Tag Archive - suffering

Abandoned by God

December 8, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Spirituality & Prayer with 11 Comments

“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

The stark cry of Jesus on the cross.

The cry of the man who ended up abandoned by God because he did exactly what God wanted him to do.

The cry of the man who had prayed to God for deliverance only to have his request denied.

The cry of untold others of us who find ourselves abandoned by God, not rescued from our trials, despite our prayers and, most disturbingly of all, in spite of our attempts to faithfully follow God in the world that is now the source of our death.

I had a conversation this week with someone who was living this: the experience of suffering, of rejection, the lure of death even, that stemmed from years of trying to be faithful only to have it fall apart.

The stories aren’t uncommon.

A young couple devotes themselves to the church community. They know that this is is the means God has ordained for their spiritual growth and health. The find themselves spiritually and emotionally abused.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

A professor at a Christian school or pastor of a particular church serve faithfully—with true fidelity to both God and their congregation, only to be run out because of politics, because of theology.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

A young couple diligently seeks the guidance of God before committing to engagement and marriage, commitedly works through their issues in therapy and counseling, continuing the relationship in the face of what appear to be insurmountable obstacles, relying on the Lord’s strength, only to end up divorced.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The bottom line is this: the feeling of abandonment by God is more severe the greater our conviction that what we’ve done, and the point where we’ve been abandoned, has been done in order to honor God, in what is true obedience to scripture combined with our personal sense of calling.

Here’s the point: any experience of emotional trauma can wreak havoc on your relationships, including your relationship with God. And, when the reason we were in the circumstance in the first place is not our own creative notion but a response to the calling of God, that relational dissonance is amplified incalculably.

In other words: don’t be surprised if your experience of / relationship with God takes a huge hit as you struggle with that rejection or suffering that comes from faithfulness.

As I talk with people who have gone through these things (including myself, to whom I speak more than I speak to most people), it often takes people years to begin experiencing again what they know to be true in their heads with respect to God’s continued presence, guidance, and even provision of new and better ways.

When Jesus was most faithful to God, he also experienced the profundity of abandonment.

Our calling to take up our cross and follow, as much as we might hope it will mean that Jesus experienced it so we won’t have to, often means the opposite: that we will recapitulate his experience in ourselves.

So what is faith for the people of God?

Continuing to trust that the God who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will raise us also with Jesus.

It is trusting that the suffering is not a sign of faithlessness from us, an indication that we were “out of God’s will.”

It is trusting, and praying, that we will yet praise the name of the Lord in the land of the living, among our brothers and sisters who will celebrate our deliverance along with us.

Christ’s Insufficient Sufferings?

July 10, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 5 Comments

Previous ruminations on Colossians 1 have taken us through exercising faith while in Christ, believing as doing, Christ the image of God, and the need to participate in Jesus’ saving death through faith.

Jesus’ death reconciles all things. Which makes Paul’s statement at the end of the chapter all the more surprising:

Now I’m happy to be suffering for you. I’m completing what is missing from Christ’s sufferings with my body. I’m doing this for the sake of his body, which is the church. (Col 1:24, CEB)

Paul sees himself so intimately tied to God’s work of redeeming the world in Christ that his own sufferings are wrapped up into the saving death of Jesus. Later in this paragraph, he will say that he is completing the mystery of God by including the Gentiles in the people of God (Col 1:26). And in ch. 2 he will say that Christ himself is the mystery.

All of these pieces work together.

Christ is the mystery. His body is the global body of a reconciled humanity at one with God and purified in himself. The means by which this global mystery comes to revelation is Jesus’ own death and the subsequent ministry of Paul (and others).

Ministers are extensions of the saving work of Christ on the cross. The body of believers is an extension of the saving work of Christ on the cross. In the already/not yet eschatology of a world reconciled and being reconciled to God, the death of Jesus is both a one-off reconciling event and a saving reality that the church is called to extend in space and time.

Paul sees suffering as necessary because he sees a world that is not yet fully subject to the reigning Christ. The means of Christ’s attainment of glory must therefore be perpetuated among Christ’s ambassadors who are bringing that work to its culmination and fulfillment.

So long as there are people who do not know the message, so long as there are ministers taking it to new places, there will be people filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.

