A Few Thoughts on Stuff - 3

 A while back I shared my testimony (Christian talk for how I came to the faith).  You can read it here for some background.  Julie's Story Spring-boarding from that post, leads me to the following thoughts.  And, the words below are just that… my thoughts and not a doctoral thesis on suffering and evil!

I kind of feel like my childhood was shadowed by death and loss. Maybe some of you can relate.  By the time I was a junior in high school, I lost a cousin to cancer, a cousin to murder, an aunt to breast cancer, an aunt to a car crash, an uncle to a car crash, a grandma to what seemed like heartbreak and a grandpa to Alzheimers all while my parents battled serious illnesses. My mom had breast cancer, then sudden onset rheumatoid arthritis, then breast cancer again, from which she died.  My dad had tic douloureux, a drowning and hydro encephalitis. And this is the abbreviated version.  I know lots of people have difficulties as children.  I’m not writing this for sympathy or to say I had it the worst. As a matter of fact, I was well-loved and deeply cared for by my parents.  I’m telling you the sad parts to paint a picture of how I felt… which was often… sad and serious and alone.   I tried to mask it.  Who wants to be that person?  I tried to relate to my peers.  Sometimes I had success, sometimes not so much.  I guess it’s that way for lots of people.  Perhaps because of the tragedies I experienced, my youthful thoughts often lingered on the whys.  Why this?  Why that?  Why is there suffering?  Why is there evil? Why, why, why.  When my mom died, the whys left me for the most part.  Why, you might be asking?  Well, at risk of sounding cliche, I came to know Jesus as my Savior.  

Personal Christian growth can be so painstakingly slow and discouraging sometimes, but for some reason when God called me, my thoughts on a few things changed right away.  I knew I could trust Him.  I knew I could not understand the whys in any deep or significant way.  To think I could understand evil and sadness and grief in the way that God understands them was a fool’s errand.  Sure, we all understand the first layer of whys or really, hows. Why do we suffer?  Maybe we have a few surface-y answers to this question. Or let’s leave suffering and take a science-type subject to task to further illustrate what I’m trying to say.  Why do the lights turn on?  Well, you know, electrical currents, wiring, and so on.  Haha… ok… I don’t personally know much about electricity.  But even the electricity experts, do they know why electricity does the things it does?  If you do, let me know! To me, science explains the first few layers of how lights work, but why they work?  I would put forth that only God understands creation on the deeper levels.  Our “knowledge” of creation is so surface-y.  I may know the first layer about electricity and you may know ten layers, but these layers of how things work, doesn’t explain why they work. Or am I missing something? I am for sure not saying that I’m not interested in knowledge and all the layers!  I LOVE to learn and experience new things.  Harnessing the creation has led to countless beautiful, helpful inventions.  There is so much our gracious Father in heaven has given us to learn in this world and in his Word!  What I am saying (if I haven’t lost you!) is that forever trying to mull over the deep things, in a way where we expect total understanding is not a thing I believe the human brain can handle, nor perform.   Ultimately, the answer to all the whys, is, God decreed it so.  This mindset is helping me so much in my current struggles.  I am writing these seemingly strange things hoping they will help some of you in your trials.

Suffering is part of life, right? We all know suffering.  Some, too well perhaps. Many know more suffering than I will ever know. In my estimation, the whys of suffering are unsatisfying beyond what God teaches us about the meaning of suffering.  More on this in other posts.  What I want to stress today is, whether my sufferings are small or large, I want to suffer well.  Suffer well.  Interesting thought, non?  If our Lord brings the suffering, we don’t want to waste it.  Suffer well.  I don’t think this means I should lay down and roll over.  I’m not the proverbial doormat after all. So what does it mean to suffer well?  All I know about suffering well comes from the mouth of God and frankly, seems counterintuitive.  In my flesh, I want to fix suffering, run from it and reject it. But…

When I am weak, I am strong.

When I walk through the fire, I will not be burned.

God’s power is made perfect in weakness.

I am to delight in hardships.

Suffering produces perseverance.

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart.

The Lord is my Shepherd in the valley and I shall lack nothing.

I know how this type of thinking may sound… a bit… crazy perhaps, but I find it a great comfort.  There is meaning in this world. (There is something I would like to shout from the mountain tops!)  There is meaning in the good and meaning in the bad. The idea that there is no God, just doesn’t seem logical.  I can’t accept that the human eye, or a myriad of other things, just evolved randomly.  The odds of just one part of our bodies or the world for that matter evolving from base elements is so far fetched to me, I can’t accept it.  Does that prove the Christian God?  It does not.  I’m just taking a tangent into the fact that I cannot accept that there is no creator, no purpose to life, no purpose in suffering.

I remember when I was new to the faith, I was at UCLA taking a medieval history class and the teacher said that the church abused the idea of suffering to keep the common people subdued. I think the medieval church can be accused of a power grab here. They sometimes wrongly caused suffering to build the physical church and told their people to suck it up. This is a tragedy. I think I am saying something completely different though. I don’t just want to bring on suffering, assign God’s glory to it and suck it up. I'll share more regarding my thoughts on suffering in the future, but in the meantime...

One of my sons is becoming a pastor and he recently preached through 1 Peter, an epistle that has much to say about suffering. Life can be so hard! If you want to hear the series, I find it quite encouraging. You can find here, starting with the date 6/6/21 and continuing through 8/29/21: https://www.sermonaudio.com/search.asp?speakeronly=true&currsection=sermonsspeaker&keyword=Eli_Hirtzel