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Making Sense of Suffering

Published on by dpatrickcollinsLeave a comment

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire —may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

1 Peter 1:6-7 (NIV)

Our church has begun a series on suffering and it has gotten me thinking about the tension that lies at the heart of the Christian faith. On one hand, God is profoundly good, a goodness we see in Scripture and experience every day. On the other, we are called to suffer. By “called” I mean that suffering, for a variety of reasons, is expected. But how exactly does God’s profound goodness factor into suffering?

The difficulty many have with God is the presence of suffering in the world. That if there were a God, he certainly would not allow this to happen. But this assumes God is the way we think he should be. It also assumes his goodness is the way we think it is. Sure, if God is all-powerful, then he must be the type of God who allows us to suffer. But whether we conclude he is good or not because of this depends on whether we define his goodness based on his willingness or unwillingness to allow us to suffer. Scripture makes clear God’s goodness is not defined in this way.

Our difficulty with God when it comes to suffering, rather, is our own conception of him. If we have been raised on a strict diet of being told God is good and he does not want us to suffer, we are understandably going to have difficulty when we do. We are going to think something strange is happening to us. We are going to think it should not be happening, and that God is not who he says he is. We are going to be inclined to a crisis of faith.

But there is really no cause for a crisis of faith if we turn to scripture, because in scripture we see from cover to cover a God, though profoundly good, willing to allow suffering. It isn’t as if the Word of God portrays God as a God unwilling to allow any form of suffering, and we now find ourselves coming to terms with a world full of it. The opposite is actually true: the Word of God shows God to be very willing to allow suffering, something that reflects the world we find ourselves in. Our difficulty with suffering then is our own ideas about God that neither agree with scripture or the world around us.

But how can God be both good and allow suffering? Again, the answer is that God’s goodness is not defined by his willingness or unwillingness to allow us to suffer. It is defined by something far more profound. To put it simply, God’s goodness is defined equally by his holiness. And it is God’s holiness that makes God willing to allow suffering. God did not create the world and then, looking down one day, say, “Something is missing. I know: suffering!” No, the Word of God is clear that all the suffering we see today came through sin. So suffering is clearly not something God desires, but it is something he allows on the basis of his holiness.

It is really important we understand this. When we object to God’s goodness on the basis of suffering, we are imagining a God willing to go to any length to prevent it. We are imagining a God willing to restrict our free will in order to prevent the consequence of sin, which is suffering, or a God willing to allow us to exercise our free will without consequence. In short, we are imagining a God who is either controlling or not holy. But God’s way of dealing with sin was to allow humanity to exercise the full range of free will and also experience the full consequence of sin. God was willing to allow sin to come through Adam and death through sin, resulting in the world we now see today.

And God is now in the process of delivering us not only from suffering but its root cause, which is sin, through Jesus Christ and his work on the Cross. Yes, even now, God could snap his finger and deliver us all from it instantly. But for a variety of reasons, he has chosen to deliver us progressively. He has chosen to keep us in the world, though we are no longer of it, experiencing his goodness in a variety of ways as we are transformed by him, being conformed to the image of His Son. And his reasons for doing so – though I have no space to go into it now – are all good.

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The Selfish Revivalist

Published on by dpatrickcollins2 Comments

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

John 10:10 (NIV)

About five years ago, I was on lunch break about to cross the street to pick up some food when I had a life-changing moment with the Holy Spirit. He said to me, “You have spent your whole life trying to show me how much you love me. But what if I spend the rest of your life showing you how much I love you?” Given my unsuccessful efforts to demonstrate to God how much I loved him for most of my life, I said yes. And in that moment, a selfish revivalist was born.

I say “selfish revivalist” because my goal from that moment onward was, well, giving Jesus every opportunity to make good on his offer. I abandoned my efforts to be a good Christian and please him. Instead, my object in life became giving him every opportunity to please me. Or, I should say, bless me. My goal was to pursue a life of abundant blessing. I reoriented my life around one objective: the blessed life.

All of this sounds so selfish, especially coming from my traditionally religious background. I had been taught the purpose of the religious life was to serve God, to live a life of such great sacrifice that he takes notice of us and rewards us, either now or in the life to come. But the well-kept secret of the Christian life is that, first of all, we really cannot please God in this way, at least not by our service. If we set out with the objective to please God by our service, we will fail.1 This is what the apostle Paul is telling us more than anything in the seventh chapter of Romans. Sowing to the flesh is not merely sinning; it is also striving to please God by our actions. Such efforts will end in a life where we are constantly striving and never managing to measure up to an impossible standard.

