All language subtitles for Dealing with Difficult Problems - Understanding Suffering.en

Several years ago I was invited to give a lecture at Covenant College, down in Lookout

Mountain, Tennessee, and I remember, the address that I gave at that time was called "The Locus,"

not locust like the insect, but The Locus of Astonishment

That is, the place where we focus on what is really amazing to us

I pointed out in that address on that occasion that we sing Amazing Grace and give lip service

to the sense in which we are amazed by grace but I wonder how amazed we really are, where

we have become so accustomed to the mercy of God the patience of God and the grace

of God that we begin to take it for granted, and to assume it and then pretty soon, to

demand it. and so that when He is gracious to us, we’re hardly surprised

I find that what is most astonishing, characteristically to Christians of our day, is when they are

visited by tragedy or affliction or suffering

And many times the presence of suffering n our life undoes us and brings us to a state

of a spiritual crisis

I think part of the reason for that is that we hear in the culture, this ministers who

tell us that once you come to Christ, all your problems are over and that God doesn't

ever will sickness or pain or affliction and so that when these things happen to us, we

have a crisis of faith

On that occasion in Tennessee, I used a portion of Scripture from the thirteenth chapter of

Luke's gospel, as a taking off point for the discussion

There in Luke 13:1 we read this narrative "There were present, at that season, some

who told Him about the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices

And Jesus answered and said to them, 'Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners

than all other Galileans because they suffered such things?

I tell you, no

But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish

Were those eighteen in whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they

were worse sinners than all the other men who dwelled in Jerusalem?

I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish

What's going on here is that the people come to Jesus and they're asking this question.

basically, how could God allow these things to happen?

If God is good how could He stand by and let the tower fall upon the heads of innocent

people just minding their business, walking down the street?

Or allow them to be become victims of this savage attack of Pilate's forces'?

He mixed the blood of the people with the sacrifices

We're surprised when these things happen

And what we may be even more surprised at is Jesus' response

He said, if you think that these things happen to these people because they were worse sinners

than anybody else, I tell you no

But unless you repent you will likewise perish

Now what's our Lord doing here?

I think what he's saying to his inquirers is this

You're asking me the wrong question

The question you should be asking is why didn’t that temple fall on my head?

Wh wasn't my blood mixed with the blood of the sacrifices with the Galileans'?

Now somehow we assume that God owes it toj us to ive us a life free of suffering

Now we have to be careful when we look at this whole question of suffering, because

we have this passage here in Luke, we know in John chapter nme; the disciples come with

a question to Jesus about a man who had been born blind

And they say, whose sin was it?

The man or his parents', that this fellow was born with this affliction?

And what does Jesus say?

Neither

You've come to me with a false dilemma

It wasn't, as a punishment to the man and it wasn't as a punishment to the father or

the mother, it was that the Son of Man may be glorified in this occasion

We go to the whole book of Job which spends an entire book of the Bible wrestling with

the question of the problem of suffering

And we are introduced to the drama of a man who is the most righteous man in the world.

who then is reduced to the worst level of pain and misery and suffering of anyone in

the world, so much so that his friends begin to think he must have been the chief of sinners

to have deserved this fate of so much pain

And Job crawled up on a dung heap and cursed the day of his birth

And yet he said, "Though He slay me. yet will
I trust Him "

But Job asked with anguish the question, why, God?

And I think that's a natural thing, a normal thing for the Christian, when we are visited

with pain and affliction and the tragic for us to cry out in pain, saying. "Why'?"

Well we have to be careful when we ask that question to ask the question why. when we're

earnestly seeking an answer is a legitimate thing, but the question why can be a thinly veiled

accusation we can be saying, "Why?"

When we say it like that, the only answer we can legitimately expect from God is, "Why not?"

