Response to Brandon's Dad, primarily about suffering

[_Steve]

While teaching in Florida, I met a young man named Brandon. His dad, who had at one time been in the ministry, had fallen away from faith. Brandon's dad had recently been in dialog with Ron Rhodes, a well-known Christian apologist, but had not accepted the points made by Rhodes. Brandon wrote to me recently, asking me to answer some matters that his father had raised in an email to him. I answered him, and, since some of his father's points were common objections, I thought I'd post, with Brandon's permission, his dad's thoughts and my responses.

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Hi Brandon,
I have looked at your dad's concerns, and have jotted down some initial impressions. I hope they may be helpful.

Your dad wrote:

“[Ron Rhodes] quotes the ‘answer’ to problems many Christians give from the story of Joseph in Genesis where Joseph claims God has turned for good what Satan intended for evil so that a nation might be saved. But what was the nation saved from?? A drought.? What is responsible for a drought?? The weather.? Who is responsible for the weather?? God.? To my way of thinking rather than God saving the nation by changing the weather that he controls and dictates in the first place, he chose to put Joseph through 15 years of hellish slavery and prison (back in ancient times when prison was far worse than it is now) via the wicked betrayal of his brothers and unjust accusations from Potipher's adulterous wife -- so that the nation could ultimately be saved.? If I were Joseph I would rather have just had God change the weather.? To me that sounds like one of those [expletive] answers to try to justify harsh brutality and God failing to save Joseph.? Yes, I know that eventually Joseph was saved -- but after 15 years of undeserved hellish punishment. Why couldn't God save him on day one?? Or why couldn't God change the weather??”

If we found ourselves incapable of answering these (rhetorical?) questions, would this failure prove that God’s plan for Joseph and his generation was not as enlightened as one we would have concocted? In some cases of suffering (like those of Joseph), it is possible to understand something of the purpose of God, while there may be other cases where the main reasons will not be known until we “know as also we are known.” The error, in the present objections, is manifest in the use of phrases like, “To my way of thinking…” and, “If I were Joseph I would rather…” The objector’s mistake is in his assumption that his own thinking is superior to that of God, or even of Joseph.

In your dad's way of thinking, it seems, God ought to cater to man’s preferences rather than man conforming to God’s purposes. In this we see that man-centered orientation that exists in every man’s benighted mind prior to regeneration. When a person is converted, by definition, he humbles himself before his Creator, and admits that man’s wisdom is dwarfed in the presence of God’s.

The regenerated man has realized that it is not God who is on trial, or who needs to justify His actions at our court of approval, but it is the other way around. This transcendent truth must be acknowledged, even in cases where God’s purposes are not so transparent as I think they are in the story of Joseph.

Impossible as it is for some to fathom, as a man devoted to God, I believe, Joseph would have rather had the will of God fulfilled in his life—-suffering and all!—-than to pursue his own choice of circumstances apart from God’s will. How do I know this? Because I think I share the same motivations that animated Joseph, as do hundreds of people close to me--so this is not theoretical speculation, merely.

Had he been given the option of choosing his own path, Joseph would eventually have found himself dividing (twelve ways!) the inheritance of a desert-wandering sheik (Jacob), leading flocks from oasis to oasis. Instead, God’s providence rendered him, ultimately, far more significant, more prestigious, more wealthy, and more powerful than any man on earth, other than Pharaoh, and placed him in a position to save millions of lives. Not a bad pay-off for 12 years in God’s school of hard knocks, I think. Richard Wurmbrandt spent 14 years in a Communist prison, under frequent torture, but he came to value the experience after it was past, and was greatly used of God as a result, in ways that he probably could not have been without the experience.

None of these outcomes in Joseph's life would have been accomplished, had God merely “changed the weather” or delivered Joseph from prison the first day he got there. One needs only to read the story to see how every step in Joseph’s journey through suffering positioned him nearer to the ear of the Pharaoh, who later exalted him to high rank.

