Making Sense Out of the Pain PART One
Why?
I am sure you have asked yourself that question on more than one occasion.
Something happens, usually something bad,
And we ask ourselves why?
Or maybe you see the pain and the suffering and the injustice of this world and you ask Why?
The atheists like to throw this one into your face.
If God is a God of love why does he allow the innocent to suffer.
Why do natural disasters happen?
Why are children born with handicaps?
Why is their starvation, murder and rape?
Why is their cancer and poverty and death?
They’re angry, they’re hurt, so they lash out in their pain.
The reasoning goes
“If God is love, He would wish to perfectly meet the need of His creatures and if God is almighty He would be able to do what He wished.
But instead we see suffering, depravation, atrocity,
Therefore God lacks either love or power or both.”
(C.S. Lewis, The Problem With Pain, p.23)
When you are on the asking end of “Why” it can really destroy your faith.
Today I would like to give you a brief answer to why there is evil in the world,
Then I want to do is focus on the individual.
Why as a believer do I personally encounter opposition, frustration,
defeat, trouble, trial and tribulation.
Why do I suffer?
In this world there is great beauty, justice and happy endings.
But also there is great ugliness, injustice and atrocity.
The Bible gives us a very general answer to why this is so.
Genesis 1:31 (MSG)
God looked over everything he had made; it was so good, so very good!
So we find in this world good.
We find nobility and virtue and love and peace and beauty.
Genesis 3:6-7 (NLT)
She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. At that moment their eyes were opened. . .
Humanity was created in love, created in the image of God, to enjoy a right
relationship with God, with self, with others and with the earth.
For love to be love, there must be choice.
How do you force someone to love you?
Our idea of love and coercion are mutually exclusive.
To stay in love is a choice.
Scripture reveals to us that humanity choose not to stay in love,
To remain in a righteous relationship.
Thus sin enters the world that God created.
Sin is anything that deters, damages or destroys relationships.
And there are far reaching consequences because of it.
We feel the pain.
The perfect created relationships become estranged.
Humanity no longer relates rightly to God,
To others, to the earth, to self.
Humanity started the fire. (a nod to Billy Joel)
Humanity created in the image of God enjoys creating things, estranged from righteousness,
we are capable of creating something wonderful,
and we are capable unleashing horrors upon the
earth.
That’s why there is evil.
Why are there natural disasters?
Romans 8:20 (NIV)
For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice …
The hurricane that kills, the volcano that erupts, the tsunami that drowns, the earth
that quakes, the lightening that strikes, the bacteria and virus that infect and
the disease that we encounter—all because of estrangement.
Not a scientific explanation,
Rather a moral explanation,
That reveals to us that things are not as they were meant to be.
That message is sent to us in symbols that are too hard to ignore—
This world isn’t right and I can’t make it right.
We feel the pain
Why is that anticipated and prayed for child born with a handicap or
Some untreatable congenital disease?
Its not the sin of the parents, its not the sin of the child,
Its because we live in a broken world,
And when we ask, why did God allow it to be broken—
The Bible answers it was part of love’s risk to give humanity
free will.
The innocent suffer, and it screams at us that things are not right.
That we don’t have what it takes to right the wrongs,
To bring justice to the situation.
We feel the pain.
Then there is the evil that we do to one another.
Humanity, not God, created “the racks, whips, prisons, slavery, guns,
bayonets and bombs.” (CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p 79)
Humanity estranged creates
Auschwitz, Abu Ghraib, the Dafur genocide and Wars
Humanity estranged creates
serial killers, rapists, murders, and pedophiles
Humanity estranged created
Betrayal, abandonment, infidelity, exploitation and thieves.
Scripture reveals to us that the sins of the fathers carry on in their children.
Deuteronomy 5:8-10 speaks to me of Intergenerational chains of sin
that just seem to grow and grow with each generation.
Humanity brings untold calamity upon itself.
We feel the pain.
Though it seems easier to accept that people do evil things to people,
We still have that nagging question why doesn’t God intervene to stop it.
The bible gives us an answer:
God has intervened in the incarnation, ministry, death and resurrection of
His son.
It is through faith in Jesus Christ,
Being His disciple,
That estrangement begins to be reconciled.
The promise of God is that through God the Son,
He will eventually set all things right.
Evil will be defeated,
Death will be no more,
Every tear will be wiped dry,
Everything will be set right.
Jesus leads us on an Exodus out of wrongness into righteousness.
“But there is a limit to this intervention:
God has allowed man freewill,
and He allows man to use that freewill -- for good or ill.”
(http://www.christadelphia.org/pamphlet/sufferng.htm)
So God does not over rule the choices people make;
even when they bring great evil and suffering on the world.
