WHAT IF...

Randy Alcorn asks the following. “What if suffering is God’s invitation to trust Him?” This seems to me to be a pivotal question. It is why sovereignty is so important. If I’m hurting, and he’s sovereign, I can trust Him. If I’m hurting and He isn’t, then I’m left alone with my pain.

Two of the most influential books I have read in the last couple of years are Alcorn’s book “If God is Good”, and John Piper’s “Suffering and the Sovereignty of God”. Both are packed with both tough questions and thought provoking answers. They have challenged and solidified my thinking, and I cannot recommend them highly enough. They have also been instrumental in my desire to write this blog, on a couple of levels.

The first was Alcorn’s statement that, “Our failure to teach a biblical theology of suffering leaves Christians unprepared for harsh realities. It also leaves our children vulnerable to history, philosophy, and global studies classes that raise the problems of evil and suffering while denying the Christian worldview. Since the question will be raised, shouldn’t Christian parents and churches raise it first and take people to Scripture to see what God says about it?”

 Darrell Scott’s daughter Rachel was the first to die in 1999’s Columbine shootings. He said the following. “In my experience, most Christians lack grounding in God’s attributes, including his sovereignty, omnipotence, omniscience, justice, and patience. We dare not wait for a time of crisis to learn perspective! Don’t be content to be hand-fed by others. Do your own reading and study, devour good books, talk about the things of God.” I couldn’t agree more. And it is especially true if, as Alcorn says, the only way to escape suffering in this life is to die. 

This leads to my second reason for writing.  I thought that I might be able to correlate some of the things that I have read, in order to pass it along in this fashion to people who would not read the entire book, for a myriad of reasons. I absolutely love to read, but others may not. But some of these things are so foundational to our thinking, to our understanding of who God is, and to the lives we live based on that theology, that we should at every opportunity “reason together” about them. The problem I have here is that I find myself wanting to quote whole chapters of these books, because there’s that much good materiel in them! Here’s one example from Alcorn.

            Vicki Anderson, who was born with a facial abnormality called hypertelorism, says,

I don’t really like the phrase “birth defect”-it contradicts my theology. A “defect” implies a mistake and I believe that God is sovereign. If he had the power to create the entire universe according to his exact specifications, then my face was certainly no challenge for him! If God is loving, why did he deform my face? I don’t know-maybe because with a normal face I would have been robbed of the thousands and thousands of blessings I have received because of my deformities. It seems odd, but usually our greatest trial is what most molds and shapes us. It gives us character, backbone, courage, wisdom, discernment, and friendships that are not shallow.

Vicki’s mother says, “I believe that God has chosen this sorrow for our family…We have all learned, we have all grown, and we love the Lord and His sovereign direction in our lives.”

Wow. This is from people for whom suffering and pain are not some abstract discussion. Two of their statements stand out to me. One is Vicki’s perspective that her theology dictates even what she calls her deformity, and especially her mom’s statement that God “chose this sorrow for our family”. Not accidental, not out of His control, not caught when He wasn’t looking and now He’ll try to make up for it.

Chosen sorrow.

For my good, in fact for my highest good.

I hope that I can continue to learn to trust in his “chosen sorrows” for me.