It is impossible for us to calculate (though God certainly knew) the degree to which those sufferings were also necessary for the purpose of humbling and softening the heart of the over-confident, young Joseph, before he could be entrusted with so great authority (we see God also requiring such training in the preparation of Moses). Those who trust God stubbornly, to the end of His dealings, eventually come to appreciate the value of this character-training.

We can't, in every instance of human suffering, see God’s good purpose as clearly as we can in Joseph’s case—nor do we need to. It is enough to know that our God is the same God as Joseph’s, and He is a good economist. He always ultimately profits from His investments, and He shares the profits with those who trust Him and pay a price in suffering.

Your dad wrote:

"We could make lofty claims about God's design and purpose being beyond our understanding -- but if it is so beyond our understanding then why do we have a Bible -- and a rather lengthy one at that? If God does not want us to understand then why did Jesus teach? Are people saved by the "magic" of hearing the Gospel? Or are they saved by first hearing, then understanding and then placing faith in it as true to be saved?"

Actually, there may be many of God’s designs that lie beyond the grasp of our understanding, though the case of Joseph and his suffering is not one of them. In this paragraph, it sounds as if your dad is struggling to balance two concepts that seem to be in tension: 1) The fact that God apparently has taken pains to bring us understanding of Himself, suggesting that He wants us to know stuff, and 2) the fact that there are things about Him and His purposes that we can't understand—like why some cases of human suffering occur.

I personally have never thought these two truths to be mutually exclusive. If I were to assume that there are, in the total realm of ultimate reality, things comprehensible to man, as well as things incomprehensible, I don't think that I would thereby be succumbing to a fit of irrationality. For example, there are (even within the limited range of things that I know as an adult) many things that young children would not be able to grasp—lacking, as they do, adequate frames of reference in certain categories. This fact, however, did not prevent me from teaching my children the things that they were capable of understanding, and especially those things that they must know for their own good.

Among the things that God understands completely, there certainly must be things that we mortals can not comprehend, because we lack adequate analogies in our temporal experience...but what of it? These things may not be among the things necessary for us to know. All that we need to know, in order to please God and enjoy Him for eternity is apparently quite within our grasp, and has been revealed to us by God through Moses and the prophets, and through Christ and the apostles. The psalmist wrote: "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me" (Ps.131:1). I do not have need to understand all mysteries and all knowledge—for without love (something I do understand), such knowledge "profits nothing" (1 Cor.13:2-3). If I remain humble before God, and teachable, He will take it upon Himself to make sure that I know all the things that I must know, many of which He will withhold from the arrogant intellectual: "I thank you, O Father, that you have hidden these things from the wise and the prudent, and have revealed them unto babes!" (Matt.11:25).

By the way, I agree that salvation comes as a result of understanding the Gospel message, rather than merely by some "magic" that accompanies the preaching. There are aspects of the Gospel that are not readily understandable by man, nor need to be (for example, the manner in which the atonement secures man's forgiveness is a philosophical matter that theologians still debate about, but it is more important that God understands it than that we do!). A child can understand the essentials of the Gospel, if they are presented clearly enough. But there is a "magical" aspect to salvation as well. Not really “magical,”actually, but miraculous, when God reveals the truth to the heart of the hearer, without which revelation regeneration does not occur.

Your dad wrote:

"Or Ron Rhodes quoted the passage from Isaiah 'My thoughts are higher than your thoughts and my ways are higher than your ways.' What about the renewed mind of Romans 12:2? What about the verse to "put on the mind of Christ"? I could understand that God's ways may not make sense to our natural, fleshly, immature ways -- but after studying the Bible and renewing our mind, I expect that we will start to understand God's ways. Otherwise, what's the point of it? To me that's just another lame answer of 'I really don't know the reason so I am scrambling to say something so the questioner will go away.' Surely the God of the universe who has ALL KNOWLEDGE can come up with something better than that. I would rather Christians say, we just don't know and it's hard to take."

