Excerpt from the book Is This A God Of Love,
by A. E. Wilder-Smith
Chapter VI
Suffering: Is
There Any
Reasonable
Interpretation?
Resentment Against
Purposeless
Suffering
Many people as they undergo
suffering
resent what is happening because
they can often see no constructive
purpose
behind it. "Senseless"
suffering, such
as we see when innocent children
are
destroyed or mutilated in war,
sickness,
plague or famine, makes our anger
and
impatience rise. The impatience
increases
when we see pain which is not only
“senseless”
or “random” but apparently
designed
and calculated, or even “refined,”
as is the
pain at the root of malaria.
A good
example of apparent sadism
arises in
considering, as did C.S. Lewis,
the
deafness of a musical genius such as
Beethoven.
An
absolute master of the art and
science
of sound struck down with stone
deafness!
Could a greater refinement of
apparent
sadism be conceived? Hence the
impatience
of many when they merely
begin to
consider the problem of suffering.
Yet, on
the other hand, anyone considering
Himself to
be a Christian is warned
on every
side to expect both joy and
suffering
as normally as summer and
winter.
Both are, according to the Scripture,
integral
parts of the Christian experience.
Being a
Christian does not provide
exemption
from suffering with the rest of
mankind.
Rather, there is the promise of
additional
suffering for Christians. The
apostle
Paul says explicitly that the
Christian
must enter the Kingdom not
only in
joy but through the gates of many
trials, tribulations and
sufferings, being
forsaken of man, and, apparently by
God
too, before reaching the final gate
of death.
If God Is Good,
Will He Hurt Us?
Lewis puts this very question in
another
light when he writes: "If
God's goodness
is inconsistent with his hurting us,
then either God is not good or
there is no
God; for, in the only life we know
he hurts
us beyond our worst fears and
beyond all
we can imagine." Plainly, this means that
if we believe in God at all, we
must believe
that it is consistent with his
perfect nature,
kindness and love to hurt us and to
leave
us wallowing in our own blood, as
it were,
right up to the end.
Lewis adds a rider to this
statement
which asks, in effect, if we accept
that in
this life God can hurt us beyond
all that we
can imagine, and that this hurting
is
consistent with his goodness, have
we any
valid reasons for believing that he
should
not, if necessary, continue hurting
us in
the same way after this mortal life
is over?
Obviously there is no moral reason
why he
should not, if spirits can endure
suffering
as mortal men do. Numerous passages
of
Scripture need to be examined carefully
in
this connection. Neither Lewis nor
we are
suggesting that the torments of
hell are
universal after death! The real
question is
whether suffering serves any
purpose in
this life and in that to come.
We can, however, go one step
further
and still remain on safe ground. If
God has
good reasons for hurting us now in
this
mortal life, he might conceivably,
have
equally good reason for continuing
the
same process afterward, in death.
Clarity
will only come by first asking
ourselves,
"What do the Scriptures
say?" And second,
from our answer to why he hurts us
now, what he intends us to achieve
by it in
this life and beyond.
Was Christ Ever In
Man's Position?
It is often helpful in dealing with
such
questions to find out whether
Christ the
man was ever in the same position
as we
in regard to suffering. If he was,
then the
investigation
of what suffering achieved in
him will,
perhaps, provide the answer as
to what
it is supposed to achieve in us.
Accordingly,
looking at one of the
most
obvious cases of Christ's suffering—
the
cross—may help to solve the problem.
God the
Father remained "passive" while
millions
of Jews, his own people, were
gassed in
brutal cynicism, just as he
"stood
passively by," as it were, while men
crucified
his own beloved Son.
To make
matters worse, the Scriptures
say that
this brutal act was the
culmination
of the prophecy that Christ
was the
Lamb of God slain from the
foundation
of the world. Thus, the cruel
cross was
an eternally foreseen event —
an event
which God presided at eternally
in an
apparently passive manner in that
he did
not stop it. Therefore, the hurting of
the
beloved one must have been consistent
with
God's eternal character. In fact,
God
himself suffered, for he was in Christ
as he
suffered (2 Cor. 5:19), so God was
actually
not just passive during this event.
He
actively suffered.
The Cross And
God's Love
This means that if the central
doctrine
of the Christian faith, the cross,
is
true, then it is obviously
consistent with
God's eternal love to hurt those he
loves
best including himself, even to the
point
of what we would call barbarism,
for the
cross is barbaric.
Whichever way we look we find the
same picture in principle. Christ
on the
eternal cruel cross and a so-called
God of
love behind him and, indeed, in
him.
Humanity and biology for millennia
"under
the harrow" too, and yet
allegedly,
according to the Scriptures, a God
of love
behind us, who is until now
entirely passive
at the spectacle. Confronted with
this
situation, what Lewis feared was
not so
much a loss of belief in God at all
with its
concomitant victory of pure
materialism
in him. That solution would have
been too
easy, for it would have meant that
a simple
overdose of sleeping pills at any
time could
have gotten him out from
"under the
harrow" forever. Far too
simple! What
worried
Lewis was that man and biology
might be
trapped, as it were, in a laboratory
in which
God might be the eternal
vivisector
and we the rats! Lewis says that
the
despair in which the Son of God died
when he
cried out “My God, why hast
thou
forsaken me?” might have been the
result of
Christ finding out that the cross
was, in
reality, a carefully baited laboratory
trap
which sprang at death and from
which
there was no escape after God had
lured him
into it.
