SUFFERING REVISITED
No “cure” here!
As sure as
it’s true that the only real cure for death is resurrection the only real cure
for all our ills is the actual curing of all our ills. Sermons, booklets,
books, inspirational classes and seminars, profound challenges from cheerful people
who are themselves great sufferers—these sometimes do and often don’t really “help”.
Whether they do or don’t help, the sufferer is still left with the blood cancer
or the crazed and brutal government or the beloved but dead child that they now
sob over. The worker who’s just been “let go” and will now lose the family home
and doesn’t know what he, his wife and three children are going to do, the
helpless girls forced into prostitution by thugs without feeling or conscience,
the desperate families of drug addicts—they’d rather be without the tragedy as have
a truth to help them live with it; they want the loss avoided and the pain to
stop!
All
the “prayer warriors” in the world don’t make a bit of difference to the
concrete situations of multiplied millions. Despite all the prayers and the
longing, the sobs and the begging, marriages fall apart or continue to be
relationships of abuse, infants live in agony for mere days before expiring,
aged men and women live for years tormented and oppressed by heartless megalomaniacs
and cruel, raping and torturing militias that keep them in power.
If
you believe in God you get cancer or the one you love most in life dies or,
worse, deserts you. If you don’t believe in God you get cancer or the one you
love most in life dies, or worse, deserts you. No one’s exempt from trouble and
finally death.
It
could be you’re an atheist who still holds on to some common sense and refuse
to believe that we can obliterate all that devastates us in life and you just
accept the reality of inevitable loss. You might be one of those atheists that
believe that one day we will
obliterate all that troubles us. In the meantime, silly or realistic, while
we’re becoming gods, millions go down to nothingness after a life of torment to
join the billions who’ve gone down before them. Still, you get cancer or the
one you love most in life dies, or worse, abandons you.
You
might believe there is a God with unlimited power though you don’t pretend to
live for him. You might well despise him because he’s doing nothing about your
suffering and loss and what’s more he’s doing nothing about the world’s great
sufferings and wrongs. So you dismiss him from your thoughts or rage against
him for his heartlessness. Still, you get cancer or the ones you love most in
life die, or worse, use and then desert you.
Maybe
you believe in God and have lived a life of decency and kindness, with a
conscious effort to please him. Then the thing you feared most falls on you and
you call on all the “prayer warriors” who (you’re told) will wrestle God into a
“yes” to remove the causes of the agony. But nothing changes; you lose your
health or your family or your freedom or your job and your home and, perhaps
worse, your assurance that God cares for you.
You see many others delivered from trouble—at least temporarily—and you are
left sobbing and desperate in yours.
God or no God—there’s universal
agony!
So what are we to do?
There's
nothing at all profound in the remarks that follow. I'm just another person who
has given some sustained thought to the suffering of the human family that
lives in the presence of the God of the Bible and feels the need to speak about
it.
An
OT professor told me (and about two thousand others) that we shouldn't talk
about such matters; we should just get involved in the lives of people and help
sustain them in their need, showing compassion and giving practical help where
we can. [He said it as though we didn’t know we should give “practical” help
where we can; help that would include things like sympathy or food or clothing
or shelter or a job or a listening ear.] But, bless me, most of the real
sufferers I've come across in life want
to talk about such matters. If speakers or authors don't bring the subject up
the sufferers do and, in fact, Rabbi Kushner was close to correct when he said
that's all they want to talk about;
wherever the religious discussion starts, he said, it ends up on why bad things
happen to good people.
The
OT is filled with “why?” because people believed God had made a commitment to
them and it looked like he hadn't been faithful to it. To say we shouldn't talk
about suffering is astonishing, especially when it comes from an OT scholar.
The dialogue about God and human suffering
didn’t begin with the 21st century and it won’t end
with it.We should talk even though talk is limited
When
we talk we’ll often be talking to people hanging by their thumbs. If we don’t talk we’ll be silent in the
presence of people who are hanging by their thumbs. It’s better to talk! It’s better to talk if we have something
worthwhile saying!
People
hanging by their thumbs don’t make good listeners and people who want to make
students out of people hanging that way have a massive job on their hands. So talk
like this should be modest in its expectations and even then it’s best
addressed to people who aren’t yet in the agony of desperation. Let me
say it again, people in agony don’t want “explanations” (good, bad or
indifferent)—they just want the pain to stop or the crisis to be averted!
That
makes sense but for millions it isn’t going to happen! The pain will continue
and what they fear most will happen. And maybe at this very moment you’re one of
those millions.
But
what’s the point of “talking” if the cancer’s still there or marriage is the
hell you live in or the debt is still mounting or the daughter’s still in the
hands of pimps and abusers who have enslaved her?
I’ve
learned long ago not to believe that
just because people like me are talking that people are listening. Often
they’re not! Often they’re not because the situation is so pain-filled that
they presently can’t!
If
the only thing hurting people want is the immediate cessation of the pain then for them talking is pointless at present.
In their fever of desperation their minds will be running everywhere looking
and listening for a “cure” even while we’re talking.
The
astonishingly good news in the middle of all this bad news is that humans are
incredibly brave, even gallant.
Setting
aside the level of suffering that is so extreme that it leaves us speechless we see humans day after
day, year in and year out, wrestle against odds that we’re sure would drive us
over the edge but hasn’t managed to do it to them—yet.
To
people like that (and they number in the millions!) we have the opportunity to
speak about the God of the Hebrew—Christian scriptures; the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ.
They
will be able to give us a hearing! They’ll do it not because we’re smart or
eloquent or profess to have all the answers but precisely because they’re
gallant and because like most of us in life they want to “make some sense” of
the harsh realities in a world governed by a God who said he “loves” us all. Up
till now they refuse to believe that this is “as good as it gets” and they’re
looking for a reason to support that kind of gallant defiance. The gospel gives
just such a reason (1 Peter 3:15, which is set in a suffering context).
The
Bible insists that God made us “humans” and that means we enjoy “pleasure” so
we try normally to avoid what’s truly “unpleasant”. [God doesn’t object to
that—he made us that way.] Just the same, if we come to think that enduring
even a marked degree of what is
distressing is for a greater good we gladly take it on. Just look around you at
parents who choose burdens for the children’s sake or in times of war or
profound need in distant lands. Of course we’re selfish but that isn’t the
entire story about humans and it is nonsense to say it is. What’s more, to deny
the existence of kindness, unselfishness, compassion and bravery across the
board in the human family is to rob God of praise for the goodness he has generated
and nurtured in humans (see Acts 17:25 and note “everything else”).
