Friday's Recap (190609)

Dear Cell, last Friday we shared about matters of the heart. This was where we dug deep into how we felt as Christians in a world of pain, suffering and death. Many of our beloved will die one day. In short, life’s motto can be bluntly put as “we live to die one day”. But death doesn’t make life meaningless. I like to think that our life, as we know it, is like an experiment. To some, it is a blessed experiment. They live to a fruitful age. They see their children and their children’s children grow up healthy, happy and generally fulfilled. Amidst the growing pain, minor disappointments and regular arguments, they experience life for what it is meant to be: an experiment of purposeful growth, shared pain and shared joy. What makes life and living so meaningful to them is the precious, priceless relationships they make along the journey and how these relationships eventually enriched them - although the journey at times can get rough and edgy. In fact, for this blessed group, Romans 8:28 says it most fittingly, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

But, like all experiments, not all of them will turn out as one has hoped. Some lives will fall by the wayside, generally ignored and forgotten. Or at least it seems that way. Now, let me clarify here. I deliberately use the word “experiment” – defined in the dictionary as a series of scientific tests - to describe life. But, by doing so, I am not saying that God plays with our lives like one would play with dice. At the cell last Friday, we generally agree that some unpleasant things happen to us because God has generally allowed it. Untimely death, brutal violence and untold sufferings happen not because God can do nothing about it. It is precisely because God can do something about it and yet he sometimes chooses not to act that makes life seems like a big, unpredictable experiment to us. We never really know what to expect at times.

When God acts, and he sometimes do, we experience miracles of nature that words cannot adequately describe. The supernatural acts of old, like the parting of the red sea, the collapse of Jericho, the raising of the dead, the manipulation of the weather and other similarly awe-inspiring events, were truly veritable fingerprints of a personal, compassionate and loving God. But, on the flip side of life’s coin, there are many life’s situations that God’s hands of divine intervention are restrained. And God is as tight-lipped as a zip-lock bag about why he had refused to act. Ask Job and you will know what I mean. Job literally lost everything, his material possessions, his house and his children under the merciless hand of nature. Although we read that God later restored Job with a new family and everything manifold, God did not explain Himself to Job. Neither did God tell him that all he had gone through was a test, or a cosmic wager. At best, God left Job with the same impression he gave to Isaiah (see verses 55:8-9), “For my thoughts are not your thoughts; neither are your ways My ways, says the Eternal God. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

I cannot deny that it is so much easier to go through trials when we know the reasons for it. In our prayers, we always pray for smooth sailing. We pray that God will make a way for us. We pray that life will not test us too much. Although God had assured us that He will not test us beyond that which we can bear, it is not the testing that we dread most of the time but it is not knowing why that vex us most. In our trials, when life turns a deaf ear to our pleas for reprieve, our prayers are often left unanswered. God seems to be silent. God seems to be distant. In fact, this lament is felt by RT Kendall, a deeply devoted pastor and prolific author, who wrote that he had never been healed and he could not recall any incident by which he could claim to have been healed, except for what could be explained medically.

In other words, when RT Kendall suffers an ailment, he gets his relief from medication and not so much from supplication. Worse still, God’s answers to our prayers are not always clear. At times, it can even be contrary to what we had prayed for. Ever prayed for health and you got sicker? Ever prayed for the return of a loved one only to be served with the divorce papers? At other times, God’s assurance came with a call for endurance and not immediate deliverance. We still have to endure the pain of the trial and will never know exactly when it will all end.

Beloved, I chose to write these sobering experiences because I do not want to trivialize the pain you may be going through in your own trial whilst still waiting for an answer from God. Reality is reality and I don’t need to embellish it to understand how you feel at times. A pastor, Dr Ed Montgomery, author of When Heaven is Silent, has this piercing advice to you who feels stonewalled by God’s apparent silence in your time of desperate need, “Life takes time to figure out, and most of our questions never get answered at all in this lifetime. You don’t learn life’s rope overnight. But once you get the hang of it, you find that life does not center on answers to perplexing questions. Life is not always meant to be understood. It’s meant to be lived. It is meant to be lived with all the richness and gusto you can muster. Living is not always a pleasant experience, but that doesn’t mean we give in to life’s unpleasantness. We may not understand most of life’s paradoxes, but then again, who says we have to? The only thing God promises us in this life is that we will have pressure (tribulation), that we can overcome the pressure and that we can have life more abundant despite the pressure.”

The above advice, I believe, is not meant to be an answer. It does not even pretend to be one. Who are we to offer answers to life’s many paradoxes of suffering when God has chosen not to reveal them? When Jesus was asked by his disciples what had caused the blindness in the man’s eye, giving two options to choose from: Is it the sins of his parents or his sin? Jesus, who healed the blind man, chose neither, but proclaimed, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” (John 9:1-3)

So, this is how we can empathize with the atheist’s difficulty in believing in a God who avoids answering the one question that they have spent all their lives looking for. To them, especially those who are suffering from indescribable pain, abject isolation and extreme cruelty, God is their enemy, someone who toys with their lives, eagerly waiting for the breaking point of their pain, and floating in the clouds with hands folded, doing and saying nothing about it. So, what comfort, as Christians, can we give to our non-believing friends, who are going through pain and sufferings without any hope of long-term remission?

Well, first and foremost, we should suspend all judgments just like what Jesus did when he healed the blind man. Jesus could have accused the man’s parents for their past sins. He could have reprimanded the blind man for his lack of faith. But, Jesus did neither. The last thing an inflicted and embattled atheist wants to hear is our spiritualizing about the cause or causes of his affliction. At such time, Jesus is a man of few words and rightly so. He urged his disciples to look forward because looking back would only reveal our immutable past, which we are completely powerless to change. I sincerely believe that God deals with us individually and personally. Just as varied and unique as we are, God’s answers to our pain and sufferings are equally varied and unique. No two trials are alike. And because they are not the same, God deals with us differently.