Atonement: I’ve Got a Problem–But So Do You

May 19, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Church with 26 Comments

As I mentioned a couple days ago, I had a chance to listen to the Roger Olson interview on Homebrewed Christianity’s podcast. He articulated something that I’ve heard from quite a number of theologians. It’s a beautiful answer to the problem of God giving God’s Son to die for us, an answer to accusations that the cross is tantamount to divine child abuse.

It goes something like this: the idea that God is abusing his Son misses the point that Jesus is God. This is not God sacrificing some human, but God giving Godself for humanity.

This is a challenge to me on two fronts.

First, as a biblical scholar, this is not the language that the NT uses to describe the relationship between Jesus and God as it comes to describe the cross.

Even the high Christology of John puts it like this: “God so loved the world, that He gave his one and only son.” Indeed, John’s Jesus says that the Father loves him because he does the Father’s will–going to the cross to die for his friends.

Mark is more stark, with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane praying for deliverance from the cross.

In the “high Christology” passage of Philippians 2 says that Jesus’ exaltation comes because he was obedient to the point of death on the cross. This is the same act of which Paul speaks in Rom 5–the one act of obedience through which the many are made righteous.

Jesus is pleasing to the Father, to God, precisely because as Son he obeys the command of the Other, the Father, to die.

When, for example, feminist critics of atonement complain about the atonement as divine child abuse, they are basing their hermeneutical dissatisfaction on a more accurate exegesis of the New Testament than the theologians who defend the cross by saying that God gave Godself.

It is, in fact, God the Father “who did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all.” Those are strong and troubling words, and I’m not sure that we can hear them on the basis of the Trinitarian objection. This is not self-giving love in that Trinitarian sense, but the sacrificial love that gives the most dearly loved other for the sake of salvation.

The second reason I am hesitant to jump on board with the Trinitarian answer to the problem of atonement is this: the suffering of Jesus the son is the story of the other sons and daughters of God as well.

It’s all well and good to say that God gave Godself, not another, to suffer on behalf of the world.

But what, then, are we to do with Romans 8? There, the way that we know we are children heading toward eternal inheritance is that we are suffering with the Suffering Child.

The Trinitarian formulation makes this worse, to my mind. God chooses to suffer of God’s own accord. As incarnate God, Jesus executes this divine decision. And then, God calls those who are not God to suffer if they want to be like the God who chose suffering freely. The Messiah suffers of his own decision, but those who would follow him are bound to follow the order that Jesus had from within (not from without): to take up their crosses.

Or, again, if it’s out of character for God to give up another, to not spare this human Messiah, what then are we to make of the God “who did not spare the natural branches” for the sake of the gentiles?

To remove the scandal of the Messiah’s death by pushing the Messiah back into the divine person only takes the problem of the suffering people of God and edges it back one notch. Left behind is still the entire NT ethic that insists that the identity of us–those who are not members of the Eternal Ontological Trinity–is also cross shaped.

If the only answer to the divine child abuse accusation is to appeal to the Trinity, doesn’t that make God a divine child abuser for having us, his earthly children, suffer with Christ if, indeed, we are to be glorified with him?

So yes, my late high Christology causes me a problem. I can’t simply say that when the NT says “the Father gave the son” that this really means “God gave Godself.” But the Trinitarian answer has its problem as well.

The Just Requirement Fulfilled

April 29, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 15 Comments

I can’t get enough of Romans 8.

Ever.

If I were only allowed to have one chapter in the whole Bible, this would be it: you have here the empowered life given by the Spirit of the resurrected Christ, you have a picture of cosmic redemption and therein an affirmation of God’s love for the whole created order; you get signals that our salvation is about participation in the new humanity of those who rule the world on God’s behalf and thereby participate in new creation; you get hope in times of suffering; you get freedom from condemnation; you get our identity as God’s beloved children as we are in the beloved son.

And, of course, you get God’s daring act of giving up of God’s son so that we might live.

Jesus’ death for us comes into play a couple of times in the passage. The one I want to explore a bit right now is the difficult claim in 8:3-4.

3 God has done what was impossible for the Law, since it was weak because of selfishness. God condemned sin in the body by sending his own Son to deal with sin in the same body as humans, who are controlled by sin. 4 He did this so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us. Now the way we live is based on the Spirit, not based on selfishness. (CEB)

Here we have, once again, the question of how the Law is related to the saving righteousness of God. And, once again, it stands outside looking in. God did what the Law could not. We are on much the same ground as Rom 3: no flesh is justified by Law before God, so God acts outside the Law, with something new and unexpected.

