It has been awhile since I have blogged. And the more recent entries are more full of links and videos than they are of my actual writing. I have been blessed by being able to write about my faith and the glory of our great God over the past year, and I have been encouraged especially by some of the stories of those who have read and been helped early on. I do want to continue writing.
I am recently married! My wife is wonderful, and we are learning how to build our lives together. I also started teaching this semester. Both of these take a lot of time, and that is a very good thing. How lame if I only blogged all the time and never actually lived! Nevertheless, writing is one of my passions, and sharing my faith is as well. My writing pace at first was frenetic; then it slowed to a stop. Now I would like to find a good place in the middle somewhere.
In looking for a writing project, one of the first places I look is toward what I am currently reading. I have recently picked up John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. Calvin was a reformer, and if you have not heard of him, he is a very polarizing figure in the history of Christianity. Most Christians love him, hate him, or have never heard of him. Usually that hinges on whether or not you believe you decisively chose God, or God decisively chose you for salvation. This is not a debate I will resolve in this blog post. Calvin's Institutes were basically his systematic theology. Given his influence in Geneva and Europe at large, this book heavily influenced later Reformed theology and is prerequisite reading for his later commentaries on specific books. It went through several revisions until he was happy with it and felt it was in a complete form, and today the book I hold is 1001 pages thick... I certainly have some reading to chew on.
Today's world is thick with the air of tolerance. Not the kind of tolerance that fights for your freedom to believe what you want and live according to the dictates of your conscience, whether right or wrong, but the kind of tolerance that refuses to say that anyone is right or wrong. The very concept of truth is thrown to the ground and steamrolled like an antiquated novelty from a bygone time. Our culture is permeated with an antagonistic distrust of truth or its personal response - conviction.
Today's church breathes in this air, too, and too often, in cowardice, we abdicate the concept of truth and the firm conviction that we have truth in God's revelation to us. With no firm ground underneath our feet, Christianity becomes a religion about our experience, the way we feel when we sing songs or read the Bible or help other people. A real God who is there and breaks into our existence, who rightly is worshipped as the center of all the universe is replaced by us and our subjective feelings as the center of things. When Christianity wimps out on its proclamation of truth, and when we forsake our fundamental identity as witnesses of our risen Savior and Lord, we become just another voice in our postmodern world, indistinguishable from all the other voices. May it not be so!
We should not be allergic to true conviction. The pattern of this world would tend to do this to us if we do not resist it. Our conviction allergies, caught as we have gone out into the world to proclaim, tend to follow us back into the Church as we seek to minister to each other and proclaim God's Word to each other. How often do you receive or give Biblical rebuke or correction? If Church is mainly about my own personal entertainment experience - which is the case if don't really believe in truth - then rebuke and correction will be completely foreign. How seriously do you take and how seriously does your church take the need to learn the full counsel of God in our discipleship?
I am a Calvinist. I am a Christian first, but I am also a Calvinist. Just like I am a Christian first and also a Baptist. To say I am a Christian means decisively saying some things that will be offensive to people who are not. To say I am a Christian does not mean that I understand everything about God or the Bible or life. To say I am a Christian does not mean that I agree with every Christian about everything, and it does not mean that I agree with everything Christians have done in the past. But nevertheless, I do not shirk the label Christian because of any of these things. Likewise, I don't want to shirk being called a Calvinist simply because of the negative connotations some have with that label.
I have felt the modern aversion to the concept of truth and the idea of having convictions and saying things that will offend. I think that many will point to Calvinism and Arminianism, and they will rightly say that neither fully expresses the truth about God and his world, and that is true. Our knowledge of God, even with Scripture, is limited. (Limited though it is, I believe our knowledge of God through Scripture is sufficient, and he has given us what he means for us to know.) Certainly, our attempts to systematize and see the unity and connections among Scripture will be limited, but that certainly does not mean that they are useless. On the contrary! Finding the connections among Scripture bring it to life so that our quiet times in the Word are not just random bits of information without context. Our God is one, and he speaks with one voice through Scripture, and what a journey and delight it is to pursue that voice in all its variety and richness and truth! May it come alive for you!
I certainly think some conceptions of God are closer than others. I think atheists are way off. I think Hindus and Buddhists are a bit closer because they at least allow the supernatural. Judaism and Islam see a single God. Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are very close to Christianity, but they differ at massively important spots as well. But eventually we move into denominations. I would say that Catholics are Christians, but I would have some significant disagreements with them. There are some first-order differences, which might place you outside the bounds of orthodoxy, and there are second-order differences, like what is the correct method of baptism, and for the latter it would be uncharitable and false to say they are not Christians over a minor disagreement. (Not everyone would agree to which differences go into which category.) When we abdicate truth and conviction, who cares about denominations anymore? But if you care about truth, and if you investigate Scripture, inevitably you are going to disagree with other Christians at certain points.
Admitting to the label of a Calvinist is a gentle rebellion against today's modern and post-modern aversion to labels and claims to truth. I still believe in mystery and I do not understand everything, but on reading Scripture, I tend to agree with Calvin about the main points, though not about everything. I do not believe that Calvinism is an extra-Biblical add-on that distorts Scripture. Rather, I believe that it is the most accurate statement of what I believe to be the true interpretation of Scripture. If I did not believe that to be the case, I am sure that someone else would have expressed a better overall interpretation of Scripture, and for shorthand, I would have taken the guy's name and said, "I follow Jesus above all, but I generally tend to agree with this guy." I believe God chose me because I believe Scripture points me in that direction, and experientially and personally, I simply see God's grace toward me in my own case, and in my salvation I give him all the glory. He drew me! That is all.
