -Revelation 21:1-7

                We become so transfixed on the “now” that we miss that God has an ultimate plan that he is working towards through ourselves and through this world.  He does not promise that this life will be without pain and suffering, but he does promise that he will make all things right.  The reality of sin has transformed God’s perfect design into a perversion of itself.  But, He is working all things towards a day when “every tear will be wiped away”!  If I am to have any hope in the goodness of God it is found not in whether or not “now” is good, but it is found in the hope I have in what my forever will be. 

                Our currently limited perspectives cause us to often become short sighted and consumed by what is happening to us right now.  Now, I do not mean in any way to diminish anyone’s suffering, but we on a simpler level recognize that we have to have the end goal in mind when we confront any difficult circumstance.  When a marathon runner is in the middle of a difficult training run, they cannot be consumed with the now, they have to focus on first, the limited nature of the training run and second, that a greater joy will be theirs if they can simply hold on and complete the race that is before them. 

                In much the same way we have to realize that where we are now is a finite and transient time.  We are made for something much greater and eternal.  While suffering is suffering, and evil is evil, having the reliability of hope in God’s ultimate promise can help us to continue on even while the now seems bleak and desperate. 

                All of this does in no way mean that God does not care what is happening to you in the now.  We see in Scripture that God is heartbroken over the rebellion of this world.  Not only is he heartbroken, but he is impassioned with just anger over evil perpetrated upon His children.  Matthew 23:37 paints a beautiful picture for us of Jesus’s heartbreak over our condition. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing”   The wording and imagery that is utilized in the passage here would indicate that Jesus is speaking with great emotion, and that the word longing could be better translated from the Greek as a sort of groaning.  As if from his innermost being he is aching to take care of his lost people.

                What we often miss as we read over this passage showing Jesus’ passion for taking care of us is that it is dependent upon US!  Jesus says that he has longed(groaned) to gather up his children and take care of them, but, they are unwilling.  The very first line of the quote I started this with asked, if God is willing is he unable?    I would answer that to Epicurus in the affirmative!  I am not sure where this silly notion of God being able to do all things comes from, but it is inaccurate, logically, AND Biblically!

                Before the Christians reading this jump down my throat let me explain.  God by his very nature is limited in a number of ways.  One example that I will draw your attention to is I John 1:5.  It tells us that God is light, in him there can be no darkness at all.  What does this mean?  God, by his very definition of himself, is limited by his inability to be less then what he is.  It is not just that he chooses to be without darkness(the context in I John would indicate darkness as sin), but that by his very nature He is unable to be in communion with darkness!

                You may have heard that famous philosophical question:  Could Jesus heat a burrito so hot he couldn’t pick it up?  While circular reasoning can be “funny”, it is a question based on a false assumption, that God’s definition of being all powerful means  that he can do or be anything.  A short list of things God cannot be:  Less then perfectly loving, less then perfectly just, petty, sinful, in darkness,  etc. 

                So what is it about God’s very nature keeps him from intervening to prevent or correct evil and sin that we observe on a daily basis?  To begin to open up our understanding of that let me direct you to a quote by CS Lewis in his book, The Problem of Pain.

                                We can, perhaps, conceive of a world in which God corrected the results of this abuse of   free will by His creatures at every moment: so that a wooden beam became soft as grass when it    was used as a weapon, and the air refused to obey me if I attempted to set up in it the sound waves that carry lies or insults. But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and in which, therefore, freedom of the will would be void; nay, if the principle were carried out to its logical conclusion, evil thoughts would be impossible, for the cerebral matter which we use in thinking would refuse its task when we attempted to frame them.

               

                We can argue all day about why God chose to give us free will, but the bottom line is, he did make us to be creatures of free will.  As desperately as he desires to “gather you under his wings” he will not compromise his creation, or, ultimately, Himself.  He has chosen to give us the ability and intellect to choose Him, or, to not choose Him. Therefore, the evil we observe, AND EXPERIENCE, in this life is in direct correlation to the abuses of this free will by mankind, as individuals, and as a communal whole. 

