Tragedies
“This will happen just as I have described it, for God has revealed to Pharaoh in advance what he is about to do. The next seven years will be a period of great prosperity throughout the land of Egypt. But afterward there will be seven years of famine so great that all the prosperity will be forgotten in Egypt. Famine will destroy the land. This famine will be so severe that even the memory of the good years will be erased. As for having two similar dreams, it means that these events have been decreed by God, and he will soon make them happen.” (Genesis 41:28-32)
Is God good only when the outcome is? When the cancer is in remission we say, "God is good." When the final score favors our team we say, "God is good." But do we say the same under different circumstances? In an elementary school where kids are gunned down rather than raised up? In the cemetery as well as the nursery? In the unemployment line as well as the grocery line? In days of stagflation as much as in days of provision? Is God always good?
Many of us have this kind of quasi-contract with God, and the fact that God hasn't signed it doesn't deter us from still believing it. From a lawyer’s perspective, that’s not a contract; that’s a wish list. But it goes like this: “I pledge to be a good, decent person and in return God will … save my child; protect my job; heal my friend; or ______.” (Fill in the blank) Only fair, right? Yet, when God fails to meet our bottom-line expectations, we’re left spinning in a tornado of questions. Is he good at all? Is God angry with me? Is his power limited, or authority restricted? When life isn't good, where’s God anyway?
Joseph's words for Pharaoh offer some help in this area. Granted, we don't generally think of Joseph as being much of a theologian because we don't have many of Joseph's words. Yet the few we have reveal a man who wrestled with the nature of God. To the king he announced that following a period of prosperity, there would be a famine so great that prosperity would be all but forgotten; that famine would destroy the land with such severity that any memory of the former good years would be erased. (Gen. 41:30-32) Joseph saw both seasons, i.e., one of plenty and one of scarcity, beneath the umbrella of God's jurisdiction because both were "decreed by God." But how could God do that?
Was the calamity God's idea? No, because God doesn’t create or parlay evil. "God can never do wrong! It is impossible for the Almighty to do evil." (Job 34:10; See also James 1:17) He is the essence of good. So, how can God, who is good, invent anything bad? Furthermore, God is sovereign. Scripture repeatedly attributes utter and absolute control to his hand. "The Most High God rules the kingdom of mankind and sets over it whom he will." (Dan. 5:21) In summary, God is good, and God is sovereign. But if that’s true, how do you factor tragedies into God's world if he’s good and self-determining?
Here’s how the Bible explains it: God permits it. When the demons begged Jesus to send them into a herd of pigs, he "gave them permission." (Mark 5:12-13) Regarding the rebellious, God said, "I let them become defiled . . . that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the Lord." (Ezek. 20:26) The Old Law even speaks of the consequence of accidentally killing someone: "If [the man] does not do it intentionally, but God lets it happen, he is to flee to a place I will designate." (Ex. 21:13)
God, at times, permits tragedies. He allows the ground to grow dry and stalks to grow bare. He allows Satan to unleash mayhem, like the Allstate guy. But he doesn't allow Satan to triumph. Isn't that the promise of Romans 8:28? "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." The key is that God promises to render beauty out of "all things," not "each thing." Isolated events may be evil, but the ultimate culmination is good.
We see lots of examples of that. For instance, when you sip a Starbucks and say, "Now, that’s a good cup of coffee," what are you saying? That the bag that held the beans is good? That the beans are good? That hot water is good? That a coffee filter is good? No, “good” happens when the ingredients work together: the bag is opened, the beans are ground and the water is heated to just the right temperature for that perfect brew. It’s the collective cooperation of the elements that creates “good.”
Nothing in the Bible would cause us to call a famine good, or a heart attack good, or the massacre at Robb Elementary School good. These are horrible tragedies, born out of a fallen earth. Yet every message in the Bible, especially the story of Joseph, compels us to believe that God will mix them with other ingredients and bring good out of them. But we have to let God define “good.” Our definition of “good” includes health, comfort and success. His definition? In the case of his Son, Jesus Christ, the “good” life consisted of struggles, storms and death. But God worked it all together for the greatest of good: his glory, and our salvation.
