How Big is Your God in Suffering?

How Big is Your God in Suffering?

Reformed Theological Seminary Orlando Chapel,  Wed., Sept. 11, 2013     Dr. Michael S. Beates

How Big is Your God in Suffering? Over 30 years ago, in his well-known book Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?, Rabbi Harold Kushner decided God was not that big. He had been grappling with that age-old dilemma that goes something like this:

Since suffering exists, God must either be good, but not all-powerful, or He is all-powerful but not good.

The reasoning is that if He was all-powerfully good, He would intervene; or since evil exits, He might seem to be all-powerful but just not all that good because he could intervene but just doesn’t care to do so. Kushner came down on the first option. He believed that God is good, but just not powerful enough to help us in our suffering. He sees us and our suffering, He is up in heaven rooting for us, wringing His hands, wishing He could intervene, but He cannot.

This is a theology of despair. And I still see the book on the shelves of Christian book stores! But the Scriptures give us a different picture, showing that the classic construction of this dilemma is a false dilemma. In fact, there is a third way. God is indeed omnipotent. The Scriptural witness to this is beyond question. He created the world by the power of His Word, He sustains all things, upholds and directs all things. Revelation 19 suffices to represent hundreds of such declarations:

“Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty One reigns.”

But the Scriptures also affirm that God is good – perfectly and completely so. “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His steadfast love endures forever.” So the question is: if He is all-powerful and all good, then why do we suffer, or . . . as we are asking today, “How Big is Our God in suffering?”

As I have thought about how to answer this question in 20 minutes or less, I’ve tried to boil it down to three primary principles.

First, God is big enough to take suffering caused by human actions and turn it to our ultimate benefit and to His glory. I know you are turning in your heads to Genesis 50:15-20.

“When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, ‘It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.’ So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, ‘Your father gave this command before he died: “Say to Joseph, ‘Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.'” And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.’ Joseph wept when they spoke to him. His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, ‘Behold, we are your servants.’ But Joseph said to them, ‘Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.’ Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them” (my emphasis).

God took the human actions of Joseph’s brothers, actions with explicitly wicked intent and He so sovereignly superintended over those events as to bring goodness and life from their repeated decades-long deception and evil.

The human action doesn’t have to be wicked for God to turn the results for our good and His glory. My friend Joni Tada would tell you that her human decision to dive into shallow water in the Chesapeake so many years ago was innocent enough, but just kinda stupid and thoughtless. But God took her human decision . . . and the admittedly catastrophic results, and turned it to her good and His glory.

Second, God is big enough to take suffering caused by natural forces and turn it to our ultimate benefit and to His glory. Think of the story of Ruth. Natural circumstances cause a famine in Judah and the suffering forced Elimelech and family to Moab. Life continued, death followed and on its heels deprivation, insecurity, deep sadness and loss – all due to natural circumstances. Yet thin about it. You know the equation: No famine, no move, no move to Moab, no Moabite daughters-in-law, no death in Moab, no deprivation and return to Bethlehem, no return, no Boaz, no marriage, no Obed, or Jesse or David, or Mary and Joseph . . . and no Jesus of Nazareth, Messiah and Savior. God is big enough to take natural forces that bring suffering and turn such things to our good and His glory. He is so big that He can take the most seemingly meaningless suffering of unknown people in out of the way places and turn it to the redemption of many.

Recently on Facebook John Piper wrote: “What could be more round about than the way God blessed Naomi? And in Christ the maze of your misery has a design and happy end.” Ruth and Naomi saw only the smallest glimpse of how big God was in their suffering and redemption. His plan was so much bigger!

Finally, God is big enough to take suffering caused by spiritual warfare and turn it to our ultimate benefit and to His glory. We are given a glimpse of this in Job. Though his suffering was the immediate result of natural causes in storm and diseases, and human causes in marauding Sabeans, the ultimate cause was spiritual warfare. But God is big enough that throughout this account, He keeps Satan on a short leash – nothing that happened to Job happened without God’s permission. Satan had limits beyond which he could not go. God is so big, He took the worst that Satan can throw down and turn it for His glory and for centuries now for the good of those who believe. Job saw man made wickedness and natural events bring suffering. He could not see that it was spiritual conflict. So also with us.