Looked at
dispassionately, surely even
a fallen
person like myself, possessing
scarcely
a trace of the love I attribute to a
God of love,
could not have stood passively
by while
they crucified him — or gassed
millions
of Jews. But then, if we take that
view, God
must be morally inferior—even
to
me—which is completely nihilistic. We
shall
have to scrap that thought too, for it
leads
straight to the destruction of all
rational
thought on the subject.
Of course
God is more compassionate
than I.
But then why was he so
relentlessly passive at the cross?
Why
doesn't he relent at the millennia
of human
and biological agony?
Hurting In Order
To Heal
Might the key to the sore problem
be
found in the following
considerations: Can
we allow that to do good there are
occasions
when we must do that which looks
as though it were bad? Put another
way,
can we hurt to heal? Obviously we
can
allow that, for every good surgeon
and
dentist does so regularly and
routinely. If,
every time I flinched, gripped the
dentist's
chair, or drew back my head in pain
at the
relentless drill, the dentist were
to stop
and end the torture by filling up
the still
dirty cavity with amalgam, he would
be
less than a good dentist He would
not be
being good, kind or loving to his
patient if
he were anything but absolutely
unrelenting
in his thoroughness in inflicting
this therapeutic suffering. We
would all be
in trouble again in no time if he
did relent.
And then all the pain he had
inflicted in
earlier drillings would have been
in vain.
He has to
be apparently passive to the
pain he
is causing. Does he seem devoid of
feeling?
In reality, of course, his passiveness
to
suffering, his apparent lack of
feeling
and his relentlessness are merely
motivated
by common sense and consideration
for his
patient, even though the
intolerable
pain might persuade me otherwise.
For
anyone who has undergone a
molar
root treatment, two further points
will
emerge or throw light on this problem.
The
bacterial infection not only causes
excruciating
pain, but the toxins released
into the
blood will poison the patient to
such an
extent that his very consciousness
may become
clouded. He may scarcely
know what
he is doing because of the pain
and
poison. Then the dentist begins work
with his
awful drill. The pain becomes
more
excruciating until the center of infection
is
reached. Then the poison pressure
is
released, and immediate relief is
felt
though it is not yet complete. As soon
as no more poison is being released
into
the blood, the head begins to clear
and the
pain to subside.
First, then, in order to remove the
hurt of decay, sometimes more pain
has to
be inflicted — worse than that of
the
original sickness. But the worst
pain acts
therapeutically on the first pain
and purges
it away. Second, only when the
basic
trouble begins to be cured does
clarity of
thought return.
The Scriptural
Position
Scripture teaches, in essence,
precisely
this view on the meaning of
suffering.
The fall introduced
the "decay" of
humanity and nature resulting in the
hurt which afflicts us. To cure
this festering
mess, the Bible says a good but
relentless
surgeon is needed to drill and
drill
until reality is too horrible to
bear, until
flesh and blood can no longer take
it —
until we believe we are forsaken by
God
and man. The Bible describes in
detail
both the setting in of the decay
and its
radical, but painful cure. Our
species has
decayed
from its original state and become,
as it
were, a lower or decayed
species,
as I have described elsewhere.
The cure
requires radical and drastic
treatment
involving, first of all, the reaching
of the “focal
point of the infection,” and
then the
"removal of the deformities caused
by decay."
Christ's death and resurrection
"reached
the focal point" of the trouble, as
it were.
But the "deformities of the decay"
have also
to be corrected, and that takes
time and
can be expected to be painful.
One of
these "deformities" is connected
with the
"clouding of the intellectual
and
rational processes" which accompanies
the fall.
The apostle described
them in
Romans 1 as a "darkening of the
mind"
so that the normal logical thought
processes
for which we were designed
become
garbled. One of the by-products of
suffering
is seen here. For although suffering
and
toxins may "knock us silly," the
removal
of the latter can bring clarity of
thought.
It is a fact that sin darkens the
mind. The
corollary that redemption and
holiness
enlighten the mind is also true.
For salvation not only redeems us
from a
lost eternity; it also redeems us
from a
lost, clouded, befuddled
consciousness at
present. By taking away our sin, we
become
saved for eternity. But we must not
forget that this same saving
process brings
light and radiance to the heart and
the
intellect right now, the process
being one
of growth — growth in this life.
Accurate Surgery
Or Wholesale
Butchery?
Can the skilled, accurately aimed
work of the dentist on a tooth with
its
concomitant pain and healing, be
compared
with the wild, indisciplined,
purely
destructive agony which afflicts
much of
mankind today? Here again, for any
satisfactory
answer, we must turn back to
the archetype of all barbarous
suffering,
namely, the cruel cross.
Is it possible to believe that when
wicked men, inspired by hatred and
jealousy,
decided to take Jesus, hold a mock
trial, scourge him, display him all
night for
the raucous amusement of the troops
and
then finally drive iron stakes
through his
hands and feet raising him on a
cross to
bleed and suffocate to death — can
we
reasonably hold that such a
performance
was the work of a skilled surgeon
in his
efforts to cure the world of its
disease?