Secondly, God has chosen to please us.2 It took me a long time to realize the Cross was not an IOU placed upon my life but rather the most extravagant expression of God’s willingness to bless me freely. We can know this for sure because we did not deserve any of it. If God wanted us to demonstrate how much we love him, he could have done nothing and given us the chance to do so. Instead, he chose to go to the Cross and die for us while we were yet sinners.

And having died for us, God has chosen to shower us with blessings.3 It is his way of demonstrating love, and also his way of empowering us to do the very things that please him. Because we cannot do what God requires on our own. It is not a matter of trying harder. It is a matter of being dead in our old nature, and needing to be raised to life with him. It is a matter of God’s Spirit doing in us what the flesh could never do. In other words, for us to live as God has created us and called us to live, he must bless us.

Besides, it is impossible to pursue a life of being blessed by God and remaining selfish for long. Granted, if I think being blessed is asking for things that I might spend them on my sinful desires,4 then that would be selfish. But God does not answer such prayers. Instead, he brings us into a life of true blessing, one where our sinful desires are purified and true life is made manifest. He heals us, restores us, and empowers us. We have peace to overcome every storm. We experience his unfathomable love and encounter his beauty. He satisfies our every desire not with sinful things, but with good things, that our youth may be renewed.5 As he does, all we do for him flows not from a place of religious compulsion and fear of never doing enough, but from a place of genuine gratitude and passion, overflowing with the love and power God gives.

This day, do not shrink back from his willingness to bless you because you think you are being selfish. Such selfishness is likely the very way God has ordained that you step into all he has for you, for your sake and for the sake of the world around you.

Photo by MI PHAM on Unsplash

  1. Romans 7:14-20 ↩︎
  2. Ephesians 1:3-7 ↩︎
  3. Romans 8:3-4 ↩︎
  4. James 4:3 ↩︎
  5. Psalm 103:5 ↩︎

Does God Only Heal Sovereignly?

Published on by dpatrickcollinsLeave a comment

News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them.

Matthew 4:24 (NIV)

Is God’s decision to heal based entirely on his sovereignty? And what do we mean when we say this, as some people do?

I believe what we mean is that there is no rhyme or reason to whom God chooses to heal. That God is up in heaven arbitrarily deciding to miraculously intervene in some people’s lives and not others. The reason we feel this way is because it confirms our experience. When we see or hear about someone miraculously healed and know of another not healed, it can appear to us this is exactly what God is doing: just being arbitrary.

And such an idea is comforting. A God who confirms our experience, as opposed to one who challenges our experience, means there is nothing we need to change. But if God is different from our experience – say for example, if God’s desire is always to heal all who are “suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed” – then we must ask the hard questions.

But aren’t we here to ask the hard questions? Do we really think life is about asking easy questions, or that God is so like us that hard questions are not necessary? In my opinion, it is better for us to accept and embrace a God whose will is always to heal us and wrestle with that disparity than to embrace a God before whom our suffering is nothing more than a lottery ticket. Especially if this means building for ourselves an image of God who literally wants us to remain not healed – whose highest virtue and calling for us is to suffer. As if God is glorified when we are miserable.

The theological problem I have with the idea God sovereignly heals is that when we say God sovereignly chooses not to heal a person, we are saying nothing at all. The reason is that God’s sovereign will, as opposed to his perfect or desired will, is what ultimately happens in any given situation, whether it is what God wanted to have happen or not. God’s perfect will was for Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; God’s sovereign will is what happened when they did. God’s perfect will is that none should perish; God sovereign will is what happens when some do. God’s perfect will is that all would be healed; God’s sovereign will is what happens when some are not. God’s sovereign will is what God as the novelist of all human history allows to take place, whether it is what he wants to take place or not.

So when we say God sovereignly chose this or that to happen, we are saying nothing more than it happened and acknowledging this means God allowed it. We are saying nothing about whether it is really what God wanted to have happen. It would be simpler for us to say “I do not know why it happened,” or say nothing at all.

I am trying to save us from a world in which some things are not possible for the sake of our personal comfort. Trust me: you are going to be uncomfortable no matter what. It is much better for us to be uncomfortable for the right reasons, namely, by realizing we live in a world in which all things are possible, and we cannot rest till we align ourselves with that reality. It may cost us our personal comfort, but a world in which all things are possible means a world in which the most beautiful things are possible. And is that not worth asking the hard questions?

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Waking from the Dead

Published on by dpatrickcollins3 Comments

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved.