I mostly agree with this assessment. It would be refreshing if more Christian apologists would simply say, "I don't know," or, "I don't understand it," more frequently. I get weary of hearing apologists bluff their way through hard questions, pretending to know what they clearly do not.

However, the objection seems to imply that God cannot have a good reason for things He does, if we do not understand what that reason is. This objection seems very unreasonable to me. First, I believe that those who meditate day and night on the word of God (as we are exhorted to do) actually do come to understand many things about God's ways and purposes that are lost on those who simply read the Bible sporadically, carelessly or skeptically. I know that there are many things that I personally would have dismissively referred to as "unknowable mysteries" back when I had only read through the Bible three or four times, but which seem quite lucid and knowable to me at this later stage of my Christian life. Some things only become clear after years of reverent meditation on scripture. This is why I never tire of studying the Bible, even after reading through it more than thirty times now. The reverent, continuous study of the scriptures is an unending adventure of discovery, taking the believer deeper and deeper into the mind and heart of God with each new reading.

(In saying this, it may seem to the skeptic that I am just affirming some lame platitude which I think is "supposed to be true" of Christian experience. I gave up all such platitudes years ago, in my quest for reality. I am acquainted with all the Christian clichés, but I am not using them. It is reality that I am describing.)

The quotation of Isaiah 55 is often misapplied, as if God is talking about the inaccessibility of His ways and His thoughts to us earthlings. Such an idea may have merit, and may be expressed elsewhere in scripture (e.g. Romans 11:33-34), but it is not the point of Isaiah 55:8f. This passage is referring to the moral superiority of God's ways and thoughts to those of wicked men (see context, including verse 7). "My thoughts are higher than yours" really means, "My ideas are morally better than those of you wicked men."

Your dad wrote:

"I know there are arguments that state that what really counts is the afterlife -- but then what is the message of the Old Testament to Abraham with all the blessings of long life and prosperity and health? When did God change his mind about that being important? Or did Moses not get it right when he wrote the Pentateuch?"

I don't think this is a question of God changing His mind, but rather of His accommodating the changing (developing) minds of His hearers. For some reason, God chose to follow a policy of "progressive revelation." He did not tell His people everything at once. This may have been merely out of sensitivity to what they could or could not handle, as when Jesus told His disciples, "I have many things yet to say to you, but you can not bear them now" (John 16:12). Or it may have been His desire to unfold the plan in stages, allowing successive generations to learn something more than what the previous generations understood, teaching the human race the ABC's prior to expecting them to dissect Shakespeare. "For precept must be upon precept...line upon line...here a little, there a little..."(Isa.28:10).

Whatever His reasons, it is clear that God revealed the deep things gradually, in increments. He gave types and shadows in the Old Testament of things to be fulfilled in Christ. Religious rituals foreshadowed spiritual realities (Col.2:16-17/ Heb.8:4-5). Physical objects and places prefigured heavenly counterparts (Heb.9:24; 11:16).

One aspect of this process of progressive revelation was that God revealed almost nothing, in the Old Testament, about eternity. There were hints here and there, but no direct revelation or disclosure of the eternal rewards of the wicked or of the righteous. The spiritual blessings of the age to come were foreshadowed in material blessings to the patriarchs. Eternal life was foreshadowed by the prospect of long earthly life.

In the absence of assurance of eternal life, the promise of long earthly life provided some consolation, but Jesus made it clear that even a long earthly life is inconsequential compared to one's eternal destiny. "Do not fear those who kill the body but can not kill the soul. But rather, fear Him who is able to destroy the body and the soul in hell" (Matt.10:28). "Whoever desires to save his [earthly] life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life [prematurely] for my sake shall save it [to eternity]."

