We hear an objection. “But I know some very good people who suffer terribly. If you only knew the woman down the street who has terrible arthritis. She may not claim to be religious—may not go to church—but she’s the most Christian person I know.” But God says otherwise. According to him, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one” (Romans 3:10–12).
Perhaps this thought may clarify. Either of two factors make an act sinful—a wrong action or a wrong motive. Often our actions are good but our motives are a universe away from righteousness. To illustrate, take a man who works as the cook and doctor on a pirate ship. He has never picked up a sword a day in his life. He stays on the ship and cooks nourishing meals for the other men when they come back from a hard day’s pillaging and looting. He is there to heal their cuts and put salve on their scrapes. What could be more innocent? But if the British crown captures the ship, the doctor-cook will swing from a rope just like his cutthroat shipmates. Why? Because he was doing good things in an evil cause.
This is the way God looks at our lives. We may be model citizens—working hard, driving our kids to soccer practice, keeping our lawns spruced, and waving cheerily to our neighbors as we pass. But God has said that the first and greatest commandment is to love him with all our heart, soul, and strength. That is, to do everything out of a motive of pleasing him. Yet for the unbeliever, each act in his life is only to serve his own interests—to help his kids, to give himself a sense of hard work and a job well done, to make his neighborhood an attractive place to drive home to. As Jay Adams has said, each of us is a sinner, but we all have developed our unique styles of sinning. For some it is drug addiction, drive-by shootings, and prostitution rings. For others it is a respectable lifestyle—doing all the right things while disregarding God. God hates both—finds them equally offensive—and says that both deserve hell.
Jonathan Edwards, an outstanding New England pastor from the eighteenth century, gave another explanation for why we deserve hell when we think we don’t. His argument goes like this. A crime is more or less heinous according to the obligation it violates. Is there an infinite obligation to obey someone? Then I become infinitely guilty if I disobey. Now, our obligation to obey anyone is proportionate to his worthiness, authority, and honorableness. God is infinitely so, therefore crimes against him are a violation of infinite obligation. Such crimes are infinitely heinous. They deserve infinite punishment.
The eternity of our punishment is what makes it infinite.
Picture it this way. In mathematics, a line has no width whatsoever, yet it stretches out in each direction to infinity. If that line were made just the tiniest bit thick, it would cover an infinite amount of area, because it stretches for eternity. The line’s width is small—perhaps just a millimeter—but its other dimension, its length, is infinite, and thus it covers an infinite area. Any individual sin of ours may seem small enough—it is like the millimeter width of a line. But because that sin is against an infinitely holy and gracious God, it is infinitely heinous, and therefore deserves infinite punishment. Since no human can experience punishment of infinite intensity, our punishment must be made infinite in duration. That is, it must last forever.
So why do bad things happen to good people? The more basic question is: Why is hell awaiting good people? The Bible’s sobering answer is that we are not good. God is just to send his rebellious creatures to hell—thus, he is fair to start that hell in this life.
But there’s a hidden mercy here. By tasting hell in this life we are driven to ponder what may face us in the next. In this way, our trials may be our greatest mercies. For some of us, they become God’s roadblocks on our headlong rush to hell. The depressed young homemaker reaches for an answer. The cancer-ridden patient makes peace with his Creator. The ladder-climbing executive slips and falls into the arms of God.
HELL EXPLAINS WHY CHRISTIANS SUFFER
Someone objects: “But the sins of Christians are paid for by Christ’s death. They will never experience hell. What does hell-on-earth have to do with them?”
Plenty. Human suffering in this life is merely the splashover from hell. Yes, you would think Christians would be exempt. But this whole book has tried to show why God allows the splashover anyway. God’s plan for us in this life is to give us the benefits of heaven only gradually. By letting us struggle with the remnants of a sinful nature, and by letting us know pain, he reminds us of the hell we are being saved from.
If we had an easy life, we would soon forget that we are eternal creatures. But hell’s splashover won’t allow that. It persistently reminds us that something immense and cosmic is at stake—a heaven to be reached, a hell to be avoided. Human souls are the battle ground on which massive spiritual battles are being waged. The stakes are enormous. The winner takes all and the loser loses everything. Every day of our short lives has eternal consequences for good or ill. Eternity is being affected. Right now counts forever. Thus, it is only fitting that God should give us some sense of the stakes involved, some sense of the war’s magnitude. He does this by giving us foretastes of heaven in the joys we experience, and foretastes of hell in our suffering.
If we are thinking clearly, each taste of hell that we have drives us to reach out toward our unbelieving friends and neighbors. Perhaps we have cancer. Our bodies are racked with pain. The Christian should think to himself, “How horrible that our sins should bring such suffering to a world that God made perfect! But how wonderful that I am going to heaven and will be rescued from the horrible pain I deserve. Yet my neighbor down the street, whom I very much like, does not believe in Jesus. He is headed for eternal pains far worse than I am experiencing now. Lord, give me the courage, tact, and wisdom to reach out to him with the truth of the gospel.”