God acts through giving God’s own son to die. Where the CEB here says “to deal with sin,” the Greek is περὶ ἁμαρτίας (peri hamartias), a likely reference to the Septuagint’s use of the phrase to mean “sin offering.” Once again we’re on the same ground as ch. 3: Jesus as a sin offering as God’s alternative to Law as the means of salvation.

But here’s where I want to explore a bit further: How is “the righteous requirement of the Law fulfilled in us”? What is the requirement and how is it fulfilled?

First, there is nothing in this passage, Paul, or the NT in general to support the claim made by at least one modern commentator that this refers to God’s reckoning of Jesus’ law-keeping to our account. The passage is entirely about Jesus’ death, nowhere does Paul (or any other NT writer) speak of Jesus’ righteousness consisting in keeping the Law. Enough of such speculation.

In Romans, Paul has used this “just requirement” language before.

  • Rom 1:32: They know the “just requirement” of God that those who do such things are worthy of death.
  • Rom 2:26: The uncircumcised keep the “just requirement” of the Law because, as God’s eschatological people who have received the Spirit, they have this Law written on their hearts.
  • Rom 5:16: The many transgressions were the seedbed from which grew out the gift, the transgressions leading to a “just requirement” (this does not mean “justification,” but the just act which would enable one to be justified
  • Rom 5:18: One “just act” lead to “justification”
  • Rom 8:4: God fulfills the “just requirement” in us

I find it fascinating that in three of the previous four occurrences the connotation of dikaioma had to do with death. The just requirement of death is known, in 1:32, and in ch. 5 it is Jesus’ death in particular that is the just action that leads to justification.

So I wonder: is the “just requirement” that is fulfilled in us, what the Law couldn’t do but God did, the just requirement of death for sin?

I have been hesitant to go down this road, in part because Paul speaks immediately afterward of our identity as those who walk, not according to the flesh but, according to the Spirit. So I’ve previously thought of this as our own obedience to what the Law would have us do: the death of Jesus enables us to live obediently to the Law.

But what does the Spirit do in Romans 8?

As the Spirit of freedom, it is the Spirit of adoption–making us God’s children and confirming and conforming us to that identity.

But that “Abba, Father,” cry is the cry of those who are being conformed to the image of Jesus by suffering with him in order to also be glorified with him (8:17). The Spirit’s work in us is to conform us not merely to sonship generally, but to the crucified and then resurrected son.

In other words, the Spirit fulfills in us our dying with Christ, our union with him in death and resurrection, our baptism into his death.

So to be those who “walk according to the Spirit” is precisely to be those who carry about in our body the dying of Jesus–and thus have the just requirement of death fulfilled in us through our realization of our union with Christ.

This finds further corroboration in Rom 3, where the thing that allows God to be just and justifier is the blood of Jesus–and those who are justified are those who are “of the faithfulness of Christ”–united to and defined by Jesus’ own death.

To have the just requirement fulfilled in us is to realize in ourselves the dying of Christ by which we are justified both now and at the end.

Sin Versus Suffering?

January 19, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Church, Quotes with 17 Comments

I know, I know. I shouldn’t have done it.

I got grumpy and shouldn’t have responded.

But I did.

What can I say? The Tweet got my dander up.

Here’s the offending member: “Those who see suffering (not sin) as the problem in life will be angry at God and complain continually to others.”

There has been a lot of conversation in evangelical circles over the past five or ten years, stretching conversation, that has helped us expand our horizons, develop a concept of the gospel that is bigger than simply forgiveness of sins.

The good news is good news to us because Jesus comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.

And suffering is where the curse is found.

And sin is where the curse is found.

And slavery is where the curse is found.

And social exclusion is where the curse is found.

As the Twitter conversation unfolded, I was assured that Jesus ultimately “corrected” the views of those who came to him for relief from suffering–by dying for their sins.

But I’m sure that his healing of the hemorrhagic woman was the good news for her. I’m sure that the freeing of the woman bound by Satan for eighteen years was good news for her. I’m sure that healing, cleansing, and restoring the lepers to community was good news to them.

In short, I’m sure that Mark 1-13, 16 is as much the gospel as Mark 14-15. When the reign of God has come near, the people of the world flourish, discovering that God has come to take the world in all its disorder, brokenness, and sin–and create order, wholeness, and forgiveness.