Because
this is true about multitudes of suffering humans they give us the chance to
“talk” and “make some sense” of the chaos and pain in the world. Of course, the
vast majority of them who already trust God will continue to trust God with or
without our “talk” but there’s no doubt about this: Truth makes free and if we
can offer truth about God, his nature, character and purpose, the life of the
suffering believer can be even richer and more peaceful in trouble and even
more of a voice for God and good.
It’s
in the context of suffering that 1 Peter 3:15 urges believers to be ready to
give a good response to those who question them about their faith during trials
(see 3:14-18).
It
seems foolish to me that we will hunt the scriptures for “answers” to all
manner of moral questions—even questions about truly exceptional circumstances—and
we spend little or no time developing a rich theology of suffering. Here is
something the entire human family experiences—no exceptions—and the most of
what we do in the face of broken hearts and devastated lives is sympathetic
hand-wringing. If we don’t do that we tell people to avoid studying or talking
about the matter and “pray your way through.” If we don’t do that we dabble with verses here and there and
call it “teaching”.
We
don’t need to know “all the answers” and as sure as the sun rises in the east
we won’t come up with all the “answers”. But that doesn’t excuse us the
prayerful patient study that seeks the mind of God to help sustain the
troubled.
Compassionate
humans are called to give many kinds of help to the weak and needy (and they
will!)—that’s written all over Matthew 25, but to deny these suffers the “help”
that comes from knowing that God is at work in and through their suffering is
to deny them help!
To
give the suffering warm hugs, food, shelter and whatever else we can wisely
provide is imperative but we’re to give them fresh courage and strength in God
as Jonathan gave to David when he was hunted like an animal and fear-filled (1
Samuel 23:16). To have these people survive only on our handouts (gracious and
generous though they are) is a great blunder. We must link them to God who is
in and behind these practical gifts. To change their situations—where we can—is
important but there will be a time when we can’t do that and that’s why it’s
important that we make the attempt via truth to transform and strengthen them and enable them to live on.
If
they’re in for a long rugged journey we need to empower them and give them an
eye for the future, the patient heart of a pilgrim. John Masefield was right,
especially right for those whose lives are not sunny and pleasant and will not
be while this world stands as it is.
of mind
For we go seeking a city we shall never find.
There is no solace on earth for us—for such as
we—
Who search for a hidden city we shall never
see.
Only the road, and then the dawn, the sun,
and the wind, and the rain.
And the watch fire under the stars, and sleep,
and the road again.
. . . . . . . .
We travel the dusty road, till the light of the
day is dim,
And the sunset shows us spires, away on the
world’s rim.
To
give rich truth to hurting souls and to help turn them into “brave-hearts” is
no little gift! When people like that see the spellbinding “City of God”
they’ll thank all who helped them
get there with gracious gifts of food and shelter and sympathy. They’ll also
thank those who strengthened them in God with the gospel of God. We must have
something to say!
What are we to say?
John
Mark Hicks, theologian and experienced sufferer, who has given this subject prolonged
critical reflection, has come to the conclusion that what people really need is
a proclamation rather than a theodicy (a rational explanation that
vindicates God). It’s a gospel people
need; a message from and about God that sustains and liberates even during sore
trials.
It’s no surprise that many people will see God in light of life’s harsh realities. [“A God who would allow a world to be as pain-filled and unjust as this is must be…”] How could that be surprising?
Still, however sensible it sounds that’s not where the Christian should begin. The Christian should see the harsh realities of the planet in light of God rather than the reverse. [“If God is like Jesus Christ he must be…”] The Christian has no other ground to stand on so as a matter of fact the Christian can do nothing else but start with God, his character and purpose.
Begin with which God?
In
1 Corinthians 8:4-6 Paul says that to others there may be many gods and lords
but to Christians there is but one God and one Lord Jesus Christ. [Here he
gives us new insight into The Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4.]
The
only God the Christian knows is the God who has made himself known to us
finally in and as Jesus Christ who said, “If you know me you know the Father;
if you see me you see the Father” (John 14:1, 7, 9).
God
had made himself known in creation and in his redemptive work with Israel but
we didn’t really “see” him until he fully revealed himself in Jesus (Hebrews
1:1-3). If we can be brave enough to trust to that even in the face of crushing
trouble and sore years we have what we need most because the reality of Jesus
and his Story gives a complexion to the world’s great suffering and wrong.
Better no Plutarch than an evil one
“I
for my part would much rather have men say of me that there never was a
Plutarch at all, nor is now, than to say that Plutarch is a man inconstant,
fickle, easily moved to anger, revengeful for trifling provocations, vexed at
small things.” In our better moments we all feel that way and in our thoughtful
moments we’d say the same about God. Better that there was no God at all than
that there was a self-obsessed, tyrannical, spiteful, arbitrary or heartless
one. That’s why some have said that if God wasn’t like Jesus we’d throw him off
the throne of our hearts and put Jesus there!
God
was well aware of what he had done to the planet in Noah’s day and what he had
done to Sodom and Gomorrah in terrifying judgment. But when Moses asked God to
show him his glory he gives him a
revelation of his goodness and
describes himself as “a God compassionate and gracious, ever faithful and true,
remaining faithful to thousands, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin…”
(Exodus 33:18-23 and 34:5-7.)
Though
he says he’s willing to have the consequences of sins work their way down
through the generations (34:7) and though he knows of the “tsunami” of
planetary proportions that he sent in Noah’s day he still describes himself as
gracious, compassionate and faithful. That’s
a real challenge to faith. To look at what he’s done and then look at him
with skepticism in our eyes and have him look back at us saying, “Yes, I am compassionate and gracious and faithful;
will you believe that?”—that’s the challenge.
He’s
willing to risk our unbelief and rage and jeering—and he gets them! But what if
he knows things that we don’t? What if he purposes wondrous things beyond our
imagining—a future that’s sin and oppression-free, joy-filled, where warm
righteousness reigns in the human family and disease and death are abolished?
What if that’s what he’s bringing
about and he is working it out even in the bedlam and chaos of this world? When
having trusted him we find ourselves in such a world, astonished and forever
safe will we not look at him then and hear him say, “Yes, well, I always knew
that you couldn’t fully believe me but you will from now on, won’t you?”
The
future will vindicate God but we’re
not left only to the future. Whatever
we humans might have thought of God prior to Jesus (and we were given reasons
to trust him then) he vindicated himself in Jesus and his sufferings and death.