We need to keep that in front of us at all
times

But the reality of suffering is something we all have to deal with

And we deal with it in a pagan world and part of the problem that we experience in

dealing with this particular difficult problem is that so often, we hear views of pain and

suffering that are pagan views of pain and suffering

And we need to understand the difference between a Christian understanding of suffenng and

pagan views of suffering

In the short time that we have today, I'm going to mention four different varieties

of views of suffering that have been popular at one time or another in the pagan world

And the first one is what I'm going to call the docetic view

I call it the docetic view because it is the view that views suffering and pain as an illusion

This is the view of suffering that is basically one of denial

It says that suffering is just a matter of the mind, it’s not real and we need to understand

that it's simply an illusion

We get to that, for example, in the religion of Christian Science

I once had a lengthy discussion with an adherent of Christian Science who told me that evil

was not real, that it was just an illusion, and also pain and suffering and all the things

that are connected with it

And I said, "Well I'm standing here, disagreeing you "

In fact, we were debating the issue in front of a group of people, and I said. ’’And I'm

telling these people that evil is real and that there really is such a thing as pain

and suffering

Do you agree with that?

no he said, "No. of course not

He says "That’s why I'm taking the opposition

I said, "Do you think it’s good that I’m telling these people that evil is real?"

He hesitated because he knew he was now impaled on the horns of a dilemma, because if he says

yes, it's good that I'm saying what I'm saying, then he's surrendered the argument and if

he says, no it’s bad that I’m doing what I'm doing, then he’s also surrendered the

argument unless he can conclude that I'm a fig newton of his imagination and just an

illusion as we're debating the point

But really, as a philosophical discussion, it has little value to somebody on a hospital

bed to say that suffering is not real

Because we all know it is real

There is such a thing as pain there is such a thing as sorrow

And it is no solution to the problem to deny the reality of rt

A second way in which pagans have dealt with the problem of suffering and evil is found

in what I call the historic or classic Stoic
view

And you hear the axioms of Stoicism creeping into our popular culture when you hear such

statements as, "Keep a stiff upper lip,” or "Don't let anything get you down "

The Stoics believed that we live in a world that is controlled by material forces

And these material forces operate according to fixed deterministic laws, and we have

absolutely no control over what happens to us in this environment

What happens to us is our fate; or our karma

It is just the result of these impersonal forces out there and we have no freedom to

determine our own destiny

The only place where we do have the ability to exercise our freedom and to impact the

state of our existence is by directing our attitudes or our emotions with respect to

things that befall us

That is, I can't stop being hit by a truck this afternoon rf that’s the way it’s going

to be, but I do have some power to decide how I'm going to react to it internally

And so, what the Stoics sought to achieve was what they called philosophical ataraxia

or peace of mind

You've maybe never heard the term 'ataraxia' except as a brand name for a tranquilizer

in the pharmaceutical world

But that Greek word is the word that means peace of mind, whereby nothing disturbs our

equanimity

Now, the Stoics also sought to reach that state by practicing diligently the art of

what they called imperturbability

That is, you practice controlling your emotions to such a degree that nothing will perturb

you

Nothing will upset you

And so, you martial these internal resources to get a thick skin or hide over your feelings

so that if you do enter into an arena of pain or of affliction, you won't let it get you

down you keep the stiff upper lip and bear it in quietness and so on

The third way in which pagans have sought to deal with suffering historically is through

a method expounded by the Stoics' chief rivals in their day the Hedonists, and the Hedonistic

view is defined in this way

Hedonism historically is that philosophy of life that describes or defines the good

in terms of the elimination of pain and the acquisition of pleasure

Now, in the ancient world, there were two different types of hedonists in their philosophical

orientation, one that I will call the crass hedonists, and the other group I'll call the

more refined hedonists

The crass hedonists were called the Cyrenaics, and the Cyrenaics were crude in their pursuit

of pleasure

They're the ones that are depicted in the movies of the Roman bacchanalia and the orgies

and all of that stuff, where they would go to these banquets and they would gorge themselves

with food until they were completely satiated and then they'd go out, stick their fingers

down their throats, regurgitate so they could come back in. and fill their stomachs with

