Tag Archives: worldview

Suffering and Sovereignty: a Follow-up

My last post may have caused some confusion regarding the timeliness of teaching some truths. Suffice to say, all theology that helps us understand God biblically (in this case, his sovereignty), may help us through hard times when we know it going in, but may prove an untimely truth, misunderstood when first received in certain situations.

Likewise, sin’s role in suffering proceeds from Eden, and may have only secondary (or further removed) causality in our suffering. In John 9:2-3 the disciples inquired whether a man was blind for his sin or for his parents’. Jesus replied, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Sin wasn’t causative, but had the fall not happened, blindness wouldn’t be an issue. When sin’s role is more apparent in suffering, a comforter should tread carefully.

Pondering suffering and sovereignty in my own life, I find this helpful: Consider the child who cuts her foot on a rusty nail. Already suffering a cut, her parents take her to the doctor, who’ll add stitches and shots to her misery. From the child’s perspective, subjecting her to more pain seems cruel and uncaring. From the parent’s perspective, it’s love for the child and purposeful for her long-term good.

Similarly, when sin is at issue (in the following illustration, disobedience), consider finding your child playing in the road against your strongest commands. Depending on traffic, you might rush to grab him by the arm, yanking him to safety before giving them a good swat on the bottom. So, in this case, you clearly haven’t been able to make him understand actual danger (traffic), so you give him a memorable, alternate incentive (punishment) to obey you in an effort to keep him from true harm.

These parents understand this suffering, but look past it for the child’s welfare.

On the “why” of evil and suffering, consider this small child, yourself and an infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, creator God. Where do you suppose is the larger gap in understanding? Between you and the child, who we’ve already determined is unable to grasp parental wisdom, or between you and God? Clearly, if we have wisdom over and purpose in some instances of a child’s suffering, God has greater wisdom and purpose in our own.

Both of these illustrations convey to me that God has purposes in whatever befalls us. For the believer it’s correction, preparatory training, reparatory work, or some combination of all of these – done in love. Unlike some Christian pundits, I’m not to venture God’s specific purpose for believers or others, in any evil and suffering large or small. Further, since I’m not the center of the universe, my own suffering may simply play into (and most certainly does) a complexity of interrelated stories concerning those around me. May my witness reflect his perfect purpose over my present pain.

In 2 Corinthians 4:8-12, Paul poetically enumerates his great suffering for Christ, before finishing (17-18): “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

God opposes evil (Habakkuk 1:13), but has power over it and purpose in it we cannot see. In fact, he uses it and suffering for our collective, eventual good (Romans 8:28). If a sparrow’s demise doesn’t escape him (Matthew 10:29), how close he must hold the suffering!

On Sin and Sorrow: Suffering and God’s Sovereignty

Whether the logical outcome of our own buffoonery, the carelessness or cruelty of others, or as rain from the clear blue, suffering in this life is a fixed certainty (John 16:33). Degree varies for “fairness,” as we understand it, isn’t in play. If you’re reading this, unless you are currently on fire (or suffering thusly), you likely wouldn’t agree to randomly switch places with one of the other seven billion people on the planet. Yes, those in the West enjoy some ease, but suffering is inescapable, whether peculiar to station (Matthew 19:16-22) or common to man (Luke 8:41-42). Life can hurt in abundance and need.

In our rush to “run the race,” we sometimes tie our shoes together, or fail to notice low limbs and deep holes in our chosen shortcuts. Our ever-present penchant for sin, no matter how wise seem our decisions, makes for a gravely road under the skinny-tire bicycle of life. Hubris, impatience, greed, slothfulness and more have led us all to react, speak, choose wrongly, behave badly, and move impetuously or indecisively – hurting others and ourselves. Some of us won’t pay the ultimate price for our sin (because it’s been paid), but most of us will taste its rotten fruit – on a cot in a cell, or in a bed of suffering and regret.