Whew! That was a bit longer than intended... But all that to say, Calvin is an important figure in Protestant history. This book represents his thought well, and it is a primary source. I want to read through it and blog my thoughts as I go. I hope you are not turned off by the specificity of my journey. But hey, many in the world are turned off by the specificity of God in choosing a particular people and being born as a Jewish baby at a particular time to a particular young family in a particular place. We do not serve a vague force, but a personal Trinitarian God who descended to mankind and took on human flesh for our salvation in a rescue mission the beginning of which was called Christmas! Hallelujah!
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Analysis of a Movie: True Grit
I have not had a lot of time to write on my blog lately. I have been working hard at Coahulla Creek. There just has not been much free time to pursue reading and listening to sermons and blogging and those sorts of things. It is a different sort of season of life right now, one that involves a little less sleep than I would like, but God is sovereign over all my seasons and all your seasons. I will give him thanks and glory even as I learn what it means to glorify him in this context.
Today I have had a bit of free time, and I stumbled across some resources on Mars Hill's website. How might a Christian think about movies? About stories? About how these relate to God? Questions abound. One of the convictions of the church at Mars Hill is that films and entertainment in general make theological statements. They make claims about reality. As Christians we necessarily live in a culture and it is not an empty question to consider how we are to relate to that culture. To exhaust that question would take a lot of blog entries... but this church believes it is edifying to collectively talk about the meanings of popular movies. It is like training in worldview and the way to think.
I watched True Grit and enjoyed it, and they talk about it. Perhaps you will enjoy or be edified...
Today I have had a bit of free time, and I stumbled across some resources on Mars Hill's website. How might a Christian think about movies? About stories? About how these relate to God? Questions abound. One of the convictions of the church at Mars Hill is that films and entertainment in general make theological statements. They make claims about reality. As Christians we necessarily live in a culture and it is not an empty question to consider how we are to relate to that culture. To exhaust that question would take a lot of blog entries... but this church believes it is edifying to collectively talk about the meanings of popular movies. It is like training in worldview and the way to think.
I watched True Grit and enjoyed it, and they talk about it. Perhaps you will enjoy or be edified...
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Jealous
My eyes shed streams of tears,
because people do not keep your law.
(Psalm 119:136)
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
(Matthew 6:9)
I read that first verse, the one from Psalms, and it revealed to me a lack in my own heart and reminded me of a sermon by John Piper on the second verse, the one from Matthew.
When you and I think of the lost, those who are without Christ and destined for hell apart from a divine salvation, we usually have a reaction sort of like this... we know that their potential fate is terrible. They will be in torment forever, and their suffering will be horrible. To me, however, that is often more of a head knowledge than a heart knowledge. Whatever it has been - perhaps just the anguish of sustaining that sort of emotion - I have become numb to the horror and reality of hell for those who will go there. I know I need to feel more than I do.
When it comes to evangelism, this knowledge of the reality of hell is one potential motivation. I even think it is an essential motivation, one that should not be minimized or ignored or denied (as some have done lately). Indeed, love would move us to seek the alleviation of the suffering of our fellow men and women. However, I believe there is an even greater motivation that should be the fuel of our evangelism.
That greater motivation is to see, savor, cherish, pursue, advance, and behold the glory of God! When we share the Gospel with another, we do hope to save them from eternal punishment because we value their souls - indeed God has chosen to value our souls. However, a twin hope is to see this effect in their salvation: another heart awakened to worship our holy God. We rejoice because a soul is saved and because God is worshipped. We are jealous for God's name, and we yearn to see him praised from more hearts because he is infinitely worthy! Worthy is the lamb who was slaughtered! Oh, to be covered by the blood of a Savior who would plan such a plan and save such a one as me!
What is worth more? A human soul or the praise of God's holy name? I would say God and his glory are worth more, but in his wisdom and love, he has chosen a plan that does not set his glory and the salvation of sinners at odds. Thanks be to him for that!
We rejoice to see sinner's eternal suffering stopped; more so, we rejoice to see God worshipped in truth from another heart because he is worthy! We do both.
When people do not keep God's laws, do I shed streams of tears? I ought to. When I read the verse, it hit me in this way: people not keeping the law is the cause of the psalmist's sorrow. Law breaking is the grounds of the sorrow. While he may also shed tears because those people will suffer judgment, here it seems that he is simply sorrowful over the transgression itself. Indeed, the law is to be treasured because it is given by God, who is to be our supreme treasure. The law (and for us the Bible) is precious because it has been spoken by our God, and its promises have been purchased by his blood. We should long to see it honored, beginning in our own hearts but also among all. Just read the rest of Psalm 119 to see a testament of God's goodness to us by giving us his law; the psalmist loves the God's words and he eats, sleeps, breathes, reads, memorizes, soaks in, and keeps them as best he can. What a tragedy when those words are trampled upon even in the least.
We should be jealous for God. He is jealous for us. He wants our hearts, and he wants our ties to idols to be broken. We should want the same thing; we should long for the smashing of our idols, even to the point of the amputation of our limbs and eyes. But not only for us. We should yearn for Christ to be lifted up in every heart, his praises to be sung from every tongue, every eye turned to heaven, every ear tuned to the precious Spirit-breathed promises of his Word. This whole world is his, though it still currently stands in rebellion, and we should be jealous that God's kingdom be proclaimed and known through the whole place. I think that is the cry of the first petition of the Lord's prayer (and also the second).
"Hallowed be your name." That means, "God, make your name holy to me. Help me to honor it. Your glory is worth all, though I have fallen so short. Make your holiness known to me so that I treasure you more deeply, down to the deepest parts of me. And make your name holy throughout this whole world. Make your name a treasure among those hearts where it is now trampled. Holy, holy, holy are you Lord! Your name is greatly to be praised!" I think that is what it means.
Well, this has been my first rambling on my blog in awhile. As always, I pray it is of benefit to you my reader, whoever you are, and I pray that God's name would be hallowed in your heart. I guess I will be writing this blog less now that I have a real life job, but I am glad I still have it. Soli Deo gloria!
because people do not keep your law.
