Tuesday night viewing

No big long post tonight.  I watched this a long time ago, and I watched it again tonight, and feel as convicted to pray and sit in the Word as before.  Everyone needs to watch this as well, and I pray that its effect is to cause people to do the same.  It's called the "shocking youth message," but really this is what I hope would be brought to every group whether youth or old or somewhere in the middle: the uncensored, basic Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the incredible need we all have for it, especially those of us who call ourselves "Christian."


UPDATE: apparently Blogger likes to strip out the video, so let's try this again.

Pain and joy pt. 5: Two roads

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”--Matthew 22:34-40

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.--Galatians 5:16-23

 Last time I ended with an example drawn upon the account of Jesus' crucifixion in Luke 23.  On either side of Jesus hung criminals; guilty of what is not known, but the incredible difference in their reaction to Jesus dying between them hangs as an incredible illustration of the two incredibly different ways that we react to pain and suffering in our lives.  Two men, both about to die, both right there with the one Man in all the universe that might do anything to help them.  One of the criminals yells at Jesus and demands that He do what He can to save his life, to let him down from the cross.  He does not want salvation in the sense that Christ offers it to anyone; he wants to use Jesus to get what he wants right now--in this case, avoidance of death and the end of this particular moment of pain.  He clings to his life, and so, he loses it and with it, hope.

The other criminal does the opposite: he admits his guilt and asks only that Jesus remember him when He comes into what will be His.  He humbles himself and lays his fate, as quickly as it is coming upon him, at the feet of a man who is dying just as painfully right next to him.  And Jesus' reaction is truly a moment of bittersweet triumph: this man, guilty of only God knows what at this point in history, would be with Jesus in heaven because he refused to cling to his life and his desires, but gave them up knowing that they were worthless.

I want to look at the incredible contrast in the second passage above, Galatians 5:16-23.  We see the fruit of the desires of our flesh laid against the fruit of the Spirit.  In other words, the result of pursuing what we naturally want in our state of being separated from God, versus the result of the Spirit's work in us to recreate us in the image of Jesus.  Left to our own devices, we run after things that bring us no life, no lasting joy, nothing resembling real happiness if viewed in the long term and in real life without blinders.  These are what the Bible calls idols, and they can take virtually any form, especially in modern society where literal idol worship is supplanted with the self.

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.

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.

Pain and joy part 2: The role of pain in a broken world

Christians have a strange relationship with issues of pain.  No one enjoys it, of course, but there are some who believe that all painful and difficult things are a sign the devil is trying to attack us and trip us up, while others view it as testing from God.  And honestly, from a biblical standpoint...it's hard to say either are completely wrong.  But what I want to talk about is expanding our view of this, so that we can see the bigger picture God is working on in us through our life experiences.

Let's start at the beginning, to the time before the world saw the introduction of sin and death: God created the world, He created it in perfection, and He created Adam and set him about the task of naming and ordering the entire world. In other words, man was given to the role of being dedicated to hard work long before the fall; it was God's intention for this to be the way we are.  Likewise: when God created Eve, Adam immediately knew that unlike all the animals he had spent God only knows how much time seeing and naming, this one was for him, to the point where he had the reaction that continues to be men's natural reaction to seeing something beautiful: he sang a song about her.  And in bringing them together, God blessed them and told them "Be fruitful and multiply."  So God gives Eve a very unique gift: she and Adam are one, and she can bear children.

Don't misread me here: this isn't some kind of "And that's why women should stay barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen" line, because that's not what I'm saying: my point is about the fact that things we do like going to work, pursuing dreams of building things, and desiring to get married and start families are things that God built into our very beings from the very beginning of creation.  And it is into this that sin brings the greatest fractures and destruction when it appears.

Pain enters the scene in the Bible in Genesis 3.  Adam and Eve have sinned, eaten the fruit of the tree in the garden that God had told them not to, and as punishment God cursed them.  He didn't kill them--the first act of grace--but He did bring punishment upon both of them, relating to the roles God had given them in the world.  Eve's curse was pain in family and relationships:

To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
    with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,    and he will rule over you.”--Genesis 3:16

God had gifted them with procreation, the ability to create new life, and in their state of perfection having children would have presumably been an utterly joyous moment* especially in the knowledge that they, as people created in the image of God, are bringing a new person who will be just as much a unique image of their Creator into the world.  Of course, any parent can tell you that certainly, giving birth is always an occasion filled with joy...and any mom will tell you, it is filled with a lot of pain.  More, perhaps, than the average person might consider reasonable, but there you have it.

In that pain, God is giving a signal: "Here comes something that is broken."  That may seem harsh, and I can tell you...I love babies, man.  They're the best.  You give me a baby and I can just sit there and play with him forever and not be bored, because to me it's funny to just watch how everything in the world is absolutely fascinating to them.  But at the same time, any parent, anywhere, will not disagree with this fact: a baby is the most selfish creature on the face of the planet.  It wants what it wants, when it wants it, and if it doesn't get it, well, you're gonna hear about it.  God is saying "Along with this joy, comes difficulty: you have the blessing of raising offspring, of seeing new life from your life grow and mature, but you are going to experience battle after battle along the way."