Add to our self-inflicted wounds the unintentional ricochets or deliberate shots of others. Physical and painful or ethereal and emotional, the negligence and barbarity of humans, one to another, has been well-documented since Cain killed Abel (Genesis 4:8). Those surviving torturous blows might also suffer the tension between revenge and forgiveness, wrongly believing the former will satisfy where the latter is the only true, if partial, relief.

Somehow, sin is at the root of all suffering. The Bible makes that clear, but it may be an unsatisfying answer to sufferers. Karma seems the natural response to the dilemma. Basically, if your sky is raining manure, you somehow seeded the clouds (Job 4:7-8). It’s “you reap what you sow” as quid pro quo rather than as a guiding principle of sin and judgment (Galatians 6:7). Still, actions have consequences, and to the degree we can recognize our sin’s contribution, we have power to lessen our suffering by lessening our sin. Even this is of grace when we realize how miniscule is any blowback compared to the price already paid…or that deferred for later payment.

Finally, our sorrow can come as seemingly random as the cartoonish piano or safe that breaks loose above the city sidewalk, only to hit us while we’re standing in a Kansas cornfield. As suffering settles in after natural disasters, dreadful diagnoses and inexplicable accidents, “blame” is not so clear.

Regrettably, this is the place where many indict God, and reason, “a good God wouldn’t allow this if he was able to prevent it.” This perspective imagines a malicious ogre who delights in our suffering, or a hand-wringing wimp, “good” in motive, but powerless to help. Neither of these unreasonable facsimiles is the biblical God. The Bible shows a good and loving God (Psalm 107:1), sovereign over everything that transpires (Isaiah 46:10; Luke 1:37).

Truly, only a clumsy caregiver will speak first of sovereignty or “God’s will” to participants of tragedy, even if there’s some sense that it’s true. It’s also less than helpful to pose that weakling God who “suffers with you.” That’s your job (Romans 12:15). Instead, declare the loving God of promise, familiar with suffering, powerful over it and purposeful in it, as proved by the cross and resurrection.

Faith Alone? Yes…and No

In my last article, I intimated that “the biblical Christian [is one] who trusts Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone.” The tenor of that article was about proper and improper ideas of “works” in relation to faith. Of Christ, grace and faith, these “alone” phrases make up three fifths of the Reformation’s “Five Solas” (Sola is Latin for alone or only; the other two fifths are Scripture alone, and glory to God alone). “Faith alone” became the shorthand statement for how we are justified before God, or “saved,” while still understanding the proper weight of importance for the five together as necessary to the whole formula of becoming, then living and growing as a child of God.

Today, faith is often considered “alone,” or independent of an object for that faith. Thus, faith is an entity or power in and of itself. “You just gotta have faith” say some to those suffering this conundrum or that. Like positivity, faith can be ginned up from within, and will push us past and over obstacles in our way. Outside or within any religious system (Norman Vincent Peale and his progeny have imported this idea into erstwhile Evangelical Christianity), this “having faith” or “thinking positively” can create wealth, heal illness, or bring any number of propitious outcomes to pass – all while never considering in what or whom that faith lies. This having faith-in-faith approaches fideism – that is, a belief independent of reason.

Even when objects of faith are identified, this tolerant “to each his own” theology finds plenty of common ground for an amorphous “faith community.” One can have faith in a historical (or fictional) person, in one or many gods, or in a previously known, biblical deity who’s been through “Extreme Makeover: God Edition.” Each member of the Trinity has suffered such makeovers; eviscerating all nuance and paradox such that each final product looks very much like the makeup artist!

In the end, with or without an object, this broad, welcoming and undefined faith has only one requirement – sincerity. Sincerity, or genuine belief without hypocrisy or duplicity, is unfortunately no measure of viability. Neither is the magnitude of faith a measure of its truthfulness. So, if the sincerity of faith and the strength of faith don’t ultimately matter, what does?