If having seen Jesus and come to know God, really
seen and come to know him—after that, if we still doubt God, he has no other
“argument” that will persuade us to trust him. We’ve beaten him.
Peter in Acts 10:37-38 summarized the life of
Jesus this way: “You know what has happened…How that God anointed Jesus of
Nazareth with the Holy Spirit, and how he went around doing good and healing
all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.”
This text isn’t only about
Jesus; it’s about the God who empowered Jesus to give us a sample of what will
be universally true and complete in a coming day. He went about healing and
rescuing because God was with him!
Jesus’ view of God
The
glorious future to which God is
bringing us will vindicate him and the incredible past of the person and suffering of Jesus has definitively
vindicated him but Jesus insisted that all around us were “proofs” that God was
to be trusted. (Incredible or not, one of his “proofs” is the existence and
life of his Body, the Church, in which the Lord Jesus now rehearses and
re-tells his redeeming work and purpose in each generation.)
Jesus
told believers that when they prayed they should say, “Our Father…” (Matthew
6:9-13.) He said if sinful human fathers wouldn’t cruelly mock their children
in their needs but would care for them that God would do no less (Matthew
7:9-11)? “If you, bad as you are, know how to give good things to your
children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who
ask him?”
This
raises questions we could perhaps look at another time; the point here is that
Jesus says that if we can only open our hearts and minds then the everyday
sight of caring fathers and mothers is a witness to the caring character of God.
He said the proofs for God’s goodness and kindness are everywhere around us, birds,
fields, flowers and family love. (Every word of Acts 17:24-29 is an education
and see Isaiah 49:14-16!)
In Edna Lyall’s novel We Two, the family had been to church and heard the preacher
describe God as heartless and cruel and it led young Ralph to say, “I don’t
like God.” His father Donovan asked the little boy what he’d do if he heard
someone say that he (Donovan) was anything like that or that he’d stop loving
him. “I’d knock them down,” he said fiercely, with fists clenched. “Why?” the
father asked. “Because it would be a wicked lie,” Ralph said passionately.
“That’s right,” his father said, “but you just believed something of God that
you wouldn’t believe of me… Never believe
anything that contradicts, ‘Our Father’.”
Jesus would not only approve of that—he would
insist on it as he did in his own life and teaching; in truth it is his teaching and Lyall is only
repeating it. This is especially good news for we need to remember this: The
God who has been the God of our fathers, the God who is our God will be the God
of our children. Nothing’s going to change (see Hebrews 13:8).
If our suffering is not so extreme that we have
the energy and desire to look for “some sense” in it all, the only place we’ll
find it is in God because only God is “big” enough to exercise control in human
affairs and if he’s not bringing us to a new heaven and earth in which
righteousness and joy and peace prevails then nobody is. If we can believe that
he is doing just that, then the astonishing mess the world is in would take on
a new complexion.
Picture this true-to-life situation; something
that happens again and again and again every day somewhere in this wild world.
A lady and her little girl are in their car in a
ditch; a man runs up and tries to drag the door open but can’t; begins to scream
at the woman through the window, the child is silent and the mother is yelling
for help; he smashes the window, pulls the door open and drags the woman from
the car on to the ground. The child is now deathly silent and the man cuts her
throat and then cuts off a hand.
He’s a paramedic! They’ve been in a terrible
wreck, the car is about to go up in flames and the child couldn’t breathe and
was trapped. [A surgeon friend of mine was in this very situation and did what
under other circumstances would have murderous.] In such situations the “cure”
is ghastly but those who love the victim
most would urge the rescuer to get on with it.
The “big picture” transforms what appears to be
callous and heartless into a labor of love.
What if it’s true that the human family has had
a vast moral wreck and the “divine paramedic” is doing for humanity what only he can do? But even if we believed the wreck of
the universe to be real, might we not think the awful pain and loss of the
world is “overkill”? I’m certain we would and I’m certain many of us do think
just that. I used the moral wreck metaphor to express the world’s situation to
a dear friend. He immediately accepted the point but his first response was:
“overkill”.
Maybe if we knew what God knows about sin and
the depth of its roots and devastating power; maybe if we knew as he knows that
sin is the cosmic parasite that feeds on us and will not allow us hope or
health unless it is dealt with ruthlessly and finally—maybe if we knew all that
we wouldn’t think “overkill”. Maybe then we’d urge him on as adoring families urge the paramedics to do whatever it
takes to bring life and health even when it horrifies us.
What if it’s true that God is dealing with the
central and “behind the scenes” cause of the human family’s ceaseless woes?
It cannot be otherwise than that we think first
of those nearest and dearest to us and it’s no surprise that our pain and loss is what we’d like God
to deal with—immediately! But we need someone to remind us—however painful it
sounds—that God is working to save “a world”; an entire human family and not just a great number of individuals.
Sometimes human fathers can deal with specific
issues involving only one of the children but almost all the time each child
must be worked with as one member of a family!
To blame humans for the agony of the world makes
some sense but who would allow morally -crazed villains such power in the world
if he could prevent it? Besides, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornado, earthquakes, floods
and disease don’t care who is running things in a country or nation—who controls
them?
Millions of us insist that God is not “to blame”
for the tragedies, catastrophes and evils in the world. Yet when we’re done
placing the blame here or there we end up looking to heaven and in our pain we
ask God what he’s up to and why he doesn’t do something about it all. In our
bones we know that somewhere in the middle of all this sobbing, injury,
disease, loss and loneliness God is playing a part or should be playing a part.
We’re not to be reluctant in finally holding God
in some way responsible. Not only can he bear the “accusation” he takes it on
himself. Job’s friends kept saying it wasn’t really God who put Job through his trial and Job kept yelling that
it was God and God makes it clear that Job was right (see Job 1:9-12, 20-22;
2:3-6, 10 and 42:7, 11).
Many authors and ministers are afraid of God
getting bad press so they keep shoving God out the side door and telling
everyone, “God didn’t do that; he wouldn’t do such a thing.” (A prominent
author of “Good Grief” told me that when Job said God did it he was wrong and
was speaking lies.) They worry about people thinking God did it and God now and again worries that people will think he didn’t do it (be sure to see Deuteronomy
32:26-27). God’s judgments on the human family are always redemptive
The Bible versus life’s harsh realities
If you
read the Bible you have to come
away thinking that God is
supremely interested in the life of each one of us. Then there are those
scattered but critically situated texts about prayer that seem to assure us
that God hears our every prayer and that he will grant what we ask. Add to that
the mass of books, written by people who say they are speaking for God, that
assure us that our reading of the Bible is accurate. (“No, you haven’t
misunderstood it; that is what it says.”)
