Healing Rays of Righteousness

Christian Faith and Does God Care

When there seems to be no answers to our pain and suffering, how can Christian faith encourage our confidence that God truly does see, know, and care about what is happening to us?  To unwrap a response to that question, I’m asking you to ponder a very important question – “On a scale of 1-10, how precious do you think you are to God?”

Philip Yancey, the author of “Disappointment with God” says that he was surprised to find so many expressions of doubt and anguish in the Psalms and the writings of Old Testament prophets.  However, “In striking contrast, the New Testament Epistles contain very little of this anguish.  The problem of pain has surely not gone away: …. But nowhere do I find the piercing question ‘Does God care?’  I see nothing resembling the accusation, Has God forgotten to be merciful?  The reason for the change, I believe, is that Jesus had answered that question for the witnesses who wrote the Epistles.  In Jesus, God gave us a face.”

At the beginning of his Gospel, John introduces Jesus’ birth into our world – “In the beginning was the Word (Jesus), and the Word (Jesus) was with God, and the Word (Jesus) was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  …The Word (Jesus) became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (Jn. 1:1-2,14).

John continues by telling us that God so loved the world, you and me, that he sent his one and only Son, Jesus, into our world as a helpless, needy human baby just like you and me, to suffer the growing-up pains and temptations of human childhood, teenager, and young adult years, just like you and me.  And then in response to God’s call to be our Savior in the world, he was subjected to the sufferings of ridicule, rejection, injustice, and death as a human being, just like you and me.

Why did Jesus need to suffer?  Hebrews 2:14-18 tells us “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity ….”  He had to become just like us,  “fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.”  And also, “because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted (tested).”

If I understand this correctly, it is only because you and I are so very precious to God, that Jesus willingly laid aside his glorious royalty, his all-mighty sovereignty, his perfect holiness, to come down and live as a human being in our human world, in order to taste the bitterness of sin and experience first-hand the painful sufferings of human life, so that he could rescue, redeem and reclaim us as his brothers and sisters in the great, eternal family of God.

This is the good news the angels proclaimed on the night of his birth into our human world – “Do not be afraid.  I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.  Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.”

That, my fellow human being, is how precious you are to God.   “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!  And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1).

I agree with Philip Yancey that in Jesus’ coming to earth, God gave us a human face so that we could better see and know that God truly does love us and cares about what is happening to us.  During the three years that the disciples lived and traveled with Jesus they learned first-hand about how deeply God felt about suffering by watching Jesus respond to all kinds of sufferings.  No, Jesus did not solve the problem of pain and suffering, but he did consistently live and demonstrate that God does care for those who are experiencing all kinds of pain and suffering.  And so, because of Jesus, I can trust that God truly understands my pain, that I matter to God, and that he cares. 

And my Christian faith is very simply my believing, trusting, worshipful response to God’s unconditional, undeserved, unfathomable love for me and all creation.  Even though I don’t always understand and may question his ways in my life and world, my faith keeps me secure in the knowledge that God knows, God sees, and God deeply cares about what is happening to me, and has promised never to leave me nor forsake me.  And I have found that my times of suffering, more than any other experience, gently led me into this deeper and more intimate relationship with God; and his comforting, healing grace has always been sufficient for me.

Furthermore, my Christian faith is anchored in the knowledge that everything is under the control of the almighty, all-knowing, sovereign God who loves me more than I can ever imagine.

 “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted (tested) in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin.  Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”  (Hebrews 4:14-16).

Suffering and God

Where is God when it hurts? Isaiah 63:7-9 speaks of God’s relationship with his people, and says, “In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them.  In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.”

Why do bad things happen to good, righteous people?  Job’s story tells us that sometimes we suffer precisely because we are righteous.  We know that Satan hates righteousness, and wants to destroy it in any way he can.  And so, he tempts us to sin, and in getting us to sin he hopes to destroy any righteous relationship we may have with God.