Consider the travelers who come to the frozen river knowing their destination is on the other side. Billy Bob is confident and begins to cross when Jimmy Joe says, frightfully, “wait!” Jimmy Joe is scared and can only cross the river on his belly inch-by-inch – his faith is minimal and doubt-filled while Billy Bob’s is strong and certain. Who will make it to the other side – one or both or neither? Will Billy Bob’s confidence save him? Are Jimmy Joe’s doubts his undoing? What ultimately determines the success of their collective effort?

Well, of course, it is neither their faith or lack, nor strength or weakness, nor confidence or fear; it’s the thickness of the ice that determines whether they’ll survive. Likewise the final arbiter of faith is its object.

We’ll all cross a river one day – the river Jordan is a metaphor for true believers into the “promised land.” Some contend that all faith is nonsense and is solipsistic (self-contained, “unsullied” by external reason). Others say God will reward sincere faith regardless of its object or its irrationality. Biblical Christians have reason to believe that the Bible is true and that God, through Christ, is knowable. Faith alone? Yes, as a God-given conduit of God-given grace in the one, particular, biblical God.

A Word to Live By

More than a few folks bristle at the idea that people of faith get their warp and woof from a book. There are numerous examples of people, past and present, who use(d) their “holy” book to excuse wreaking havoc on the world. Others who believe all people are “basically good” are forced to conclude that these books and their brandishers must necessarily brainwash adherents – those who believe their specific book is given by God – and are therefore dangerous to the continued progress of man.

Religious books aren’t all of the same stripe. The ethereal natures of some Eastern and “New Age” religions don’t require verifiability or historical accuracy of their texts because their “truths” transcend those categories. Others, whose books would seem to be historical (including some Judaism and Christianity), use various four-fold interpretive methods that include the literal meaning of the text, but go to a more allegorical, subjective sense to derive ultimate meaning. Biblical Christians, and I suppose Qur’anic Muslims, and maybe Mormons and other quasi-Christian sects, must needs be “people of the book,” and those books must be in accord with actual natural and supernatural events to be coherent.

For the last 150-200 years, liberal scholars have taken to “demythologizing” the Bible. Enlightenment rationalism has forced many who would “save Christianity” to skew the Bible almost as ethereal, mystical and mythical, so that events like the virgin birth and the resurrection are not taken literally, but super-spiritually – “Jesus has risen in my heart” even if his body still lays dead somewhere. For Paul (and us), Christ’s actual, bodily resurrection is an imperative (1 Corinthians 15:12-19).

The Bible depends ultimately on the objective truth of God as he has revealed himself, and what his Word says he has actually said and done in history (revelation). There are copious tests for historicity, continuity, coherency and authority, and biblical Christians welcome honest scrutiny as should any said “people of the book.”

That said, there is indeed a spiritual component to understanding the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 2:14), so if you approach it to disprove it, you might indeed do so to your and others’ satisfaction. Blaise Pascal stated, “In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.” (Note: authors Lee Strobel and Josh McDowell are two of many exceptions – scoffers whose investigations led to faith.)

So, I may take a later column to dispel some popular misconceptions (or skeptics’ holstered challenges – locked and loaded for rapid fire avoidance of actually considering answers) about the Bible and how it’s to be read and interpreted as the author(s) intended. For now, let me speak to (myself and) my brothers and sisters.

The reformers stated regarding the sufficiency of Scripture that “the Bible is our only rule for faith and practice.” Given that Christian Scriptures are central to understanding the God who made us – the Christ who saved us (Luke 24:27) – you might agree that knowing it should be somewhat paramount in our practice of the faith. Knowing it…is knowing Him. Reading, learning, memorizing and meditating on “the Word of God” would seem to be essential to leading a life pleasing to the God who made himself known. Yet, Christians are in too large measure illiterate of the book they claim to love. It is meant to be consumed for our guidance and delight (Psalm 119:11; 1:1-2).

Fundamentalism of a Different Sort

One variation of Vince Lombardi’s annual “back to basics” training camp talk went, “Gentlemen, this…is a football…Am I going too fast?” Anyone who’s played organized sports remembers related preseason and post-loss mid-season talks or drills. A musician’s scales, a singer’s “do-re-mi” and a ballet dancer’s five “positions” are all versions of the same, and most everyone remembers school textbooks titled “Fundamentals of…(Whatever).” Yes, fundamentals are fine – until you start talking about religion and add an “-ism.”