So here
comes Francois who wrestles with that way of reading scripture and those claims
made by confident authors. Because the texts and the books by cheer-filled
authors don’t square with the realities he and a host of his friends and
acquaintances he gives up on the biblical God.
The choice
seems clear: believe the Bible and act blind, deaf and dumb when life crushes
texts or believe pitiless life and have the courage to scrap the Bible and all
these cheery books.
Getting as much as you can of what
you
want
Of course,
masses of us couldn’t care less. We’re off to the bars, the partying, the fishing,
the travel or television re-runs in a comfortable chair with a good lie-in on
Sunday mornings. We're too busy working five days a week or raising kids or
both (and more) to want to bother. But there’s a host of people that work
equally hard and face important responsibilities in life and they care if God
exists and they care if the Bible is believable or not.
No simple answers
I’m one of
those that think the Bible tells us the truth and that the harsh realities of
life also tell us truth. I think our difficulties are the result—in part—from
our inability to understand both life and scripture and God’s overarching
purpose that climaxes if the Lord Jesus.
Our
difficulties will always be with us and no one, not even God himself, can
soothe our raw emotions and ease our mass of exposed nerve-endings. Bless me,
if more than two thousand years ago the psalms and the prophets are filled with
protest and people asking God and one another for explanations what would make
us think we’d come across simple answers?
It isn’t “explanations” we want
It isn’t
that God hasn’t spoken clearly; it’s that he speaks to sinful and hurting
people and it’s hard for people like us to hear even if Jesus himself is
talking. People hanging by their thumbs aren’t the best students. But we’re not
all in such torment that we’re
incapable of reflecting and listening. As pained as Francois is he still asks
questions and levels his protests. Some poor souls don’t have the time or
energy to do even that. They only have the time to crawl into some hiding place
before the Darfur rapists and murderers come around again; in Zimbabwe they
only have the time to dig in the ground for mice and roots to feed their family
and keep it alive or in some parts of Haiti they cook and eat soil. And nearer
home vile people do the unspeakable to the defenseless who don’t want “answers”
and wouldn’t understand them if you offered them; they just want someone to put
a stop to their torment. There are some tortured souls whose experience is so
extreme that we feel even to speak is obscene so we look at them—speechless. But
for those whose lives are hard but not so hard that they can’t ask questions
the wrestling is legitimate and warranted even though the gallant suffering of
many around them makes the questioner wonder if they aren’t wimps to moan and
lament.
Is the God of the Bible a heavenly
sweetheart?
God has
spoken clearly! He hasn’t spoken clearly on every conceivable question. He has
said enough for us to work with. We don’t like the fact that God hasn’t spoken
on every question we would like to ask, and that’s understandable. But I think
that’s only part of a part of the problem. We don’t like it that he hasn’t said
enough but we like even less much of
what he has said. We
go through and pick out the things that please and assure us and pay little or
no attention to what he has said that we don’t want to hear.
But it’s
worse than that. We who say we speak
for him—don’t like a lot of what he says. What’s more, we’re not
prepared to say many of the things he has said and said plainly. We come across
people who don’t like much of what they hear in scripture and we hurry to assure
them that that isn’t what the scriptures say. “Oh, no, God wouldn’t say
something like that!” we tell them. We meet people who don’t like what they see
in life and we hurry to assure them that God has nothing to do with things that
are unpleasant. We who say we speak for God and scripture tell some biblical
truths and rework the rest so that it suits the critics or the peeved or
ourselves. We speak some truths about life and “explain” the rest in an attempt
to please everyone but the God we say sent us to speak for him. We present “a
biblical” picture of God and how he relates to the human race that is neither
true to the whole counsel of God or life as it comes to us.
Some of
the disappointment, desperation and pain (or at least their intensity) that suffering
people endure rises because of the difference between their expectations and
the reality they live with. We teach them to expect certain things and when
they don’t arrive as promised they’re gutted. [You can see this in its most
obvious form when people go to these big-wheeling “healers” and are diverted
into a side tent or building and never get to see “the main man”. Or those that
are bundled off the stage; assured that they’re healed when nothing’s happened
and everyone concerned knows it!] I would guess that by far the bulk of the
disappointment and pain that Western believers experience comes when the
biblical promises fail—when God let’s you down.
Still, if we could just make sense of it
But here
we go again, “explaining” why the promises aren’t fulfilled. Why doesn’t God
just fulfill the promises and we wouldn’t need “explanations”? For those who
have no time or interest in “explanations” the Bible has nothing to say, so you
can be sure I have nothing to say and reading this is a waste of precious time.
I can speak a little from my own limited experience and say that “explanation”
has made some of my life much more bearable. I’ve known a little pain and
disappointment down the years and even though I had explanations, now and then
I’ve sobbed because the explanations didn’t remove the experience of hurt but
they threw light on the hurt so that it didn’t consume me. Tens of millions
experience that every day. If we can just “make sense” or get a glimpse of “purpose”
it makes it easier to endure—easier but not always “easy”. If our child’s
surgery is purely routine and he or she dies during it—we’re devastated, even
more so than if we’d been told it was a touch-and-go operation. The husband or
wife we love brings down the curtain on our marriage because we “cannot”
behave—we’re devastated; but more so if they walked off without reason or
explanation. Give us something to hold on to that makes sense and people are
amazingly resilient.
I think we
who talk for God and people have distorted the message in some really critical
areas. I don’t believe that I have
the answers for everything; I’m not even a minor verbal-messiah but I
have deep convictions that enable me to work with the hurt that makes me weep; and they might be helpful to
someone else. I struggle to speak to keep from saying nothing. They’re complex
convictions that can’t be fully developed in a brief offering like this and
you’d need to be patient even to hear them, and, then, having heard them you
might well think them nonsense. But that’d be all right too; at least you would
have heard them.
“Natural laws” are the will of God—
don’t deny it
We
speakers talk so much rubbish about prayer and create expectations that God nor
Bible ever created. By the time we’re done talking, God dare not say “no” or
we’re sure he has proved himself faithless. That isn’t the biblical doctrine of
prayer! Prayer is one of those massive and grand realities God has blessed the
world with but it is one reality that functions within other larger
realities.