Jesus even suggested that what we, today, call "quality of life" was relatively unimportant, compared to eternity, suggesting that a lifetime of physical poverty, blindness or lameness is more desirable to be endured for the sake of eternal life than good health and wealth with hell to pay (Luke 6:20, 24/ Matt.6:19/Mark 9:43-48). The teaching of Christ, when juxtaposed against that of the Pentateuch, does not represent a change of God's mind, but rather God's pulling away the veil from the eternal realities that were previously only hinted at.


Your dad wrote:

"One of my foremost problems with Christianity is the gross holes in it -- the inconsistent logic, the inconsistent representations of God -- for in the Old Testament God is presented as a judging God -- and the OT gives promise after promise that following and obeying God will lead to blessing and prosperity (and not just spiritual prosperity) and that rebellion and rejecting God will lead to judgment. Set aside the blessing part -- where is the judgment?"

When one refers to the inconsistencies in Christianity, I am always curious to know what is being referred to as "Christianity." So far as I can tell, “Christianity” simply means following Jesus. Jesus said to certain people, "Follow me!" When they did so, they became disciples (a term later replaced with "Christians" Acts 11:26). In my forty-plus years of being a disciple of Jesus (or a Christian), I have not found that Christ has required me to involve myself in any contradictions or inconsistencies. All the inconsistencies in my Christian life have come from my side, not from the requirements defined by Jesus.

The present charge of inconsistencies in Christianity seems to be based on the perception that God, in the Old Testament, was more judgmental than in the New. This is partly true and partly illusory.

The law was given by Moses, but "grace and truth" have come into the world through Christ (John 1:16). The atoning sacrifice of Jesus has allowed God, in many respects, to deal more gently with sinners than before. "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their transgressions against them" (2 Cor.5:19).

However, there is no perceptible inconsistency between the character of God, as He is revealed in the Old Testament and the character of God revealed in Christ. We would find fault with a novel or a play in which we felt the characters were too "one-dimensional." Real people are more complex. Yet, quite inconsistently, we require the Bible to present a one-dimensional God, as if He is not as real a person as we are! The Old Testament reveals both the love and the wrath of God (characteristics that we often find in real people); and so does the New Testament.

God's wrath is not confined to the Old Testament, nor His love confined to the New. The cross of Christ, which is the central point of the New Testament, is where God's wrath against sin is seen most uncompromisingly. God placed our sins upon Christ, and punished Him for them with utmost severity. The cross of Christ, in the New Testament, makes no sense without the presupposition of the wrath of God, depicted so graphically in the Old Testament. There is a natural progression, not an inconsistency, in the flow of redemptive history when comparing the two testaments.

That God still judges sinful nations, as He did in the Old Testament, is strongly affirmed in the New Testament. Jesus and John the Baptist both predicted the wrath that God was going to bring upon apostate Israel (fulfilled in AD 70). This judgment seems to have been a primary theme in John's preaching (Matt.3:7, 10-12), and it also came up frequently in that of Jesus (e.g., Matt.21:40ff; 22:7; 23:33-38; 24:1-2; Luke 19:42-44, etc.). There is no book of the whole Bible more occupied with God's wrath and judgment than is the book of Revelation—that’s in the New Testament.

It is true that the Old Testament records more examples of God's punitive judgment than does the New, but that is merely because the Old covers 4000 years of history, and the New covers only about 70 years. A period of 4000 years naturally provides more occasions for God to judge sinners than does a period of 70 years, so we find more of such instances in the longer period. However, sudden judgments like those of Lot's wife (Gen.19:26) and of Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10:1-2) are not absent from the New Testament (e.g. Acts 5:1-11; 12:20-23). I simply see no basis for claiming that God in the Old Testament is depicted as more wrathful or judgmental than is the same God in the New. God has always been, and always will be a God of both mercy and justice. Unlike people, who sometimes backslide, and renege (for example, on wedding vows), God can be counted on to be the same yesterday, today and forever. There is a consistent predictability in God that is comforting to those who are willing to deal with Him on His terms (and what could be more reasonable than doing that?).