Adam's curse is on the task God had set before him: instead of a world he is the ruler over being cooperative and unified in desire to obey God's great will, now just as Adam rebelled against God now nature rebels against him:

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”--Genesis 3:17-19

Adam will still work.  He will organize, plant, grow, and eat the fruit of his labor.  But instead of that work being full of the unadulterated joy that comes with oneness with God's purpose, Adam reaps what he's sown: weeds choke out crops; insects, disease and weather attack everything that he's done to feed his family.  And even as we've left the rural life, moved mostly into cities and working in offices, stores, and other places strife and turmoil of various kinds follows.  We work hard to make the best life we can for our families, but debt consumes a large portion of that.  We put in as much time as we can, but the fear of missing out on the lives out our children and growing apart from our spouse presses on us.  And of course, the same troubles of disease and disaster plague us, no matter where or how we live.

And as we go into this, as we fear it coming, as we escape from the latest cycle of frustration and loss, we often find ourselves asking the same question: why?  What are we supposed to be getting out of this?

Probably the best word I've heard used to describe what we get out of the trials of life--if we're listening to God, that is--is brokenness.  We've all heard the phrase "pride goeth before a fall," which is an abbreviation of Proverbs 16:18: "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall."  It's a basic idea most people subscribe to in one way or another as being true, and yet we live in such a way that shows that in our heart of hearts, pride is absolutely a central part of our lives.  We believe that we're good, we're strong, we're smart, and we're capable of getting whatever we want out of life.  We believe that we control our own destinies and that we can be good enough to please God (or whatever version of God we conceive of as pleasing to our whims).  Brokenness, in contrast, is the knowledge that we are not able to achieve what we really want, what we really need to be--which is, to be righteous.  A man is broken when he sees his failures and owns them, and cannot blame another.  But this is not a broken in the sense of "lost."  God breaks us, so that He might put us back together the way we are supposed to be.

“And you said, ‘Behold, the Lord our God has shown us his glory and greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire.  This day we have seen God speak with man, and man still live.  Now therefore why should we die?  For this great fire will consume us.  If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, we shall die....”--Deuteronomy 5:24-25

God took this rebellious, thick-headed bunch of Israelites out of Egypt and spent 40 long, arduous years breaking them: of their attachment to the lives they had as slaves in Egypt, of self-worship and desire for nothing more than a full belly, and makes them His own people.  And when He speaks to them...He scares the hell out of them.  The closer the Israelites get to God for real, the more fear rules over them, because in His presence the incredible reality of their own inadequacies, their sinfulness, their total unworthiness comes to the surface.  It's the reason the prophet Isaiah falls to his face as though he's dead in his vision of the throne of heaven: he knows how incredibly unworthy on his own he is to be in God's presence.


Brokenness is God’s design for us—it is the true, right view of ourselves and God.  “Humility” is a part of it, but not the extent of it.  Brokenness teaches us both our own innate sinfulness, and God’s great holiness, both convicting and uplifting.  I want to borrow some words of wisdom from the "prince of preachers," Charles Spurgeon, that I ran across in doing devotions while working on this:

God’s great design in all His works is the manifestation of His own glory.  Any aim less than this were unworthy of Himself.  But how shall the glory of God be manifested to such fallen creatures as we are?  Man’s eye is not single, he has ever a side glance towards his own honor, has too high an estimate of his own powers, and so is not qualified to behold the glory of the Lord.  It is clear, then, that self must stand out of the way, that there may be room for God to be exalted; and this is the reason why he bringeth his people ofttimes into straits and difficulties, that, being made conscious of their own folly and weakness, they may be fitted to behold the majesty of God when he comes forth to work their deliverance.  He whose life is one even and smooth path, will see but little of the glory of the Lord, for he has few occasions of self-emptying, and hence, but little fitness for being filled with the revelation of God.  They who navigate little streams and shallow creeks, know but little of the God of tempests; but they who do business in great waters, these see his wonders in the deep.

This is why Jesus came walking out to the disciples on the boat while the sea was rough and bad weather was around them; this is why Jesus slept peacefully as the disciples panicked in that boat; this is why Jesus’ parable of the two houses, one built on rock and the other on sand, makes it clear that both houses are hit by the storm.  Jesus desires us to understand that that storm will come, in one form or another, and we all walk through it.  It is not avoiding the storm that God promises, but rather than in passing through it we have a better understanding of who God is and what our relationship with Him is about.  

God allows pain to enter our life to break us of our views of self as good enough, smart enough, able enough. He has given us the capacity and indeed the drive to make plans and build, but He will only endorse His plans and designs. All other things, He either disrupts or allows to continue just long enough to show their futility, and in the process, forms us into a stronger, holier, more Christ-like people. The enemy has his owns designs for these troubles, disruptions, and problems that invade our lives: he desires to drive us to despair, to anxiety, to fear God and/or be angry with Him. God’s plan is to wrest our hands from the controls of life and lead us to trust Him.

Next time: God uses pain to show us that we are not in control.

*I'm not saying that pain as an idea or a sensation didn't exist; after all the verse says that the pains will increase greatly, implying that before it would be much milder.  But I don't want to get bogged down in semantics here or speculation about specifics we probably won't know until we reach a time that blog posts like this are utterly silly in the face of being able to truly know God in a way unimaginable to us today.