And if he can’t succeed in tempting us to sin, he will attack us by way of our family, our job, our physical bodies, to the maximum degree that our God will allow him to do so, hoping that we will give in to doubts about God, to denial of God’s existence, and to turning angry and bitter toward God.

I believe Job’s story reveals the following basic truths which can help us better understand God’s perspective on human suffering:

 First – The painful sufferings we experience are more likely due to Satan’s attack on us in his attempt to diminish and destroy our faith, rather than being an act of God punishing us for personal sin.  At other times it may simply be the consequence of our bad choices.  This is the human reality of living on planet earth where all kinds of evil abound, and the followers of Christ are not exempt from its sufferings.

Second – God accepts responsibility for allowing Satan’s attack on his followers, but retains sovereign control over Satan by setting limits to his attacks (Job 1:8-12 & 2:3-7).

Third – Our sufferings are not just about us.  Like we saw in Job, suffering tends to make us rather egocentric in saying “Why me?” and “Woe is me.”  Although Job never got his “why” question answered, he did come to realize that his hardships were about something bigger than his afflictions.  God overwhelmed Job with a litany of every day, everywhere evidences of his presence and power.  (Job 40:3-5 & 42:1-6).  This revelation from God transformed Job’s “why” questions into a “worship” response of confession and praise (Job 42:1-6).

Fourth – Job’s story of wrestling with God, gives us permission to do the same.  And we learn that spiritual unrest and questioning is a struggle that can teach us much about ourselves and our God, and hopefully strengthen us in Godly faith, trust, and hope.

Fifth – Because Job firmly believed that God loved him and would rescue him, he was able to maintain his integrity and faith in God throughout his suffering and so can we.  Job believed that God’s supreme sovereignty was consistently interwoven with his love and thus had a right to rule over his life.  In his own words, he asked, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job 2:10).  He also counted on God’s promise of resurrection.  Again in his own words, he declared, “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth.  And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I will see him with my own eyes – I, and not another.  How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25-26).

Finally – Job’s God is the same God we worship today.  He is unchanging and his sovereign knowledge and control of things remains far above our best understanding.  We need to always remember that we are “creature” and God is “creator.”  Accepting this understanding of our relationship with God leads us to an eternal perspective of humility, submission, and dependence upon God.  

I continue to find the following few scriptures helpful in my understanding of God’s perspective and participation in our sufferings.  I would encourage you to read them frequently in order to strengthen your faith and trust in the God who created and cares deeply for you.

Psalm 139:1-18 – a lengthy and detailed assurance that God is everywhere and completely knows me and my whereabouts, and protects and cares for me.  “How precious to me are your thoughts, God!  How vast is the sum of them.”

Isaiah 43:1-3 – assumes suffering and assures me that I will not be destroyed by my sufferings, “For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”

Lamentations 3:22-26, 31-33 – God is always compassionate and “does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone.”

Job’s story clearly portrays God as allowing Satan to attack Job in order to test Job’s faith relationship with God.  The following scriptures lead me to believe that God continues to use our sufferings for the purpose of testing our faith, strengthening our trust, and deepening our love relationship with him.

Romans 5:3-5: “…but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”   – God would have us grow in righteousness and the only way we will ever grow is by exercising our spiritual muscles of faith, trust, and righteous living.

I agree with Ernest Hemingway when he wrote, “The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong in the broken places.”  He reminds us that we can use suffering to become stronger in our weak and broken places.  Some of the noblest human traits flourish in the soil of suffering – compassion, kindness, fortitude, patience, sympathy, and humility to name a few.

Above all, suffering reminds us that life on this earth is temporary.  This present place is not our home.  We wait in anticipation of our eternal home with God in his kingdom.  And so, “Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.” (Hebrews 12:1b-2a).

Job’s Story of Suffering

Read Job 1-2

In our effort to understand why bad things happen to good, godly people I think it important to hear the story of a good, righteous man named Job.  Job is a wealthy, highly respected, successful, godly man who suffered greatly.  His story of sufferings begins with this backdrop, “In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job.  This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.  … He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.”  This sterling characterization of Job is repeated by the Lord in verse 8 and in chapter 2, verse 3.                   