more food

They lived lives of unbridled licentiousness as much sex and drink and food and physical

sensuous pleasure that they could possibly enjoy

And that was their way to happiness

But again, this crass school of hedonists was short lived because it didn't take them

long to figure out that if you have an unbridled appetite for pleasure, that has no moderation

or no balance to it, that pain of the consequences of such unbndled self-indulgence will be

felt very shortly and acutely

There are only so many hangovers that you can have until you begin to realize that there's

not as much pleasure in this activity as you maybe thought there was

And so, a new version of hedonism was developed in a more refined, sophisticated way, by those

that were called the Epicureans

And there, they didn't seek maximum pleasure: but rather optimum pleasure

The most amount of pleasure you can have without at the same time, increasing the threshold

of pain

And that's why they became gourmands in their eating habits and all the rest, and learned

the best wines

And for them, it was just a little bit of adultery, just enough to keep life and not

enough to drive you to destruction

Now; of course that viewpoint either in its crude form or its refined form; still addresses

people today

We still have Epicureans and we have a culture that has been drenched and saturated in the

philosophy of hedonism

alcoholism and of unbridled sexual behavior and intoxication and addiction to hard drugs

And most of the psychologists and sociologists look at this phenomenon of our day which

v/e have given ourselves over to the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure

Why?

In many cases, because of a response to an extremely negative view of life

It's not an accident that suicide is highest ranking cause of death among certain age groups

in this nation, because people are taught now and bombarding by all kinds of sources

telling them that they have emerged from the slime, they're cosmic accidents, their life

is meaningless

Their suffering is therefore meaningless, and so they try to dull the pain and the ache

of the anxiety of being hurled into a meaningless existence by seeking relief in the stupor

of pleasure

Nothing new about that

Just the dimensions are different

We remember Paul, when he addressed the Corinthians and gave his magnificent defense of the Resurrection,

when he was going through that discussion, at one point, he said, "If Christ is not raised,

let us do what?

Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow, we die "

See. that's the creed of the hedonists

Sooner or later, tragedy death, pain, suffering and affliction are going to get me

So, I only go through life once, I'm going to grab all of the gusto I can get right now

and I'm gonna fill up on pleasure because tomorrow. I die

In the meantime, it’s party time

And so. this approach to hedonism, in many ways is motivated by a fear of and a desire

to escape from the pangs of suffering

We talk of those who drown their sorrows in a bottle and perhaps the most popular psychoanalysts

of our culture are the bartenders that are found on every street in every metropolitan

area, because there are a lot of people who are unhappy, who are suffering, and who are

in pain and who are desperately trying to find solace and relief from their pain any

way that they can

Well, these are just some of the ways in which people cope with the reality of pain and suffering

And obviously, the Biblical view of sufferin is on a collision course with these views

Because the one overarching principle of the Biblical view of suffering is this that suffenng,

for the Christian, is never an exercise in futility

It is never an exercise in futility

But that suffering is used by God for redemptive purposes among his people

And we are told where to put the locus of astonishment

We're told by Peter we're told by James that we ought not to think that it is something

strange when we are called upon to suffer

Because the Christian faith is born in suffering

The way of salvation is the Via Dolorosa, the way of sadness, the way of the Cross

And Christ Himself promises his people in the world, you will have tribulation

You will have afflictions

Paul says that He fills up in his own body the afflictions that have not yet been completed

in the body of Christ, His church

That we all are called to participate in the sorrows of Christ, who was called a man of

sorrows and acquainted with grief

And there's a difference between that and Stoicism

I don’t know how many times, when I’ll go into the homes of Chnstian folks where somebody

has just died and people feel like they're not allowed to weep, they're not allowed to

express any kind of sorrow or mourning or
grief

That they're supposed to be Stoics

And we won't allow them to grieve

We'll say to them that that’s an act of unbelief for something like that, as if when Jesus

went to the place of Lazarus, after he had died, knowing what He was going to do, still

