Yes, all three of those have something to do with this =) First off, we need coffee, as I might be at this one for a while! If it’s long, I apologize ahead of time, and thank you for bearing with me.
OK, I go to NewChurch in Georgetown, which I like because it’s not your “typical” church. And I don’t JUST mean it’s not “3 songs, 5 points, and a poem” (although it is sometimes 3 songs lol!), but it’s…REAL. I think that’s the best way I can put it. The pastor’s don’t whitewash things, Grace is put into practice rather than simply talked about, and in a year there I have yet to hear a judgmental word–I know, I know, crazy isn’t it! I know there are other churches that actually Live the message around, and for that I am glad, but they are way too few and far between, at least in my personal experience.
Anywho, in the weekly handouts there are always a couple of questions. Either last week’s or the week’s before, one of them was the oft asked “What is God’s role in pain and suffering?” This is one of those questions Spirit has been after me to sit down and wrestle out for a little bit now, or maybe more to wrestle with putting to words what it is in my heart here. So…here goes.
First off, I’m afraid the majority of Americans in alot of ways don’t know the meaning of suffering, not really. I’ve been to Haiti, I have friends who are missionaries in Africa, one of my dearest friends has serve with YWAM and done work with human trafficking and works with autistic and Downs kids for a living. I had lived with what is defined by the medical community as “severe abuse” for many years of my life. I contrast this with being in a Sunday school class a few years ago and a very well dressed and bejeweled woman in the class complaining of the suffering in her life because, and I quote, “my husband and I are arguing about whether we should purchase a 4th car or a boat.” Now, I have nothing against being well dressed, Lord knows I love jewelry, and if you have enough children of driving age one may consider a 4th car a “need”, I suppose. But that is not “suffering”. We are WAY too soft & cushy in this country, and we tend to look down on those who are not in the same position, as a society. But that’s another post.
There is though real suffering, even in this country, and pretty much 100% of people know what “pain” is. Whether it’s the loss of a loved one, a relationship, a pet, a job, a home or a thousand other things, pain is universal. I am interpreting the question to mean “mental and emotional pain”, even though physical pain is also universal. It’s just that can range from a paper cut to loss of limbs in war or disease, for example. The latter bring mental and emotional pain with them. Paper cuts are a bummer, and can sting like the bejeebers, but they don’t cause internal anguish. *wink*
And this is getting long, already *sigh*. Gathering thoughts…
First off, I personally take a huge amount of exception with how we blame God, Jehovah, Abba for all that is wrong with this world. Natural disasters are “acts of God”, sickness is blamed on Him, heck, everything that goes wrong in our lives. Yet I don’t often see the converse happening. We take the blessings for granted, as if they are our due.
I know this begs the debate of “well, God ALLOWS these things to happen.” OK…I sort of see that, but from a different angle. No, God didn’t step in and annihilate those who began sexually abusing me at 2 and 3 yrs of age. Nor did He destroy those participating in unspeakable acts of ritual abuse, nor Hitler or any other despot since time began. He didn’t stop those children from being born with mind or body crippling diseases, or the horrors of war. I have a harder time with the diseases issue, but at the same time, I think it goes back to the same thing-we, as a species, have brought alot of this on ourselves. We expose our bodies to chemicals they were never designed to deal with. We eat poorly, exercise poorly, stress way too much for our health. We handed control of this world over to the enemy thousands of years ago and he has run with it. We gave dominion to a monster, what do we expect? God to break His own laws? If He does that, how does He differ from Satan?
We were created in His image. Jehovah, as part of that, gave us the gift of free will… and we promptly turned it into a curse of sorts (sometimes). If He overrides our free will, He is in violation of Himself, of Who He is. Yes, I believe God is all powerful. Free will does not negate that fact. And if a person decides to use his or her will to commit atrocities, then that is that person’s choice. That is not God’s fault.
We also overlook Gods immense mercy, and His own statement that He desires none to be lost, but all to come to repentance. If He were to step in and stop much of our suffering, it would require Him to choose one human over another. Any parent can see the issues with that. Only Father knows all ends, all possible ends, which is the actual Hebrew of that verse. If He does not let it play out, isn’t He then possibly denying the opportunity of repentance to one who desperately needs it? And trust me, MY human side sometimes doesn’t want that–it is something I have had to struggle with. My abusers come to repentance?! My flesh wants judgement, justice, or what I deem as justice. But is it really?Ouch, and I have to think on that one…
But then…and this is another whole line of thinking, maybe, and one I also deeply believe, even if it seems counter. Jesus flat out told us “in this world you WILL have trouble.” We are told in Peter’s (?) writing that Jesus was perfected/matured through suffering. Suffering is actually a rather common theme all throughout the NT. If Jesus needed to endure suffering, who are we to think we need anything less? So in that sense, maybe God does have a hand in it….but as usual, it is a conundrum, a..oh, what word am I looking for?? Father certainly had a hand in Jobs’ suffering, one could even say set Job up for it. Practically dangled him in front of Satan like a lure, for that matter. I’m not sure we are ever even really told WHY, the end point of His doing that. And He certainly doesn’t tell Job why. When He finally comes and addresses Jobs’ complaints it’s basically a “when you are able to create all these things on your own, and do all these things on your own, we’ll talk about WHY” response, and in a rather intimidating manner. But here I think is where Job differs, and the source of the righteousness God was bragging on him for in the first place. He simply accepts God’s answer for what it is, and says You’re right, and I’m shutting up now (like my paraphrasing? lol!). And then Father turns on Jobs “friends” and lays into them, and gives Job another compliment, that in all of Jobs complaints, He still always spoke right of Him. Which I also find interesting, as the friends were doing what we do today–blaming the victim. “You had to have sinned and brought this on yourself”. God was NOT happy with that line of thought, and told them they better hope Job would make sacrifice and beg mercy for them. The implied “because if he doesn’t” is a bit alarming. Yet, I still sometimes find myself wondering…well, what really was the end game there? I have to accept Job’s response, and his cry mid-book has been a life line for most of my life–“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” And maybe that was the point. Really, honestly, how many of us see God in that light? If He lets the Destroyer do what he does–steal, kill, destroy as Jesus put it–if He allows the death of your children, the destruction of your livelihood, the theft of all you have….will you, will I, STILL trust Him? If He brings us to the point of death, if He were to do so with His own sword, would we STILL trust Him?
Do we REALLY accept, in other words, that HE is God, and not we? I think that is God’s place in suffering, perhaps. Testing us, and we are told we WILL be tested in the epistles. Where, really, are our hearts? How deep, really, does this faith go for us? Does it go all the way in, to the points of our greatest fears, our deepest vulnerabilities? Or will we “curse God and die”, and that death be on a much deeper level than the simple stopping of our heartbeat, the cessation of breath?
The lump of clay in the potters hands, if it were alive and could feel, would have to hurt during the process of being molded, I would think. Jehovah tells us repeatedly in Isaiah, He is the Potter and we are the clay. Jesus told us that unless a seed is buried and dies, it stays just a seed. All of it’s potential is lost. Am I willing to die, on oh-so-many levels…to stay on the wheel and not jump off when He is pinching and pushing and pulling and molding, and then moves on to the detail work, when I get there, and pulls out carving knives and starts to sculpt? I think it would be safe to say the clay suffers, as it is becoming a vessel. Do I still trust Him through that? I pray to God I do…
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