                So where does hope fit into this picture?  If we are creatures of free will who will inevitably abuse it and cause ourselves, and often others, pain, what is the big idea God has?  Let me direct you back to the passage from Revelation that I quoted earlier.  God has an ultimate, and eternal, destination in mind for His creation.  What we experience now is the results of a broken and sinful world that has perverted God’s intentions.  So what is He waiting for?  Why doesn’t he just make things better right now?  Why is he waiting to “wipe away” my tears?

                Revelation 20:15 records, “ All whose names were not found written in the book of life were thrown into the lake of fire”   As I mentioned God cannot force himself over our will and will also not be able to diminish himself by dwelling in sin.  If we are not able to come before him cleansed of our sin, we will be cast into hell for eternity.  This of course would necessitate a completely new blog to deal with the issues of salvation and why salvation is found only through Christ, but for now accept the premise of eternal damnation for the context of understanding the existence of evil that you observe.

                God has given us free will, which has led to evil, which he is currently “not” stopping.  So why has he chosen to ignore and allow evil to continually be perpetuated?  Because of you!  100% without question, he is allowing evil to continue because he passionately and desperately desires to gather YOU under his wings, and you are not letting him…..yet.  The greatest message of love that has ever been conceived is that he is willing to allow evil to continue to persist because he has not yet given up on you. 

                Here is what I mean.  When we look at evil and sin, we most often look at evil and sin outside of ourselves.  It is quite natural to see something like genocide in Darfur, or children born with AIDS because their young mother was raped and wonder where God is in all of this.  We cry out to God to stop this evil, to punish those responsible, to heal the brokenness that we ourselves are broken over.  But we do so with an incomplete understanding of the nature and heart of God. 

                How I like to put it is this:  God is not the tv show “Trading Spaces” he is the tv show “Extreme Home Makeover”.  We ask God to come and sanitize and deal with the sins that bother us.  The things that make us sad.  We say, God I really hate my living room, can you come spruce it up and make it a more comfortable place for me to live?  But that is not who God is, that is not how He operates.  He is Ty Pennington, he is going to come in, take one look at the rotten floor boards, the crumbling foundations, the leaking roof, and he is going to take dynamite to it and bring it to the ground so he can build something brand new and wonderful.

                We say, God come stop genocide, and he says, “Alright, but if I deal with that now, I am going to deal with the fact that you are sleeping with someone you are not married to, I am going to deal with your gossip and slander, your hard heart towards your parents, your spiteful words to your neighbor, your foul language, your internal sexual sin of the heart and mind, your drug addictions, your __________ fill in the blank…..”   And we respond, “hold on one minute there buddy!  I am just talking about REAL bad stuff, you don’t need to get too personal about this” 

                God will not ever do anything part way.  Once he begins the process of making all things new, your sin will be dealt with same as the man raping a child after he has killed their family in a village in Africa.  You cannot expect God to just come along and make YOUR life more palatable while ignoring your own crumbling foundations and leaking roofs.   And what has stayed God’s hand on the dynamite plunger so far?  You.

                Jesus showed us God’s heart, that it is groaning passionately to gather you home.  And because of that he is going to give you every last chance he can, he will keep the door open for you until the last possible second.   As you watch the news and hear terrible things happening in the world, as you hold tightly loved ones as you struggle with the pain of a terrible and unforeseen disease or loss, be comforted in knowing that God is broken and weeping with you.  But he knows the end of the story, that this death destruction is not the end of the story.  And because of that, he is keeping the light on, just a few hours more, just a few moments extra to give everyone every possible chance that there can be to come home. 

                So how do we answer Epicurus?  As long as there is still hope for some, God will stay the execution of Justice because he loves us too much to give up just yet.  He is willing to stop evil, but he is not able to give up on his children.  He is not able to give up on you yet.  There will come a day when all things will be made right, and he will answer to the evil that has gone on under his ever attentive gaze, but for your sake, I pray that it doesn’t come too soon.

Preview Bad Things and God

This week I will be attempting to tackle the subject of why do bad things happen, or, more importantly, why does God allow bad things happen.  I was thinking about this topic for a while, and I was finally prompted to move forward on completing it.  The catalyst for that is thanks to my participation in the officiating of my first funeral as a pastor.  It was a 22 year old man who leaves behind a grieving family to question this tragic situation.  So, stay tuned as I wrestle with an issue that we have each dealt with in some capacity before.