A quarterly magazine for the proclamation and defense of the Gospel
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A quarterly magazine for the proclamation and defense of the Gospel |
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Vol. 5, Issue 2 | Summer 2011 |
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Primum Mobile is a quarterly web magazine. This issue and all its contents are © Copyright 2004-2011 by the editors. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.
by Paul Lytle
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.-James 1:2-3
As I write this, we are still getting news stories about the May 22, 2011, tornado in Joplin, Missouri. Every morning, it seems, we’re hearing updates, death toll numbers, and more stories are being released about the people who died and the families left behind.
This has been the latest of several disasters in a row, a series that began with the Japan earthquake and tsunami, continuing with a series of tornados in the south, the flooding of the Mississippi River, and then to Joplin. I do not know whether this will be the end of it for a while, or if we will be greeted this very day with the news of yet another natural disaster that takes lives, rips apart families, and destroys everything in its wake.
It is inevitable that the question is raised (and should be raised): Where is God in all of this? The less intellectually honest will phrase it like this: Is God unable to help, or does he just not care?
For the Christian, it sometimes seems like that is the choice – do we say that God is in control of even these events and make him seem like a heartless villain, or do we say he is not in control and make him seem like a rather impotent God.
Many will go with the second choice. They will say that God’s power is limited. They will usually acknowledge that God is omnipotent, but they will say that God has limited his own control over earth for one reason or another. They will say that he has left the natural laws to control things and does not intervene, or that he will not override our free will, and tragedy is one of the many consequences of our sin.
On the other side, you have those who think that either God simply doesn’t care, or they see disasters as proof that God doesn’t exist.
There is yet another group, and those are ones who want to link disasters to a particular sin. They will say that Haiti was struck by its earthquake because of its long occult practices, for example.
All that to say that our theology is critical in the midst of tragedy, and not simply to answer the questions of skeptics who challenge God’s goodness in time of death and destruction. This is something that we need to hammer down, because there will be a time when it hits closer to home.
It doesn’t have to be a tornado. It doesn’t have to be an earthquake. It can be cancer, the death of a loved one, a divorce, the loss of a job. These events bring the pain close to home, and when hope becomes scarce, we are either going to cling close to God or turn away. What we do in that moment is largely the result of the theology we have developed beforehand.
That theology should have some very hard truth in it, but there is also a lot of comfort. In the first place, we have to understand that God is in control of all things, even of the natural disaster.
The whole of Psalm 104 is a meditation on God’s sovereignty over nature. He is the one who tells the rivers where to flow (v. 10), the grass to grow (v. 14), and gives the lion food (v. 21). More topically, he “looks on the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke” (v. 32). Isaiah 31:2 tells us directly that it is the Lord who brings disaster. Even the movements of armies and the invasion of Judah is credited to God’s control in 2 King 24:3: “Surely this came upon Judah at the command of the LORD.”
So the Bible is clear – it is God who is in control of these events.
That statement will automatically make many think that God is not good, and yet the Bible is also clear that he is indeed good. The two may not seem to work together, but they do.
In the first place, God’s goodness does not completely mean what we want it to mean. Sometimes, we want to think that a good God would give us daisies and roses and nothing bad would ever happen to us. The only problem with that is that we are not good, and a good God has to deal with us.
A good judge does not fail to punish criminals. And this is exactly the category we are in as fallen men. We are rebels against God and deserving of death for our sin. Every hour we have on this earth is a bit of mercy, and not one that we deserve. The hard truth is this: we don’t deserve another day, and hearing of these great tragedies should remind us of that.
When Jesus was asked to discuss a tragedy of his day – a construction accident that killed several people – his reaction is difficult to hear: “Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:4-5).
That disaster was a warning to others to repent. We have a merciful God, but he is also just. In his mercy, he has given us time to turn from our sin, but he will not wait forever. Whether we die at 20 or 120, we will die. Disasters should be a reminder of our own mortality.
Now, I don’t think we should necessarily make declarations that this thing happened because of this particular sin or that particular sin. This was the very question phrased to Jesus when confronted with the man born blind: “And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him’” (John 9:2-3).
Such suffering this man had faced for his entire life, and yet such glory was given to God because of it. This case was not a punishment for sin, but a reinforcement of faith! So too was Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” described in 2 Corinthians 12. Whatever this thorn was, it caused Paul much struggle and pain, and yet it was a reminder of God’s grace, and Paul ultimately celebrated in his weaknesses because God’s strength shone through in those areas.
For the Christian, suffering is always for the ultimate good. We are most often blind to how it does that, but God’s promise is that all things work together for our good (Romans 8:28). Truly blessed are we in those times when we can look back at those times of trouble and see exactly what God has done. When we can see the growth, the strength, and the mercy given to us. It is not always like that. Job never found out the reason for his struggle. It’s a good thing too, because he would have been comforted in the result, and not in God alone.
When Joseph was sold into slavery, he could not know that the end result of his sufferings would be that millions of lives would be saved, but when he came to that day, he recognized God’s great providence, and he said, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20).
So it was with the greatest evil ever perpetrated on the earth, when the only innocent man who ever lived was murdered. The Pharisees did not know, when they were pushing for Jesus to be crucified, that their wicked act would be used to redeem all of God’s people. And yet God here too used these evil acts for the good of his children.
In the end, our comfort as Christians must come not in the answers to our particular circumstance, but in the character and power of our God. That is what God told Job in the end. His message to Job was essentially this – You have only known a moment in time at a tiny part of space. You cannot even begin to comprehend what I am doing.
Do we believe that God is good? Do we believe that he is trustworthy? Then let us also believe that he will keep his promises to his children, and that he will use this very day for our good. Every trial, every struggle, every grief, every tear, and every pain is being guided by our Father, who has our best in mind.