Christian fundamentalism in the late 19^th– and early 20^th-century was an attempt at recapitulating the basics of the biblical Christian faith in response to the wholesale acquiescence of liberal protestants to cultural mores and Enlightenment perspectives that seemed to militate against biblical truth. As is often the case, valid beginnings don’t guarantee staying on course. In just a few decades, some Fundamentalists began to unbiblically (1 Corinthians 5:10) withdraw (socially if not physically) from the still-changing culture. “Fundamentalist” has often been used pejoratively ever since for anyone with a conservative, biblical view of the faith.

Enter Islamic Fundamentalism. I’m not an expert on Islam, but I’ve seen Quranic views that extolled the “peaceful religion” of many, and those of fundamentalists, “extremists” and “radicals.” Whether the abhorrent behavior of terrorists is borne from right or wrong interpretation of their holy text, or from some other sociopolitical dynamic, I don’t know. I do know that comparisons between those who commit crime in the name of God (including some “Christians” today and over the history of the church), and those biblical Christians who “rightly divide the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15) are ludicrous.

Recently, Evangelical Christianity (the next “movement” attempting to rescue biblical Christianity from the last movement as it diverged) at least partly overstepped and conflated their faith and politics – it was called the Religious Right. Thankfully, the confusion cleared, but left a worry from the more secular that anyone who brought their faith to the public square was attempting to build a theocracy. Ours is “fundamentalism” of a sort, so a biblical Christian is unable to dispatch the resultant worldview from their politics, but we want no more than our voices heard and votes counted. If there’s such a thing as “Christian Jihad,” it’s to save lives, not take them. (Note: I still consider myself a Christian and an Evangelical, though “biblical Christian” saves so many words of differentiation from others who use the same descriptors.)

True, biblical Christians rightly decry tired, staid, lifeless churches, but we must be careful on how we define “lifeless.” Many faithful churches, with enlivened members, have been “doing it the same way” for many years. Our culture worships the “new and exciting,” but heaven’s population will be heavy with those faithful who found wonder in the weekly recitation of the gospel of grace by the preached Word of God and the right practice of the sacraments, despite living an otherwise mundane existence.

So I’ll take the label “fundamentalist” and even “extremist” since, by nature, that’s what the biblical Christian life is. However poorly I personally meet it, the call of the Christian is to love and service, to one another and to neighbors (Matthew 5:16), including the proclamation of the truth of the gospel (Mark 16:15). How “radical” this is, though, should be determined by the surrounding culture, not by some intentional effort to try harder. The brightness of the light often depends on the darkness of the night. Any aberrant need to stand out or be intentionally radical leads only to burnout and disillusionment when we fail, or self-righteousness when we believe we’ve succeeded.

Christianity’s PR Problem: Oh, What to Do?

Christianity has an image problem. Exclusivist claims are a turn-off, “puritanical” morality is behind-the-times, and we have some “crazy” beliefs about how humankind came into being. Further, the Church is saddled with all sorts of (true and false) baggage for reprehensible (and unbiblical) crimes committed under her banner. Finally, hawkeyed media outlets and others who glory in any hint of Christian buffoonery from a few, never miss the opportunity to proclaim it such that the reproach is universally shared. Who can blame them when some of us act in a manner to make parody superfluous?

It would seem major swaths of “Christians” have indeed hired PR consultants and have distanced themselves from presently distasteful stances by compromising with the world on creation, salvation, and morality (necessarily severing ties with much of the Bible in the process). “Get with it,” you might hear them say while their denominations race to conform. Their churches shrink with the contrast they now lack, and the spiritual food they serve is water soup to a starving world.