Suffering is not the whole problem, but it might be the problem by which you are made aware–that the world as it is is not the world as God intends it to be and for God to be the good God and sovereign over all this all must change.

Behold, he must make all things new. To experience suffering in faith is not to become a whiner–it is to take our stand with the the world in its corruption and cry out to the Lord of all that all is not right, and to join with the Spirit and the Bride in saying, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus.”

Me, says Jesus

November 17, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 8 Comments

Any time I read the story of Paul’s encounter with Jesus in Acts 9 I am struck by the question: “Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

Not, “Why are you persecuting my people?”

Not, “Why are you persecuting the church?”

Not, “Why are you persecuting them?”

But, “Why are you persecuting me?”

This identification of Jesus with the early church is communicated using a variety of metaphors. John uses the vine-branch metaphor, Paul uses the body image (though I’m not sure “metaphor” is exactly the right word).

The title of Acts is often rendered, “The Acts of the Apostles,” though the first couple verses indicate that the story is actually the continuing acts of Jesus (finishing what he had started during his time on earth). But the point seems to be that to say one is to say the other. The Acts of the Apostles, or, better, the Acts of the church, are the continuing acts of Jesus, and the continuing acts of Jesus are the acts of the church.

This unity is one of the theological underpinnings for the Christological readings of the OT that I advocated yesterday.

As I said in a comment there, the church does read the psalms as though these are our words, but the reason why we can do so, the reason why this is a true use to put them to, is often because they are true of Jesus first.

The “me” Jesus defends in Acts 9 is the persecuted Christ, the righteous sufferer whom God delivered from the shackles of death. (Cf. 80% of the Psalter.) When we pray these as Christians, we pray these as people (a) for whom these songs became ours when we were joined to Jesus; (b) who in being joined to Jesus are joined to the person who was literally delivered from the figural fates of death articulated by the suffering kings (often) in these psalms, and (c) who have hope for the psalm’s successful resolution because of our own being joined to Jesus in his death and resurrection.

Done right, a Christological reimagining of the psalms does not separate us from them, but actually makes it clear why they are true for us despite the fact that they speak of persons, hopes, and dreams that otherwise would remain forever removed in an ancient place and time.

The Gospel We Don’t Know

August 3, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 4 Comments

In May, I was in New York listening to a bunch of folks at Redeemer Presbyterian Church talk through the intersection of their faith, their “secular” work, and theological education. At one point in the discussion, a person suggested that maybe what self-sacrificial love looks like in this transient world of ours is committing oneself to a place. I think there was something profound in that answer.

Such a perspective on commitment to community is reiterated in by Ajith Fernando in a fantastic, spot-on, drop-dead-perfect article in this month’s Christianity Today entitled, “To Serve Is to Suffer.”

His thesis is deceptively simple: not only is “suffering” something we should be made “aware of” as “that which happens over there and far away,” but the very character of “vocational fulfillment” in the kingdom of God is tied to service–often, suffering service as we carry forward the mission of the Suffering Servant.

Fernando speaks of the challenges incumbent on ministry, and claims that our post-industrial infatuation with efficiency and measurable results too often draws people away from seeing through callings to hard, pioneering work where tangible, measurable outcomes may reside 10 to 15 years in the future.

But more than this, living out our faith in the developed world that brokers no discomfort, we too often see suffering, discomfort, and pain as indicators that it is time to move on rather than indications that we are finally entering a stage in our relationships where the true transforming power of the gospel might begin to make itself known.

Because we leave when things get difficult, Fernando claims, “The sad result is that Christians do not have the security of a community that will stay by them no matter what happens.” He goes on:

Sticking with people is frustrating. Taking hours to listen to an angry or hurt person seems inefficient. Why should we waste time on that when professionals could do it? So people have counselors to do what friends should be doing.

Inefficiency is not the stuff of rousing report cards sent back to the denomination, but it is the stuff of family. Working through hurt and pain is not the stuff of growth charts, but it is the stuff of the community that brings to bear on its world the gospel movement from death to new life.

About a year ago our house church was going through some difficult relational issues. People would ask us how things were going. The response I developed was this: “We’re having some really hard conflict right now. Which means that we’re healthier than almost any church I’ve ever been in–because we’re actually having the conflict.” I think there’s something to that.