As for the last question, "Where is the judgment?" it should be observed that this question existed in the minds of the psalmists too (e.g., Ps.73:3-7; 94:3-7). Solomon noted that "the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily" (Eccl.8:11), and the prophets sometimes complained about this very thing, as well (Jer.5:26-28; 12:1-2/Mal.2:17; 3:15). Interestingly, these are the same writers who so often affirmed that blessings would come to the righteous and calamity to the wicked. They apparently knew that appropriate blessings and disasters would be meted-out by God in His own good time (this is the theme of Psalm 37, for example). There is clear biblical evidence that judgment may sometimes be forestalled by God because He wishes to give the sinner opportunity to repent (2 Pet.3:7-9/ Rev.2:21), but God will inevitably redress every evil.

Your dad wrote:

"Why is that God was so hard-nosed in the OT --turning Lot's wife into a pillar of salt for merely looking back at Sodom -- but allowing all kinds of horror (like the Holocaust) in the last 100 years?"

Some of this was addressed above, but the case of Lot's wife is an interesting one. It is not necessary to assume that God turned her into a pillar of salt by a direct miracle. The sulphur and salt deposits that still exist in abundance in the Southern Dead Sea region (where this occurred) may suggest that the explosive effects of the fire and brimstone sent by God upon that region may well have sent flaming masses of these minerals flying some distance in every direction. God warned Lot's family not to look back (i.e., not to linger or watch nearby out of morbid curiosity), probably, in order that they might thoroughly escape to a place beyond the range of this danger. Lot's wife disobeyed and remained in harm's way, only to become completely covered and encrusted by these salt projectiles. Hence, she "became” (it does not say that God did it) “a pillar of salt" (Gen.19:26).

As for the recent European holocaust, this was, for sure, a most heinous injustice occurring in modern history—but not more horrendous than many similar persecutions by tyrants in other historical periods. There may have been a larger body-count in the recent holocaust than in former ones, but to the individual victims, it was all the same as it was to individuals in previous times (e.g., when the Assyrians conquered Israel, or when the Babylonians captured Judah).

Though God did not prevent these calamities from occurring (see below), yet it must be remembered that they were the acts of wicked men, and not God. In fact, God did not desire for these things to happen, and would have preferred for the Israelites to have avoided them. He clearly warned them that these very things would happen if they were foolish enough to come out from under His protection by violating His covenant with them (e.g., Lev.26 & Deut.28). He begged them to stay under His protection so as not to be left unprotected from the malice of the Gentiles (Deut.30:15-20). They did not heed these warnings, and so they have, for most of 2000 years, experienced precisely what God predicted...the violent hostility of the heathen toward them. Jesus also predicted these things, and wept over the thought of this (Luke 19:41-44; 21:20-24). Let's not criticize God for what was someone else's doing. If we do, it is we who are being unjust, not Him.

Your dad wrote:

"If God exists then God can be however he wants to be. However, he cannot make claims about himself and then act in contradiction to those claims. For example, if God claims to be loving then he must always be loving. If God has the power to spare suffering or pain when it is not deserved and he does not act then how is that loving? If God has some "greater purpose" to bring himself glory through someone's suffering that he could have prevented but did not, that is both cruel and selfish."

I agree that God must be consistently loving...but this does not mean He must be as sentimental as we usually are, when we say we are "loving." God's love is always committed to the well-being of His people. Thus whatever He does, is to be regarded as His fulfilling the demands of His own love for us.

Some people are sufficiently shallow thinkers as to suggest that a God of love would not punish sinners (I don't hear your father saying this, and I will get to the point he raised presently). However, if an innocent person is being victimized by a violent criminal, and the criminal cannot be stopped without killing, or severely injuring him, what would "love" demand? Obviously, your father knows the answer, because he gave an example of this (treated below) in that of a man attacking a child with a baseball bat. Any loving father would intervene, even to the point of severely wounding or even killing the attacker. Would this injuring or slaying of the attacker prove that the father in question lacked love, or could he be consistently "loving" in taking-out the violent criminal? I think the answer is obvious.