God hardly ever does things the way we would expect. Though He upholds the cosmos by His powerful Word, He also became small – a new born child without speech – in fact, as Paul tells us in Philippians 3, He made Himself nothing, the infinite became finite, omnipotent became vulnerable; the omnipresent One confined Himself in the body of a man, in order to conquer our infinite rebellion and sin.

And His eye sight is big enough that He sees the least of these. Not a sparrow falls to the ground, not a hair falls from your head that He does not know it. Remember the words of William Cowper’s hymn “God Moves in Mysterious Ways”? One of the stanzas says:

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense
But trust him for His grace.
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

I don’t know what suffering you have faced. In God’s mercy none of us knows what suffering awaits us.But the Scriptures tell us God is big in our suffering, . . . so we can glory in our weakness. Joseph saw many years of dark providence of human wickedness redeemed in the end for the good of many. Ruth and Naomi saw the frowning providence in natural causes resulting in the hardship of loss, death, and hopeless deprivation. And Job also experienced unspeakable loss in spiritual warfare that God never did explain to him in this life. But behind this darkness, behind the hard providence lay blessings that would break upon all of them as individuals, as families and communities, and ultimately blessings for all of human kind across the world and across the centuries, even to you and me in that Pauline sense of being infinitely beyond what they could see, hear, or imagine.

There’s that African antiphonal saying: “God is good” . . . “All the Time!” . . .   “All the time” . . . “God id good.” With respect to this RTS series “How big is your God?” we can modify that  to: “God is Big!” . . . “All the time” . . .  “All the time”  . . . “God is big!”

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Digital Media and Human Flourishing

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human flourishing, sherry turkle, wsj online

The following is a piece I wrote for The Geneva School’s September Courier which was just released. Enjoy.

Stating the obvious: We live in a digital age and our students swim in a culture whose current is strong and whose native language, increasingly, is one of text, status posts, and digital images. At The Geneva School, of course, we seek to help young people swim against such current as much as possible. Are we merely Luddites, opponents of anything new and “more efficient”? No, we are realists; but we seek to reflect upon whether such new modes of communicating encourage or discourage human flourishing.

I read an intriguing review entitled “Touchscreen Toddlers and Instagram Teens” by Amy Finnerty in The Wall Street Journal (August 31). The author discusses a new book, The Big Disconnect (Catherine Steiner-Adair, Harper, 2013), and mentions another notable book I heard about last year entitled “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (Sherry Turkle, Basic Books, 2012).  Ironically, I am frustrated that WSJ online “locks” such superlative articles, otherwise I would include the link. We are left relying upon the old fashion method of photocopying if you wish to see it. The review is worth reading and speaks to our situation at Geneva.

The article begins with a reference to the notion that families spend less and less time IRL. Whether or not you are familiar with the shorthand, I am confident that you see quite often what they are saying. A family of five at dinner at a local eatery, sitting quietly, all consumed by their individual iPhones and hand-held game machines – enthralled by the digital, missing family time together “In Real Life.” Such times are graphic examples of “being alone together.” The concern from many experts is growing. Evidence is mounting that such overwhelming amounts of time in front of screens is serving to diminish fundamental human skills of communication, patience, empathy, and conflict resolution.

For example, we increasingly say things to people by text and email that we would never say face-to-face. The less-personal mode of digital expression erodes the normal filters of gentility, respect, and deference. Studies are showing that young people exhibit a growing inability to talk things through in a manner necessity for managing conflict as human beings. Such skill, born from experience is crucial for growth into adulthood and for ultimate human flourishing. Many employers lament that more and more young people are unable to carry on meaningful and cogent conversations with customers or to demonstrate the basics of genial “customer service.”

Scores of studies involving nearly 14,000 college students have shown that a consuming digital life among this age group of students is producing a “sharp decline in the empathy trait.” While for millennia people have slowly developed the ability to read emotions through patient, constant human interaction, such progressive learning is being lost. Thus we are seeing a growing ease of cruelty or equally dangerous ambivalence to other people’s feelings in digital media.

Another study showed that a growing number of 4 year olds are able to download apps before they can tie their shoes. In some civic arenas a concern has risen that too many young adults are not able to “sign” their name in script when mere printing is not legally binding.

Returning to clay tablets (or scrolls or manuscripts) and to horses and buggies is not the answer of course. We live in our age and must learn to navigate these new forces. But as parents it is incumbent on us to help our children flourish as human beings made in God’s image by engaging the world and other human beings in meaningful (real!) ways, not allowing them to retreat increasingly to the artificially safe environment of the avatar or the online profile. We are seeing that young people are having difficulty sometimes distinguishing the real from the mechanical or the computer generated image.

