Walking with God through Pain and Suffering (2)

“The classical author Cicero famously argued that the main task of philosophy is to teach us how to face death” (p. 35).

With that, Timothy Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and author of the book, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering (https://www.amazon.com/Walking-God-through-Pain-Suffering/dp/1594634408/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484864868&sr=8-1&keywords=walking+with+god+through+pain+and+suffering), begins Chapter Two .  He goes on to trace historical philosophies that have influenced our concepts of suffering and death.

Stoicism was an influential Greek school of philosophy.  While denying a personal God, it believed the universe had a moral order to which human must align themselves.  This meant facing suffering and death by accepting the twists and turns of fate, not attaching ourselves to anything in life, and realizing that when we die our substance becomes part of the universe in another form. The Roman Cicero (cited above), influenced by the Stoics, believed that grief over suffering and death was useless.

Meanwhile, in Eastern culture the oldest scriptures of Hindu thought there is “not only no evil but no good, no individuals, no material world.  Everything is actually part of the One, the All-Soul, the Absolute Spirit . . . Ultimately we cannot lose anything.  We are part of everything” (p. 40).  (That’s what today’s Buddhists believe.)

Therefore, we overcome suffering by detaching our heart from things in this world, which are impermanent.  Not only so, both Stoics and Buddhists claim to live in hope is not a good thing.

Christianity’s birth brought radically new ideas that countered Western and Eastern thought, especially regarding suffering and grief.  First, Christianity offered a better hope.  The doctrine of a future bodily resurrection in which “our personalities will be sustain, beautified and perfected after death” (p. 42), where we will be reunited with our loved ones sharply contrasted with Stoicism and Eastern thought.

John 1:1-18 offers the most striking contrast.  The Greeks called the moral order of the universe Logos.    John wrote, “In the beginning was the Logos” and “The Logos became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory” (John 1:14).  John was saying “that the Logos behind the universe was not an abstract, rational principle that could be known only through high contemplation by the educated elite.  Rather, the Logos of the universe is a person—Jesus Christ—who can be loved and known in a person relation by anyone at all” (p.43).

Second, Christianity offered, not only a better hope, but the right to express sorrow and grief, yet not as those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13).  Christians do not stoically repress grief over the loss of life or loved ones.  And while Christianity agrees we mustn’t love this world’s things too much, it doesn’t teach us renounce them so much as to love God more. 

In the poem “The Raven”, Edgar Allan Poe gives the bird one word to say:  nevermore.  Keller observes, “With frightening pithiness, this conveys the irreversibility of life.  Once our youth, our childhood home, our loved ones are gone there is no going back . . . but Christianity offers a restoration of life.  We get our bodies back—indeed, we get the bodies we never had but wished we had . . . We get our lives back . . . the soul and the body are finally perfectly integrated, one in which we dance, sing, hug, work and play.  The Christian doctrine of the resurrection is, then, a reversal of death’s seeming irreversibility.  It is the end of ‘nevermore’” (p. 46).

After the time of Pope Gregory (c. 540-604), the idea grew that suffering was a way to “work off” one’s sins and merit heaven.  That all changed, however, with the Protestant Reformation and Martin Luther.  Luther taught that suffering crucified our pride and led us to find our only security in Christ.  More importantly, Luther taught “the theology of the cross”—God doesn’t reveal himself in “the theology of glory”, but “the deepest revelation of the character of God is in the weakness, suffering and death of the cross” (p. 50). And in that weakness and suffering, the Messiah died to put death to death.

Luther prized Jesus’ cry from the cross—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) as “the greatest words in all Scripture.”  Keller writes, “Christ suffered Godforsakeness in his human nature; he knew [that state of hopelessness and helplessness] in infinite degree . . . “ Thus we can approach him for mercy and grace “in our time of need” because he can “sympathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:14,15).  Keller concludes, “Suffering produces growth in us when we understand Christ’s suffering and work on our behalf” (p. 52).

I’m especially moved by these words:  “Christ suffered Godforsakeness in his human nature; he knew [that state of hopeless and helplessness] . . . “.  They move me because I often feel that way.  So, I envision Jesus hopeless and helpless on the cross, then breathing his last and buried.  But on the third day he was raised from death.  New life defeated hopelessness and helplessness!

In recent centuries, instead of living with that triumphant view of Luther, philosopher Charles Taylor says we live inside “’an immanent frame,’ the view that the world if a completely natural order without any supernatural” (p. 53).  Strangely however,  we still believe in God, but he/it is distant, not someone/something we can know.  And instead of believing that we exist for God’s glory, this new belief holds that God exists to take care of us.  This is why we explode in anger at God or fall into deep depression when we suffer—because God’s not doing “his job.”

We then have go further:  we claim that evil’s existence disproves God’s.  If we  believe God exists to make us happy, then, when evil strikes, our belief in God fades.

For all practical purposes, we (along with all Western societies) have become secularists (even though many profess a traditional belief in God).  Keller notes, “ . . . this secularized belief in God, or this residue of Christianity, may be the worst possible preexisting condition in which to encounter suffering” (p. 58).

As I’ve admitted elsewhere, my suffering has shown me how much I’ve allowed “this secularized belief in God” to influence me.  If asked, I would vehemently deny that God exists to make me happy.  But deep inside I get angry and depressed when he lets me suffer.  I am more a product of worldly philosophies that I thought or like to admit.  I study Scripture but close my mind to it when I’m in pain.

I need to reshape my thinking.  Keller concludes Chapter Two withfour Christian beliefs which do just that, beliefs that giveus “victory” in suffering . . .

One, God is a “personal, wise, infinite and therefore inscrutable (mysterious) God who controls the affairs of the world—and that is far more comforting than the belief that our lives are in the hands of fickle fate or random chance.

Two, “in Jesus Christ, God came to earth and suffered with and for us sacrificially—and that is far more comforting than the idea that God is remote and uninvolved… “

Third, “ . . . through faith in Christ’s work on the cross, we can have assurance of our salvation—and that is far more comforting than the karmic systems of thought.”

Fourth, because of Christ’s resurrection, we who are his by faith will also be bodily resurrected.  “We get our bodies back, in a state of beauty and power that we cannot today imagine” (p. 58).

Long-held philosophies have failed.  Only God is Christ gives us sufferers victory.