As I write for this the world around us is being
confronted by the tragedies of fighting in Gaza and the shooting down of a passenger
airplane by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine. Many
people have lost their lives in the fighting in Gaza, and there have been many injured.
Close to 300 hundred innocent lives were lost with the shooting down of MH-17
in Ukraine, leaving family and friends with a deep sense of grief. These
situations certainly need our fervent prayer.
The issue of suffering is a very difficult one, and we are
confronted with the perennial question: how can a good God allow such
suffering? It is a question, I’m sure, that many of us have asked. Yet, it is a
question that we need to attempt to answer; especially as Christians, because
it can truly test our faith.
The two events that I mentioned above give us some insight into
suffering and God. These two are quite clearly human motivated. Human beings
are quick to go to arms when they feel that injustices have been committed
against them. Whatever we might think of the rightness of Israel’s, Palestine’s
or Russia’s responses, the truth is that human beings are causing suffering. We
could well trace much of the world’s suffering back to human causes. This is
indeed what the Bible does. Suffering and death came into the world by the
choices made by our mythical forbears, Adam and Eve (Gen 3; Roman 5). Suffering
is not part of God’s original purpose. That unpopular word and notion, ‘sin’, taints
everything we do as humans. This is not to say that human beings are not
capable of great good, because we are, but it highlights the fact that there is
something not quite right with the human race. We live in a ‘fallen’ world.
Well, if God’s original intention is that there be perfect peace
and harmony within creation then why doesn’t God snap his fingers and return the
world back to ‘Eden’? Again, the Bible offers another response. God entered the
world in the person of Jesus. It was a covert operation, and God’s methods were
subversive. God through Jesus was seeking to transform the world from the
inside out. Rather than leaving human beings as passive observers, God enlists
us as fellow subversive operatives. We join with God in bringing to birth God’s
kingdom here on earth. Suffering is with us until the ‘Kingdom of God’ is
revealed in all its fullness. Recent events remind us that we have a long way
to go in this. The word to Zerubbabel is still timely: ‘Not by might, nor by
power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts’ (Zechariah 4: 6). In the
meantime, we pray ‘your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in
heaven’. As Christians we are not defeatist about suffering, but we know there
is a better kingdom entering into our world. We participate in this kingdom by
working for peace, and doing whatever we can to alleviate suffering.
Chris
2 comments:
Well and clearly said Chris! Brilliant! Reminds me of the story of the Starfish and the young boy.
Once upon a time, there was an old man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach every morning before he began his work. Early one morning, he was walking along the shore after a big storm had passed and found the vast beach littered with starfish as far as the eye could see, stretching in both directions.
Off in the distance, the old man noticed a small boy approaching. As the boy walked, he paused every so often and as he grew closer, the man could see that he was occasionally bending down to pick up an object and throw it into the sea. The boy came closer still and the man called out, “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”
The young boy paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean. The tide has washed them up onto the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves,” the youth replied. “When the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them back into the water.”
The old man replied, “But there must be tens of thousands of starfish on this beach. I’m afraid you won’t really be able to make much of a difference.”
The boy bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned, smiled and said, “It made a difference to that one!”
Your post was very helpful. It gives clarity to God's grace. "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand" (Romans 5). We stand dead in sin because of our forebears man (Adam) and woman (Eve). But now God has made us alive in Christ, the second Adam, and won us eternal life because of his work on the cross. In Adam "the law enslaves, the flesh dominates, the world beguiles and death reigns. The new “aeon,” however, which was inaugurated by Christ, is characterized by grace not law, the Spirit not the flesh, the will of God not the fashions of the world, and abundant life not death. This is the victory of Christ into which he allows us to enter." (Stott, The Cross of Christ, 2006, pp. 242) The tragedies of this world, not just limited to ones on the tv, and our responsibility are made most vivid from Adam to Christ. And the question for us is where do we start from either we start with Adam or Christ.
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