Board index ‹ The Problem of Evil and Suffering

[MolyRoly]

Jim, I feel like I'm going to die. I went to the doctor today. I don't have any symptoms that show I'm dying so there's nothing he could do. What am I suppose
to do. I FEEL SO CRAPPY. Am I going to just whither away? Am I going to die of "no cause"? Does that happen to people? How bizarre. My ear and the side of my head are killing me. The pain is there—I'm not making it up. I've got so many other symptoms all over my body that are REAL. You would think they could find SOMETHING wrong with me. In the mean time I go to the shrink—after all, since there are no physical findings it must be psychological.

I know, I know. That's life. Get used to it. I feel utterly and helplessly alone. What good is having a God if He leaves you in the most horrible and terrifying place you can imagine. I know, I know. It's not about "feeling". It's about trusting. But I don't have the strength or ability to trust. I don't have it. I just can't do this life. God is asking me to do something that I don't have the ability to do. All the words you have spoken to me are so wise and I understand it all but none of it helps me or means anything to me when I'm crying out in pain. I'm like a little child who is just reaching out for help, reaching out for a glass of water because I'm thirsty, reaching out my hand because I've fallen, wanting God to wash my scabbed and bleeding knee. Fix it first, God, then I will be able to hear what you are trying to tell me. It hurts too much to even hear the message.

[jimwalton]

Wow. That's EXACTLY what I was thinking about feeling about 2 years ago. Let me fill in some more thoughts for you: If it's REAL, it has to be REAL. If God is REALLY God, then he has to DO something. Any God worth his salt acts in our lives. If we're all just pretending and calling it "faith," I'm not interested. If God is really THERE, then God has to be really HERE. What's the sense otherwise? I can't go through this life by myself, just slugging it out. That's why I need a GOD—a God who will HELP me. And if God isn't going to help me, then what's the sense? I can live my miserable life and die in agony all by myself. The reason to have a God is because I NEED HELP.

(How am I doing here? I continue—I'm not done yet)

God is supposed to be my FATHER. He's supposed to be my help in time of need. He's supposed to CARE for me. Is it all bloody, cruel lies? I"m not interested in that. I'm interested in what's REAL. I'm sick of this. I'm sick of being rejected and ignored. You know, God, you can love me, or you can hate me, but don't ignore me. It's the worst insult. I've read the Bible. You save cities and you heal lepers. What about the prayer of Jabez (1 Chr. 4.10)? "Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain. And God granted his request." You answered Jabez' prayer. Am I SO awful, so undeserving, so despised that you can't do ANYTHING for me. Jesus even gave the DEMONS their request (Mk. 5.12-13). God answered Lot's request (Gn. 19.17-22) even though it was stupid, self-centered, and a mistake. Am I so awful that you can't answer a single prayer of mine???? And on and on. My tirade lasted for years, and I was so spitting angry at God, and I told him so quite often.

Jesus prayed in John 17 that the church would be unified. that prayer was never answered.
Jesus prayed in Luke 22.42 that the cup of suffering be avoided. That prayer was not answered.
Paul prayed in Romans 1.10 that he be allowed by the Lord to visit the church of Rome. That prayer was not answered. He got to Rome all right, but in prison and as far as we know never got to visit the church.
Paul prayed in Romans 10.1 that the Jews would be saved. That prayer was not answered.
In Philippians 1.19, Paul asks them to pray for his deliverance, but we don't know whether he ever got out of prison or not.

But in and through all of this, about 2 dozens times Paul teaches them to pray and pray and pray and never give up. I was SO confused. What's the sense of PRAYER if it doesn't accomplish anything? What use is a God who doesn't act??

It was at that point I decided to read the Bible for myself to see what God actually promises to do for us. And that's where I came up with the list I sent to you before. God doesn't act on our behalf as far as our circumstances, but certainly does with our souls. So I had to face the reality: It rains on the just and the unjust. Christians die from illness and accidents just like non-Christians. We get jobs and go bankrupt at the same rate. Believers and unbelievers die in tsunamis and earthquakes. What DOES God DO for us? Our souls. it takes a whole different way of thinking, but we've been through this before. It's hard to make the switch to this, but the more I read the Bible, it's clear to me.

Psalm 118: Give thanks for the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.