(Psalm 119:136)
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
(Matthew 6:9)
I read that first verse, the one from Psalms, and it revealed to me a lack in my own heart and reminded me of a sermon by John Piper on the second verse, the one from Matthew.
When you and I think of the lost, those who are without Christ and destined for hell apart from a divine salvation, we usually have a reaction sort of like this... we know that their potential fate is terrible. They will be in torment forever, and their suffering will be horrible. To me, however, that is often more of a head knowledge than a heart knowledge. Whatever it has been - perhaps just the anguish of sustaining that sort of emotion - I have become numb to the horror and reality of hell for those who will go there. I know I need to feel more than I do.
When it comes to evangelism, this knowledge of the reality of hell is one potential motivation. I even think it is an essential motivation, one that should not be minimized or ignored or denied (as some have done lately). Indeed, love would move us to seek the alleviation of the suffering of our fellow men and women. However, I believe there is an even greater motivation that should be the fuel of our evangelism.
That greater motivation is to see, savor, cherish, pursue, advance, and behold the glory of God! When we share the Gospel with another, we do hope to save them from eternal punishment because we value their souls - indeed God has chosen to value our souls. However, a twin hope is to see this effect in their salvation: another heart awakened to worship our holy God. We rejoice because a soul is saved and because God is worshipped. We are jealous for God's name, and we yearn to see him praised from more hearts because he is infinitely worthy! Worthy is the lamb who was slaughtered! Oh, to be covered by the blood of a Savior who would plan such a plan and save such a one as me!
What is worth more? A human soul or the praise of God's holy name? I would say God and his glory are worth more, but in his wisdom and love, he has chosen a plan that does not set his glory and the salvation of sinners at odds. Thanks be to him for that!
We rejoice to see sinner's eternal suffering stopped; more so, we rejoice to see God worshipped in truth from another heart because he is worthy! We do both.
When people do not keep God's laws, do I shed streams of tears? I ought to. When I read the verse, it hit me in this way: people not keeping the law is the cause of the psalmist's sorrow. Law breaking is the grounds of the sorrow. While he may also shed tears because those people will suffer judgment, here it seems that he is simply sorrowful over the transgression itself. Indeed, the law is to be treasured because it is given by God, who is to be our supreme treasure. The law (and for us the Bible) is precious because it has been spoken by our God, and its promises have been purchased by his blood. We should long to see it honored, beginning in our own hearts but also among all. Just read the rest of Psalm 119 to see a testament of God's goodness to us by giving us his law; the psalmist loves the God's words and he eats, sleeps, breathes, reads, memorizes, soaks in, and keeps them as best he can. What a tragedy when those words are trampled upon even in the least.
We should be jealous for God. He is jealous for us. He wants our hearts, and he wants our ties to idols to be broken. We should want the same thing; we should long for the smashing of our idols, even to the point of the amputation of our limbs and eyes. But not only for us. We should yearn for Christ to be lifted up in every heart, his praises to be sung from every tongue, every eye turned to heaven, every ear tuned to the precious Spirit-breathed promises of his Word. This whole world is his, though it still currently stands in rebellion, and we should be jealous that God's kingdom be proclaimed and known through the whole place. I think that is the cry of the first petition of the Lord's prayer (and also the second).
"Hallowed be your name." That means, "God, make your name holy to me. Help me to honor it. Your glory is worth all, though I have fallen so short. Make your holiness known to me so that I treasure you more deeply, down to the deepest parts of me. And make your name holy throughout this whole world. Make your name a treasure among those hearts where it is now trampled. Holy, holy, holy are you Lord! Your name is greatly to be praised!" I think that is what it means.
Well, this has been my first rambling on my blog in awhile. As always, I pray it is of benefit to you my reader, whoever you are, and I pray that God's name would be hallowed in your heart. I guess I will be writing this blog less now that I have a real life job, but I am glad I still have it. Soli Deo gloria!
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Make God Known at Work
Tomorrow morning I officially begin the first day of my new job. I will be a math teacher at Coahulla Creek, teaching freshmen and seniors. I am excited and a little nervous, and your prayers are much appreciated. I ran across a blog entry on Desiring God's website, where Piper wrote very briefly on ways to make Christ known at your secular job. These are things I want to keep in mind, and wherever you are at, I am sure they may help you as well...
I have in mind at least five things—five ways to make God known through your secular job and all of them are important. When one of them is missing, the witness to the truth of Christ suffers.
I have in mind at least five things—five ways to make God known through your secular job and all of them are important. When one of them is missing, the witness to the truth of Christ suffers.
1. The excellence of the products or services you render in your job shows the excellence and greatness of God.
2. The standards of integrity you follow at your job show the integrity and holiness of God.
3. The love you show to people in your job shows the love of God.
4. The stewardship of the money you make from your job shows the value of God compared to other things.
5. The verbal testimony you give to the reality of Christ shows the doorway to all these things in your life and their possibility in the lives of others.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Psalm 150
Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens!
Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his excellent greatness!
Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with sounding cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord!
Our God is infinitely worthy of all our praise. He gives us our breath and heartbeat, so that we can give them back to him by living and praising. This is by no means a complicated entry. Just a simple reminder to stop and praise God that you are alive and blessed, even if things seem difficult. There is deep joy to found in the Fount! Go to him and drink!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens!
Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his excellent greatness!
Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with sounding cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord!
Our God is infinitely worthy of all our praise. He gives us our breath and heartbeat, so that we can give them back to him by living and praising. This is by no means a complicated entry. Just a simple reminder to stop and praise God that you are alive and blessed, even if things seem difficult. There is deep joy to found in the Fount! Go to him and drink!
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Rejoicing in Suffering
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)
I write and speak as quite a novice in the ways of suffering. I know that others have suffered far more, and I know that others have more wisdom on this subject. If you stop reading now and simply pray and soak in the quoted Scripture above, it will by no means be a loss! But perhaps if you read on, you will test what I say and find it to be both true and useful, and if that turns out to be the case, all praise for it will be due to God and not my wisdom.
