Calamities

Calamities

“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)

About 20 years ago, a German Shepherd/Wolf mix attacked my youngest son who was walking to school one day with a friend. The crazed animal, completely unprovoked, climbed out of his dog run and onto the sidewalk and nearly killed William. The dog left my son with dozens of cuts and gashes, all of which required stitches whose number are far too many to remember. The dog even came back for “seconds.” Fortunately, thanks to some courageous passersby, a second attack was averted. The cur’s name was Cujo, of all things, and this wasn’t his first victim. As you can imagine, William didn’t leave my sight the rest of the day, and neither did my un-Christian thoughts about Cujo. Amidst the trauma, however, I was able to reflect on the goodness of God, since the day’s events could have had a very different outcome. But if things had turned out differently, would God still have been good?

Is God good only when the outcome is? When the cancer is in remission, we say "God is good." When the pay raise comes, we say, "God is good." When the university admits us, like it did for my youngest daughter, or the final score favors our team, "God is good." But would, and do we say the same under different circumstances? In the cemetery as well as the nursery? In the unemployment line as well as the grocery line? In days of recession as much as in days of provision? Is God always good?

Many of us have this kind of quasi-contract with God – the fact that God hasn't signed it doesn't deter us from still believing it. “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 he stumped? Overworked? Is his power limited? His authority restricted? Did the devil outwit him? When life isn't good, what are we to think of God? Where is he in all of this?

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 – not like Job, the sufferer, or Paul, the apostle. For one thing, 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: “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.” (Gen. 41:30-32) Joseph saw both seasons, the one of plenty and the one of scarcity, beneath the umbrella of God's jurisdiction. Both were "decreed by God." But how could God do that?

Was the calamity God's idea? Of course not. God never creates or parlays 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, he’s 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) So, in summary: God is good, and God is sovereign. Then how do you factor in the presence of calamities in 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 calamities. He allows the ground to grow dry, and stalks to grow bare. He allows Satan to unleash mayhem, like that 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 examples of this all the time. 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 into powder, and the water is heated to just the right temperature. 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 a terrorist attack good. These are terrible calamities, 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 includes health, comfort and recognition. 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.

Joni Eareckson Tada has spent most of her life attempting to reconcile the presence of suffering with the nature of God. She was just a teenager when a diving accident left her paralyzed from the neck down. After more than forty years in a wheelchair, Joni has reached this conclusion: “[Initially] I figured that if Satan and God were involved in my accident at all, then it must be that the devil had twisted God's arm for permission . . . I reasoned that once God granted permission to Satan, he then nervously had to run behind him with a repair kit, patching up what Satan had ruined, mumbling to himself, "Oh great, now how am I going to work this for good?" . . . But the truth is that God is infinitely more powerful than Satan . . . While the devil's motive in my disability was to shipwreck my faith by throwing a wheelchair in my way, I'm convinced that God's motive was to thwart the devil and use the wheelchair to change me and make me more like Christ through it all . . . [He can] bring ultimate good out of the devil's wickedness.”

This 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. He is the master chess player, always checkmating the devil's every move.

Our choice really comes down to this: trust God or turn away. The truth is that God will breach that “contract” of ours; he’ll shatter our expectations. And we’ll be left to make a decision. Because at some point we all stand at the intersection of the question, “Is God good when the outcome is not?” During the famine as well as the feast? The definitive answer to that question comes in the person of Jesus Christ.

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 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.

He exacts nothing from us that he did not experience himself. Why? Because he is good. God owes us no more explanation than that. Besides, if he gave us one, what makes us think we would actually understand it? Maybe the problem is not so much God's plan, but with our limited perspective.

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. On it her husband had written only one measure in a melancholic, minor key; one that didn't work standing on its own. But 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 at all. You aren’t a very good composer." What would he 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 understand? Not very much.

Is it possible, then, 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? And isn’t it possible that the wonder of heaven will make the most difficult life a great bargain? That was Paul's conclusion when he wrote, "Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." (2 Cor. 4:17) And he saw heaven. (2 Cor. 12:2-4)

Suppose I invited you to experience the day of your dreams. Twenty-four hours on an island paradise with your favorite people, food and activities. There’s only one catch: you must experience a millisecond of discomfort. For reasons I choose not to explain, I tell you that you will need to begin the day with a millisecond of distress. Would you accept my offer? Probably. Because a split second is nothing compared to twenty-four hours, right? Similarly, we’re all in the middle of our milliseconds on God’s clock. So, compared to eternity, what’s seventy, eighty, even ninety years? It’s just a vapor. Just a finger snap compared to heaven. 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? What?

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.” The lamb’s response? “Oh, be quiet. Go play by yourself. I don’t play with pigs.” Wow, that’s pretty harsh.

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 this, he must take us through all of the circumstances in life through which he took Christ. 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 life 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.

Still think you’re alone? 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 shadows, but the presence of His Light.

What’s coming will make sense of what’s happening now. So, let God finish his work. Let the composer complete his symphony. The forecast is simple: Good days. Bad days. God is in all your days. He’s the Lord of the famine and the feast, and he uses both to accomplish his will.

Even in life’s calamities.

Grace,

Randy