But then tragedy struck and in quick succession Job loses everything precious to him.  His flocks are stolen.  His servants are put to the sword.  Celestial flames engulf his sheep.  His children are crushed in a windstorm.  His skin burns with open sores.  It’s hard to imagine the severity of Job’s sufferings.

Beginning in chapter 3 and for the next 35 chapters, we hear Job, his wife, three of his friends, and a pretentious young man named Elihu wrestling with Job’s question, “What have I done to deserve this?”  It’s the same question many of us have shouted out to God when we were emotionally and spiritually overwhelmed with painful losses of things and persons precious to us.

Just like his fellow believers in God, Job’s faith is anchored in God’s divine sovereignty.  He believes God is firmly in control of the universe.  Furthermore, his religious tradition is anchored in a system of strict moral retribution:  “God blesses the righteous, but curses and afflicts the unrighteous.”   In other words, good people are rewarded and only wicked, evil people are punished.

However, Job finds himself suffering the punishments of the wicked without having done the deeds to deserve them.  And so, Job’s moral universe has crumbled into a pile of confusion and controversy, causing Job to now be a man without a creed.  He can’t explain what has happened to him.  He can’t find an adequate response to the counter the criticism from his friends .

Biblical scholars say that Job’s story is mostly about whether or not Job will abandon his faith in God under the anguish of severe suffering.  And as the story progresses we discover that the crux of the matter is more about Job’s faith in God then about his sufferings, which is expressed in Job’s question to his wife, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (2:10).

At first, Job refuses to question God for what had happened in his life.  But after crying out to God with his desire to die, and after suffering so much scorn from his wife and friends, Job is ready to have it out with God.  “If only I knew where to find him; if only I could go to his dwelling!  I would state my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments.  I would find out what he would answer me, and consider what he would say to me.” (23:3-4); and later, “I cry out to you, God, but you do not answer; I stand up, but you merely look at me.” (30:20).  In these verses we hear the anguished cry of Job’s deeply wounded soul saying to his Lord, “You don’t seem to care about me, Lord.”

Finally, in chapter 38, God breaks his long silence and responds to Job’s taunts by counter-challenging Job’s challenge for God to defend himself.  Interestingly, God’s response to Job is a series of rhetorical questions that Job cannot begin to answer, and no answer is expected.

We may question the purposes of God in this lengthy series of questions to Job.  But I am confident that it was not to display and confirm God’s righteousness within the moral, religious framework that Job and his friends propose, but rather the purpose is to shift the focus of debate from Job’s innocence to Job’s ignorance, and the role this ignorance plays in Job’s questioning the “why” of suffering.

I say this because I too experienced similar questionings from God’s Spirit when journeying through my times of bad things happening.  And I believe that God’s questioning me did more to evoke within me the feelings of majestic awe and mystery then what any direct statements describing God’s power and glory would have done.

Through the telling of his power and sovereignty in nature, God is telling Job the only thing he needs to know in his time of suffering:  “I am who I am.”

•  – I am all-knowing and wise while you lack understanding (38:2-4, 42:3);
• – I am all-present.  My eye sees all and my presence touches all;
• – I am all-powerful and can do anything I will.
• – I designed the world (38:4-7) and I control it (38:8-13).

I believe God’s speech to Job portrays the encounter of a mere human with the Almighty, who is the powerful, all-loving and ever-caring God.  As is always his intent, God’s speech brings Job to his knees.  And in similar fashion the psalmist is brought to his knees and ponders, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?”  (Psalm 8:3-4).

God’s speech ends as it began, completely ignoring the narrow, elementary questioning with which Job and his friends have approached the problem of suffering.  God did not give Job any answers, but instead  overwhelmed Job with a verbal display of his indisputable supreme knowledge, presence, and power as creator and controller of all things, and whose actions in all creation are way beyond our human comprehension.

