Musings on God -- part 2

In the last post by the same title, I attempted to give a reconciliation between the truths of God's perfect love and His perfect omnipotence as it relates to human pain (alongside a much better explanation by C. S. Lewis). This understanding is merely a jumping off point for coping with life's suffering and is wholly inadequate if divorced from God's own Word.

Pain -- physical, emotional, spiritual -- has purpose in God's economy. (How that in itself testifies to God's goodness that He should reappropriate the suffering a sinful race brings on itself for our own benefit!)

And although pain entered the world willfully by Adam's sin bringing death, God has seen fit to express His mercy by not allowing our suffering to be purely punitive in nature, redeeming even our very deserved suffering for His glory and our good.

As far as I can understand it, pain (beyond its genesis in Adam) has three causes. In each case, God illustrates His Godly character to us.

First, and most obviously, we suffer as a result of the natural consequences of our sin. God has designed us to function best within certain boundaries, and that for our own safety. Just as no one truly loves his child whom he also allows to run freely into traffic, God prescribes limits to what His creatures can and should do physically and spiritually. When we second-guess His wisdom and insinuate ourselves into the place of His authority, we inevitably get hurt. This is true of the child who rebels against his father's rule and runs into the street, relishing his supposed freedom before disaster strikes, and it is true of all of us who test the limits by tiptoeing (and sometimes flinging ourselves headlong) over God's boundaries.

We are created to glorify God, but in our sinfulness are bent on glorifying ourselves. Herein we find most of our suffering -- as creatures foolishly pretending we can govern ourselves better than the Creator, substituting our rules in place of His.

The natural expression of this truth is all around us. God instructs us toward purity before and fidelity within marriage. Outside these loving parameters we find deep emotional fears, rampant disease, broken homes, poverty, and anchorless, insecure children who, more often than not, are described as "troubled". The same is true of those who have embraced homosexuality against God's warnings, ignoring its devastating physical and emotional consequences, the details of which I do not even want to describe here.

The point is not that God rains down these consequences purely to punish wayward humankind, but to allow the sting that would drive us back into safety, under the umbrella of blessing He promises to the obedient. Even as a child is conditioned to avoid a hot stove once he has burned his hand, God allows the pain from our sin to condition us to avoid what is destructive (even though we, like children, often don't appreciate our Father's wisdom until we've been burned).

"My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor detest His correction; for whom the Lord loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights." (Proverbs 3:11, 12)

"Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." (Hebrews 12:11)

The second type of suffering is that which results from doing what is right, which may seem contradictory to my earlier comment that God blesses obedience. But Scripture is clear on both points: that the righteous will suffer for doing good and that God promises good to those who are obedient to Him. One might also wonder what motivation there is for doing good if only to suffer for it. This is where I will pick up next time.

(There is, of course, a kind of pain that we learn to appreciate because it strengthens us -- sore muscles that become strengthened through exercise, hard work that rewards an honest living, an immune system strengthened by illness, etc. -- but it could be argued that this is true of all three kinds of pain discussed here. But that discussion will be included in the next post.)