First, I want to recognize that suffering is real. This passage presupposes the reality of suffering in our lives, and more explicitly in other places of the Bible suffering is actually guaranteed. Psalms gives undiluted voice to the many groanings of our hearts in a great variety of sufferings. God is incredibly realistic in his teachings about suffering and in his portrayal of it.
It is possible that many write off the Bible as cookie-cutter unrealistic because it bids us to rejoice in our sufferings. What could be more unrealistic than that?! If only the Bible knew of my sufferings...
I believe every other system of belief falls either into naive optimism or into hopelessness, while the Gospel of Jesus Christ alone recognizes the depth and gravity of our position as fallen beings and actually addresses it. There are plenty of people running around who believe in the progress of man through the triumph of science or some other method of improving humanity. In each case there is some Utopia held up as ultimate and achievable, and humankind (for the most part) is on its way to achieving it, as long as we can get along and get some things together. These people want to have Heaven now (whether or not they believe in Heaven), which is what some academics refer to as an over-realized eschatology.
Those who believe in an achievable Utopia are the unrealistic ones. (And even if their vision for utopia is not a universal vision encompassing all of mankind, they probably have at least a personal/private vision of utopia. Once such-and-such finally happens, then I will be finally happy. I may still have some problems then, but they will mainly be minor problems that are easily taken care of. And I will be able to basically live happily ever after. This is what I call the Grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side of Graduation/marriage/kids/retirement Syndrome)
A look at the news reveals the folly of utopia. The twentieth century was the bloodiest century of human history. Today there are murders, rape, systematic oppression, wars, and all sorts of evils going on. The twentieth century has revealed that scientific progress does nothing to improve the human condition, but rather just magnifies it! Science may help us to prolong our lives and give us conveniences, but it cannot give us fulfillment or peace, and for one who has no hope, this only means he will have longer to suffer without hope, but at least he will be sufficiently distracted along the way. Indeed, our depravity spreads to fill whatever room there is, and technology has merely served to provide us a bigger room, not a cleaner heart. And beyond news and history, if we look closer in amongst our family and friends, we see suffering in struggling marriages, addictions, sickness, and painful death of loved ones. And perhaps you have suffered. While you will go through seasons characterized by more or less of it, there is nothing in this life that simply takes it away. Suffering is a part of being human in this world.
The other error is to open your eyes and truly recognize the suffering in the world only to conclude that there is no hope. This will lead only to despair. If you are without hope, you will do very little in helping to provide hope to others. You will be miserable. Humans are often resilient and do find hope, but is there possibly an anchor or a true object for our hope that will not fail? Christians dare to answer, Yes! Jesus is our hope.
What you run to when you are having a hard time will tell you the idol that you have set in Jesus' place - alcohol, food, television, friends, Oprah feel-good philosophy, books, sports... Idols are good things (though I don't place Oprah's philosophy in that category) that we have made ultimate, and if we are getting things (peace, hope, happiness, security...) from this substitute that we should rightly get from God, that is good evidence of the idolatry. When you are hit with hard news, do you pray or sink yourself into some distraction? Prayer is the realistic answer. It is our various distractions that are avoidances of reality.
The Christian answer is not a fake and plastic answer. If you have the courage to read the Bible seriously and believe it, it is very blunt and realistic about suffering and the depravity of man. This world is not now as it was created to be. The principle of death and decay and suffering entered the world through the sin of Adam. The physical world around us felt it, as it began to decay and therefore groan. And by our sinful nature we ourselves contribute to the problem as we sin. In sinning we begin to personally unravel in different ways. And when we sin against others, we reap death, not only in ourselves, but in others as well. Everyone does this. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one! Sinning creates a vicious circle of futility and personal, social, and societal destruction, and it is truly the terrible and just wrath of God to give us over to this.
But the Bible also tells us that creation was not only subjected to futility, but it was subjected to futility (death and decay as our judgment) in hope! It was subjected by a God who had a greater plan and purpose to bring about, even through what we had meant for evil. I could talk about this all day, but the point I want to emphatically make is this: God tells us to have joy in suffering, but this is by no means an unrealistic perspective that ignores the reality of suffering. Woe to us if we think we are more realistic about suffering than the Author of Reality! This joy is not a fake or plastic joy, but a soul-deep persevering joy. It is not an Osteen-ish overcoming-power-of-smiling type joy, but a Christ-like cross-bearing-and-enduring type of joy. God is not blind to your sufferings, and he knows that they are real. He does not bid you to ignore them, but instead to trust him in them. If we believe the Bible, having joy and suffering are not mutually exclusive.
Second, our suffering with joy is linked in the passage above to a knowledge. We know that suffering produces endurance produces character produces hope. Our suffering is not senseless. We are being molded by our difficulties and circumstances. We are being made into better people. We are being chiseled by pain into the image of Christ, and oh my, how much there is to be chipped away at on me! Romans 8:28 is an anchor to hold onto. Our sufferings are not outside of this. God is using our sufferings ultimately for our good and his glory.
This takes a higher view of God's sovereignty than many do. Some are unwilling to say that God is sovereign over our sufferings. But this paints a picture of a rather weak and helpless God. When the earthquake happened in Haiti, did God not know it was going to happen? If he did know, was he just powerless to stop it? Every tragedy could be measured the same way. (Of course, atheists will take suffering as an argument against God, but when they recognize suffering and evil in order to say it is not right, they presuppose the existence of a real Right and Wrong, a real way that things should be. And where can that standard come from but from God? Some theologians like Gregory Boyd actually capitulate to these objections and say that God limits his knowledge of the future. The evidence against this view is not the topic of this post, but suffice it to say that the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the view that God's knowledge of the future is complete.)
