Pain and joy pt. 4: The difficult doctrine of the love of God

Let me say first and foremost that the title is borrowed from the title of an excellent book by D.A. Carson, which I highly recommend.  It's not a long read, but it absolutely is worth every moment spent digging in.  I borrow it because I believe it plays into what I am going to talk about in this post, which is one of the most challenging, frustrating and, quite frankly, offensive truths about pain and suffering that we need to address: that pain is a sign that of God's love for us.

Why offensive?  Because we as humans begin our lives with a very backwards and twisted (from God's perspective) view of who we are in relation to the world, and who God is in relation to us.  Humanity has a very upside-down view of the relationship between God and man--at least, I would argue, any outsider looking in would certainly think so  Imagine, for example, going to a store and seeing a parent and child.  The child wants to grab everything, eat whatever he can get his hands on, you know, typical kid stuff, and wails his head off when the parent yanks bottles of poison from his mitts.  All the kid knows is, he wants what he wants and he can't think of any good reason why he shouldn't have that. 

You, the stranger watching this wrestling match between a kid who would just as soon kill himself as obey his parent, and a parent who only wants the best for the child and is bound and determined that he is going to learn this one way or another, see the reality of the situation for what it is.  The parent is not trying to harm the child; on the contrary, he wants to prevent harm, by keeping danger away and by teaching the child what is and is not acceptable.  But the kid sees bright colors, sees things that he can grab, put in his mouth, things that he thinks are good--and he can't stand the idea that this person dares to intrude on his personal kingdom with that most hated of words: "No." 

We have no trouble recognizing that this kid desperately needs that parental intervention.  But now we look at our own lives: we go after all manner of things that are poisonous to us physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and as I discussed before God takes all manner of tactics to remove our hands from them and point us towards what is truly good for us.  And we act towards God exactly the way that unruly child acts towards his parent: ungrateful, furious, full of hate for any limitation on our desires and more than willing to justify to ourselves anything we might possibly want.

Come, let us return to the LORD, for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.  After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.  Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.--Hosea 6:1-3

It's one of the most common questions when trying to speak to someone about the Gospel, about the love of God in this cruel, broken world: "What kind of loving God would allow x into the world?" with the variable representing anything from historical mass wickedness of mankind like the Holocaust or the slaughter of American Indians, to personal wrongs felt like the death of family or the loss of a job.  And the reality of it is, this is a hard question to answer because it's hard to look someone in the eye and say "Human experience, even your own, does not outweigh God's Word or His will."  That certainly doesn't feel loving or compassionate, and in reality that's not the way to deal with someone with such a hangup.

But love is the issue, and here is where God's conception of love--which is to say, seeking to lead us to our best and most ultimate purpose, which is to know and love Him above all other things and to understand that He is our source of life--and our conception of it--being given what we desire, being set free from strife and struggle--begin to differ.

In preparing this sermon I have been reading quite a bit, and one book I knew I had to reread was C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain.  I've spoken before about my love for his work, and how he helped to shape my earliest images of the real relationship between myself and Jesus by his depictions of Aslan.  Indeed, if you read The Chronicles of Narnia I believe you will see illustrations of exactly the sort of paradox of pain and love I'm talking about here.  I don't agree with everything he says; for example, his belief in God-directed evolution, and we definitely have different views on the sovereignty of God.  But I think his illustration of the right relationship between God and man, and how sin severed it, deserves quoting:

Up to that moment [when man first sinned] the human spirit had been in full control of the human organism.  It doubtless expected that it would retain this control when it had ceased to obey God.  But its authority over the organism was a delegated authority which it lost when it ceased to be God's delegate.  Having cut itself off, as far as it could, from the source of its being, it had cut itself off from the source of power.  For when we say of created things that A rules B this must mean that God rules B through A.  I doubt whether it would have been intrinsically possible for God to continue to rule the organism through the human spirit when the human spirit was in revolt against him.--C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

So if we are seperated from God, by our own rebellious acts and desires, that separation compounding the rebellion upon itself, what is God's answer?  He must find a way to teach us truth, and make a way into hardened and sinful hearts to let that truth be heard, take root, and grow into full flower.  So God disciplines directly, while at the same time displaying for us what would seem to us to be a series of strange inversions to our understanding of how the world works.  We believe that might conquers weakness, so the Son of God comes as a servant who exercises His immense power only in very personal, very quiet ways that serve to give glory to the Father, while at the same time God declares Himself a "jealous God" of that which He has created.  Jealous for that which is His, and for the glory which belongs only to Him and which he will not see delivered to another, He does not simply wipe us out and start over, but instead makes a way for us to understand our true source of life and power and strength.