All the while that we are experiencing such pain, these trials are making us more like Christ. They are refining our character and, thus, winning us eternal rewards. As Paul says, “Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:1). In other words, by tasting a small bit of hell now, our heaven is becoming more heavenly. Our neighbors and friends are more likely to join us there. And our gratitude for our salvation overflows. “I deserve to go to hell,” we admit, “but I’m going to heaven anyway—no one has more reason to rejoice than I!”
And twenty minutes of heaven will make up for everything.
Thirteen
SUFFERING GONE
Last weekend I took some out-of-town friends up to the coastal hills to see the Reagan Library, set low and serene on a plateau like a California mission. A lazy hawk glided on warm, dry wind gusting from the valley floor, and we leaned over the wall to admire the arid landscape below.
“This way,” directed a guide once inside the library. I wheeled into an exhibit area that set the tumultuous stage onto which President Reagan walked, first, as California’s governor. I stopped at the entrance, letting the images bombard me. Flower-power and anti-war posters, pictures of Twiggy, beads and bangles. A Volkswagen Beetle splattered with iridescent yellow paint squatted in the middle of the room. Next, a display of newspaper headlines: KING ASSASSINATED and BOBBY KENNEDY SHOT. After that, photos of sullen-faced Beatles, a sour-faced Janis Joplin, and sad-faced Mamas and Papas. I slowly wheeled by mannequins kneeling in military uniform, holding guns, portraying a scene from Vietnam—these were young men who had a reason to be sad. Me too. It was the era in which I was injured.
My friends wandered off to other exhibits in lovely, orderly rooms, showcasing the humble beginnings of a young Reagan growing up on a shady street in a little Illinois town. I stayed behind, staring at a cover of an old Simon and Garfunkel album. I had played that thing in the hospital over and over, grinding the sad lyrics into my mind like grooves on the record, filling the empty moments with noise, trying to obliterate the horror of entr
apment inside a useless body.
Rarely do I think—really think—about those rough, early days. But the exhibit—as well as a fast approaching milestone of three decades in my chair—forced me to bear down on my brain to revive the images in the emergency room and hospital hallways. I could recall nurses looking out my window at the tanks rumbling down the streets of Baltimore. The faces of angry, black aides after a city-wide curfew was imposed. I remembered my hospital room, a few conversations I had with friends, and in my mind’s eye, I could see my high school boyfriend walk out the door, leaving me behind for college. But that was it. I could not revive the real horror. I couldn’t call up heart-wrenching anguish over torn relationships or gasping for breath when I learned I’d always be in a wheelchair. The mental movies I tried to run were full of blips and blank spaces—nowhere near the painful human drama of thirty years ago.
I moved on to the next room, relieved that all along there existed sane families living in small Midwest towns, raising sons and daughters to be teachers and preachers, hardware store owners and graduates of ivy-towered universities.
Time is slippery stuff. The past always looks different than it did back when. Memory is selective. It chooses only a few highlights of lasting importance from all that happened. When we recall pain in the past, we do so with a perspective we simply didn’t have when going through it. We didn’t understand how it would all pan out. In the middle of suffering we see only confusion. For me it was a bizarre mix of tie-dyed T-shirts, the smell of pot in the hallways of the state institution, and thoughts of suicide.
If we were looking for roads that lead somewhere through the pain, we were doing just that—looking, not finding them. Later, it’s different. In my case, thirty years later, I’m finally understanding. I have found the path. All because I see things differently.
It depends on our perspective—where in time we are looking from. When looking back on heartache, the pain fades like a hazy memory. The trauma has dulled like an old photograph. Only the results survive, the things of lasting importance—like the good marriage, the successful career, or in my case, the acceptance of a wheelchair. These are the events that rise and remain, like stepping-stones above raging waters. These are the things that carry us to the other side of suffering, to the present—the place where we have a sense of “arrival,” the place where we are more “us” than we were years earlier.
When we come “through the valley of the shadow of death,” we are different people. Better, stronger, and wiser. It’s what happens on the other side. He “prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies;” like me wheeling placidly by a faded poster of a huge marijuana leaf. He “anoints my head with oil; my cup overflows” with the satisfaction of surviving suffering with a smile (Psalm 23:4–5).
The Bible constantly tries to get us to look at life this way. It steadfastly tries to implant the perspective of the future into our present, like a voice counseling us, “This is the way it’s all going to turn out, this is how it will all seem when it’s over, a better way, I promise.” It’s a view that separates what is lasting from what will fall by the wayside.