As an example, when Job suffers, he attributes it to God, and he is said not to have sinned with his lips. But it was Satan who was afflicting Job, right? Satan was doing it, but what Satan meant for evil, God meant for good. Romans 8:28 says that God does things for a purpose. If we are suffering, God could have prevented it, but instead he allowed it. Whatever God allows, he allows for a reason. God has purposes in our sufferings. This is a truth that may take a lot of wrestling and a lot of Scripture-searching and even a lot of tears to come to grips with, but I am convinced that it is the truth, and indeed, the truth sets us free, even when it hurts.
So what can we know of God's purposes in our suffering? A more general question: what can we know of God's purposes? An even more general question: what can we know of God? I think the same principles govern the answers to all three questions. Our knowledge of God can be true, though it will never be exhaustive, and the infallibly reliable source of our knowledge of God is his self revelation in Scripture. The same is true of our sufferings and their purposes. There is so much that we simply are not going to know, at least for now. However, we can have answers that are true, if not exhaustive, as long as they are tied to Scripture. Part of that knowledge is given here in Romans 5. More is given in Romans 8.
God is producing in us a hope. But it is not a hope for that substitute utopia. It is not a general and directionless hope. It is a hope that is tied fiercely to Scripture. It is a hope in God, and it is a hope that takes him at his Word. That is really what I would call faith, and taking God at his Word calls attention to his infinite goodness, love, and inexhaustible riches as the Giver of all good things and the Keeper of promises! Calling attention to these things gives God the glory! When the cry of our hearts is no longer primarily, "God make me happy", but rather, "God be glorified", we will rejoice in his wisdom to do that by whatever means he deems best. Often, God will get more glory from us when we have the kind of hope in him that comes only through suffering. And our happiness will then be the best kind because it will not be the kind that we would have invented for ourselves, a kind of happiness that would necessarily include the minimization of all suffering, but will rather be the happiness that only the God who created us can give. He knows us better than we know ourselves, and he himself is better than any other thing we could grasp for, and therefore this knowledge is a grasping by faith at this truth: God knows best how to give himself to us.
Knowing these things doesn't make suffering easy, but it is a pathway to celebrating God's glory! Walking that pathway, we can find joy even with tears in our eyes.
Third, it is both good and bad to compare sufferings. Let me start with the bad. When I am suffering, it will be very easy for my eyes to be focused on me and my own situation. If I compare my sufferings with those of other people, it would be bad to conclude that their suffering is lesser and therefore unimportant. How horrible if my suffering should actually be an occasion for a subtle form of pride! It would be profoundly unloving for me to see where another is suffering and to call it fake or small or unimportant. We must fight the temptation to rationalize why our suffering is real and rationalize why someone else should just get over it. We ought to recognize the reality of universal suffering - that everyone goes through it. Or else, we will cut off our own legs from ever being able to walk over to someone else to put our arms around them. To magnify our own suffering in order to downplay everyone else's will leave us in a deeply lonely place, unable to be helped and also unable to be a help.
However, when I am in a place of difficulty, and I am preaching the truth to myself, comparing my sufferings can be a good thing. It is healthy for me, at least, to realize how blessed I am. There are people in the world who do not have food, shelter, water, a livelihood, health, and plenty of other things. I am filthy stinking rich in comparison to most of the world. And not because I earned it, but because of who I was born to. When I went to Haiti, I saw overwhelming devastation of all sorts. One of the things that sticks with me is a man who lost two children, but rejoiced that his third was alive! In Haiti, especially in the worship services, I saw that suffering and joy were not mutually exclusive. And the relative bigness of some of their sufferings in comparison to mine allows me sometimes to take a deep breath and know that it's not the end of the world. It is good to be invaded by realities bigger than the small world I allow myself to be focused on when I am focused only on myself.
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. (Romans 8:18) What is coming for us is so much bigger than what we are going through now. The glory that is to be revealed to us is going to be awesome in the strongest sense of the word. Take everything you are going through right now and place it on a scale against God's eternal glory, and it is not even feathers!
The flip side of this comparison - and it's so lopsided that it's apparently not even worth the comparison - is a very sobering reality. Some humans will die and enter eternal damnation separated from Christ in hell. God's wrath will rightly visit them for eternity. Millions slip unexpectedly over this waterfall into eternity every year, and none of our sufferings compare to the sufferings of hell. When I believe I am suffering here and now, it is good to consciously bring before my mind that I really deserve an eternal suffering that is a trillion trillion times worse than this, but that by God's grace alone I have been saved. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Hallelujah!
Since suffering is ultimately a consequence of original and ongoing sin, I think our sufferings can be taken as a clue to the seriousness with which God takes sin, and our sufferings are occasions for repentance. They remind us that God's wrath is real, and therefore we should take the reality of hell seriously, to avoid it ourselves and to have urgency in warning others (within the context of the whole Gospel).
While the earthquake in Haiti may not have been God's specific judgment on Haiti for a specific sin committed, it is nevertheless evidence of God's judgment on sin, and our response should be repentance, not an investigation into the sins of Haiti. When the Tower of Siloam fell on some unsuspecting folks and Jesus was asked about it, his instructions were simple: repent.
Fourth, our God knows suffering as an insider. This is more comforting than anything I have said thus far, I believe. God did not exempt himself from the sufferings of his children, but he allowed himself to undergo them all. He is a High Priest who can sympathize. He was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. He was homeless, mocked, betrayed, spit on, deserted, rejected, laughed at, and crucified. Physically and emotionally Jesus suffered greatly.
Yet there was a suffering far greater than these. Spiritually, Jesus was separated from the Father; he cried out, "Why have you forsaken me?" Jesus had known perfect fellowship with the Father from eternity past; for the first time that fellowship was broken, as my sins were laid on his back, and he bore God's terrible wrath toward my sin in my place. I deserved crucifixion and worse, but he took it. He deserved blessings and fellowship, which were rightfully his all along, but he gave those up to shoulder the cross, and I got those blessings and that fellowship, instead. That is what the Gospel is about! But oh, the suffering Jesus endured! It is a suffering that we cannot comprehend, and it is one that bids me to silence in the presence of our holy God.