The will
of God is seen in what we call “the laws of nature”. It’d be foolish to suggest
that he isn’t Lord of these laws but it’s equally foolish to suggest that they
aren’t an expression of his will. The water that keeps us clean is capable of
drowning us precisely because it’s capable of washing us. The fire that warms
and cooks our food is capable of burning us precisely because it’s capable of
warming and feeding us. Two cars meeting head on at speed results in injury or
death—these are the “physics” of the matter. The “laws of nature” include the
laws of personal development, including environment, relationships, neural
pathways, genes and the rest. These “laws” are the expressed will of God. They
exist because God continuously wills them to exist. That God can work outside
and above these is clear but that they’re his “normal” way of expressing
himself is also clear; even when he answers prayer with a yes or no.
God can and does say “no” to personal
requests
To say God
couldn’t prevent a wreck (or a cancer or an earthquake) is nonsense but to say
he must because we ask him to, that’s presumptuous. To understand a text
of scripture to mean that whatever we ask for, God has already committed
to give it to us is sheer nonsense.
Paul asked
“three times” to have a chronic and gouging pain removed and God said no (2
Corinthians 12:7-10). Isolate the prayer from the context and we’re left with a
perfectly reasonable request by a good man that a miserly and unfeeling Lord
refused to grant. But look how the scene changes when we note the context that
shows that a “no” to Paul’s request made perfect sense and that he was glad for
the no when he finally understood. Yes, but what if we can’t see how a “no”
would fit into a redemptive context? What if we view our requests as trivial
compared with Paul’s and can see no good reason why they got a no? What if
we’ve had “no” so often that we wonder if God knows the word “yes”?
God’s ceaseless stream of “yeses”
I find all
those questions sensible and reasonable—and human. But they’re questions that
come from (understandably) irritated and disappointed people who are ignorant
of so much of God’s cosmic purpose. [Sometimes they come from people who
care nothing for God or his purposes and who just like to hear themselves
talk.] In any case, believers need to remember that we’re showered with “yeses”
from God day in and day out. I’m not now speaking about people in extreme
poverty and danger—even if they had the time and energy to read this—they’d
fling it from them and sob for it all to stop; I have the rest of us in mind.
Day in and day out God gives us blessings. Clean water, fresh air, a democratic
government, health, a clear mind (which we often use to criticize him), friends
and acquaintances, good education, decent jobs, warm clothes, homes, parents
and a mass lovely things. He knows how to say “yes” but because we’ve had a lot
of “no” and have to endure severe trials we tend to forget this.
The connection’s real even when we
can’t stomach it
And when
we say we can’t see the connection between our losses, disappointments, pains
and God’s cosmic purpose we’re expressing only our ignorance—pained ignorance
but ignorance just the same. But because we don’t know the connection doesn’t
mean there isn’t one. What if in bringing the human family to
a glorious finale that “no” is one necessary strand of God’s way of working?
What if he isn’t mad at you, what if he isn’t mad at anyone at
that point? What if in the “land of the Trinity” where the redemption and
glorification of a sinful humanity has been planned that “no” is as much a part
of the way to life for the family as “yes”? In a wise and loving human family “no”
is required for many good reasons and “no” is required even to reasonable
requests. Because children often have conflicting desires and needs, a “no” to
someone is the wise and loving response. If only in this phase of living we had
hope then every “no” would be magnified. If the final purpose was our being
happy then every “no” could be a black hole that swallowed all.
If God was kind he would…
Yes, but
if God’s kind he would prevent an injustice, a car wreck or a rape or a murder.
Would he indeed? Did he prevent the injustice heaped on his own Son or the
brutal murder of that Son? When the holy and obedient Son expressed his desire
to avoid the cup, the Father refused to grant it. A kind Father would have
exempted his Son from the cup! Would he indeed? It was precisely because
he was a kind and Holy Father who loved all the children he created that
he wouldn’t exempt this unique Son from the cup. His “no” to the Son
was part of his “yes” to all his created sons and daughters. Christ’s
request was perfectly reasonable, it wasn’t that he was asking for a billion
dollars in a Swiss bank account; agony was tearing him apart and he asked to be
released from it. If we ignore the biblical Story as a whole, if ever there was
a time when a prayer should have been given the green light it was then. If you
isolate his request from the larger world and vaster purpose within which it
occurred you have a different prayer! Rip his prayer out of its cosmic,
redemptive and holy context and it isn’t the prayer that was prayed in the
garden. Place the prayer in the biblical context and the “no” becomes not
only understandable, it becomes the only answer we can expect and the one we’re
glad to hear.
What if it’s true that…
And what
does all this prove? Well, for starters it proves that God can love supremely
and say “no”. And what if it’s the case that his “no” to Jesus and his “no” to
the followers of Jesus (and to his human family at large) on a host of
occasions—what if they have the same nature and are part of the unfolding
saving drama? What if his “no” to Christ and his no to us rise out of the same
soil? What if we bear loss and pain as part of God’s redeeming agenda and
method? Of course Christ is unique! But what he experienced isn’t unique—it’s
because he is unique that what he shared with us in common becomes the
redemption of the world. What if he continues to rehearse his suffering in
those who are the body of Christ?
What if “no”
to all the righteous women and men and boys and girls down the ages comes to
focus and crowning glory in God’s no to the sinless Christ? What if it is part
of the means by which God exposes sin, teaches utter dependence, bears the sin
of the world and brings humanity to glory?
What if
the pain and disappointment that the believers experience is nothing other than
Christ filling up the cup of suffering that he is destined to suffer in and
through his body? Compare Colossians 1:24 and Acts 9:4-5.
God’s “no” to a man who should have
had a “yes”
Whatever
Paul’s thorn in the flesh was it was causing severe distress (2 Corinthians
12:7-10). It was “to buffet” him and the word doesn’t suggest anything like “inconvenience”.
The very reading of the text suggests that the distress and pain is enduring
and in light of God’s response it was to last even longer.
Paul tells
us he prayed to God about it and asked him three times to remove it. Three
times might be literal and it might also reflect his imaging out of the
Christ’s experience in Gethsemane. Imaging it, not in any slavish artificial
way. And since he models his own life on that of Moses we will remember that
Moses spoke to God more than once, asking God to let him into the promised
land. We’ll recall that God told Moses the burden wouldn’t be lifted and that
he was not to mention the matter again (Deuteronomy 3:23-27). We’ll remember too
that in 1 Corinthians 9:27 Paul doesn’t wish to experience the rejection Moses
experienced at the end of his life of service.