Scripture can do no less. It only deals in realities, always underscoring the final results—the heart settled, the soul rejoicing. And so Scripture urges: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2). It reminds us:
“It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees” (Psalm 119:71).
“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17).
“Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings” (Romans 5:3).
‘“For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”’ (Jeremiah 29:11).
“Blessed [happy] is the man you discipline, O LORD, the man you teach from your law; you grant him relief from days of trouble” (Psalm 94:12-13).
Human nature gags on such a perspective. It tries to rivet you to the pain of the present, blinding you to the realities of the future. Human nature would rather lick its wounds and sneer, “That’s pie in the sky. The future doesn’t count.” But it does count. So much so that “everything else, no matter how real it seems to us, is treated as insubstantial, hardly worth a snort.” Tim Stafford, in Knowing the Face of God, continues: “That is why Scripture can seem at times so blithely and irritatingly out of touch with reality, brushing past huge philosophical problems and personal agony. That is just how life is when you are looking from the end. Perspective changes everything. What seemed so important at the time has no significance at all.”1
The Bible blatantly tells us to “rejoice in suffering” and “welcome trials as friends” because God wants us to step into the reality he has in mind for us, the only reality that ultimately counts. It requires gutsy faith to do so, but as we trust God, we move beyond the present into the future. In fact, we enter the very future God intends for us. “Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (who is your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you’ll show up, too—the real you, the glorious you” (Colossians 3:3 THE MESSAGE).
“Real life which is invisible” seems as impossible to comprehend as “rejoicing in suffering” seems impossible to do. But don’t forget, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). Like watching a Polaroid snapshot develop before your eyes, the “we” God intends us to be as a result of suffering emerges when we “welcome trials.” “We share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory…the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:17-18).
The future is straining to get out. To be revealed in us: “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed” (Romans 8:19). We have seen the future and it is us—Christ in us and us in Christ. “If, indeed, we share in his sufferings.”
As we do, our perspective is changed.
This is what God wants—hearts burning with a passion for future things, on fire for kingdom realities that are out of this world. God wants his people aflame with his hope. A “consider it pure joy” outlook affects the way we live on earth. Though we still suffer, we become “cities on a hill” and “lights on a lamp stand” (Matthew 5:14–15) for all to see and thus be encouraged. People whose hearts are ignited for heaven make good inhabitants of earth. These, said C. S. Lewis, do earth a world of good.
It doesn’t happen without suffering. Affliction is what fuels the furnace of this heaven-hearted hope. People whose lives are unscathed by affliction have a less energetic hope. Oh, they are glad to know they are going to heaven; for them, accepting Jesus was a guarantee of no hell and all heaven, like a buy-and-sell agreement—place your sins on the counter and get an asbestos-lined soul. Once that’s taken care of, they feel they can get back to life as usual—dating and marrying, working and vacationing, spending and saving.
But suffering makes the Christian experience more than signing the dotted line on an eternal health-care contract. Suffering gives the covenant life. It turns our hearts toward the future, like a mother turning the face of her child, insisting, “Look this way!” The apostle Paul said as much to his friends as the first waves of persecution were sweeping through the church:
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” (Colossians 3:1-4)
Once heaven has our attention, a fervid anticipation for God’s ultimate reality—appearing with him in glory—begins to glow, making everything earthly pale in comparison. Earth’s pain keeps crushing our hopes, reminding us this world can ne
ver satisfy; only heaven can. And every time we begin to nestle too comfortably on this planet, God cracks open the locks of the dam to allow an ice-cold splash of suffering to wake us from our spiritual slumber.
WHAT IS OUR HOPE?
Suffering keeps swelling our feet so that earth’s shoes won’t fit. My atrophied legs and swollen ankles, curled fingers and limp wrists are visual aids in a children’s Sunday school lesson on Isaiah 40:6, 8: “All flesh is grass…the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.” (KJV). So I can, along with others who suffer, “Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, ‘Be strong, do not fear; your God will come…he will come to save you.’ Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy…Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away” (Isaiah 35:3–6, 10).
For me, verses like this are not cross-stitched promises nostalgic of a vague, nebulous and distant era. It’s part of the hope I’m already stepping into, the time when Jesus will “transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). I like that part about new bodies.
But my hope isn’t centered around a glorious body.2 It goes far beyond that.
The New Testament writers, bruised and battered, felt the same. There was something more grandiose about the hope of heaven that stoked the fire in their bones—their writings are laced with constant references to the second coming of Christ, the time when heaven will burst over the horizon. Continually they were praying, “Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!” It was said of the early Christians, “You eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed” (1 Corinthians 1:7). They likened themselves to soldiers poised on the watchtower, workers hoeing for the harvest, athletes straining toward the finish line, and virgins waiting and watching at night, lamps trimmed, hearts afire, and eyes scanning the horizon for someone special.
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