You know what I hate about the story of Job? How God chews Job out at the end of the book. After all, wasn't God the one who described Job as the finest man on earth-- a man of complete integrity; didn't God refer to him as one who had nothing to do with evil? In the story, Job experiences unimaginable suffering, so that by the end you might expect God to be singing Job's praises--"Well done good and faithful servant" kind of praises. But He doesn't. I have to admit that, in the past, I've always skimmed that part of the story jumping to the happily ever after. And I'm wondering if all along I haven't been missing the most important part.
It’s
the eternal question, isn’t it? If God is so good then why so much suffering?
Why, especially, does it seem that His faithful followers are inflicted with
all kinds of grief and pain. This question always seems to be hovering above my
heart waiting to consume me with its fire of anger, resentment, and doubt about
God’s goodness.
After
all, who hasn’t wondered why God allows such suffering on the earth. For a
nonbeliever the answer might come easier; God isn’t real, He doesn’t exist, or,
if He does, He’s a fraud. But for the believer who trusts God, who follows God,
suffering seems to be the antitheses of all that we believe God to be;
gracious, merciful, loving.
Today,
for the first time in a long time, I remembered the night I was hospitalized in
a state of severe psychosis. I remember the pain of waking up and realizing
that all of my visions in the past several days--the ones I thought were from
God had been nothing more than the twisted work of a devil—a devil who
masquerades as an angel of light. I felt so vulnerable, scared, and unsure of
what had gone on. My past seemed a fraud and my future loomed before me with so
many unanswered questions.
In the
midst of all that pain, I was tempted more than at any other time in my life to
turn my back on God—to have nothing more to do with Him. God was good, was He?
I had prayed. I had worked. I had been faithful. Was all of this just a cheap trick
by some puppet master in heaven who, despite what I’d been taught, didn’t care
about me at all? Worse yet, was He mocking me?
Looking
back, almost ten years later, I realized something else today, God's
perspective, His eternal perspective is so much clearer than my own. In the
midst of that thought something else occurred to me. The best person who ever
lived, a person who was good to the core, who followed God unswervingly endured
terrible suffering, too. Jesus.
I'm
sure there wasn't a single day that Jesus didn't experience some type of
trouble. Yet, he followed God, he trusted God, he believed in God's goodness.
So what was the outcome of his life? What did he receive as a reward for his
faithful obedience? He died. On a cross. Alone. And the very God he called Father
had forsaken him.
Jesus
felt the pain of it, the full pain of being left to wonder if God really is as
good as He claims to be. And you know what? To the very end Jesus believed
that, yes, his Father was good. Though he felt forsaken, Jesus entrusted his
spirit to the One who could rescue him from death.
If the
best person who ever lived endured such unimaginable pain, is it too much for
God to ask that I endure suffering with the same faith and hope that Jesus did?
After all, look at what came out of Jesus’ life; out of his death. Our
salvation. Something magnificent and beautiful grew out of the ashes of death—Jesus
brought us back to God, back to our Father.
Let me
encourage you today to look at suffering with a little bit different
perspective. See it not as a curse to be borne. Instead, praise God for what He
will bring out of the ashes of your own suffering. Life. Eternal life—with a
happily ever after we can’t even begin to imagine. All will be set right in the
end. I believe that with all my heart. I hope you can find the faith to believe
it, too.
Many Western Christians have lost the understanding of the differing wills of God. There is God's Ultimate Will, which is have all things come back to Him in the Ages of Ages, the ultimate complete redemption and reunification of all of creation.
ReplyDeleteThere is also God's Intentional Will. That is what God intends for people, whether they choose to do it or not. There is also God's Circumstantial will, in that when people made bad decisions contrary to his Intentional Will, what is his Will in the circumstances.
While the atheist thinks his suffering is ultimately meaningless and pointless, the Christian believes that no suffering is ultimately meaningless or pointless. Why? Because we believe that a loving God is providentially orchestrating all things, in a way that upholds our freedom. For that reason we believe that when God allows us to suffer, He is doing so to protect us from a greater evil, or to lift us to a far greater and outweighing good. God always has a good purpose in allowing suffering, even when that purpose is inscrutable to us. We always have a choice in our suffering, whether to trust God as our loving Father, and receive the good gift that He is giving us, or to rail against God in distrust and anger, as though we know better than He does what is ultimately good for us.
The relation between our present life and the life to come is the condition for the meaningfulness of our sufferings in this present life. The gospel shows us that suffering is an opportunity given to us to participate in our future blessedness by offering our present sufferings, in union with Christ’s sufferings, to God in self-giving sacrifice. Our suffering then takes on a whole different dimension, transformed from the occasion of a fist-shaking interrogation of God or cause for doubting His goodness or existence into the greatest opportunity to show Him trust and self-donation, without the least futility, knowing that it will be repaid a hundred fold. (Matt 19:26) This is why the Christian martyrs rejoiced when they were chosen for martyrdom, and why after being flogged the Apostles went away “rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name.” (Acts 5:41) Apart from the gospel, much of our suffering would seem gratuitous and even sinister. But in the light of the gospel we see that our suffering is a gift, a gift of the same sort as this present life, but even greater. It is the gift of an opportunity to give ourselves entirely to God in the greatest possible expression of love, i.e. sacrifice: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”
To quote the great Papal Encyclical, Rerum Novarum:
"Jesus Christ, when He redeemed us with plentiful redemption, took not away the pains and sorrows which in such large proportion are woven together in the web of our mortal life. He transformed them into motives of virtue and occasions of merit; and no man can hope for eternal reward unless he follow in the blood-stained footprints of his Saviour. “If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him.” Christ’s labors and sufferings, accepted of His own free will, have marvellously sweetened all suffering and all labor. And not only by His example, but by His grace and by the hope held forth of everlasting recompense, has He made pain and grief more easy to endure; “for that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.” (Rerum Novarum, 21)