It has been interesting to help students understand, for instance, that when they talk on the phone, they are not “hearing” their friend’s voice. They are hearing an electronic reproduction of the voice. This is often a startling realization for them. And as clear as such reproductions are (3G, no . . . 4G in HD, . . . even “face time” video . . . eventually a 3D holographic image?), human interaction holds something mystically more real, deep, and ultimately necessary and satisfying.

Steiner-Adair calls us “to reclaim the immemorial rhythms of the hearth and [to] shield our children from the excesses of the digital age.” Amen to that; but how do parents do this in 2013?  Most simply, we must work intentionally to maintain (or recover) a more “real life.” Read out loud to your younger children – add accents and different voices to different characters. Allow their young supple mental imaginations (instead of CG artists in Hollywood) to create visual images in their mind. Get out doors with your children – share IRL experiences: hikes, bike rides, simple walks in the park. Get real face time! And nothing personal against the primary industry in Central Florida, but hardly anything is “real” at Disney and Universal.

Great wealth of learning occurs in the quiet interaction of sitting by the lake, sharing time in conversation, patiently learning how to handle boredom which (perhaps as a result of the Fall) is an integral part of our human experience. Constant hyper-stimulation does not allow such patience to develop in our young people.

Set an example for your children by making it a practice, as often as possible, to take communication to the next more human and personal level. Move from texts to email, and when possible from email to a phone call. And even better, replace the phone call with a person-to-person meeting. I know it cannot work all the time, and convenience often trumps the time consuming face-to-face meetings. But nothing is better than sitting down together to talk.

What this comes down to in many cases is how we understand our being made imago Dei, in the image of God. While many people these days talk about how digital life is changing the “hard wiring” of the way children communicate, such a phrase presupposes that we are machines or at best animals. But at The Geneva School, we hold fast the truth that we are created imago Dei, in God’s image. Human interaction can be messy, hard, inconvenient, and not at all as efficient as new modes of communication. But it is real. Tears and laughter, subtle facial expressions and body language are impossible to replicate in digital media. {{Hugs}} notwithstanding, I prefer the real thing, and grasping a hand, shedding a tear, or laughing with someone communicates in a way profoundly more meaningful than LOL.

I have taught a couple of classes at Belhaven University where I had students in Houston or Memphis participating in the class via “polycom” communication. They could see and hear everything, and we could see them and hear them. But trust me, these distance students were not getting their money’s worth. The connection was less than satisfyingly human. And like any technology, all it took was a thunder storm in Houston and the connection would be lost. Technology is still a god that limps.

So we are thinking about these important things at The Geneva School. We are learning together how to live with new innovations, and to remain human, indeed to flourish as humans. Stay tuned! Continue to learn with us.

God Works Through Small People in Small Places

A Sermon for Immanuel Presbyterian Church, DeLand, Fla.

September 1, 2013

Dr. Michael S. Beates

Introduction

Forest Gump famously said, “My momma always said, ‘Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.’” Oh my, I wish it were that simple, right? I wish all the crazy things that life throws at us ended up being sweet little treats like those we get from a box of chocolates. But you and I know that though we indeed never know what we’re gonna get in life, all too often, it is more bitter than sweet. So we need the goodness of God and the Word of God to make sense out of and to persevere through the bitter until God makes it sweet. Let’s see what the story of Ruth can show us in this regard today. I think there is encouragement in this story if we look carefully and if God gives us ears to hear. Let’s walk through the main points of this beautiful narrative so that we might see how God works His will through small and insignificant people in small and out of the way places. But before we dig in, let’s pray.   . . .

The story of Ruth is one of those good news/bad news stories. Look how it begins in chapter 1: there is a famine in the land of Judah – bad news. But apparently there is food in Moab – good news; so Elimelech and his family go there. But Elimelech dies – bad news. But the two sons find wives – good news. But then the two sons die – really bad news. And that is just the first five verses! But after speeding through more than 10 years in 5 vv, the narrative slows down.