So, He allows pain and suffering into His creation to teach that this broken, sin-spoiled world is not the end and ultimate of things...and then He walks right along with us in it, indeed, walking to it purposefully.  And just like His own endurance of pain, He brings it upon those He loves not out of cursing or anger but out of loving, parental discipline:

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.  In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.  And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?  "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.  For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives."--Hebrews 12:3-6

 If someone loves anything, let alone the Creator God of the universe, he will endure anything that may come because he knows all of it is in His hands and will lead him to his Father.  He struggles against encroaching bitterness because he will not tolerate anything that blinds his eyes to the truth of God's love, nor will he gaze upon himself except that in doing so he sees the markers of God's love, His strength poured out on him, His fellowship and support in all matters.  And when the day comes that he finally sees Jesus face to face, he finds that he has become like Him in thinking, in heart and in deed, truly a healthy part of the body of Christ.

Of course, that paragraph describes a life that is, in all likelihood, a path through suffering and hardship, loss, and frustration.  Where Psalm 22's prophetic words echoed by Jesus on the cross pass through their mouths not in anger but in a desire to crawl into God's arms and be held: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  And the more he matures, the more he knows even as he speaks those words, God has not forsaken him even in the darkest moments, and he becomes like Paul, a man who sings hymns in prison and does not fear anything man may wish to do to him.

But let's also remember, that person started like everyone else, as a person who carried the worldview of "it's all about what I want."  Pain entered his life and in a dark and frustrating moment, the Gospel entered as well, and he followed after it, guided by the Holy Spirit.  What if that person, in his pain, pushes back and fights?  He lives in Romans 1, quoted in an earlier post, and even as God lets him have what he wants that he might taste it and see how utterly inadequate it is, he pushes back and fights against the same pain and breaking of his heart that the humbled believer submits to, and eventually is hardened.  Not beyond all hope as long as he is alive, but certainly the longer he or anyone walks in this, the harder it is to come back.  I'll address this issue more in the next post, when I start to talk about the ways in which we deal with pain.

All of this together gives pain a larger purpose in our lives of either softening and transforming our hearts, "changing us one degree to the next" into the image of God we were created to be...or, of hardening our hearts and driving us farther and farther from the purposes and relationship God intends us to have with Him.  We see both in the Bible, especially in stories about rulers and their dealings with God.  Pharoah's refusal to obey God results in him seeing his country led through one painful struggle and plague after another, until finally his own firstborn son died along with so many others.  But one thing to note is that Exodus says "God hardened Pharoah's heart."  Part of God's judgment on him was in letting him walk deeper into his own rebellion, to see its total folly. 

David was "a man after God's own heart," but he screwed up a lot.  Indeed, his life gives me hope because if someone like him can be beloved of God, I know that God certainly is basing His love for me on behavior.  His faith was great and in so many of his psalms we see the earliest pictures of redeeming grace and salvation through faith in that grace.  When he sinned and conceived a son with Bathsheba in adultery, then arranged for the death of her husband in battle to cover up his sin, God punished him by allowing the child to die.  David mourned greatly, but just as much it broke his heart all the more to love God and worship Him rightly, and to remember his role as king was one of a servant of his people, not as one who lived off their backs.

And once again, I must point to the beginning of Hebrews 12, that "For the joy set before him, Christ endured the cross," that even as he sweated blood and cried out to His Father in the Garden of Gethsemene, He was obedient to God's will knowing that in spite of the horrendous day that would follow, the greatest glory would render that day nothing more than a pinprick.  And when he did walk through that day, he did not curse that pain or react in anger or desperation towards any.  He did not begrudingly walk through it but sought even in that to display the love of God:

And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left.  And Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."  And they cast lots to divide his garments.  And the people stood by, watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!"--Luke 23-33-35

 He didn't stumble into a bad situation and suffer unintended consequences.  Over and over Jesus prophesied exactly what was going to happen, and He didn't flee from it, nor did He embrace it like some kind of zealot.  Instead, He entered into obedience knowing that by doing so, He walked into and would lead many to far greater joy.  As long as we live there is never a moment too late for us to come to know that love and transforming power of Christ:

One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, "Are you not the Christ?  Save yourself and us!"  But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?  And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong."  And he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."  And he said to him, "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise."--Luke 23:39-43

 And that picture is one of humanity: two people, suffering exactly the same way, one of whom wants Jesus only as an escape from pain back to what he had before, the other submitting himself to it knowing it is deserved and asking for, and receiving, forgiveness.  In how He lived and how He died, Jesus displays Himself as savior, king and Lord of all, and in recognizing that even in his last few moments of life that man found real life even as death came upon him.

The different ways these two men saw Jesus is the division between being hardened or softened by our walks of life, and it is this division of reaction that I want to address next time: not the big picture, but what happens moment by moment as we engage pain and strife.  How do we react, and what does that in turn create in us?  We will look at that next.