And now Jesus is resurrected. He is alive. He is at the Father's right hand. If we are in him, because he has been raised, we receive forgiveness and justification. The price has been paid. Jesus knows us intimately, he formed us, and he has placed his Spirit within us. He pours his love into our hearts through the Spirit! I do not believe that the great martyrs of old and today were extra-super-spiritual or full of superhuman strength. I think that they had grasped to the heart this magnificent truth: God loves us! Oh, that we might really know that!
Some people have a hard time believing God would send people to hell. I have the hardest time believing he's not going to send me. I understand - though not as much as I ought - God's wrath. I have a harder time understanding his grace and love. I am so deserving of eternal suffering, but I believe he foreknew me, predestined me, justified me, and that I will one day reach glory. Each step is not dependent on my works or inherent goodness but on the gracious gift of a persevering faith that produces works. My boasting is eradicated by the blood of Jesus!
Let yourself be understood by Jesus. Let yourself be known by Jesus. Let yourself be comforted by Jesus. He does love you, and he does understand you. Many people feel alone in their sufferings. They are unable to be comforted because they believe no one understands. No one has gone through the exact same things. If you get in a habit of shutting people out who try to comfort you because you don't believe they understand, you may end up hardening your heart to the love of any other in general, and you risk shutting out the God who actually understands perfectly and who stands there by your side to comfort you and give you joy in suffering.
Finally, one of God's purposes in suffering is the spread of the Gospel. We are filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. Christ's sufferings on the cross were sufficient to pardon sinners, but what is lacking is a very real portrait of that to the nations in each generation. As the Church we are the Body of Christ, indwelt by the Spirit. Just as Christ suffered bodily on the cross, his Body now suffers for the same ultimate purposes - that Christ would be glorified through the purchase of sinners into his family. Christ went to the cross for the joy that was set before him - many sons coming to belief. We find real joy, too, when we count our lives as nothing compared to knowing Christ, and in so doing, proclaim the Gospel which is the power of God for salvation to all who believe. It is the mark of true believers when, having given up everything, they deny that they have given up anything because they really have caught the Philippians 3:7 logic. And the spread of the Gospel through sufferings and deaths of saints should not hold up only those very visible actions of self-denial but the thousands of smaller daily dyings to self that serve as the necessary foundation. May Christ be our treasure! Soli Deo gloria.
We will be able to rejoice in sufferings when we get ourselves caught up in bigger realities than our own lives, namely the glory of God.
To summarize, you can suffer with joy because God is in control and he loves you. Wiser men and women may have written a far more helpful account, but it is my hope that this will have been of help to you. Thank you for sticking with me in such a long and meandering pondering on a deep and heavy subject.
I write and speak as quite a novice in the ways of suffering. I know that others have suffered far more, and I know that others have more wisdom on this subject. If you stop reading now and simply pray and soak in the quoted Scripture above, it will by no means be a loss! But perhaps if you read on, you will test what I say and find it to be both true and useful, and if that turns out to be the case, all praise for it will be due to God and not my wisdom.
First, I want to recognize that suffering is real. This passage presupposes the reality of suffering in our lives, and more explicitly in other places of the Bible suffering is actually guaranteed. Psalms gives undiluted voice to the many groanings of our hearts in a great variety of sufferings. God is incredibly realistic in his teachings about suffering and in his portrayal of it.
It is possible that many write off the Bible as cookie-cutter unrealistic because it bids us to rejoice in our sufferings. What could be more unrealistic than that?! If only the Bible knew of my sufferings...
I believe every other system of belief falls either into naive optimism or into hopelessness, while the Gospel of Jesus Christ alone recognizes the depth and gravity of our position as fallen beings and actually addresses it. There are plenty of people running around who believe in the progress of man through the triumph of science or some other method of improving humanity. In each case there is some Utopia held up as ultimate and achievable, and humankind (for the most part) is on its way to achieving it, as long as we can get along and get some things together. These people want to have Heaven now (whether or not they believe in Heaven), which is what some academics refer to as an over-realized eschatology.
Those who believe in an achievable Utopia are the unrealistic ones. (And even if their vision for utopia is not a universal vision encompassing all of mankind, they probably have at least a personal/private vision of utopia. Once such-and-such finally happens, then I will be finally happy. I may still have some problems then, but they will mainly be minor problems that are easily taken care of. And I will be able to basically live happily ever after. This is what I call the Grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side of Graduation/marriage/kids/retirement Syndrome)
A look at the news reveals the folly of utopia. The twentieth century was the bloodiest century of human history. Today there are murders, rape, systematic oppression, wars, and all sorts of evils going on. The twentieth century has revealed that scientific progress does nothing to improve the human condition, but rather just magnifies it! Science may help us to prolong our lives and give us conveniences, but it cannot give us fulfillment or peace, and for one who has no hope, this only means he will have longer to suffer without hope, but at least he will be sufficiently distracted along the way. Indeed, our depravity spreads to fill whatever room there is, and technology has merely served to provide us a bigger room, not a cleaner heart. And beyond news and history, if we look closer in amongst our family and friends, we see suffering in struggling marriages, addictions, sickness, and painful death of loved ones. And perhaps you have suffered. While you will go through seasons characterized by more or less of it, there is nothing in this life that simply takes it away. Suffering is a part of being human in this world.
The other error is to open your eyes and truly recognize the suffering in the world only to conclude that there is no hope. This will lead only to despair. If you are without hope, you will do very little in helping to provide hope to others. You will be miserable. Humans are often resilient and do find hope, but is there possibly an anchor or a true object for our hope that will not fail? Christians dare to answer, Yes! Jesus is our hope.