Now, God views these same principles on a larger scale. He looks at the eternal ramifications of people's actions and the impact they will have upon the eternal well-being souls. The reason He must judge and eliminate sinners (eventually) is that they are ransacking the moral order and victimizing his children. I am not talking about persecutors of Christians, merely, but every person whose sin may corrupt another person or lead others astray, even by their example. Hence Jesus says, "Woe unto him by whom stumblingblocks come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should stumble one of these little ones" (Luke 17:1-2). Someone whose persistent rebellion against God tends to demoralize, corrupt, or discourage the faith of other people is, in the spiritual dimension, committing an act analogous to a man doing physical harm to a child. In fact, the one who damages the faith of a child, whether he realizes it or not, does more harm, ultimately, than does the man who pummels him with a baseball bat. The love of God compels Him ultimately to eliminate such influences, just as the compassion of a surgeon may compel him to remove cancerous cells from a body, for the benefit of the body's healthy cells.

Now, all of this treats the matter of how God's love can be consistent with His judging the guilty. Your dad raised a different question as to how God's love can justify the suffering of the innocent. This is a complex question, because suffering has many uses, many of which are redemptive or therapeutic, and a single statement on the subject cannot hope to explain every case—except for one statement, which your dad himself made: "If God claims to be loving then he must always be loving." This is profoundly true, and satisfies the mind of the trusting child in the midst of the adverse providences of God. If God is always loving, then He is always on the side of those who trust Him—even in adversity. When my wife was killed; when I lost everything through other people's slander; when Job lost his wealth, his health and his honor through no fault of his own...in all cases such as these, the trusting child says, "Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him." Those who trust Him completely, through every trial, discover, in the end, that the trial was therapeutic and beneficial, and was very much consistent with His love for them. "It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn your statutes...I know, O Lord, that your judgments are right, and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me" (Ps.119:67, 71).

"Ah," but someone may say, "this apparently applies to God's dealings with His children. But what can we say about the suffering of multitudes of innocent non-christians, who are neither violent criminals requiring judgment nor God's children experiencing discipline?"

As before, this question deserves something more responsible than a simplistic pat answer, but it can only be answered on God's behalf by someone who takes God's side in the matter and who sees things from His point of view.

From that point of view, earthly sorrow, misfortune and even pain can be the implements by which unbelievers can best be made to see their helplessness and their need for God. If they turn to God in their distress (as many would not do when in comfort and affluence), then they have benefited eternally in exchange for their brief lifetime of suffering. I do not expect that this answer will satisfy in the least any person for whom "eternity" seems unreal, theoretical or unlikely. That's why I said one can only appreciate the answer when one takes God's view of the situation.

If the Bible tells the truth about eternity, then this answer is altogether satisfactory. If it is indeed harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to get through the eye of a needle, then the perplexing question would not be "why does God allow so many people to experience grinding poverty?" so much as "why does God allow so many to be handicapped with riches?" If a man without eyes to cause him to stumble is better off eternally than the man who has eyes that lead him to his eternal doom, then we ought not to require an explanation of how God's love can allow these handicaps to exist so much as how His love can allow the straying man to keep both of his eyes for a lifetime. If it be true that "our light affliction, which is but for a moment (a very optimistic way of expressing the constant suffering to which Paul was subjected) works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor.4:17), then why should God's love allow any of us to escape suffering? It would not be suffering, but the lack of it that would raise questions about God's love.

That men turn to God more frequently and genuinely in affliction than they do in affluence is an obvious statistical fact. Even those who have never heard of Christ may find mercy, if their sufferings cause them to seek aid from the one true God (see 2 Kings 6).