In any
case, Paul prayed fervently and asked for relief. In saying he asked he used an
aorist verb in the indicative. This suggests that his days of asking were
decisively in the past; he did it back then and was done with it. The reason he
was done with it is because the Lord (in this text probably the Lord Jesus) who
knew all about being denied a request denied his request and gave him
assurance.
When he
tells us about the Lord’s response Paul uses a verb in the perfect tense. And
if we allow it to function as a perfect tense verb then Paul hears the word of
the Lord ringing in his ear even as he writes to the Corinthians. Back then
Paul used to ask for relief but he put a stop to it. And he stopped it because
the Lord said something to him that he hears even now as he writes.
Before we
read what it was that the Lord said we need to note that for Paul it was
decisive and satisfying. We need to note also that the man who was begging for
relief was God’s faithful servant who was on the rack. Instead of rushing over that truth to get to another we need to feel
for the depths of it.
This was
such a person that we might have thought should get a “yes” to the plea for
relief. We sort of feel that he “earned” it. This was the sort of person we
would be especially eager to relieve and if the Lord has any compassion about
him the kind of “compassion” that means something to us, surely Paul’s hurt was
a strong appeal.
Making it easy for God to trust us!
But
this was such a person that in some ways made it easy for the Lord to say “no”.
Paul’s desire for ease was real and urgent because the pain was
prolonged and severe. (Underscoring the obvious sound of the text, the lexical
work and grammar make that clear.) But down below his strong desire for relief
was something profoundly stronger—his hunger to serve God’s redeeming purposes.
The situation here was such that relief would not have served God’s gracious
purposes best and that more than he wanted relief Paul wanted God’s glory and
our redemption in Christ. In this we find Paul going through his own
Gethsemane. His Master too had longed for relief but below the hunger for ease
there was a deeper and more pulsating hunger to do his Holy Father’s will. In
this text Paul is finding part of what he longed for in Philippians 3, to enter
into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. And listen, because Paul was that
kind of man and because Jesus was that kind of Son they made it easier for God
to say “no”. God knew he could trust them. They so responded to God that he
knew he could trust them!
Is God heartless then?
Here is a
section of scripture that urges us to believe that pain and loss delivered by
the hand of some satanic messenger is made to serve the glorious purposes of
God. Here is a section that urges us to believe that God looks at some among us
and by the depth of their devotion to him and to the world that he loves God is
free to say “no” to their fervent pleas for ease.
And it isn’t
that God’s glorious purposes are heartless! The person and work of Jesus Christ
bury that notion forever. God says “yes” to teeming millions of requests but he
not only reserves the right to say “no,” he does it. Sometimes the no is at
awful cost to the sufferer and it makes perfect sense that they would rather
have a yes—how could it be otherwise? We’re dreaming if we think Paul always
walked around grinning and didn’t at times double up in pain and wish the answer
could be yes. Christ left the garden as faithful as he went in but you can be
sure he came out trembling. No one waved a magic wand and pain and anguish
vanished. There was assurance, explanation and comfort (comfort, and not mere
consolation).
Job’s later
word to God could have been: “You know, for a while you made it hard for me to
believe in you.” God’s word to Job could have been: “Isn’t that interesting,
you made it easy for me to believe in you.”
So should we just shut our mouths and
obey?
So are we
not to expect anything from God? Does prayer make no difference? Does what we
need have no effect on God’s governing of human affairs? Does the fine print in
the Bible effectively empty the more obvious words of their meaning?
Well...yes
and no!
Should we
expect God to provide for us? Jesus insists that God does provide for us
whether we pray or not and even whether we believe in him or not. He sends the
sun and the rain on both the evil and the good (Matthew 5:45 and Luke 6:35).
[What about those places where he sends the rain on neither the evil nor good? It’s a good question but it’s for
another time. I’m addressing those of us that have no experience of extreme
poverty.] For those who are able and willing to believe what Christ said, God
gives life and the things necessary to sustain life. Paul insists in Acts
14:16-17 and 17:25 that God not only gives to all nations fruitful seasons and
times to be glad, he gives them “everything else”. Why this isn’t the present
experience of every individual in the world is an important question but at
this moment we need to settle the one we’re working with.
There are
people who enjoy countless blessings of friendship, health, income, food,
family, job, political freedom, education and more. Who provides these? Biblical
writers insist that they come from God and Jesus, in the Lord's Prayer, urges
us to believe that. It simply won’t do to look at life and say it in no way
matches the biblical claims and promises. Yes, of course, there are many
reasonable desires that we ask God for and don’t get. To say that is correct
but to move from that to claim he gives us nothing makes no sense at
all.
So, should
we just be grateful for what we get and shut our mouths? We
certainly should be thankful but he doesn’t speak to shut us up and neither
should those that profess to speak for him. Philippians 4:6 and Ephesians 6:18
urge believers to make their requests known to God. Loving parents provide for
their children and should one of them ask for something that is beyond the basics
we wouldn’t expect to hear them told that they’re not to ask for more than the
parents have decided to provide. It’s very clear from both scripture and life
that God has blessed some people with more than others and it’s very clear that
he has blessed them with a lot more than they need simply to exist. [He also
expects them to share!]
God to Job: “You think you know what’s
going
on?”
I
understand that some non-believers find that too much to swallow but then I’m
not addressing non-believers at this moment. Those who are willing to give
scripture a hearing will accept that claim. All right, it generates difficult
questions even for believers but why should that surprise us? Just trying to
figure out how to take care of the conflicting needs and wants of a small
family can tax the brain and patience of loving and wise parents. As soon as
you increase the size of the family, the urgency of their needs and the depth
of their desire for some beyond-the-basic things everything is so much more complex
and harder to assess. When it becomes a national family and you watch a
government trying to satisfy the needs and wants of various sectors—if you’re
fair—you begin to see the difficulty in providing. But more than that—again, if
you’re fair—you know that the rank and file that are being represented by
government are not able to see the difficulties involved in providing. I
don’t say God sits wringing his hands wondering what to do. I do say that needy
and acquisitive humans aren’t able (or always willing) to admit the
complexities of the situation. Job,
the wise man, knew he was hurting and so did his wise friends but they hadn’t a
clue about the cosmic ramifications of what was going on.
“I want you to give
me…” and “What will
you give me?”
And then there’s
this—and we don’t like to be reminded of this, especially when life has been
hard for a long time—it just isn’t right to see our relationship with God as a
one way affair where he does all the giving and we do all the taking. What
if he asks us to give him something? What if he wants to use us to bless others
and it means that it’ll cost us something?