What you run to when you are having a hard time will tell you the idol that you have set in Jesus' place - alcohol, food, television, friends, Oprah feel-good philosophy, books, sports... Idols are good things (though I don't place Oprah's philosophy in that category) that we have made ultimate, and if we are getting things (peace, hope, happiness, security...) from this substitute that we should rightly get from God, that is good evidence of the idolatry. When you are hit with hard news, do you pray or sink yourself into some distraction? Prayer is the realistic answer. It is our various distractions that are avoidances of reality.
The Christian answer is not a fake and plastic answer. If you have the courage to read the Bible seriously and believe it, it is very blunt and realistic about suffering and the depravity of man. This world is not now as it was created to be. The principle of death and decay and suffering entered the world through the sin of Adam. The physical world around us felt it, as it began to decay and therefore groan. And by our sinful nature we ourselves contribute to the problem as we sin. In sinning we begin to personally unravel in different ways. And when we sin against others, we reap death, not only in ourselves, but in others as well. Everyone does this. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one! Sinning creates a vicious circle of futility and personal, social, and societal destruction, and it is truly the terrible and just wrath of God to give us over to this.
But the Bible also tells us that creation was not only subjected to futility, but it was subjected to futility (death and decay as our judgment) in hope! It was subjected by a God who had a greater plan and purpose to bring about, even through what we had meant for evil. I could talk about this all day, but the point I want to emphatically make is this: God tells us to have joy in suffering, but this is by no means an unrealistic perspective that ignores the reality of suffering. Woe to us if we think we are more realistic about suffering than the Author of Reality! This joy is not a fake or plastic joy, but a soul-deep persevering joy. It is not an Osteen-ish overcoming-power-of-smiling type joy, but a Christ-like cross-bearing-and-enduring type of joy. God is not blind to your sufferings, and he knows that they are real. He does not bid you to ignore them, but instead to trust him in them. If we believe the Bible, having joy and suffering are not mutually exclusive.
Second, our suffering with joy is linked in the passage above to a knowledge. We know that suffering produces endurance produces character produces hope. Our suffering is not senseless. We are being molded by our difficulties and circumstances. We are being made into better people. We are being chiseled by pain into the image of Christ, and oh my, how much there is to be chipped away at on me! Romans 8:28 is an anchor to hold onto. Our sufferings are not outside of this. God is using our sufferings ultimately for our good and his glory.
This takes a higher view of God's sovereignty than many do. Some are unwilling to say that God is sovereign over our sufferings. But this paints a picture of a rather weak and helpless God. When the earthquake happened in Haiti, did God not know it was going to happen? If he did know, was he just powerless to stop it? Every tragedy could be measured the same way. (Of course, atheists will take suffering as an argument against God, but when they recognize suffering and evil in order to say it is not right, they presuppose the existence of a real Right and Wrong, a real way that things should be. And where can that standard come from but from God? Some theologians like Gregory Boyd actually capitulate to these objections and say that God limits his knowledge of the future. The evidence against this view is not the topic of this post, but suffice it to say that the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the view that God's knowledge of the future is complete.)
As an example, when Job suffers, he attributes it to God, and he is said not to have sinned with his lips. But it was Satan who was afflicting Job, right? Satan was doing it, but what Satan meant for evil, God meant for good. Romans 8:28 says that God does things for a purpose. If we are suffering, God could have prevented it, but instead he allowed it. Whatever God allows, he allows for a reason. God has purposes in our sufferings. This is a truth that may take a lot of wrestling and a lot of Scripture-searching and even a lot of tears to come to grips with, but I am convinced that it is the truth, and indeed, the truth sets us free, even when it hurts.
So what can we know of God's purposes in our suffering? A more general question: what can we know of God's purposes? An even more general question: what can we know of God? I think the same principles govern the answers to all three questions. Our knowledge of God can be true, though it will never be exhaustive, and the infallibly reliable source of our knowledge of God is his self revelation in Scripture. The same is true of our sufferings and their purposes. There is so much that we simply are not going to know, at least for now. However, we can have answers that are true, if not exhaustive, as long as they are tied to Scripture. Part of that knowledge is given here in Romans 5. More is given in Romans 8.
God is producing in us a hope. But it is not a hope for that substitute utopia. It is not a general and directionless hope. It is a hope that is tied fiercely to Scripture. It is a hope in God, and it is a hope that takes him at his Word. That is really what I would call faith, and taking God at his Word calls attention to his infinite goodness, love, and inexhaustible riches as the Giver of all good things and the Keeper of promises! Calling attention to these things gives God the glory! When the cry of our hearts is no longer primarily, "God make me happy", but rather, "God be glorified", we will rejoice in his wisdom to do that by whatever means he deems best. Often, God will get more glory from us when we have the kind of hope in him that comes only through suffering. And our happiness will then be the best kind because it will not be the kind that we would have invented for ourselves, a kind of happiness that would necessarily include the minimization of all suffering, but will rather be the happiness that only the God who created us can give. He knows us better than we know ourselves, and he himself is better than any other thing we could grasp for, and therefore this knowledge is a grasping by faith at this truth: God knows best how to give himself to us.
Knowing these things doesn't make suffering easy, but it is a pathway to celebrating God's glory! Walking that pathway, we can find joy even with tears in our eyes.
Third, it is both good and bad to compare sufferings. Let me start with the bad. When I am suffering, it will be very easy for my eyes to be focused on me and my own situation. If I compare my sufferings with those of other people, it would be bad to conclude that their suffering is lesser and therefore unimportant. How horrible if my suffering should actually be an occasion for a subtle form of pride! It would be profoundly unloving for me to see where another is suffering and to call it fake or small or unimportant. We must fight the temptation to rationalize why our suffering is real and rationalize why someone else should just get over it. We ought to recognize the reality of universal suffering - that everyone goes through it. Or else, we will cut off our own legs from ever being able to walk over to someone else to put our arms around them. To magnify our own suffering in order to downplay everyone else's will leave us in a deeply lonely place, unable to be helped and also unable to be a help.