First steps after bad things happen (1:6-14)

In verses 6-14, we see a glimmer of good news – Naomi heard in Moab that there was food again in Judah, so she sets out and her two Moabite daughters-in-law start to follow her. But Naomi is a realist.  Essentially, she lays it all out for them. “Look, you cannot come with me – I have nothing for you in your future. Even if I were married and conceived sons tonight, you cannot wait for them to grow into men to become husbands for you” – true enough. But then look at Naomi’s perspective in v. 13: “It is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.”

Did you hear that? Naomi says that things that have happened were no mere occurrences of bad luck, no twist of fate or ill-wind of fortune. She lays her bleak life situation at God’s feet. Life is bitter because the hand of God has gone out against me.  . . .   Have you ever felt like that? Many followers of the Lord Jesus are unwilling to be this honest with themselves and with God. We have been lead to believe in our cultural context that we have a right to a safe, happy, and relatively comfortable life. But Naomi nails this. Her theology is sound. She knows and understands that things don’t “just happen.”

So she encourages the young ladies to go home, find security and happiness in Moab. She was a realist. There was no reason to think that things would get better for her. The worst life situation in the Ancient Near East was life as a widow with no sons. Actually, there was a worse situation than this – two or three widows with no sons. So she says, “Go home.”

But here is a principle we see in Ruth’s life: When things get really bad, commit to stay with people. See it through. Walk with your family through it. This is the context we have when Ruth gives her well-known soliloquy in vv. 16-17. And you must know that Ruth’s words here are desperate, almost blurted rather than finely spoken. She says essentially, “Where you go, I go; your people, my people; your lodging, my lodging, your God, my God. Where you die, I die.”

She commits to Naomi. She says, “You are family. May God deal with me . . . and the curse goes unspoken . . . and worse if I ever turn away from you.” Great stuff! When life turns sideways, stick with the people God has given you.

But here is a second principle: when life surprises you, do the next thing.  Do the next thing. Small acts of faithfulness make the difference in difficult time. Major decisions, major changes in life need perspective. And we don’t have that perspective in the midst of earth-shaking difficulty. So you do the next needful thing. In this case it was traveling back to Bethlehem.

And look what happens in vv. 19-21when they arrive. The women of the town talk. And Naomi responds. Your notes in the margin help us here. She says, “Don’t call me Naomi [meaning pleasant], call me Mara [meaning bitter].” And hold on to your seats. Listen to what comes next. Naomi throws it down here: First she says, “the Almighty [the Shaddai] has dealt bitterly with me;” and second, “I went away full, but the Lord [just in case you’re not sure who I mean by the Almighty, I mean Yahweh!], the Lord has brought me back empty” – it’s God’s fault! And if that’s not enough, God has testified against her, and the Almighty has brought calamity upon her.

Whoa – let’s take a breath here.

Naomi is blaming God for her bitter state, for the calamity that has befallen her.   . . .  And our Westminster Confession of Faith agrees. In the chapter on Providence, the Assembly said, “God the great Creator of all things does uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by His most wise and holy providence, according to His infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of His own will, to the praise of the glory of His wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy.” And the next paragraph essentially says God ordains whatsoever comes to pass . . . in some sense. Yes, we make decisions, some profoundly bad; yes, things happen out of our control, some unspeakably tragic. But nothing happens outside of God’s ultimate control. And the inverse is also true: everything happens within God’s control – loss, betrayal, death, bankruptcy, failure, . . . everything.
Am I commending Naomi’s attitude? No, of course not. But I understand it – and I think you understand it. How wonderful it would be if all of us in the midst of trials, tribulation, and loss could say with the psalmist, “The steadfast love of the Lord [the hesed of Yahweh] is better than life” (Psalm 63:3). And that is true: indeed God’s steadfast love is better than life itself. But God also knows our frame. The Lord knows your discouragement; He is acquainted with sorrows; He knows our frame that we are dust.

But look how chapter 1 ends – with the smallest hint of hope: They came to Bethlehem . . . “at the beginning of the barley harvest.” So when things turn upside down, commit to people, stay faithful, and do the next needful thing.

When Things Start to Turn (2:1-18)

So things take a turn for the good . . . finally. But make no mistake, things are not yet “good” – Naomi and her foreign daughter-in-law are still in a precarious position: widows without income, future, or security.

But in verse 2 Ruth says, “I’m going to go out and glean after someone in whose eyes I find favor.” The principle here is a corollary of “do the next thing.” Here the principle is when an upside down life provides an opportunity, Take initiative . . . even if it requires a small step of faith. Take initiative and see what God might do. “Doing the next thing” helps us through depressive situations when we want to turn off the lights and sleep – it’s a survival tactic. Taking initiative goes beyond this – an active investment in the future.