The Exact Therapy
Of The Cross
The Christian position is frankly
that
this was the case: that God, with
the
butchery of the cross, did cure the
world
of its disease; that the cross was
the work
of a skilled surgeon, even though
it looked
from the human point of view like
the
exclusively destructive and
adventitious
work of the ribald Roman soldiers
and
hateful Pharisees. It looks so very
much
like this that the cross was
considered by
the Greeks to be so unworthy of
Divinity
that it was a sheer “scandal.” But
the fact
is, outward appearances may
deceive.
The reason for this deception is
simple.
Outwardly wicked men put him to
death
and that was all that man ever saw
of the
process. But behind the scenes the
great
surgeon did an unseen work through
Christ's
suffering. Christ took into his
own body
the very “virus” which was at the
root of
man's sickness — the turning of
man's
back upon the only good one and
his
perfect will. The Bible says that this
turning
is "sin." It is as though Christ in
his death
took the organism of decay (sin)
away from
me, as well as the toxic products
of decay
(sins) and allowed the organism
to be
cultured in his body until it
killed
him. A parasite may kill the host
organism,
as when the influenza virus
kills the
man it lives on as a parasite. But
in
killing the host it also kills itself at the
same
time. So Christ took on the causative
organism
(sin) together with its toxins
(sins) so
that mankind could be freed from
both by
embracing his act.
This was
the secret surgery or therapy
which
went on unseen to the human eye
when they
crucified him. Thus, the senselessness
of the
cross is only superficial —
superficial
to the uninitiated. Its senselessness
becomes
sense to those who
probe to
the bottom of the mystery and
find that
he did, in fact, bear
their sin and
sins in
his own body on the tree.
Christ at
Calvary reversed the process
of
rejecting God's known will by
turning
to, embracing and doing God's
known
will, even though it meant his own
suffering
and death. Man's act in turning
away from
God was reversed by Christ
when he
embraced God for us anew with
his will.
However, he embraced not only
the basic
cause of the ill — the turning
away —
but he took on himself the consequences,
the
"metabolic products," as it
were, of
that fatal, wrong choice. He took
my
sickness and my sicknesses on himself.
No one
knows just how he accomplished
this,
just what mechanism he
used. All
we know is that we could not do
it, for
none of us could die in a valid way
before
God for the sin of another. The
Father
gave his permission and command
to Christ
to lay down his life as a ransom
for many.
And Christ obediently did just
that. The
man Christ reversed Man's
disobedience.
The Scriptures teach one other
point
on the meaning of suffering.
Hebrews 5:8
teaches that even the Son of God
learned
obedience by the things he
suffered. If the
suffering of the dreadful Cross
produced
positive results in the Son of God
in this
way, perhaps we are justified in
thinking
that even dreadful butchery of this
son
may not be entirely negative in its
effects
even in our own case.
A Less Ugly Way?
This is, I suppose, the legal way
of
looking at the therapy Christ accomplished
for me at the cross. As such, it is
of vast
importance, providing, as it does,
the
basis of salvation from the guilt
of sin for
eternity. Some will say it is
horrible. It is.
To think that God could find no
other
method than a bloody cross, cruel
iron
nails through his hands and feet,
before
he could redeem me from Adam's
fatal
mistake, fills me with dismay.
Surely a
more genteel, aesthetically
acceptable
method could have been found for
such a
momentous piece of therapy.
This
brings us to the second point we
must make
on this subject. It concerns
the
blood, the sweat and the desolation of
the cross
of Calvary, in short, the ugliness
and
horror of such a piece of restorative
therapy.
The utter cruelty of it shocks
even
wicked men. Let us look, then, at this
second
great problem of the cross — its
ugliness.
It is
written of Christ: "In the days of
his
flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and
supplications,
with loud cries and tears,
to him
who was able to save him from
death,
and he was heard for his godly fear.
Although
he was a son, he learned obedience
through
what he suffered; and being
made
perfect he became the source of
eternal
salvation to all who obey him."
This is
an almost incredible statement
for the
writer of the letter to the
Hebrews
to have made. The Son of God
had always
been perfect from eternity
until he
came into time at the incarnation.
During
the incarnation he was without
sin and
therefore still perfect. What the
writer is teaching here will answer
our
question as to why God chose such a
cruel
method of redemptive therapy.
Made Perfect
The process of “being made perfect”
referred to here means, in this
context
being "made mature." If a
child is perfect
in mind and body, there is nothing
we can
complain about. But his perfection
as a
child needs to grow into the mature
perfection
of an adult. This process is one of
growth in body, mind and
experience.
There is no quick way around it. To
be
genuine, it must be gone through
experimentally.
This is exactly what Christ went
through as a man. He was perfect
from a
child onward. But the Bible says he
grew
in wisdom and stature — that is, he
matured by his experience as a man.
Even
though he was the second Person of
the
Trinity, he was perfected by
growing up as
a man, for he gathered actual
experience
of manhood which he lacked
experimentally
before the incarnation. He
certainly
knew all
about manhood before he became
a man,
because he was omniscient.
But now
he experienced manhood in the
body —
and matured or became experienced,
and
therefore perfected, in it.
