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thank you for your share i like it

Posted by north face khumbu, 29/12/2011 1:12am (1 month ago)

Thanks for your comment and the questions raised.

So, firstly in reply:

One big hole in my talk was not talking about the state of humans when God had first created the world. I looked forward to that promise of the future with no pain, death, sadness, sickness or suffering... but I should have looked back to show that yes, as you've said, God first created a perfect world.

Sin came into the world, and then suffering as a punishment and consequence, because humans chose to go against God. It is possible to do wrong - even when all you've experienced is perfection - if right and wrong have been clearly set out, along with the consequences for each. God had given the first humans everything - life, a garden to live in, food, each other, and most of all friendship with himself, the greatest gift. He had also given them one rule - not to eat from one of the many fruit trees in the garden. And he also told them the consequence of breaking the rule - life will be taken away and you will have death instead. So they knew both what it would mean to do something wrong, and why life would be rubbish as a consequence, because God had defined it in terms of what they already had - relation to himself and his word.

So God wasn't just setting a command they couldn't understand, or threatening a punishment which had no weight in their mindset. The weight of both command and punishment was that they would lose what they had generously been given.

As an illustration: a Dad might say to his son, "If you do that again, I'll stop your pocket money for a week". That would be a threat, even if the son couldn't remember what life before pocket money was like, because he knows that life with pocket money is great! It would take discontent with his pocket money in order for him disobey.

And that's what sin is at root. A discontent with God stemming from a false belief that the grass is greener somewhere else - believing the lie that true happiness and satisfaction and joy come from some thing, place or being other than God.

The seeds of that discontent were sown by the devil as he tempted the first humans. It wasn't sin for them to be tempted. The sin came when they believed the devil's lies instead of God's truth. God had given them everything, the devil had given them nothing. But they still listened to the devil and rebelled against God. Nothing wrong with God's characteristics; everything wrong with ours now that we've chosen to listen to lies rather than truth.

Secondly.

Suffering as a warning is repugnant in itself, I agree. Suffering is never pleasant, or easy, or light, or trivial. But it is not repugnant for God to allow suffering to warn us. The alternative would be for God to hide from us the true consequences of our sin, and that would be far more repugnant.

Which would be worse? For us to feel sharp pain when we put our hand in a flame, and so to remove it instantly, OR, to feel no pain, but then realise a few seconds later that our arm has been totally burnt off and is no longer usable? It is better to be warned of a greater pain by a smaller one.

The warning is extreme - you mention perhaps the worst example of human suffering and slaughter in the Holocaust. But the warning is extreme for two reasons.

1. The crime is extreme. Sin is a huge deal. Ignoring God might not sound a big deal, but that's because we have a little, puny view of God. God is infinite in his perfection and person - so treason against him is an infinitely serious crime.

2. The final punishment will be worse. God's final and lasting punishment of Hell - being cut off forever from God and his goodness - will be far worse than any suffering we experience or witness on earth. Hell is nothing like the cartoons - even the devil and the demons are terrified of Hell. It's not the fiery home of the devil - it's the fiery torture chamber where the devil too will be tormented forever, along with all those who, by their refusal to follow God, follow the devil instead. Haiti and the holocaust are not examples of 'hell on earth' - they are like flickering candles of pain compared to the raging furnace of agony that is the eternal punishment of Hell.

Finally.

If you've seen even just a glimpse of how awful Hell is, then you will see that Jesus really is the answer to the greatest problem we face. Avoiding physical suffering on earth should not be our number 1 priority - avoiding permanent suffering in Hell should be.

And the fact that should bring us to our knees in desperation is that we cannot save ourselves from Hell. We've already blackened our record, stained our lives with the toxin of our sin. We can try as hard as we like, but we've got no hope.

No hope, that is, without Jesus. Jesus went through the infinite suffering of being totally cut off from his Father, so that we can be adopted into God's family and, bound to Jesus, call God 'Father'.

That doesn't bring a quick answer to the seemingly 'random' and 'sick' events of suffering which many Christians go through. But God promises to turn those horrible things to good for those who love him. As an example, the apostle Paul, who wrote a good chunk of the Bible, said that for him death (even the horrible death of beheading which traditionally Paul was later subject to) was 'gain'! Why? Because death was the gateway to seeing Jesus face to face and knowing him fully, finally and forever.

If you don't have that attitude towards Jesus, then the problem is with your understanding, not his goodness. You don't know him, you don't know what an incredible person he is, you don't know the comfort he brings in dark times, you don't know the peace of having a secure future with him, you don't know the joy of having his constant presence in your life by his living Holy Spirit. And in all likelihood, you don't know him because you don't want to know him. It's scarily easy to keep putting off God's call on your life with objections which avoid the heart of the issue.

God exists. And if he was a cruel dictator who inflicted suffering on people for fun, or for no reason, the world would be far worse than it is and you'd have no escape.

But the fact is, he's loving, and it's the best news in the world! Loving enough to come down himself and deal with the problem of your sin in the hardest, dirtiest, most agonizing way possible - by facing the humiliation and suffering of the cross.

If you still turn your nose up at his offer of life once you've seen and understood that, then all God has left for you is total abandonment and rejection. There's still escape for you now - call on God to forgive you through what Jesus has done and ask him in to lead your life. Otherwise, one day soon your time will come and it won't be good news. Forever is a long time to regret a bad decision.

If you'd like to talk more about this personally, fill in the form on the Contact page - that comes straight through to me directly. Otherwise, please keep thinking about these things.

Also have a look at 'The Problem of Pain' (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Problem-Pain-C-S-Lewis/dp/0006280935/) if you want a really good intellectual argument for why God allows suffering, but from the perspective of someone who experienced suffering himself.

Posted by Andrew Toovey, 08/04/2010 4:27am (2 years ago)