WHERE SUFFERING AND SOVEREIGNTY MEET
I wanted
to share some excellent thoughts from John Pipers book, "Suffering and the
Sovereignty of God", in a chapter written by Dustin Shramek. He presents
very eloquently the tension between our faith in God's sovereignty and the very
real pain of life. Let me share several quotes.
"Good
theology is essential if we are going to suffer well...But we must never forget
that often the night is long and the weeping uncontrollable...No amount of good
theology is able to take the pain out of suffering. Too often we allow
ourselves to believe that a robust view of God's sovereignty in all things
means that when suffering comes it won't hurt...The pain of suffering is both
dark and deep. This is critical to see, for when we minimize the pain we fail
to love others and we fail to honor God...There are times in our lives that we
can barely make it out of bed in the morning and we have no energy to do
anything. Our pain and grief is so great that we are unable to concentrate...We
don't love others in the midst of this kind of pain by pretending that it isn't
all that bad or by trying to quickly fix it with some pat theological answers.
We love them by first weeping with them...But let us not so quickly go from the
afflictions to the deliverance and thus minimize the pain in between..."
Hopefully
I haven't too badly butchered Shramek' thoughts, but just given a little of the
flavor of what he has to say. He follows
up by saying, "God is a big God who can handle our questions, our anger,
and our pain." This is from a man whose first-born son died twenty minutes
after birth. It was not theoretical to him.
There
is a real tension between suffering and sovereignty, though mostly because we
can't understand it. The Bible doesn't flinch at this. It still presents that
both are true, and that God has a plan in all of it. His ultimate goal for us
is that we trust Him
Jesus models both the anguish of suffering and supreme confidence in God. In the garden as He prayed, "take this cup [of suffering] from me" and "your will be done." Pain, heartbreak, grief, all real and deep...but not more real or more powerful than God. Sometimes we just hang onto that truth with our fingernails until it feels real to us again.
ReplyDeleteThanks pastor John, and isn't it comforting that we can see the same anguish in Christ? Piper also comments on Hebrews 5:7... Jesus offered up "loud cries and tears," which are not incompatible with faith in God. In his cries and tears, Jesus was heard by the one able to save him, yet he still died. He asked for the cup to pass, but was resigned to do his Father's will, even though it would cost him his life. God heard his prayers, but rather than save him from pain and death, he chose for Jesus to walk on the road suffering so that he might receive the greater joy of resurrection... I think Piper's point here is that if God allowed such deep anguish and pain in Jesus, why would we expect less struggle ourselves?
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