It is also undeniable that some unbelievers suffer, but refuse to turn to God. "For the people do not turn to Him who strikes them, nor do they seek the Lord of hosts" (Isa.9:13). "In vain I have chastened your children; they received no correction" (Jer.2:30). But then, this takes them out of the category of "the innocent" who suffer, doesn't it?

The problem with the present objection is that it springs from an attitude more sympathetic toward mankind than toward God. This reveals more than the objector may be willing to admit about his own motivations. There is the worship of the creature above the Creator. Only a lack of love for or trust in God can generate such arguments, since, in the dispute between sinners and their Creator, the objector takes the side of the former against the latter. This is definitely standing on the wrong side of the dispute!

Your dad wrote:

"If I am watching 3-year old Brandon and in walks Joe the stranger with a baseball bat and he starts hitting Brandon with the baseball bat, I could say: "Well, that Joe has got free will and he is exercising it in very sinful way. Brandon does not deserve it. But that Joe has got his God-given free will and I am sure not going to intervene with that -- even though I really feel for each blow little Brandon is receiving to the head. Oh well that's Joe's choice! I am with you, Brandon! You're not alone -- if you can still hear me or are you unconscious? BUT I WOULD NEVER SAY THAT! I WOULDN'T EVEN BE SPEAKING TO JOE! I would be using every ounce of energy within my power to stop Joe, remove his bat, and render him unconscious or dead to prevent one more blow to my precious Brandon."

So true! And this is because the attacker in question is malicious, and his attack is not calculated by the perpetrator, nor by the father, to further the child's well-being. But if the man with the bat, on the other hand, were a physician coming to re-break an arm that had healed crooked from a previous break, so that the arm could be restored to its normal state, the father might take a different approach.

Suppose someone was approaching the child, not with a bat, but with a handsaw, preparing to painfully cut off his leg at the knee. This would cause any caring father, with every ounce of compassion in him, to want to intervene so as to spare his child that painful ordeal! However, if the reason for the saw was that the child's foot had gangrene, which would threaten the child's life if not amputated, and there was neither anesthesia nor medical equipment available, the father would be compelled to restrain his impulse to intervene, and would stand-by, wincing and watching his beloved child suffer the brief ordeal for the sake of saving his life in the long-term.

With God, the "long-term" is nothing less than eternity, and the comparatively "brief" ordeal may be as much as 80 or 90 years! How many years of suffering would it be worth enduring, if the benefits for it were to be infinite and eternal? That matter is God's to decide, and ours to accept, or else to rebel against. The latter response would be that of a person who is not in touch with the eternal realities that the word of God was given to make us aware of. Those who reject God's eternal perspective can never be expected to appreciate His long-term policies. However, since it is the critic, and not God, who is out of touch with reality, the critic only displays his ignorance if he claims that God's policies are not consistent with His love.

In the analogy of the baseball bat, the father is intended to represent God; the child represents humanity; and the attacker represents pain, suffering, and death, in general. What is left out of the analogy (preventing it from reflecting the issue properly) is the fact that God's design (unlike that of the attacker in the illustration) is for all pain and suffering to be potentially redemptive and corrective, so that eternal benefits may accrue to the sufferer.

This is true, whether the suffering takes the form of sickness, poverty, pain, physical disability, loss of loved ones, or even malicious harm delivered through wicked agents. Joseph recognized this fact when his brothers had beaten him and sold him into slavery. His misfortunes came upon him through the malice of evil agents, yet he later said to them: "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good"(Gen.50:20).

Not all who suffer affliction recognize the hand of God in it as clearly as did Joseph, but that doesn't mean God was not lovingly involved in theirs as well as in his. Those who love and trust God can often see clearly what, to His critics, seems entirely opaque.