Ephesians 2:4-5 (NIV)

As a young Christian, I walked through a season of realizing just how sinful I was. It was as if all my motives were exposed to the light of truth, and none of them were any good! I realized at that time that even my desire to be good was driven by an unhealthy need to be accepted by others. Which was a problem, of course, since being a Christian meant being willing to be despised and rejected by others for the sake of Jesus.

And so I did what anyone does who thinks he is a pretty good person and suddenly discoveries he is not: I hid. I hid by doing everything in my power to be a good Christian. I was constantly obsessed with the idea God requires radical obedience and tried to obey God in radical ways. Whether it was giving or sharing my faith or reading my Bible or attending church functions, I did so with my whole heart, ideally in a way that cost me something.

But my obedience was not really to God. it was my attempt to change who I was so that I might be pleasing to him. The knowledge of my sin was like a secret I carried; it weighed on my soul like a dark cloud. I felt dead inside.

The beautiful thing about the Cross is that Jesus died for the very thing I was hiding from. It is easy to think Jesus died for my sins or even think He died for my past sins only (and now it is my job not to sin any more presumably). But our problem runs much deeper than that. We are dead in our sin, by nature deserving of God’s wrath. The horror I felt about myself was real. But the remedy was not me trying harder. It was coming out into the light to allow Jesus to do what only He could do: make me into the very thing He desired me to become. And furthermore, recognize He alone has the power to do that. In short, Jesus died that He might raise me from the dead.

Once we are raised from the dead, we are new creations. And our new nature is unpunishable. Jesus has literally put to death the part of us that can be punished and given us a new nature than cannot be punished. This is how far He has separated us from our sin. Our new nature also has the power to do what pleases Jesus, and it is from this nature that we now operate.

But our new nature can only come fully online by us receiving the Good News. In my case, it was by actually realizing whatever I felt I deserved or did not deserve on the basis of my own conduct or even the content of my own heart no longer mattered. All that mattered was recognizing I had been raised to life — a life for whom guilt and punishment was literally impossible. In short, that I had been awakened from the dead.

And when you realize you have been awakened from the dead, all around you is life. And there is simply nothing the God of life will withhold from you.

The Limits of Faith

Published on by dpatrickcollinsLeave a comment

We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith

Romans 12:6 (NIV)

As we have been discussing, faith is ultimately something God supplies. Not that we have no role in cultivating a lifestyle of faith, but recognizing faith is not something we can manufacture ourselves, and that it is ultimately a gift from God, will save us a lot of needless striving (and no small degree of emotional distress). The faith we need to move mountains and see answered prayer is ultimately a gift from God.

But why then does God tell us to have faith? For the same reason He tells us to be perfectly righteous. When Jesus says, “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven1,” He is in fact telling us to possess what He alone can provide. It is the same with faith. Our part is to cultivate both through relationship. By coming into relationship with Jesus by receiving His forgiveness purchased by His own death at the Cross, we become perfectly righteous. By cultivating a lifestyle of intimacy with Jesus, we become filled with faith to move the very mountains God is moving.

This distinction is really important because it means we are not ultimately in control of the level of faith we have: God is. Again, we are not trying to manufacture faith; we are learning to operate in the faith God has already given us. This is why the apostle Paul in the opening scripture (above) encourages us to operate in the grace given to us according to our faith. Where grace exists, faith is present. And God ultimately controls both: He gives us the faith to operate in the gifts He has given to us and to fulfill our God-given destiny. He also gives us the faith to cooperate with Him in the soul’s transformation. He is not in other words standing far off expecting us to muster up faith; rather, He leads us by faith.

And this means there are limits to faith. Not in the sense of what faith can accomplish, but in the sense of where faith can be found in our lives at any given point of our journey. That is, faith will always be present in the areas where God is at work in our lives. We do grow in faith, but not by trying to have more faith. We grow in faith by being faithful to partner with God with the faith He has already given to us.

In saying this, I am challenging the whole idea that faith is a super-power that lets us do whatever we want. That faith is an alternate path to perfection that does not require partnering with God at all, really: we just crank up the faith engine through our own effort and we are free to do whatever we want. This whole notion is in actuality a perception of faith from an orphan lens. In many ways it is an attempt to reap the benefits of faith without the cost involved, which is intimacy with God.

Which is not possible. Whether we are talking about romantic love or our relationship with God, intimacy costs you something. In fact, it ultimately costs you everything. But those who have participated in either know the cost is worth it. The path to life is limited by the narrow gate of intimacy. But once we enter, we find God and His goodness to be, well, quite limitless.2

  1. Matthew 5:20 ↩︎
  2. Matthew 7:13 ↩︎