And when they do,
We Feel the pain
The scripture indicates that even allowing for free-will God restrains the forces of
Evil from making the Holocaust look like a picnic.
2 Thessalonians 2:7 (NIV)
For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way.
So God is at work. God is intervening.
Is it our narcissism that convinces us that God hasn’t intervened?
We see an injustice, we see an innocent suffer,
we see the things that cause us to question the love of God,
the goodness of God,
Then from our finite perspectives we conclude that God
hasn’t intervened.
What of the times when justice is served, the innocent escape,
the sick is healed, the problem solved and the catastrophe is averted?
Did God intervene here?
If we acknowledge that yes God did intervene
Then we are still stuck with wondering why doesn’t God intervene
Everywhere, in every situation?
The scripture gives us an answer,
Though it is not intellectually satisfying,
Faith finds it enough.
Isaiah 55:8-9 (NIV)
For my
thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my
ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
“Pain offers a general message of warning to all humanity that something is wrong
with this [life] and that we need radical outside intervention.”
(Phillip Yancy, Where is God When it Hurts, p 84)
Why is there evil in this world?
Because of sin.
Because the world is broken, just like you and me.
And God has intervened to restore all things to their created
perfection.
God just might be intervening with you now through this presentation.
By far my observations are not the last word on the topic.
What I’ve said is not even a brief introduction but
Hopefully what I have said will open a dialogue up and
we can wrestle with these thoughts together.
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What I want to do now is consider pain in the life of the believer.
We’re not going to ask why as much as we are going to search for meaning
in our pain.
I know that once pain is in the rear view mirror,
Sometimes you can get a perspective on it that is totally impossible to grasp
when your in the midst of the hurt.
You see the incredible truth of Romans 8:28
Romans 8:28 (NIV)
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
It’s only God who can bring good out of the bad.
Who can transform times of pain into blessings.
One thing I am absolutely sure of is that God desires you be holy,
So God is more concerned with your righteousness than your happiness.
Holiness and happiness are not mutually exclusive,
Happiness is a fruit of holiness.
Yet, Holiness is God’s primary concern for you.
A lot of people seem to be confused about holiness.
It’s not that hard of a concept.
Holiness is being like God.
Being like God is being like Jesus.
The path of discipleship is a process of transformation
into the Christ likeness, into righteousness.
As an active participant in the process of transformation,
you are holy, becoming holy and will be holy.
That in a nut shell is what holiness is all about.
Transformation into the image of Christ, holiness,
Is God’s number one concern for you.
God knows that your happiness hinges on holiness.
Even after you are living the ABC’s of the faith,
Accepting that fact that you need a Savior.
Believing that Jesus is that Savior.
Committing yourself to discipleship.
Even after God does His great work of redemption in you,
Birthing you spiritually.
And Hence the term “born again.”
As glorious and incredible this experience is
there is a particular sin that remains.
There is a work to be done in your spiritual life.
You haven’t arrived, you’ve just started the journey.
Its not too far in that journey that you run into this sin.
We generally define sin as anything that deters, damages or destroys right
relationships.
And the biggest culprit is egoism.
Egoism is the self centered on the self.
That desire to be your own God; to be the authority;
To be the arbitrator of morality; to be self-directing.
A.W. Tozer calls egoism the self sins.
“self-love, self-pity, self-seeking, self-confidence, self-righteousness,
self-defense.” (The Best of AW Tozer volume 2, p 77)
Egoism comes disguised as self-sufficiency.
“I can handle what comes my way.”
“I have the resources I need to be victorious.”
“I am a rock, I am an Island”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My9I8q-iJCI
The Apostle Paul calls egoism the “root of sinful self-interest”
Galatians 5:17 (MSG)
For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day.
Egoism is a road block to holiness.
God wants to remove that road block so that you can be who He created you
to be and do the things He created you for.
Egoism creates an illusion.
Or maybe I should say delusion.
It grips us often without our even being aware of it.
Egoism “will not even begin to try to surrender …
as long as all seems to be well with it.” (CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p 82)
It is not until egoism is confronted with the fact that all things are not well
that we begin to question our abilities to handle life.
Pain is a wake up call. (CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p 84)
That we are not as strong as we think we are.
Pain shatters the delusion that all is well (Lewis, p. 85)
Pain shatters the delusion that what we have what it takes (Lewis, p 85)
Pain asks egoism “are you tired of your way?”
“Do you need some help?”
Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when
everything is going well with us. (Lewis, p 85) (Deuteronomy 8:12-14)
Pain causes us to think about God.
Our thoughts can drive us to or away from God.
If towards God then
Our pain causes us to bring in to question our self-
sufficiency which leads us to bringing our egoism
to God.
Pain teaches us that we are only sufficient as God empowers us to be.