Yes, this refocusing of our thoughts regarding God’s sovereignty and majesty can be helpful in reassuring me of God’s ability, but where is God when I hurt?  More about that next week.

Why Do Bad Things Happen?

Ray M. Geigley

This is a very troublesome question that we all struggle with at some point in our life’s journey. Last October, I was asked to share my understanding of the biblical response to this question in a weekend church retreat setting.  I do not pretend to have all the answers, but would like to share some reflections that have come to me during my many years of pastoral and chaplaincy ministries, and from my own journeying through several very significant and difficult “bad” experiences.  I plan to spread my thinking on this question over the next several weeks and hopefully build a more adequate biblical understanding that encourages your heart.

Read Genesis 1-3

For both Judaism and Christianity the understanding of this basic question comes from the Hebrew Scriptures, which we call the Old Testament.  It begins this way:  “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  The story unfolds, describing the progression of creation, one event upon another.

Then human life is created.  First it is man, then as the Creator notes, it isn’t good for man to live alone, so he creates woman.  The two are given responsibility for overseeing the grand and beautiful world that God has created for their provision and enjoyment.

There are three important things to note in this beginning story of humankind and the wonderful perfect world they were placed in as partners and caretakers with God.

First, God alone created everything.  There is nothing other than God; there are no other gods, no other authority or power to which God is subservient.  All life came from his will and word alone.

Secondly, After creating the cosmos, God saw that it was good, and after creating humankind he pronounced his work as very good. There is no evil, no badness in all of this creation.

Thirdly, Human life is unique in that it bears the image of its Creator.  Though animal and plant life were also seen as good, only the human being was stamped with the likeness of the Creator.  This was God’s special work, the epitome of his desire to create a living creature with whom he could have an intimate relationship and be loved by.

From the beginning, it was God’s intent that in the harmony and balance of creation, human life would gladly and obediently carry out his will and concern as the supreme and sovereign Creator of all things.  In creating us humans he also empowered us with the ability and responsibility to participate with him as caretaker and stewards of all his good creation.

That’s the essence of the first two chapters of the biblical story of beginnings in Genesis.  But then the story takes a sad and ugly turn in chapter three.  Deception and disobedience are two earth-quaking events that pull shut the curtain on God’s “good” creation of all things.  Satan’s deception and mankind’s sin of disobedience brings “badness” and “death” into the human experience from that time forward.  The consequences were significant, immediate, and continuing:

1. Creation was cursed – both the serpent (v.14) and the ground (vv.17b-18).
2. Humans were driven out of the good garden into a life of sufferings; a life of shame, fear, blaming others, painful childbirth and difficulty in working for food to survive, ending in death.
3. Fellowship with God is broken.
4. Community with one another and with all creation is destroyed.

Living on this side of that cataclysmic break, it is hard to grasp the vastness of its consequence.  Humans entered into an entirely different way of life when they disobeyed God, losing their purity and intimacy with the divine. The devastation of that disobedience broke the harmony of creation and humanity, pitting one against the other, and changed the entire relationship of God to creation.

The resulting impact was global.  The man and woman were set at odds with one another and with creation. The principle of shared resources was turned upside down.  Resources became objects of greed and envy.  The powerful hoarded rather than shared.  Instead of care for the environment, abuse and pollution became accepted standards.

God’s human creation began to oppress others and their environment.  And God sent prophet after prophet to warn the people about their sin, and to invite them back into a relationship of forgiveness and love with himself, as was his intention in creating humans.

This is the world in which we live.  A world where bad things happen and keep on happening. Deception and disobedience not only opened the eyes of Adam and Eve but also the fountain of evil that spills over all the earth everywhere and every day.  Pain and suffering exists and we are continually seeking refuge and relief from it, all the while wondering what life would be like if sin had never been introduced into our world.

However, we are still left with the question, “Why do bad things happen to righteous, godly people?”  That will be our focus next week.  I hope you will prayerfully tune in.