Now notice
what some of this manhood
experience
involved for Christ —
something
he, as God, had not experienced
as a man
before: "In the days of his flesh,
Jesus
offered up prayers and supplications,
with loud
cries and tears, to him
who was
able to save him from death." It
was the
fight between the will to be obedient
and the
terrible reality of a bloody
death on
the tree. Here we have anxiety,
anguish
and suffering—right up to bloody
sweat —
in anticipation of the abyss of
such a
death. He matured as a man by the
experience
of anguished prayer in faith to
him who
could deliver him. We are assured
that he
was heard because of his godly
fear. But
he was only saved from death by
going
down through death and thus being
led out
of it after tasting it.
The
result, then, of this seemingly
unreasonable
and cruel death of the cross
and the
death which preceded it was that
although
he was a Son, yet he learned
obedience
through what he suffered. Of
course,
he had always been obedient to
the
Father's will — the two wills were
always
congruent and the Father loved
the Son
and the Son the Father. But here
was a new
experience of the anguish of
facing
death such as all creatures, but not
God,
face. The God of life was to die for all
his
creatures and share all their ugly
experiences.
This
anguish and suffering of the
cross and
the preceding events demonstrated
that
Christ was perfectly obedient
to the
Father in all things. The experience
of the
unnameable pain, anguish and
despair
of the cross did something to the
incarnate
Son of God which would have
been
impossible before the incarnation.
The
discipline, the setting of his face as a
flint to
go to Jerusalem to face it all, the
refusal
of even the analgesic (the myrrh)
before
the nails were driven through him,
all that
perfected even him, the Son of God
— as Man.
Thus, the fact of the cross laid
down the
legal basis for our salvation, but
the
bloody cross showed what suffering
and
anguish can do if accepted as Jesus
accepted
them. His death was expiatory
for sin.
But the manner of his death served
at the
same time as a teacher of obedience
to God
the Man; it was a maturer, a
perfecter
of the perfect one. If the Son of
God as
man was matured in his experience
and
learned obedience by it then we
find yet
another secret, hidden element in
the mode
of "therapy" God introduced by
his Son
to cure the creation of its fatal
malady.
It will
be obvious then, that, purely
legally,
Christ's bare death — by any
method—would
have secured our salvation
for
eternity. However, it was, perhaps,
not immediately
obvious why such a
shocking
and barbarous route to death
needed to
be taken—a route which made
the cross
a scandal to the Greeks and a
stumbling
block to the Jews. No wonder
so few of
the Greeks or Jews could under-
stand it without the extra
information
given on the subject of suffering
by the
New Testament—and by experience
too.
Suffering — Not
Senseless
Thus, the anguish and suffering of
the cross are not senseless. They
are
refined, even though drastic,
therapy,
hidden to the eyes of the mortal
man in
general. But their function teaches
us
why the whole Bible is full of
references to
pain, suffering and anguish. Every
person
who embraces the death of Christ
(and his
resurrection) as his basis for
eternal salvation
is warned to expect, as a matter of
routine, sufferings of some sort.
Christ
having suffered in the flesh, he is
told, is
warning us to arm ourselves with
the
same mind—that is, to be on the
lookout
for the squalls of suffering which
certainly
await the consistent Christian. In giving
us salvation, Christ suffered. In
accepting
that salvation, suffering will
certainly find
us out.
Further, we are told that the
disciple
is not above his Master even in
these
matters. This means that, in this context,
if the
perfection or maturation of the
Master
could not be effected without the
anguish
of suffering, neither can the
maturation
or perfection of the disciple be
accomplished
by any other means. The
Christian
who thinks he can get through
without
this sort of perfecting is living in a
fool's
paradise. The disciple is not above
his
Master even in learning matters.
The New Testament
is full of teaching
of this
kind, teaching which is seldom
even
touched upon today, for by its very
nature it
is unpopular to the natural
human.
Paul the apostle, when writing to
the
Philippians, informed them that "It
has been
granted to you that for the sake
of Christ
you should not only believe in
him but
also suffer for his sake." Surely
it would
have been unnecessary for Paul
to have
told the Philippians that it had
been
granted them not only to believe but
also to
suffer if just believing without
suffering
was an ideal state. Clearly, no
one wants
suffering. But in the light of the
above it
must be a special privilege. Christ
did not
relish it. He sweated blood in
anticipation
of it. Yet he endured it as a
privilege
in view of the glory of the maturity
gained by
it.
This
means, again, that even for us
mortals “senseless”
suffering need not be
pointless.
It may be more than the mere
adventitious
agony produced in a mortal
body of
flesh and blood. It can be the
gateway
to special results in our characters.
In any
case, it is poor policy to avoid
suffering
by disobedience, for Christ embraced
trials
and suffered because of obedience.
It is the
Christian path to try to
follow
the same policy. For by doing so
Christ
has been matured and exalted by
the
Father to his right hand. The Father
has
committed the entire government of
the world
into Christ's capable hands —
hands
rendered mature and fit for the job
by being
obedient even to letting them be
pierced
at the cross.
Is it
because the fruit of suffering is so
little
known in the Western churches that
we have
so few "giants" in the land today?
In the East the total number of
Christians
has been reduced greatly by
suffering.
But the proportion of
"giants," mature
Christians, has certainly increased
there.
Promised
Tribulation
The Bible—both the Old and the New
Testament—is crammed with
references
to suffering, anguish, tribulation,
grief,
trial and affliction. For example, there
is
this rather neglected text by the
apostle
Paul: "But whatever gain I
had, I counted
a loss for the sake of Christ.