Look what happens when Ruth goes out to glean. The text in v. 3 says, “So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech.” The Hebrew text here literally says, “It chanced a chance that she came to a portion of the fields of Boaz.”   . . .   “It just so happened” “As it turned out” “By coincidence” “The luck of the draw”. . . Really?

I think not.  In fact, I think the writer of Ruth was winking to his readers here when this was written. God’s finger prints are all over this little seemingly insignificant happenstance. So often in life, this is how God works. Small acts of faithfulness in the course of life can become for us (and for many others of whom we are not even aware); such moments can become turning points in the large drama of our redemption and God’s cosmic plan for His world.

But then we see the next principle in this episode. Be grateful for the small kindnesses of God in the ebb and flow of life. First we see Ruth’s gratitude. Boaz notices her industriousness and rewards her with blessing in vv. 11-12. He says, “Word has gone out about your faithfulness and risky commitment to Naomi. May God reward you.” Then she expresses gratitude to him for his kindness. But she doesn’t yet know the full extent of God’s kindness.  Look further down at verse 19. When she relates the story to Naomi who is incredulous at what she brought home, Naomi breaks forth with gratitude to God:  “May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead!” She recognizes that the good things, just as the hard things, come from God.  Naomi also said to her, “The man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers.”

Now this gets complicated and is difficult for our modern sensibilities, but basically what is happening here is an example of biblical “social security” – family takes care of family. It’s a sacred obligation. And Ruth had stumbled across family, a man who was now predisposed to do whatever it took to “redeem” to save from peril, to buy back from destitution relatives in desperate need.

Oh friends, do you see the Gospel in action here? God sees our desperate need, and at great, incalculable cost to Himself, buys us back from our poverty in sin. Redemption as practiced in ancient Israel was a sign pointing ahead 1000 years. It was a faint fore shadowing of a much bigger reality – a much more perfect and permanent redemption – not merely from financial or social deprivation; but from the sure prospect of judgment for our sinful and lost estate.

Finally, Have Eyes to See the Long View

But the story gets better. While the end of chapter 2 may seem like the high point, it gets higher. Though time does not allow all the details, Ruth and Naomi take a risk, leaning on the goodness of God they have seen thus far to seek even more blessing. And in short, Ruth becomes the wife of Boaz, the family is redeemed. But look at the ending in chapter 4.

Ruth has a son – a small thing, a normal thing, a blessing to be sure to Naomi and Ruth, and Boaz of course. But look at the ending.

[Read 4:14-17]

     This son, Obed became the father of Jesse, who became the father of David. And all Israel cheers. But friends, connect the dots. If there was no famine, no death, no loss, no destitution, there would be no David, or Solomon, no Joseph or Mary . . . and no Jesus Christ. Recently on Facebook John Piper wrote: “What could be more round about than the way God blessed Naomi? And in Christ the maze of your misery has a design and happy end.”

     Do you see it? Ruth could not with her eyes see it, though I believe she eventually did. Seemingly tragic events, combined with seemingly small acts of faithfulness, in out of the way places by otherwise ordinary and unknown people changed the course of humanity! And if you are in Christ, Ruth’s commitment to people, her willingness to do the next thing, to take initiative, to be grateful to God . . . all these small things, in God’s kindness, led to your salvation and your everlasting hope in Christ.

Remember the words of William Cowper’s hymn “God Moves in Mysterious Ways”? One of the stanzas says:

“Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust him for His grace.                 Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.”

Ruth and Naomi saw the frowning providence in the hardship of loss, death, and hopeless deprivation. And some of us have had to stand – for far too long sometimes – with Naomi and Ruth. But behind this darkness, behind the hard providence lay blessings that would break upon them as individuals, as a family and community, and ultimately blessings for all of human kind across the world and across the centuries, even to you and me in that Pauline sense of infinitely beyond what they could see, hear, or imagine.

In closing, 1. Remind yourself of God’s faithfulness to you in the past; 2. Believe and trust that His purpose for you will prevail, no matter what today looks like; 3. Hear again The Lord’s words in Isaiah 43:

“But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and [when you pass] through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.'”

God id with us through such times; He never leaves or forsakes us in the midst of such times. Thanks be to God.