To some, there is immediate relief like the blind man. To others, the relief is withheld. In other words, you can say that God, being in control of all things, dead or alive, allows the pain to ravage our lives in the same way that Job had to endure without a clue, or as much as a hint, of what is actually happening to him. Of course, an atheist is not going to be satisfied with this answer because it makes no sense to him as to how an allegedly all-powerful and all-loving God would allow his very own flesh and blood to suffer so seemingly meaninglessly.

This is where a little honest admission is required of us Christians. We have to exercise mature faith and tell it as it is. Let me distinguish mature from naïve faith. Naïve faith is believing that our prayers and faith will vaccinate us against evil and that temptation would not likely come our way. Mature faith is just the opposite. Mature faith sees life as unfolding and always unfolding and this unfolding will bring with it the good and the bad. Mature faith also accepts the spiritual reality that one cannot ask God to only unfold the good and leave out the bad completely. This is in line with Job's rebuke to his wife when she asked him to curse God and die, "Shall we indeed accept good from God, shall we not also accept adversity?" (Job 2:10)

Beloved, there is a difference between the healthy pain of growth and the unhealthy pain of sin. Not all pain in life is bad, or counterproductive. Of course, consequences abound for our actions. If we choose to do evil, we will be visited with evil. Our sins have a way of boomeranging back to us with a vicious payload. This is the basic and natural law of sowing and reaping and God, most of the time, do not intervene in this law just like He will refrain from intervening in the natural law of gravity.

But, for those with mature faith, it is not the pain from sins that challenges their faith. It is the pain arising from growth that requires addressing in their spirit. God allows trials to come our way because they ensure our growth in Him. In John 16:33, Jesus assured us with these words, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world!” Take note that Jesus overcame this world through His death. And by overcoming it, Jesus made a way for us. So, growth comes from overcoming. And things or situations that require overcoming will always demand something from us, some form of sacrifice that will pain us. In the end, God values our growth above all good things that he desires to give to us. James 1:12 tells us why, “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.”

Well, this explanation does not prevent an atheist from asking us, “Why did God create man when He knew he would suffer?” In the same way, it does not prevent a Christian from asking back, “Why did God create man when He knew He – God Himself – would suffer?” Beloved, at some point in your life, you will have to closet yourself in one meditative corner and ask yourself this question, “what makes suffering in this life so necessary, so unavoidable, that even God’s only son was not spared from it?” I mean God could have shown the awesomeness of his power, the same power he exercised when he created this universe, by making a way for Jesus so that He could avoid the Cross altogether. But he chose otherwise, Why? Well, the Bible tells it all. Jesus died so that God’s plan for salvation can be freely given to all. So, God had a plan for Jesus. And His plan is redemptive in nature. Can we then say the same thing for our own trials and pain?

Some atheists frown at this explanation because it is as good as saying nothing of value to them. When they are suffering, with no end in sight, and God has hidden his face from them, and not revealing why and how such suffering should exist in the first place, it is as good as saying that God does not exist. This is understandable. But, even for an atheist, suffering under life’s random hand of fate, I sincerely believe that deep inside of them, they are crying out for some form of meaning or purpose to their suffering. Sadly, some of them will never find relief from their pain and may very well die from it. But this does not prevent them from crying out for an explanation. As Christians, there is admittedly little that we can do in our limited understanding and knowledge. This is clearly God’s domain and his alone. All we can do is to stand by them and pray that by our conduct and faith they will come to realize that there is something out there that is bigger than their pain and that is God’s redemptive and reconciliative plan for them.

I believe that when death beckons, we need a larger-than-life faith to see us through. And this larger-than-life faith entrusts God with all the answers and hopes that they will be revealed in His own time.

For me, the concluding words of Dr Ed Montgomery provide some refuge for my faith in the foreboding storms of life, “God is weaving a tapestry. He intertwines threads of every texture and color, some bold and brash, others dark and demure…So it is with our lives. God is the master weaver who has firmly placed in His imagination a perfect portrait of our outcome. He knows what must be, even when our incomplete state provides no clues. He weaves and He waits, color-coordinating our every move. He rejoices when weaving in the bright colors of our joys and triumphs. He weeps while weaving the dark times we so valiantly try to reject He fights off the moths and other destructive pests that would feed upon the fabric of our lives. He supplies additional material when we need support. And He even stops when we stop, allowing us to catch our breath along the way…Somewhere down the road, we will become aware of this tapestry, this eternally living and moving testimony of our existence…But until that day, when the fullness of His plan for us can be revealed, God is content to keep many of our questions on His eternal shelf. There the tapestry will remain, safe in His keeping until the finished work is unveiled before us in splendor and glory. Until then, everything rests safely in His love.”

Beloved, have a trusting week ahead.

PS: Remember, your trial is only as big as your doubts about God’s specific plan for your life. The greater the doubts, the bigger your trial. Go to your own garden of Gethsemane and confront God with your fears, your doubts and your defeats. Jesus did the same; he confronted God, bargained with and cried out to Him, and eventually drew extraordinary strength to face the cross. Moses did the same when he argued with God about his fears and inadequacy of leading His people out of bondage. God rebuked Moses and set him on a crash course to making history. How about you? When was the last time you had a good dialogue with God? When was the last time you argued with God - raise your fist and beat your chest in frustration for your lot in life? Remember, God desires our relationship more than our worship. And relationship involves more than just talking; it involves arguing sometimes, challenging and even questioning. In the face of a trial, the real question a Christian should ask is, “Am I close enough to God to feel safe and secure in His apparent silence?” Are we?