Indeed I count
everything as loss because of the
surpassing
worth of knowing Christ Jesus my
Lord. For his sake I have suffered
the loss
of all things, and count them as
refuse, in
order that I may gain Christ and be
found
in him, not having a righteousness
of my
own, based on law, but that which
is
through faith in Christ...that I
may know
him and the power of his
resurrection,
and may share his sufferings,
becoming
like him in his death, that if
possible I may
attain the resurrection (out) from
(among)
the dead."
The Reason Why
It is clear from the letter to the
Romans
that Paul knew and experienced
salvation on the basis of a gift of
God and
not on the basis of any works he
had done.
Nothing he could do could save him
from
the penalty of sin. On the Damascus
road
he had learned that his own works
could
not help him, but that Christ's
work could
and did. Why, then, does Paul now
insist
so much on the value of the work of
suffering he had done in losing
everything
for Christ's sake? Those losses
would
never save him.
As we read the cited passage
carefully
it becomes obvious that Paul is
referring
to the value of suffering and
losses in
learning the surpassing worth of
knowing
Christ. He is referring to a
process which
can only be described as one of
Christian
maturity or perfection. He suffered
the
loss of every privilege which he
had possessed
as a well-respected Pharisee in
order to be obedient to Christ. No
doubt,
this caused anguish. But his losses
were
not only
abstract. He was whipped, imprisoned,
mishandled,
shipwrecked and
generally
maltreated as he went off scouring
the world
for Christ's sake. He couples
these
experiences with the greater experience
which
resulted directly from knowing
the
surpassing worth of Christ. Most
of us
Western Christians know little of
this. Is
it because we have not sought out
the only
maturing process known in
Scripture
leading to this knowledge —
and to Christ?
Paul's obedience, like
Christ's
obedience, in suffering while doing
the will
and Word of God is the key to
such
depth of experience.
But more
about the maturing process
is to be
discovered in Philippians 3.
Christ
was exalted to power because he
was
fitted for it by the things he obediently
suffered.
Paul says in effect precisely the
same of
himself and his own exaltation.
For he
couples his loss and his suffering
with a
capacity to take part in what he
calls the
"out-resurrection" (exanastasis)…*
Apparently
Paul's aim was to accept
the same
type of loss and suffering that
his
Master had gone through in order to
become
prepared himself for high office
with
Christ. All this is based on the free gift
of
salvation by the blood of Christ. But in
building
upon this sure basis of free salvation,
a
maturing or a perfection process
occurs by
means of suffering in the will of
God,
foreseen both by Christ and by Paul.
Paul's
attitude of heart is confirmed by his
instruction
to Timothy: "If we have died
with him
we shall also live with him; if we
endure,
we shall also reign with him; if we
deny him,
he also will deny us." This
surely
clinches the matter. The Christian
owes his
redemption to the free gift of God.
But he
owes his degree of exaltation to
close
knowledge of the surpassing worth
of Christ
and close association with him
and his
purposes in his kingdom, and to
the
maturation processes which fitted
even the
Son for his supreme office in the
kingdom.
The experiences of suffering,
endurance
and anguish in obedience to
the will
of God, no matter how outwardly
senseless
and adventitious they may appear,
are the
therapeutic instruments
God used
on his Son and uses on all his
redeemed
who declare themselves willing
for the
process.
The same
process produces not only
the
surpassing knowledge of his will, but
it also
makes us useful to others. "For
because
he has himself been tempted and
has suffered, he is able to help
those who
are tempted." On this basis, who could
be better fitted to help mankind
than the
Son of Man who has been through the
same kind of temptation — though
far
more acute? This establishes a bond
of
confidence between us and him. He
understands
because he has experienced
the fire of anguish. Therefore he
can help
us. Our lot and his as mortals were
once
congruous. It gives me confidence
towards
him. If I suffer, I can help those
who
are suffering, even as Christ has
helped
me.
Perfection
This leads us to the third point.
The
first point was that Christ died
and rose
again to justify and redeem us,
giving us
the basis for fellowship with the
holy God.
The second point was that his
sufferings
and endurance were the means of
qualification
and maturation for his exaltation
to the right hand of God the
Father. In a
parallel manner, the sufferings of
Christians
are calculated to mature them for
high
office in his kingdom. The third point
is also
directly concerned with suffering
and its
consequences. Peter develops the
subject
in saying: "Since therefore Christ
suffered
in the flesh, arm yourselves with
the same
thought (mind or will), for whoever
has
suffered in the flesh has ceased
from sin,
so as to live the rest of the time
in the
flesh no longer by human passions
but by
the will of God."
Peter was
referring to "suffering in the
flesh,"
which he says, leads to ceasing
from sin
in the flesh. But the same principle
also
applies to matters not directly
concerned
with the flesh, as he also confirms:
"For
one is approved if, mindful of
God, he
endures pain while suffering unjustly."
This
simply means that any discomfort
we have
to endure because of our
faithfulness
to God will eventually lead
to our being
"approved.” In fact, Peter says
that as
Christ suffered the same kind of
discomfort
for our sakes, so he left us "an
example,
that you should follow in his
steps." This,
then, is the line of action to
which we
"have been called.”
Therefore,
according to Peter, suffering
leads to
ceasing from sin and approval
from God.
