Pain and joy pt. 3: The illusion of control

I want to keep going on this idea of brokenness from the last post, because it's crucial to understanding what God accomplishes by allowing pain to exist in this world.  First, a bit of Scripture.  Well, a lot of Scripture:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.--Romans 1:18-32

Look at the pattern that we see here: Knowledge of God and who He is, written into our beings and engraved on creation, is rejected by people who instead desire to do what they want and give honor and glory not to the Creator but to other aspects of creation--nature, gods made with hands, other people, even themselves--and so, God's judgment is to say "If you think that's what you want, then have it, as much as you can stand, and see how it fulfills you." 

Even as He allows people to walk into what they think they want, what they think is good for them, He introduces into it all moments that reveal the utter folly of their thinking to them, reminders that there is impending judgment.  The way we react to that over the course of life is what makes us either men and women transformed by the healing and restoring power of Christ into images of the living God...or people condemned to eternity away from God because we refuse to relinquish our grip on our lives, deeds and thoughts.  Paul wrote to the Corinthians that "You are not your own, for you were bought with a price."  Through the mists of pain and suffering in this world, God works to break us of the belief that we can bring our own lives into a state of perfection and happiness.

And what belief drives our society more, after all?  Walk into any bookstore and you'll see sizable sections devoted to self-help and self-improvement.  Even churches get in on the act, with many people going on Sunday not to hear the Gospel that brings life, but to hear sermon after sermon about how to get what they want out of life--not what God wants them to pursue in life, namely a relationship with Him full of true and unshakable joy, but how to find some semblance of happiness and achievement draped in churchy words.

The book of Job is ripe with the struggle between human self-righteousness and God's holiness.  God allows Satan to take everything from Job: his wealth, his children, his health, leaving him miserable and desperate.  But God's reasons for allowing Satan such latitude, as always, were to glorify Himself by taking the good and righteous Job and teaching him that his goodness was nothing compared to God.

When Job's friends come, they each try to convince him that he must have committed some horrible sin that God is punishing him for.  Job's response to these fools is partially right: he contends that he has not done anything wrong to deserve such punishment, but they persist in believing what many people, even Christians, today believe is the marker of God's behavior: that He punishes bad and rewards good, very simply and cleanly.  Such belief, unrooted as it is in either Scripture or even a modest observation of the way the world works, is a quickstep away from apostasy and atheism, and precisely the reason that the apostles chose to endure sufferings in full view of the church: that they might know that there is a joy that transcends circumstance.  But I digress.

Job is partially wrong in his responses to his friends, because while he is correct in that he is not being punished for a wrong, he is wrong in saying that his own righteous deeds uphold him in God's eyes.  And in that, we get to the reason why God allowed Satan to run roughshod over poor Job.  God wants Job to understand that righteousness is of faith in Him and His redeeming power, not in any act of self.  And after chapter after chapter of Job's alleged friends giving horrible advice and Job being frustrated in the face of it, God finally comes down and shuts everyone up, Job most of all:

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Dress for action like a man;
    I will question you, and you make it known to me.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
    Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
    Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
    or who laid its cornerstone,
when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?--Job 38:1-7

And on and on, God points out the foolishness of Job ever hoping to hold his own righteous acts up to the standards of the Creator God of the universe.  The end of the book is remarkable, because even with all of this God never stops loving Job or viewing him as a beloved servant.  Job's acts do not control his life, but God's sovereignty and love lead him through pain, loss and suffering into a new understanding of his relationship with God and a restoration of what he lost.

But what about what is probably the most striking image of suffering in the Bible--what about Jesus?  Jesus is a paradox in this sense: He absolutely does have control here.  The weather, the waves, the natural and the supernatural are both utterly beholden to His commands.  And He is sinless, He is humble and serves others who see Him as their king and rightful ruler, and He knows the finest details of the Scriptures as only their original Source could possibly know them.  Yet...He chooses to endure some of the worst suffering imaginable.  Why?

For the sake of joy.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.--Hebrews 12:1-2

For the joy that was set before him, Christ went through one of the most horrific days conceived by men, and men did conceive of it--only because He allowed them to.  Jesus did it so that we might understand, this world is not all there is, and our lives that end are not our ultimate purpose.  We spend so many of our days chasing after comfort, pleasure, and when we encounter questions of meaning we either try to sink them into pursuits and religions that cannot fulfill because they were authored by men that, likewise, had no fulfilling of their own, or we drown them in idolatries and pride...but we'll come back to that next time.  But Jesus laid aside every comfort He could have seized as one who was fully man just as He was fully God, for the sake of displaying that the real goal of our lives is to lay them down for the sake of glorifying God to others.

Paul tasted the goodness and joy that accompanied such sufferings, and told of it to Timothy:

For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.--2 Timothy 4:6-8

No shame at what he hadn't experienced or done, no fear of death, only the knowledge that by going for the true, lasting joy of the Father, Paul had embraced the only thing that would ever last.  Esau traded his birthright for a bowl of stew.  Paul, however, embraced his, and suffered far worse than hunger pangs, so that he might have a seat at the eternal banquet.

Let me be clear: I am not saying that Paul did something that made him okay.  But what he did do, was live a life by faith, walking through everything that God led him through until eventually that path led to the executioner.  We don't know where our lives may lead, but we do know that the godly way to endure, to deal with every issue that we encounter in life, is not to "curse God and die" as Job's wife advised him, but to remember that every day we're here is a blessing, is a moment to know that God is providing for us exactly what we need to live and to be transformed into a glorious image of our loving Father.  It's why Paul can say "To live is Christ, and to die is gain" and then go out and live exactly that.  God help me, I hope that I can embrace that truth as much in even the smallest annoyances all the way to the worst sufferings of life.

As we get ready to land this plane, so to speak, and move from this 30,000 foot view of pain into a more personal level, there is one more aspect that I need to discuss next time: that pain is proof of God's love for us.  I've touched it here, and I want to dig deeper.