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Where is God?#5
The Gift of Hope
In 1927, Thornton Wilder wrote The Bridge of San Luis Rey, a novel about a bridge that broke and killed five Peruvians. The story centers around a Franciscan priest, Father Juniper, who--convinced that nothing in God’s universe happened by accident--determined to study the lives of the five in order to show the providence and wisdom of God, even amid tragedy.
Wrote Wilder: “It seemed to Brother Juniper that it was high time for theology to take its place among the exact sciences and he long intended putting it there.”
In a sense, friend, we’ve been doing this week what Father Juniper tried to do: and that’s come to understand human tragedy and suffering in the context of a loving God.
I think that we’ve made some progress, don’t you?
First, we saw that God had no choice: if He wanted beings who could love, He had to create them free, because love to be love has to be freely given. Not even God could create a love that is forced.
Second, we saw that God created us as free beings, even though He knew beforehand that we would sin and bring suffering upon ourselves. Why would He do that? It’s because He’s an all-loving God, and if He’s all-loving the only reason He would allow this to happen is because, in the end, He will bring out a greater good.
Third, the question arose: How fair is it that God should be safely ensconced in heaven, working out this greater good, while we suffer on earth?
And finally, the answer to that question is the cross, where God Himself, in the person of Jesus, suffered worse than any of us ever could, and that’s because all our pains and suffering--what we know only as individuals--He carried in Himself corporately: “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,” (Isa 53:3, 4). At the cross, God has linked Himself to humanity through the thingswe all share in common: grief, tragedy and pain. After the cross, no one can justly accuse God of indifference to our plight. He’s suffered from consequences of sin and evil worse than any human being ever has or ever will.
OK, you say, all this is fine, and it makes sense, and it helps me to understand how these things can happen. But it still doesn’t explain why. Why?
I know a wonderful family; kind, generous, loving. Suddenly, out of the blue, their beautiful daughter was struck down with Multiple Sclerosis. She’s slowly wasting away right before our eyes. All we can do is weep. And wonder Why?
Every day you hear about another tragedy--a young life lost, a good person victimized by a senseless crime, a family torn apart by unexpected illness and disease. The tsunami in South Asia. And we ask, over and over, Why? Why? Why?
Friend, I wish I could explain. I wish that, as the preacher, I could give every person who suffers a good reason for the pain they endure. I wish I could show them how, in the grand scheme of things, that this is all, all for the best.
All I can do, in the face of my own suffering, and the suffering around me, is go back to my Bible, go back to the promises of God, to the revelation of God offered to me through Jesus--and from there draw strength, hope and encouragement.
You know, I’ve always been a little perplexed at those who try and use suffering as an excuse to not believe in God, or in the Bible. Anyone who knows the Bible understands that pain and suffering aren’t proof that God doesn’t exist. How could they be proof, when the Bible itself time and again acknowledges the reality of suffering and death--and always in the context of God? From the story of Job, up through the fall, the flood, the patriarchs, the Jewish nation, right up to the crucifixion of Jesus, the Bible is full of accounts of human suffering, human pain and tragedy. And yet never is the existence of God called into question.
Talking about the events leading up to His return, Jesus said: “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains” (Matthew 24:6-8). Hardly sounds like wars, pain, and suffering has taken God by surprise, does it? In light of the recent Asian tragedy, it sounds like today, doesn’t it?
No, we can’t claim there is no God just because we see people suffering. What the God of the Bible does, however, is offer us hope despite our suffering. The Bible says to us, This isn’t all for nothing. There’s a promised end, a glorious end, a hope of something more than the pain and suffering here that ceases only when we rot in a dark and damp hole.
Scripture points us to the “hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began” (Titus 1:1). It says to us, even amid our sufferings, “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope” (Romans 15:13). It gives us the promises, “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind” (Isa 65:17).
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant once argued that if you just went on one premise, just one--which is that God is just, then you have to believe in some sort of afterlife. Why? Because there’s certainly no justice here—and that’s for sure! I read the other day about a man recently freed from prison after serving 34 years for a crime that DNA testing just proved beyond question he didn’t commit. 34 years in prison, unjustly convicted! Sure, he finally got out, but you call that justice?
Of course not. And we all know of acts of injustice even worse than this. Hence, Kant’s point--if there’s going to be justice it’s going to have to come after life here now.
And that’s the great promise we have from God: a promise of justice, of restitution, of God making all things right. The promise of a new heaven, a new earth, of a world without sin, suffering and death. The Bible is filled with promises of just this. Here’s one of my favorites “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Rev 21:4).
Of course, people mock the hope of heaven, the hope of God ever making things right in a new world. It’s just some fantasy we cling to, they say, in order to try and make life easier here.
But, friends, what alternative do they offer? The philosophy of the world offers us nothing; no answers, no meaning, no hope. But God offers us something else, the hope of a new existence in a new world--the only thing can help make all that we suffer in this world right.
Yes, God promises us something better. We have the promise, the promise of eternity with Jesus, where it’s all made up for, where every pain is atoned for, where every tear is finally and forever wiped dry, where it’s all done right—that will be our home, that is where all this comes to, that is what Christ died on the cross to give us. This is what I have cling to, every day, this hope, this promise, assured me through the sacrifice of Jesus.
We have been studying this week pain and suffering, and we all know it’s there. But I want to end on a positive note. Despite what we all go through--we all have things to be thankful for, don’t we? Regardless of our situation, we’ve all been blessed in our own ways, no matter how small. Amid it all, there’s always some light shining, isn’t there? I believe so.
I like the words of poet Jack Gilbert: “We must have the stubbornness to accept gladness in the ruthless furnace of the world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.”
And we don’t want to do that, do we? We don’t want to praise the devil. We want to praise and thank the God who has given us so much through Jesus, the God who in humanity has suffered along with us, the God who says I have not left you alone here, amid your sorrow. I have been there with you. And I’ll be back and make it all right.
That’s the God I cling to in faith, in hope--not just because without that faith and hope there’s nothing, but because He has given me reasons to believe, to trust, and to hope—and what greater gift can we have in this “ruthless furnace of the world” than the gift of hope? And thanks to the death of Jesus in our behalf, we have that hope.
Friend, why delay? You can have that same hope, that same comfort, that same solace, even in this painful world. And you can have it through Jesus, who knows your sufferings because He’s been there Himself, suffering even worse than you ever could. Give your life to Him today, right now. You won’t be sorry you did.
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