However, when I am in a place of difficulty, and I am preaching the truth to myself, comparing my sufferings can be a good thing. It is healthy for me, at least, to realize how blessed I am. There are people in the world who do not have food, shelter, water, a livelihood, health, and plenty of other things. I am filthy stinking rich in comparison to most of the world. And not because I earned it, but because of who I was born to. When I went to Haiti, I saw overwhelming devastation of all sorts. One of the things that sticks with me is a man who lost two children, but rejoiced that his third was alive! In Haiti, especially in the worship services, I saw that suffering and joy were not mutually exclusive. And the relative bigness of some of their sufferings in comparison to mine allows me sometimes to take a deep breath and know that it's not the end of the world. It is good to be invaded by realities bigger than the small world I allow myself to be focused on when I am focused only on myself.
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. (Romans 8:18) What is coming for us is so much bigger than what we are going through now. The glory that is to be revealed to us is going to be awesome in the strongest sense of the word. Take everything you are going through right now and place it on a scale against God's eternal glory, and it is not even feathers!
The flip side of this comparison - and it's so lopsided that it's apparently not even worth the comparison - is a very sobering reality. Some humans will die and enter eternal damnation separated from Christ in hell. God's wrath will rightly visit them for eternity. Millions slip unexpectedly over this waterfall into eternity every year, and none of our sufferings compare to the sufferings of hell. When I believe I am suffering here and now, it is good to consciously bring before my mind that I really deserve an eternal suffering that is a trillion trillion times worse than this, but that by God's grace alone I have been saved. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Hallelujah!
Since suffering is ultimately a consequence of original and ongoing sin, I think our sufferings can be taken as a clue to the seriousness with which God takes sin, and our sufferings are occasions for repentance. They remind us that God's wrath is real, and therefore we should take the reality of hell seriously, to avoid it ourselves and to have urgency in warning others (within the context of the whole Gospel).
While the earthquake in Haiti may not have been God's specific judgment on Haiti for a specific sin committed, it is nevertheless evidence of God's judgment on sin, and our response should be repentance, not an investigation into the sins of Haiti. When the Tower of Siloam fell on some unsuspecting folks and Jesus was asked about it, his instructions were simple: repent.
Fourth, our God knows suffering as an insider. This is more comforting than anything I have said thus far, I believe. God did not exempt himself from the sufferings of his children, but he allowed himself to undergo them all. He is a High Priest who can sympathize. He was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. He was homeless, mocked, betrayed, spit on, deserted, rejected, laughed at, and crucified. Physically and emotionally Jesus suffered greatly.
Yet there was a suffering far greater than these. Spiritually, Jesus was separated from the Father; he cried out, "Why have you forsaken me?" Jesus had known perfect fellowship with the Father from eternity past; for the first time that fellowship was broken, as my sins were laid on his back, and he bore God's terrible wrath toward my sin in my place. I deserved crucifixion and worse, but he took it. He deserved blessings and fellowship, which were rightfully his all along, but he gave those up to shoulder the cross, and I got those blessings and that fellowship, instead. That is what the Gospel is about! But oh, the suffering Jesus endured! It is a suffering that we cannot comprehend, and it is one that bids me to silence in the presence of our holy God.
And now Jesus is resurrected. He is alive. He is at the Father's right hand. If we are in him, because he has been raised, we receive forgiveness and justification. The price has been paid. Jesus knows us intimately, he formed us, and he has placed his Spirit within us. He pours his love into our hearts through the Spirit! I do not believe that the great martyrs of old and today were extra-super-spiritual or full of superhuman strength. I think that they had grasped to the heart this magnificent truth: God loves us! Oh, that we might really know that!
Some people have a hard time believing God would send people to hell. I have the hardest time believing he's not going to send me. I understand - though not as much as I ought - God's wrath. I have a harder time understanding his grace and love. I am so deserving of eternal suffering, but I believe he foreknew me, predestined me, justified me, and that I will one day reach glory. Each step is not dependent on my works or inherent goodness but on the gracious gift of a persevering faith that produces works. My boasting is eradicated by the blood of Jesus!
Let yourself be understood by Jesus. Let yourself be known by Jesus. Let yourself be comforted by Jesus. He does love you, and he does understand you. Many people feel alone in their sufferings. They are unable to be comforted because they believe no one understands. No one has gone through the exact same things. If you get in a habit of shutting people out who try to comfort you because you don't believe they understand, you may end up hardening your heart to the love of any other in general, and you risk shutting out the God who actually understands perfectly and who stands there by your side to comfort you and give you joy in suffering.
Finally, one of God's purposes in suffering is the spread of the Gospel. We are filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. Christ's sufferings on the cross were sufficient to pardon sinners, but what is lacking is a very real portrait of that to the nations in each generation. As the Church we are the Body of Christ, indwelt by the Spirit. Just as Christ suffered bodily on the cross, his Body now suffers for the same ultimate purposes - that Christ would be glorified through the purchase of sinners into his family. Christ went to the cross for the joy that was set before him - many sons coming to belief. We find real joy, too, when we count our lives as nothing compared to knowing Christ, and in so doing, proclaim the Gospel which is the power of God for salvation to all who believe. It is the mark of true believers when, having given up everything, they deny that they have given up anything because they really have caught the Philippians 3:7 logic. And the spread of the Gospel through sufferings and deaths of saints should not hold up only those very visible actions of self-denial but the thousands of smaller daily dyings to self that serve as the necessary foundation. May Christ be our treasure! Soli Deo gloria.
We will be able to rejoice in sufferings when we get ourselves caught up in bigger realities than our own lives, namely the glory of God.
To summarize, you can suffer with joy because God is in control and he loves you. Wiser men and women may have written a far more helpful account, but it is my hope that this will have been of help to you. Thank you for sticking with me in such a long and meandering pondering on a deep and heavy subject.
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