That was the message of Jesus. When his followers spotted a blind man on the side of the road, they asked Jesus for an explanation. Was God angry? Were his parents to blame? Who sinned here? But Jesus' answer provided a higher option: the man was blind so that "the works of God should be revealed in him." (John 9:3) God turned blindness, a bad thing, into a billboard for Jesus' power to heal. Satan acted, God counteracted, and good won. It's a divine jujitsu of sorts. God redirects the energy of evil against its source. God uses evil to ultimately bring evil to nothingness.
Jesus is the only picture of God that we have in our photo album. And do you want to know heaven's clearest answer to the question of suffering? Just look at Jesus. He pressed his fingers into the sore of the leper. He felt the tears of the sinful woman who wept. He inclined his ear to the cry of the hungry. He wept at the death of a friend. He stopped his work to tend to the needs of a grieving mother. He doesn't recoil, run or retreat at the sight of pain, or even life’s tragedies. Just the opposite, actually. He didn't walk the earth in an insulated bubble, or preach from an isolated, germ-free, pain-free island. He took his own medicine. Trivial irritations of family life? Jesus felt them. Cruel accusations of jealous men? Jesus knew their sting. A seemingly senseless death? Just look at the cross.
Suppose the wife of George Frideric Handel came upon a page of her husband's famous work, “The Messiah.” The entire symphony was more than two hundred pages long. But imagine that she discovered a single page lying on the kitchen table one morning and on it her husband had written only one measure in a melancholic, minor key; one that didn't work standing on its own. Now suppose Mrs. Handel, armed with this fragment of dissonance, marched into his studio and said, "What are you thinking, George? This music doesn’t make any sense! You’re a horrible composer." What would George think? Maybe something similar to what God thinks when we do the same.
We point to our minor key – our sick child, joblessness, or famine – and say, "This doesn’t make any sense, God. I thought you were supposed to be good?" Yet out of all his creation, how much have we actually seen? And of all his work, how much do we really understand? Not much. So is it possible that some explanation for suffering exists of which we know nothing about? What if God's answer to the question of suffering requires more gigabytes than our puny minds can comprehend? Your pain won't last forever, but you will. "Whatever we may have to go through now is less than nothing compared with the magnificent future God has in store for us." (Rom. 8:18) Less than nothing?
That’s the same puzzling question that Wilbur asked the lamb in Charlotte’s Web. “What do you mean less than nothing? I don't think there is any such thing as less than nothing. Nothing is absolutely the limit of nothingness. It's the lowest you can go. It's the end of the line. How can something be less than nothing? If there were something that was less than nothing, then nothing would not be nothing, it would be something - even though it's just a very little bit of something. But if nothing is nothing, then nothing has nothing that is less than it is.” To which the lamb responded, “Oh, be quiet. Go play by yourself. I don’t play with pigs.” Ouch.
None of us are exempt from suffering, loneliness, discouragement or unjust criticism because God is developing within us the character of Christ. And in order to do that, he must take us through all of the circumstances in life through which he took his Son. Does this mean God causes tragedies? No. God is good, and he will not cause evil or do evil. But God can use the dark and stressful times of our lives for good. He'll use them to teach us to trust him, to show us how to help others and to draw us closer to other believers.
Some 2,000 years ago, Christians, just like you and me, felt the same way: “We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead.” (2 Cor. 4:8-9) We all go through difficult times. The difference for those who believe in Jesus is not the absence of shadow, but the presence of His Light. It’s a different paradigm.
So perhaps our prayers for strength are answered by God giving us difficulties to make us strong. Prayers for wisdom may result in God giving us problems to solve. Requests for prosperity may be answered by God’s gifts of both brain and brawn so that we can get to work. Even prayers for courage could lead to dangers to overcome. And in our prayers for love, God gives us people to help. Rather than favors, God gives us opportunities. In other words, we pray for the things we want and receive everything we need, instead.
Let God finish his work, and the composer his symphony. The forecast is simple: Good days. Bad days. God in all our days. He’s the Lord of the famine and the feast, and he uses both to accomplish his will – even amidst life’s tragedies.
Grace,
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