Is it then any wonder that after
his death
and resurrection, Christ asked
the
disciples questions that bring the
whole
problem of suffering into focus:
“Was it
not necessary that Christ should
suffer
these things and enter into his
glory?” “The Christ should suffer and on
the third
day arise from the dead.” The
same
topic was the subject of Paul’s three week
long
argument with the Jews in
Thessalonica:
“And Paul went in, as was
his
custom, and for three weeks he argued
with them
from the Scriptures, explaining
and
proving that it was necessary for the
Christ to
suffer and to rise from the dead.”
Among
other things, suffering made
Christ “approved.”
It is
generally conceded that Christ's
death is
basic to the Christian's salvation.
But the
suffering type of death is not
usually
emphasized. Perhaps it is too
barbaric for our cultured society
to bear.
Regardless of our reactions to the
awfulness
of death on the cross, God chose it
in
order to bring to mankind a full
salvation
— not only from the guilt of sin
but also
from its power, not only to save us
from
eternal damnation but also to
demonstrate
to us how to become approved in
the same way that Christ became
approved.
In fact it was to teach us how to
cease from sin.
Rejoicing In
Suffering
Paul sums it all up: "So we do
not lose
heart. Though our outer nature is
wasting
away, our inner nature is being
renewed
every day. For this slight
momentary affliction
is preparing for us an eternal
weight of glory beyond all
comparison."
Clearly, Christ's death and
resurrection
are the cornerstones of any
salvation that
will take us to heaven. But Paul is
talking
about something built on the
foundation
of salvation as a superstructure.
It is an
eternal, incomparable weight of
glory
founded upon salvation, God's free
gift.
And it is our suffering, borne in
the will of
God, which makes us approved for incomparable
glory, just as afflictions and
suffering
brought approval to Christ after he
had patiently and triumphantly
borne
them. Temporary afflictions
exchanged
for an incomparable weight of
glory! Paul
considered it a bargain. So he
acted upon
it immediately!
A Possible
Misunderstanding
Of course, one might say that if
suffering
is so useful and well rewarded in
the
will of God, then let us afflict
and scourge
our fellowmen all we can and seek
suffering
ourselves. We are doing them a
favor
by hurting them or ourselves. This
seems
to echo the old argument: Let us
sin
willfully so that grace may abound.
Let us
seek and provoke suffering! God
forbid!
The dentist does not willfully or
wantonly
bore holes anywhere and everywhere
in
our teeth to stop the future
possibility of
decay. God is the surgeon, so let
him
operate just where it is necessary.
He may
and will use wicked men as his
scalpel. He
has
promised to punish them for their evil
intentions
because they afflict others just
for the
sake of hurting and killing. Though
he uses
the same evil for his purposes,
that
doesn't give us the right to sin so that
grace may
abound by hurting others or
ourselves
unnecessarily.
To
indiscriminately inflict pain is
wanton.
Jesus never regarded pain and
suffering
as good things in themselves, for
he
abolished them by healing on many
occasions.
He also told us to do the same.
The
Scripture speaks of death itself as the
last
enemy. Pain falls into the same category.
Pain and
death entered into the
world by
the fall, when man turned his
back upon
God. The point is that God
reverses
the evils of pain and death to
produce a
glorious result — to glorify his
Son and
to glorify man when they both
withstand
and endure pain and death in
doing his
will. This is how God triumphs
over evil
— not by "stopping" it, but by
using it
to his greater glory.
Gentling Process
A minister wrote to me on the
subject
of the meekness of Jesus, pointing
out
that the word meek is often
misunderstood.
In the context used in the Sermon
on the Mount the word translated by
"meek" really means
"gentled" or "broken
in" as those terms are applied
to horses
trained to work in a harness. The
minister
recounted how, as a boy, he had
worked
on a farm and helped with
"gentling"
horses, breaking them in for farm
work.
Later the horses were often used
for pulling
out tree stumps prior to preparing
wasteland for arable purposes.
The untamed wild horses were
useless
for doing the skilled work
necessary
for removing tree stumps. They had
to be
thoroughly "tamed" before
they could work
constructively with other horses in
teams.
The taming or "gentling"
process was a
prerequisite for useful work. Once
they
had been submitted to the sometimes
harsh process of breaking in, which
involved
punishment as well as rewards,
they
worked productively for the rest of
their
lives and obviously enjoyed it thoroughly.
As their
experience grew, the reins
could be
left on their necks and they
would go
by themselves from tree stump
to tree
stump, assume the correct position,
wait for
the chains to be hitched to
the
trunk, and then with all their strength
—nipping
and nudging one another in the
process —
pull out the stump. If a stump
did not
come up at the first pull they would
move to a
more favorable angle and try
again.
Affliction
and suffering can work as a
"gentling"
process, fitting us for God's
work in
the present world and the next.
This is
the true meaning of the word
"meek"
as Jesus used it. What if the
abysmal
suffering of mankind and of nature
is now
being used in God's good
hands to
"gentle" us all — even as it
"gentled"
his Son? The stakes are high
indeed.
Suffering makes us kind to others
who suffer.