Your dad wrote:

"Ron Rhodes also spoke on the ‘faithfulness of God’ and then he spoke about how he was prompted to write this book when his nephew was killed in a tragic auto accident.? How is that the faithfulness of God?? Does the word ‘faithfulness’ have no meaning??… faithfulness by definition means to always ‘be there’ or always reliable to come through. Now I am not stating that God caused Ron's nephew to have the accident -- but if ‘God has the whole world in his hands’ and he is ‘lord of the universe’ then he can prevent any act from happening and whether he has advanced knowledge of the event or not, he could prevent it before it happened -- since God operates with 1 day as being a thousand years -- by utilizing 1/4 of a second as a decade to spare Ron's nephew's life…"

Simple answer: the faithfulness of God is not a matter contingent upon God’s doing our pleasure, but upon His keeping His word. I had a wife who was killed six months after we were married. The accident perplexed and tormented me, but it never occurred to me that it somehow reflected negatively upon God’s faithfulness. “Faithfulness” means that one can be counted on to fulfill his promises.

When my wife was killed, the reason that I did not question the faithfulness of God was that He had never promised me that she would NOT be killed. In fact, he had promised me that she would indeed die, someday, as will I and all other human beings. “It is appointed to men once to die…”(Heb.9:27). What I find striking is that those who make themselves God’s critics will accuse the character of God whether their loved one dies at infancy, or in adolescence, or in their prime, or in old age. Such a person is vaguely aware that everyone necessarily dies, eventually, but is so full of himself/herself that, when tragedy comes that close, he/she invariably says, “Why would God let this happen to ME?…Why MY child?…Why MY grandma?…”etc. This is the irrationality of mankind in rebellion against the Creator. And then such an irrational being thinks himself competent to stand in judgment over the all-wise God!

When I married my wife, I did so knowing that either we would die together, or that one of us would someday be bereft of the other. These were the only options (short of “the rapture” occurring in our lifetimes, which I knew we could not count on). When she was killed first, I was surprised, of course. I did not expect to lose her so young (she was 25)! But what complaint can I make? We both knew that someday we would both die—that we had no greater claim on longevity than does anyone else—and we were both eager to see Jesus (who wouldn’t be?). Would I have preferred for my wife to suffer through sixty more years (of marriage to me!), and possibly die a lingering death of cancer or Alzheimer’s? Would she or I have found that development more satisfying than dying instantly and going straight to heaven, so as to be exempted from any further suffering? “The righteous perishes, and no man takes it to heart; merciful men are taken away, while no one considers that the righteous is taken away from evil” (Isa.57:1). Unless I was to die first, I knew I must necessarily deal with the loss of my wife someday, even if after seventy years of marriage. Would that have been any easier to bear, in my old age? Or would I have preferred to have been spared the sorrow altogether, and died first, leaving my wife to deal with the bereavement? Can a man wish such agony on his wife? I could not. How could any sane person argue that the tragedy that occurred in this matter was not the very best of all alternatives? Where is there anything in this situation that impugns the faithfulness of God? I can’t see it, and never could.

The faithfulness of God has no impact on the question of whether we will experience tragedy and loss. That is guaranteed! The faithfulness of God means that tragedy and loss, as final as they appear to our truncated vision, are by no means the final outcome, and that the believer, who hungers and thirsts after righteousness, will ultimately be satisfied in the presence of a faithful and compassionate God. Those who are determined to oppose God simply choose to be blind to these things. Ironically, they will not find exemption from personal disasters in their lives of rebellion any more than they would in a life of devotion. They will only find no source of comfort in their tragedies, and no way of making sense out of the unpredictable turns of “fortune.”

"I thank you, O Father, that you have hidden these things from the wise and the prudent, and have revealed them unto babes!" (Matt.11:25)

Blessings!

_________________
In Jesus,
Steve

[Guest]

Steve,

Good job! How arrogant we can be in thinking we could understand if God explained it all to us; might be like explaining calculus to my 3 year old grandaughter.

Homer