He called
on Joseph to serve him in Egypt and despite the boy’s pleas (Genesis 42:21) God
chained him and sold into Egypt (Genesis 45:5-8a, Psalm 105:17-18). Joseph
wanted to go home and God said no and sent him into slavery. If we didn’t know
the whole story we could easily—and understandably—think this was another case
where God shrugged at injustice and cruelty or wrung his hands in despair
because he could do nothing about the evil that humans choose to do. But the
Bible doesn’t see things that way. God’s no to Joseph was his yes to tens of
thousands of others in time of famine and it meant the elect line was kept
alive and finally led to the Messiah. God’s no to Joseph meant thirteen long
years away from home but if you asked Joseph, the lord of Egypt, if he would
rather that God had let him go back home instead of into Egypt he would have
said “no!”
The Bible
is filled with texts that believers avoid while they’re rooting out all the
“assuring” texts. Amos 4 tells us explicitly
that God sent drought and famine and pestilence and war on apostate Israel [in
order to bring them back to him and to life] but what of the innocent children
and the righteous men and women who didn’t turn from God? They suffered along
with the guilty. God wasn’t punishing them but they got it in the neck just the
same! What would we have said to such men, women and children? Well? When they said they just wanted
the pain to stop what would we have said? When they prayed for their family to
be exempted what would we have said? It was a bad request? They were just being
wimps? That their pain wasn’t real and excruciating? A pox on that kind of
talk! They were bearing and sharing God’s judgment on the guilty that he might
bring the guilty back to life and God wouldn’t exempt them just as he wouldn’t
spare his own Son (Romans 8:32).
God’s “no” to Jesus as his definitive and
eternal “yes”
It’s true
that in scripture prophets, psalmists, kings and peasants all cried to God in
protest at the profusion of “no’s” without explicit explanation, but why should
that startle us? They were just like us, bewildered and disappointed. The Bible
wants us to understand that God understands our protests and feelings. But when
you take the biblical narrative as a whole and have Jesus as the final “yes” to
all the promises of God (2 Corinthians 1:20) then we have the normative
teaching. In Christ as the “Yes” of God we hear that all that we rightly expect
from God is being and will be fulfilled.
We will
discover in the end that the “no” is a purposed part of the complex whole and
that we to whom so many no’s were said are part of the redeeming vehicle. God
eternally purposed to say no and then did say no to his own unique Son,
though it led that Child to sob his heart out and feel as though he was being
crushed to death (Hebrew 5:7, Matthew 26:38). If that’s true then surely we
need to embrace his “no” as part of a glorious and ultimately life-bringing agenda.
And if we
say he could have worked world redemption without a “no” or that he could have
created a world and a humanity in which “no” had no place, just look what we’ve
done! To keep us from having to come to terms with a long list of painful
disappointments we want the whole universe constructed differently. And
maybe that’s understandable too. But what if God has made the right choice?
What if his way of dealing with humanity’s rebellion and bringing us to
deathless life and unbroken peace is the best way? What if “no” really is
what must be in a world of choosing, inter-dependent humans where to say “yes”
to some means “no” must be said to others? What if God is honoring us by saying
“no” to us and by that lays on us a burden that we carry for others? What if “no”
is one of the essential elements in bringing about the final and profoundly
satisfying “yes” from a generous and holy God whose agenda is infinitely
more wonderful than our present complete satisfaction? Imagine him coming into
your room, looking you right in the eye and telling you, “I mean you no harm.
Trust me when I tell you that in a sinful world ‘no’ is only part of the final
‘yes’ to which I’m bringing you.” As sinful as I am and as selfish as I’m
capable of being I’m still assured by that thought.
Simple answers to complex questions—
always “wrong”
We make
complex matters too simple. We feel God lets us down—in part—because we don’t
really know what we’re asking or what’s involved in getting what we want. John
is unemployed and prays God to get him a job. He’s thrilled when he gets an
interview at Holsen’s Machine Parts factory and thanks God for answered prayer.
Hmmm. Holsen is expanding at the expense of Fleet’s and they had to lay-off
seventy-five of their workers. Peter worked for Fleet for twenty years and
needed the job. He knew lay-offs were coming and had prayed that he would be
spared. Peter and John go to the same church, pray to the same God for the same
but conflicting things.
Rachel has
been praying for a fine Christian husband for her daughter Mary—why wouldn’t
she? And the newcomer to their church—Charles Petrie—is just that. Despite
Rachel’s fervent prayers Mary isn’t interested in Charles and, anyway, Belinda
Hathaway has been praying as well—why wouldn’t she?—and she and Charles hit it
off. They’re planning to get married in about six months. Rachel wanted what
Mary didn’t want and Belinda got a “yes”, which meant that Rachel had to get a “no”.
The
national economy is on the decline, tens of thousands pray for serious improvement—why
wouldn’t they? And it comes—in the exports sector. The national currency
has weakened so outsiders can buy more from the home nation so all who work in
that sector thank God for answered prayer. But because the national currency
has weakened the imports industries have to pay more for foreign goods
and materials and this rise is passed on to the rank and file in either wage
cuts, job losses or price increases for the goods. Import businesses go under
and the whole workforce is laid off. Huge numbers in the export trade
gain and huge numbers in the import trade are squeezed.
Nations go
to war. Families pray for the safety of their loved ones—why wouldn’t they? But
their Tom or Ann is kept alive at the expense of someone else’s son or daughter.
Those now dead sons and daughters were prayed for and while some families
celebrate a homecoming other families mourn the arrival of corpses.
Raw power can’t cure everything
Yes, yes,
but why does there have to be all this confusion and conflict of interests? Why
doesn’t an all-powerful and all wise God work it out where no one is ever
disappointed or hurt? Maybe if we were as wise as God we would know not to ask
such questions! Some things can’t be fixed with just “power”. If God had a
jillion times more power than he now has (and he has all power) he still
couldn’t do some things. Not being able to make a square circle or a four-sided
triangle has nothing to do with power! And if we had half a brain we
wouldn’t set such tasks within a “power” context. God can't give a “yes” to
both Rachel and Belinda about Charles and it has nothing to do with how wise or
powerful he is.
Sinners can’t be trusted with prayer as a
blank check
God’s
wisdom and power and holy love serve an eternal agenda that takes into account
our freedom to rebel against him, war against each other, be greedy and
predatory. It takes into account that we are a single human family,
inextricably bound one to another and who therefore affect one another for
good or ill by our attitudes and behavior and desires. He has created us as one
and means us to live in response to one another and he refuses to live our
lives for us in a ceaseless stream of divine interventions that
negate our humanity and responsibility toward each other. If he didn’t want us
to live our lives he wouldn’t have given them to us!