We discover that there is no sufficiency outside of God.
So pain can serve as a wake up call.
We seldom change and seek God when we see the light,
Its usually only when we feel the heat,
That we are sufficiently motivated to search outside of
ourselves for the remedy to our pain.
2 Corinthians 7:9-10 (MSG)
You let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss. Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets.
I’m going to add suffering now to our discussion—
As if I haven’t caused you enough suffering already today. J
I’m thinking here of long time chronic pain and suffering.
It could be physical or emotional.
It could be some kind of oppression, poverty, persecution.
The Apostle Paul was sufficiently vague when he described his pain and suffering
Possibly so that we can all relate to his situation.
2 Corinthians 12:7-8 (NIV)
To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.
Paul says that whatever was plaguing him kept him humble.
Pride is another facet of egoism --
“The desire to be master of our own lives and to be independent from
God” (J. Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Maturity, p. 61)
“The subtlety of pride is seen in the fact that its victims are generally
quite oblivious to their bondage.” (Sanders, p. 65)
Now I don’t think God gets His jollies by seeing how much He can mess
with someone’s life.
We live in a broken world and broken things happen.
Lamentation 3:33 (NIV)
For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.
I’m still trying to come to terms what the Prophet Jeremiah wrote.
There is a man who new all about pain and suffering.
Where I am right now, is that God will use any means necessary,
Including pain and suffering to draw you to Himself.
What is key here is to read God’s response and Paul’s conclusion.
2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV)
But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.
Do you see how the pride associated with egoism is being dealt a death blow here?
Paul says I can’t do what I am doing on my own accord.
Its God, using this weakness, this pain and suffering to do more than I
could ever accomplish if I were whole.
Pain and suffering destroys the delusion of our
independence.
Grace is the desire to be and the power to do.
Truly a gift from God.
It is by His grace that we find strength to endure,
power to accomplish in spite of,
the will to choose joy in the midst of the suffering,
and a supernatural solace in the soul.
Pain and suffering can spiritually poison you
Or it can purge you of egoism.
“Dependence,
humility,
simplicity,
cooperation,
abandon
–these are qualities greatly prized in the spiritual life,
but extremely elusive for people who live in comfort.” (Yancey, p. 145)
At age 17 Joni Erickson Tada suffered a spinal injury which resulted in her
becoming quadriplegic.
She writes:
“I was devastated.
My life had been so full.
I was involved in as many school activates as I could squeeze in.
And suddenly I found myself all alone, just a bare,
immobile body between two sheets.
My hobbies and possessions were meaningless to me.
Those beautiful horse in the barn which I used to trick-ride,
standing on their shoulders - I would never ride them again.
I couldn’t even feed myself,
I could sleep and breathe; everything else someone did for me.”
(Yancy, p 130)
Her story is epic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t_lCNG6gy4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KimqzNy6Kus&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUkcu17I2Ng&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn1EWco33u8&feature=related
Joni is on the path in a mode of travel I sure don’t ever want to be on.
Yet she has allowed what has happened to her to draw her closer to God.
In her holiness she discovered that happiness is not important.
In doing so, there is a greater happiness that is hers.
Listening to her, she is not happy over her situation.
But she finds God’s grace sufficient to not allow a
broken body from doing a mighty work.
There she finds a greater happiness.
We can allow pain and suffering to drive us away from God.
The atheist and the cynic have allowed that.
They see the condition of the world and declare there is no God.
They don’t realize that its our mess,
They don’t realize that their anger needs to be directed at
fixing the brokenness
Or we can allow pain and suffering to drive us into the arms of God.
There we will find that He is constantly interceding,
Calling for us to partner with Him in healing the brokenness,
Not only in our own lives, but in the entire world.
Today we discovered why there is evil in the world.
Not a scientific answer, but a spiritual one.
Its because of sin.
The world is broken.
Humanity is broken.
Far from doing nothing,
God has intervened and is working to make all things righteous.
We now know that God is more concerned about our holiness than our
happiness.
Today we learned that pain and suffering
wake us up to our problem with egoism and
can purge us of our foolish pride.
God’s grace, supernatural, beyond comprehension,
is His gift to us to move us through our pain and
suffering into holiness.
A message like this should open up a floodgate of comments and questions,
Observations and concerns.
I welcome them, I want to dialogue with you about what you think.
But let me tell you, I do not have an answer for your why questions?
I couldn’t even begin to give Joni and explanation for why she is a
paraplegic and why God hasn’t seen fit to heal her after all
these years.
I don’t think that there is an answer to any why question.
We can only observe how individuals have dealt with their pain
and suffering and brought meaning out of the experience.
Each individual must turn to God and seek Him
for only He can bring good out of the pain that you are
dealing with.