Others have used America’s one home-grown philosophy, pragmatism, and made Christianity more temporally useful than eternally crucial. With Christianity, you can “Have Your Best Life Now,” or take “8 Steps to Create the Life You Want.” Money, stress, health, drugs, marriage, raising children – every one of your problems can be “fixed” by this Christianity. Prosperity preachers preach, “You can have whatever you want,” with the escape clause, “if you have enough faith.” Otherwise orthodox pastors’ pulpit messages master in missing the point when they concentrate almost entirely on fixing the felt needs of the congregation over proclaiming the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Even biblical Christians can suffer this tendency to a small degree. When’s the last time you heard someone’s testimony that didn’t focus on how much better their life is since coming to Jesus? “I used to be ‘this,’ and now I’m ‘THIS!’” What about hearing from someone who grew up in church, always believed and never rebelled, but still understands deeply their need for a Savior? This is how it should be for our kids, but we discourage that when we celebrate the sensational. Besides, Tony Robbins or a juice cleanse may be just as likely to “fix” you.

So, if aping culture and offering practical/fantastical solutions to life’s problems isn’t the answer to our PR problem, what is?

Well, avoid joining the ranks of the thin-skinned “reactivists” with a featherweight chip on weak shoulders. Real, dangerous persecution happens overseas all too much for American Christians to complain. Did biblical laws inform our forefathers as they laid the foundation of this country? Of course and in many ways there is marked erosion, but this has never been a “Christian nation,” and as pluralism increases, liberties we once assumed can be assumed no longer. Sans paranoia, we can offer a calm and civil response when there are real changes to the freedom of speech or religious liberties intended by law.

So, is there a “war on Christmas” and on Christianity in general? Yes! There has been for two thousand years! Jesus said, “You will be hated by everyone because of me…” (Matthew 10:22a) He said it to his apostles in a specific context, but there is so much more biblical weight promising a hard road (cross-bearing, trials, persecution) for all who love and follow Christ.

Faithful, biblical churches will never solve their PR problem. We should be intentional in love, winsome in manner, but unyielding in truth. The cross is its own offense. It needs not our help.

Follow the Leader?

We live in a society of changing “norms” and diminishing distinctions. The New Tolerance has popularized the idea that truth is in the eye of the beholder. Instead of Truth, there is “my truth” and “your truth.” Even in contradiction, each remains equally valid. This sort of relativism sits atop the P.C. throne, and has made inroads into discussions of religion, ethics, politics and even gender. The idea comingles harder (more objective) and softer (more subjective) sciences to muddle “truth” such that personal preferences and mitigating circumstances affect perception. Physics is one of the harder sciences, and I have as yet not seen anyone able to relativize gravity. If you and I step off the 22-story Executive Office Building of the Capitol, our feelings/beliefs about gravity will have little to do with the mess we’ll make on the plaza. My contention here is that religious/spiritual “Truth” is as similarly hard and fixed and as unforgiving as gravity.

Whatever your position is on what happens to our ethereal selves when our bodies die, it’s nonsense to believe we could all be right. The naturalist believes we cease to exist at physical death. We biblical Christians believe heaven or hell await our (temporarily) bodiless souls until Christ’s second coming. We can’t both be right. You can add reincarnation, passing into “oneness,” or the ubiquitous idea that most everyone but despots, serial killers and pedophiles go to some type of heaven. “S/He’s in a better place” may provide opiatic comfort to us as a culture as we watch everyone die, but it begs the question why we try so hard to push death days or weeks as the precipice inevitably approaches. Death is batting around a thousand, and while we could all be wrong about our destination, we can’t all be right.

I might be wrong in my beliefs, but I’m not wrong saying that whatever is, is, and our beliefs and preferences, like in the case of gravity, don’t change the facts. The New Tolerance disagrees, riding in on a white horse named “Fairness,” proclaiming Sincerity as savior. All beliefs are equally (if only subjectively) true and valid and good. Religions, even nominally “Christian” forms, join hands with all who will agree to this wide, inclusive road to a wonderful afterlife and sing. Tra-la…la-la…la?

Here’s the real question: What do YOU believe? Why?