But what if a bloody war, a rule
of
tyranny is really working out an incomparable
weight of
glory for all those who
allow themselves to be
"gentled" and disciplined
thereby? If this is so, it would be
a fatal blow for the despair and
nihilism
into which our generation is so
obviously
falling. If eternal glory were to
result (and
the Bible says it will), then we
could, with
the Christians of old, rejoice in
suffering
and jubilate with the apostle Paul:
"We
rejoice in our sufferings, knowing
that
suffering produces endurance, and
endurance
produces character, and character
produces hope, and hope does not
disappoint us, because God's love
has
been poured into our hearts."
Again, Why All The
Barbarism And
Cruelty?
Some time ago I had the pleasure of
discussing this and related
questions with
a U.S. Air Force chaplain. We came
to two
main conclusions, which, as we
shall see,
throw light on the above problem:
1. We all have some sort of freedom
to
choose among the paths in life
which are
made available to us. But we never
have
any freedom of choice as to the
consequences
of any
path we choose. For these
consequences
are the built-in properties
of the
way which we may freely have
chosen.
For example, though I choose the
way of
cheating in examinations, I cannot
choose
the consequences of cheating. They
are built
into the way known as cheating.
Similarly,
I may freely choose to abuse
drugs —
it's entirely my own choice. But,
having
chosen this way, I cannot choose
the
consequences of drug abuse such as
drug
dependence, liver necrosis, delirium
tremens
or hallucinations. They may be
built
into the path of drug abuse. The
choice of
the way is free, but not its
consequences.
Man chose
and still chooses to turn
his back
on the only good — God. Before
doing
this he was automatically part of
paradise,
for paradise was everywhere
that God
was. Having chosen good (God),
paradise
could not be chosen — it was
part of
the way with God, paradise was
"built
in" it. Of course, paradise included
eternal
and abundant life. However, later,
in
turning his back on God, man refused
the way
of paradise and chose the alternative
way built
into the choice of following
Satan. The
built-in consequences included
such
matters as pain, sorrow and death.
Thus man
found that after making his
perfectly
free choice for Satan, he automatically
began to
reap the consequences of this choice.
What can
be done about the situation?
To get man out from "under
the
harrow,"
to "pull the tines” out of his flesh
now that
they are there is painful too.
Piercing
flesh hurts in the first place, but
so does
pulling out the tines.
2.
Suffering is not necessarily a judgment.
Christ
has assured us on that
point. In a way, suffering was a judgment
— the
judgment following a wrong
choice.
But curing the consequences of
the fall
is painful too. When we suffer, the
pain may
be either punitive or curative. It
may also
be a mixture of the two. Until we
get
behind the scenes of the material life,
we shall
probably never be able to sort out
the two.
Nevertheless, both kinds of agony
can serve
to heal us.
Importance Of The
Stakes
There is just one more point to be
made in dealing with our problem.
Probably
few of us know what we really
believe
until we are asked to suffer some
inconvenience
or even pain for it. How much are
we willing to suffer for what we
really
believe? The length we go along
that road
shows the depth of our belief. The
Bible
holds up Christ as an example — he
suffered unto death because he
totally
believed in redeeming us. Some,
like
Falstaff, run away to fight another
day,
believing that discretion is the
better part
of valor. Surely such persons have
shallow
faith in what they fight for!
Christ loved his own, right up to
the
cruel death on the cross. This fact
establishes
forever his absolute faith in his
calling to redeem the world.
Second, it
establishes the degree of his love
toward
those whom he purposes to redeem.
Therefore, it is obvious that
suffering
may act as a sieve or a filter to
sift out the
lighter elements of love and faith
and
separate them from the deeper ones.
Suffering may show us what we really
do
believe as compared to what are
only
words and hot air. The little
suffering that
I personally have experienced has
certainty
shown me the shallowness of my
faith in many directions. It
produces a
clarity of thought in these matters
which
is vital, for it leads me to
repentance at the
sight of my own shallowness in
eternal
matters. Therefore, suffering can
act as
the filter I personally need to
sort out the
wheat from the chaff in my own
dealings
with God, the good one. Fire must
separate
the dross from the gold in normal
refining processes. But after
enduring the
fire, the gold is pure gold, though
it may be
less in volume than before the
fiery refining
process. Similarly, strong winds
blow
away the chaff and leave the corn.
The Joy Of Relief
In C.S. Lewis’ famous Screwtape
Letters
the "Law of Undulation"
is used to
describe the ups and downs to which
all
humans are subject. If we
experience
heights
of joy, we shall also experience
depths of
misery. This is a perfectly normal
process
to which all flesh is heir.
This idea
may be applied to our interpretation
of the
suffering of mankind. The
person
who has experienced the horrors
of great
pain is the most thankful, positively
grateful,
for any periods in which he
experiences
less or no pain. Such joy is
unknown
to the man who has not experienced
pain.
The
apostle John in the Revelation
speaks of
this type of exultation when he
describes
the arrival in heaven of those
"who
came out of great tribulation." By
the very
contrast that which they had
suffered
made their joy the greater.
It may be
legitimately asked why the
fall of
man should have of necessity brought
the
suffering and death of which the Bible
speaks.
One can understand it having
brought
suffering and death to Adam. But
why to
the rest of the world? It does not
help much
to maintain that Adam was the
head of
visible creation which fell and that
it fell
with him. The creation under Adam
was not
rational as was Adam and therefore
could not
possibly bear the guilt that
he, being
rational, had to bear.