He entered into the grief of the moment and our Lord Himself wept

He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief

And the Scriptures make it plain that grief is a legitimate human emotion and there is

nothing sinful about mourning the loss of a loved one

That emotion of grief, the emotion of sorrow, in and of itself is perfectly legitimate

It can easily become a spirit of self pity or of bitterness, but those are distortions

of legitimate emotions

And a legitimate emotion of sadness and sorrow are not only permitted by Scripture, but in

many cases, commended

We are told in the Old Testament, that it is better to go to the House of Mourning than

it is to spend your time with fools

Herman Melville once made the statement that until we understand that one grief outweighs

a thousand joys, we will never understand what Christianity is trying to make us

When Paul speaks of the great benefit of our justification whereby we’re adopted into

fellowship in the family of God he says being justified, therefore you have what?

Peace with God

Access into his presence

And then he goes on to say, "And in the midst, because of your relationship to God, you are

able to endure tribulation knowing that tribulation works patience and patience’s character and

these things will not leave us ashamed "

So that God uses tribulation, He uses our pain, not simply to punish us, but to polish

us

To sanctify us

In many cases, we go into the refiner's fire, so that God will remove the draws from our

life, draw us close to Himself and in the process of pain and suffering, we are made

more like Christ

And then Paul reminds us that the sufferings of this present time are but for a moment

They are not the final answer

And that the sufferings that we are called to endure in this world aren't worthy to be

compared with the glorious things that God has stored up in heaven for those that love

So, in one sense our suffering becomes a bridge to glory

Now that doesn't mean that we are supposed to go out and look for suffering and to say

Thank you, Lord, every time the sky falls on our heads

And there are people that try to do that and that can be a form of denial

It can be more docetic than it is Christian, or it can be more, as I say, treating the

pain as if it were illusory, when in fact it's very, very real

We don't rejoice that we have a headache

We don't rejoice that we have cancer eating away at us what we do rejoice in is the presence

of God in the midst of our pain

But again we have to understand, lest we fall into being absolutely undone and astonished

whenever affliction hits us that we are to expect it!

It’s part of our call as Christians

That God has called us into a fallen world to minister into a world that is a veil of

tears and it's a place of pain and there's no way that we can ever expect to escape it

Now suppose I'm afflicted with suffering

Why?

Why am I afflicted?

There could be several reasons

It may be that God needs to correct me and that it is part of his corrective wrath to

make me sick or to bring me low

He does that

I here are manifold examples of that in scripture

How did Miriam get leprosy?

God gave her leprosy to bring her to repentance

What is Jesus saying here, "Unless you repent, you all likewise perish "

Sometimes the suffering that we have in this world is because God is correcting us or disciplining

us

But we can't jump to the conclusion that every time we get sick or every time we suffer that

there's a direct correlation between our disobedience
and the pain that we’re experiencing

Again Job is Exhibit A to refute that argument

Job was more righteous than anybody else and yet he suffered more than anybody else and

it would have been a terrible mistake to assume that there was a direct, proportionate relationship

between the degree of his guilt and the degree of his pain

Mustn't do that

So we don't always know, and we don’t have to know

What we have to know is Him

Because when Job demanded an answer for his pain and asked God to speak to him and explain

it to him and God finally appeared to Job and interrogated Job for several chapters,

what answer did Job get from God?

He didn't get one

God didn't say to Job, "You're suffering this pain for this, this, this, and this "

The only answer Job got to his affliction in the final analysis, was God Himself

The presence of God

And in fact, what God was saying was, "Job,
here I am

I am with you. trust me

Now, when people say "Trust me," it's time
to run

But when God says trust me, it’s time to trust

Let me finish by reminding you that our God never promised any of us that we would never

go into the valley of the shadow of death

What He did promise us was that He would go with us

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I will fear no evil,

for thou art with me

Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me

We have the good shepherd

We have his presence

We have his consolation

That doesn't mean that we’re removed from the arena of pain, but that we are upheld

in the arena of pain