If you’ve thought about the eternal consequences of death for even a moment and settled your position, however tenuously, you’ve trusted someone – your parents or teachers or pastors or scientists or some amalgam of the world’s views. Whether religious/spiritual or areligious/naturalist, you have placed your “faith” in someone or some idea.

Consider this – some thirty years ago, I had a friend who was a fairly new pilot in the F-111. He was flying a night, low level mission with an experienced instructor. This aircraft had terrain-following radar with a type of “auto-pilot” so the plane could fly low and fast with the pilots’ hands off the controls. The system kept forcing the plane to pitch-up and climb (a built-in safety measure) when there was no apparent obstacle, so they assumed the system wasn’t operating properly. They toggled it off. Seconds later they flew into the side of a mountain at over 500 mph. This macabre example is a cautionary tale of death’s insidiousness, ignored warnings and misplaced trust.

So, again, what do you believe and why? By grace, confirmed by study, the biblical Jesus Christ has earned my trust regarding my eternal destination. Has whoever informed your view truly earned your trust? Much is at stake.

[This article originally appeared in the Tallahassee Democrat.]

Understanding the Gospel: What is Good News?

Everyone believes that they are right. Think of the well-worn religious parable of the elephant and blind men. Each has hold of a different portion of the elephant. Asked to describe the elephant, each is confined to his tactile perspective, where a leg “is like a tree trunk,” the tail “is like a rope,” the side “is like a wall,” the trunk “is like a snake,” and the ear “is like a leaf.” “So,” says the teller of the parable, “each has their own perspective, and likewise each religion has some portion of the whole truth.” Sounds compelling until you realize this “inclusive” storyteller is claiming to see the whole elephant! He’s not blind, everyone else is. One path or many? Are our divergent beliefs inconsequential? God only knows for sure.

It comes down to authority. Who or what informs our theological ethic? Unaided conscience? Present social mores? Biblical Christians believe that the Bible is our authority simply because it’s God’s revelation to us (Kevin DeYoung said about the parable that everything changes when the elephant speaks!). I could be wrong, but I have good reasons to believe that the Bible is true – all of it, not just my favorite bits. I know there are tough verses, but I have sufficiently studied the doubters’ accusations and believers’ responses. There remain tensions, nuances and depths of understanding that escape me, but I’m comfortable with the admixture of the rationally grasped, the spiritually understood and the mystery when I find neither. After all, the God of the Bible is a God who can be essentially, not comprehensively, understood (Is. 55:8,9).

While the Bible proclaims clearly that ALL are sinful (Rom. 3:23), or sick, if you will, many people don’t perceive their need for saving or healing. Others would save themselves with perfunctory religiosity – church membership, attendance, rituals – and/or they simply work their “balance sheet” accumulating good deeds and minimizing bad, or hope by comparison with others that they make the grade. “Hey, it’s not like I ever killed anybody.” It’s not a competition. If it was, we’d all lose.

You see, no résumé, no balance sheet, and no comparison of deeds will suffice to cancel the debt each of us owes. If we were true to ourselves, we’d rightly argue with Paul about who, indeed, is the “chief of sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). I pity the person who cannot look inside and see something broken, something sick, something that needs fixing. I hope you can see that. If so, I have GOOD NEWS!

The gospel, or good news, is that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). The God of the Bible is a holy God who hates sin. In his grace, he visited the punishment for sin on his sinless Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross. His death and subsequent resurrection “conquered the grave.” If we trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ on our behalf, we will be saved, adopted as sons and daughters. We have no righteousness of our own (Titus 3:5) – instead, we trust in Christ alone. Augustus Toplady wrote in his classic hymn, Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.”

I understand the exclusive claims of this gospel and the offense it is to some (1 Co. 1:23). Whether biblical Christians are right or wrong, we believe that our ability to truly love the world rests on the proclamation of the gospel. Are we clumsy, forgetting the grace shown us? Too often. Grace should be humbling, for it is not merited, not earned and not deserved.

[This article originally appeared in the Tallahassee Democrat.]