Our
answer to this question really
depends
on our conception of the state of
nature
before the fall of Adam. When the
Bible
maintains that death and decay did
not exist
before Adam's fall, it is really
introducing
a concept entirety beyond the
power of
mortal man today to conceive of.
For the
idea of no death and decay cuts
clean
across our total experience of the
laws of
thermodynamics, particularly the
second
law. It implies no ageing — no
entropy
increase. The second law states
that
although the total energy in the
cosmos
remains constant the amount of
energy
available to do useful work in the
cosmos is
always getting smaller with the
passage
of time. As I have pointed out
elsewhere,
this again brings with it the
concept
that chaos, disorder and decay
are
always on the increase with the passage
of time
in our total cosmos.
Illness,
decay, suffering and death
can be
regarded as accompanying symptoms
of entropy
increase. In fact, we measure
the
passage of time itself, in the last
analysis,
by the rate of entropy increase—
how fast
a clock, atomic or otherwise,
runs
down. The corollary holds equally
well that
without time there could be no
increase
in entropy. The same meaning
conveyed
by "timelessness" and "no entropy
increase"
could be communicated
by saying
that an “eternal” or changeless
state had
been reached.
The
creation of Adam, as described in
Genesis,
corresponds roughly to this external
state of
affairs. For we are introduced
to him in
Genesis not as a growing
baby or
as a maturing young man but as
an
ageless person. Even Eve, produced
from
Adam's flesh, was apparently ageless
too — she
was, at least, no infant when
she
appeared to Adam. In their innocent
state
there is no record of their having
children,
although Eve certainty
had the
sexual
organs of a woman and Adam had
those of
a man. If they lived in a pre-fall
world
where no decay, no death and no
second
law of thermodynamics ruled, then
reproduction
there was not necessary —
and,
indeed, would probably have been an
anachronism.
A
consequence of all this is that a
species
living in a world in which the
second
law did not exist must have been
vastly
different from what we would expect
today
where the second law reigns
supreme.
For example, Adam before the
fall
could walk and talk freely with the
Eternal,
whose infinite dimensions he
experienced
as a matter of course. Traces
of this
ability are still seen in Moses and
some of
the prophets who moved in the
eternal
realm much more easily than we
do.
Christ did, too.
If these
considerations concerning
Adam's
state before his fall are correct
then
everything in that primeval state
must have
been permanent or “eternal”—
without time,
entropy increase or decay,
as they
are in heaven or paradise. If the fall
took
place in such conditions of eternity
and these
eternal conditions had remained
after the
fall, this would have meant that
the fall
and its consequences are eternal
too, and
therefore irreversible. Adam would
have
turned his back eternally upon God
and good,
and his chances of returning
would
have been ruined forever. This is
probably
the state of the lost angels and
Satan,
who, living in eternity where no
change in
time can be, are lost forever.
Presumably,
then, for this reason
God threw
Adam and Eve, and the creation
over
which they had been set, out of
eternity
— and its permanence in paradise
— into
time with its decay, sorrow
and
death. God introduced the second
law, the
law of impermanence and death,
as a
measure to counteract the "freezing"
of Adam's
fall. So, he rendered Adam's
kingdom
and its sin subject to time, the
passage
of thus providing a way back into
the kingdom
of love for which he had
created
man.
Death and
decay became fully developed
as a
means of return when Christ
used
death to overcome the fall on the
cross.
This made the second law, and its
accompanying
culmination in death, the
grand
highway back from the fall to the
kingdom,
thus confirming what we have
said above
about its significance. Of course,
the
introduction of death and decay to
biology
introduced the necessity of reproduction,
which did
not exist in the
realm of
the eternal —just as it does not
exist in
the realms of angels, who are
neither
married nor given in marriage.
Reproduction
is a consequence, at least to
some
extent, of the introduction of suffering
and
death.
The
undoing of the consequences of
the fall
is best seen in Christ's deed on the
cross. On
dealing with the cause of the fall,
in
embracing God's will, Christ in the flesh
became
Christ the immortal man (the last
Adam),
rejoicing at the right hand of God.
The
undoing of the causes of the fall undid
the consequences
of the fall. Man, first of
all in
Christ, then took on the properties
and
attributes of the original created species
known as
man. He could again move
in time
and eternity with equal facility, as
demonstrated
by his meeting with the
disciples
on the Emmaus road after his
resurrection.
The same process (the
reopening
of paradise) is open to all who
wish for
it and seek it in the same way that
Christ
did.
The
conclusion we draw, then, as far
as our
original question is concerned, is
that time
and its concomitant decay, suffering
and death
were introduced to the
whole of
Adam's cosmos so as to permit a
way back
for Adam's cosmos. If Adam and
his
kingdom had remained in eternity,
then
Adam's sin would have remained
forever
"frozen." Seen in this light, the
tortures
of our present time seem to be
necessary
mercies consistent with a God
intent on
restoring to man and his cosmos
a kingdom
of love, and intent on restoring
to Adam
his own image.
The undoing
of creation was accompanied
by the
introduction of the second
law and
its concomitant death and decay.
This is
really the opposite of a creation and
its
concomitant decrease in entropy. The
abolition
of the second law, suffering and
death,
is, in reality the same thing as re-creation
and is
spoken of as such in the
Revelation
of John.
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