If we
don’t open our hearts to another way of looking at life we’re beat before we
begin. There are tens of thousands every day and in every generation that are
praying for the rich blessing and happiness of the whole human race. If
all prayers got an automatic “yes” then no one would need to pray for anything
because everyone would already have everything.
Don’t let
anyone kid you into thinking that prayer is a simple matter. And don’t let them
con you into believing that God has committed himself to say “yes” to every
reasonable request. And don’t rob yourself by thinking that prayer is nothing
more than asking for things. And don’t let life’s disappointment and pain lead
you to be permanently angry with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Don’t let
it become all about us wanting things and God being so stingy that he won’t
give them to us. What if he doesn’t want to give them to us? What if he
thinks it’s our turn to go without for reasons at present known only to
himself? (Some of you who are suffering greatly must surely find yourself
getting angry in light of such remarks. Get angry with me if you must but do
your best to remember that you see him best in Jesus Christ and he would never
treat your awful hurt as of no account. Trust him and believe that he will
restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten—compare Joel 2:25.) What
if the God who shed blood for us unto death in Jesus Christ is doing what is
best for a sinful human family’s ultimate blessing? What if he came saying: “This
is all too complex for you to grasp the whole. When the drama is completed you
will understand and be glad that you committed to me in trust. I...will...not...let...you...down!”
What kind of God does he have to be to
gain our commitment?
What kind
of God must God be for us to serve him and rejoice in a relationship with him?
This is a good and fundamentally important question. Whatever we say, we
could not and should not worship a deity that is demonstrably worse than we are in our worst moments! If we have no
good reason to believe he is good and if we have well-established reasons to
believe he is cruel and capricious, we should renounce him. [We have a lot of
people picking verses from here and there in the Bible to show God is cruel. We
have a lot of believers who “explain” texts like that to keep God from getting
bad press.]
Of course
God could bludgeon us into saying worshipful things or he could turn us
into automata and he’d get what he wanted. We would be afraid of him and grovel
before him—if he tortured us enough he could make us do that but he could never
get us to freely love and worship and enjoy him. I think the agnostic John S
Mill took himself a bit too seriously but surely he was right when he said that
God must be “good” in the way that good people are “good” if we are to praise
him and love to be in his presence. If “good” has no meaning that we can
recognize, then why would we praise him for being “good”?
So the
question is a good one and an important one in the realm of moral philosophy
but in the light of Jesus Christ in particular and the entire biblical witness
as a unit it’s a redundant question. For those who commit to the truth about
Christ the case is closed—God is good in the way that good people can
understand goodness! [“If you, then, evil as you are know how to give good
things to your children how much more does your Father in heaven…”] I realize
that non-believers dispute that but at this moment we’re not dealing with non-believers.
These remarks are addressed to disappointed and hurting believers whose
questions arise precisely because they believe God is good. If they
didn’t believe God existed or if they believed that he was cruel and capricious
their questions about prayer and God’s behavior wouldn’t exist.
But even
believers are tempted to debate about the kind of God they want to welcome into
their lives. There are those who have trusted in God but because he didn’t or
doesn’t respond as they think he should they have walked away from him. Oh,
they’re pretty sure he’s still around; but what use is he if he doesn’t provide
as they think God should provide? They too work with the question: What kind
of God must God be for us to serve him and rejoice in a relationship with him?
So the question remains a good one and an important one.
But the first question should be…
But it’s
not the first question that should be asked! That question is asked from
the creature’s standpoint and it’s asked very often from a selfish creature’s
standpoint. A creature richly blessed but wanting more. The creature has become
the center around which everything must revolve. Certainly it isn’t always
selfishness that drives the question—sometimes it’s desperation and anguish but
even then, it’s not the first question that should be asked! Even then that
question comes from a human that sees him or herself as the center of reality.
The hurt and anguish makes them their center!
The first
question should be: “What kind of person must I be to welcome the only God
there is into my life?” In light of Jesus Christ and the
Hebrew-Christian scriptures God is good and has an agenda that offers fullness
of life to a sinful humanity. As far as Christ and scripture is concerned it
isn’t for us to make God in our image but for us to seek his image. He isn’t
the one that needs to change.
So, that’s
it, is it? God has all the power and we’re simply to knuckle down to him? We’re
to grovel at the feet of the omnipotent bully that can out-talk and out-think
us? No, that’s not it at all! We misunderstand the notion of “power” in
relation to God and we certainly haven’t seen nor heard of Jesus Christ if we
think God is an omnipotent bully. God help us, because we’re sad and lonely and
hurt and high strung with anguish we want him to make the world work
differently or we want him to change so as to give us some peace and longed-for
joy. It all makes so much sense when we think we’ve taken as much as we can
take. But give us some lovely days or weeks, give us some joy, some things that
make us smile for a while and we know better. Ease the burden a while, give us
a chance to gulp in some fresh air when we’ve been smothering, give us a few
truths—especially if they’re embodied in gallant people—and we smile ruefully
at God and tell him, “Don’t change. I wouldn’t want you to be unlike Jesus
Christ. I’ll change.”
Let
me say it again, anyone who simply refuses
to give material and social help to those in need is liable to have Matthew 25:41-46
stamped on his forehead! Any congregation that caters massively to its own
physical/worship comforts and offers a sheer pittance to the countless
Lazaruses lying around locally and all over creation—that congregation is
asking for the same judgment.
Inspired
and strengthened by bread from the Hebrew—Christian Bible (though they don’t or
won’t admit that) huge numbers of non-believers are up to their necks in easing
the burden of the needy. Huge numbers of believers are doing the same thing and
in many cases they (understandably) avoid linking their work with their faith.
The
danger in this is that humans see kind humans
giving them “real” help and God is
nowhere in sight. Weak and limited humans
are left to help their fellows live another day or ease the pain for another
day or kill a parasite in another child for another day. This is glorious work
and should be praised no matter who it is that’s doing it! But it underscores
the “absence” of God! If decent, compassionate humans weren’t there, there’d be
no help at all.
Because
what the humans can do is so limited and God with all his power “sits idly by”
he is
despised
or raged against by the millions left without a shred of help. The believers
are honored by the needy for their compassionate involvement but their faith is
dismissed. Non-believers admire the involved believers but think they are
better than their faith and their God.
Not
to bring God into the suffering of the world is to do less than we can. To give
a cup of water in Jesus’ name is to harm
no one.
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