See, my thought was: (1) I'm not thankful when all all I get is the crap. (2) How can God be good and treat me like this this? (3) If this is love, please stop loving me.

Psalm 118.5: In my anguish I cried to the Lord and he answered by setting me free. The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can me do to me? The Lord is with me; he is my helper."

Et cetera. But in my new understanding of Scripture, I have to read this deeper: set me free from WHAT? My study tells me it's not from the pain and from the crap, but from the slavery to the pain where it's all I think about and it separates me from God. I need to be set free from THAT, so my soul can commune with God who loves me and gave himself for me. Because God will most likely not take the pain away. We see his great love in the salvation he has freely given to us. Jn. 15.13; 1 John 3.1; Rom. 5.8, et al., not in changing my circumstances.

This is SO hard, especially in an extreme case like yours. I'm so sorry I can't pray your pain away, and neither can anyone. But maybe I can pray the pain away from your soul.

[MolyRoly]

Yes. My thoughts exactly. (The first part of your message). The last half of your message—it all sounds so good. If only I could internalize it. But i can't. The pain is squeezing the life out of me. I desperately want to do the right thing. I have fallen asleep 5 times while trying to type this email. I awake in pain. I'm so scared. I don't want to die. I don't know who to turn to. I keep begging for help but there is no one to help me. Do you have any practical advice? There are times (many) where I think my body is just going to shut down. It's a very scary feeling. I would go to the emergency room but I've done that before and they don't know how to treat me or accuse me of having a mental problem. I quit. I'm not quitting life or God. I'm just quitting trying to process it all. It's wearing me out. I'll just live mechanically w/o the emotion. If I die, I die. There's nothing I can do about it.

[jimwalton]

If by “practical” you mean “take the pain away,” there is no one who can do that. You’ve been to doctors and specialists, psychiatrists, and ministers. If that’s the only “practical” advice you’ll accept, you sit in a silent room.

Mark 5 tells the story of 3 completely hopeless people. The demoniac had been tied up in the cemetery outside of town. No one had a clue how to help him. The woman with the blood flow had been to every doctor and had spent all she had, but she was still dying. She is cut off from her culture, desperately alone, chronically ill, and spiritually disenfranchised. The child of Jairus is dead. Three completely hopeless situations, desperate people with nowhere to turn.

The one with the most relevance to you is the middle one: the woman with menometrorrhagia. This was a woman of broken dreams and dashed hopes, devastated by disappointment at how her life had turned out. No matter what she tried her life just got worse.

Why do you think people swarmed around Jesus so? Because for YEARS all their prayers had gone unanswered and they were not healed.

All of this sound familiar?

The primary question here is: How can this story help you? You are in the category of “praying and not being healed.” The point here is not that even Jesus’ clothing exuded power, but the point is her faith. If faith is so short on resources that its only answer to suffering is to ignore it, it is pointless. Honest people would choose honest doubt over dishonest faith. If faith is merely an anesthetic to cover up pain without honestly confronting it, doubt has more integrity. So we have to dig deeper.

Faith is not the wishing and hoping and believing that we will get better after all. Faith is that I have eyes to see and a brain to recognize the spiritual part of life and to know it’s real, even though I may not experience it in my life. (Heb. 11.39). Faith is more than optimism. Faith is more than hope. Faith is knowledge, pure and simple. It’s different, though. Knowledge is because you’ve seen, and faith is that you know even though you haven’t seen.

Heb. 11.4: Cain believed. He knew God existed. But belief like that isn’t good enough. And notice that God did not protect Abel from being killed, even though he had just obeyed, and he was killed by the man who had been disobedient to God.

Heb. 11.8: The nature of Abraham’s faith is that he believed in God’s promised when he could not actually see either situation: he couldn’t see his final earthly destination, and he couldn’t see his final heavenly destination.

NONE of the examples of faith in Hebrews 11 pertain to answers to prayers the individuals are praying. They are all responses to God’s revelation of himself. Read the text carefully, and with new eyes.

When day after day passes, and the “promises” don’t come about, you start to doubt the promises and the promiser. But our eyes and thoughts can’t be trusted. Bad things happen to good people. We all get thrown off-stride, and we all want to quit. Faith says, “I know there’s another reality out there. I can’t see it; I don’t experience it, but I’m going to live it. I am battered by troubles, but I know it’s not the only reality. I don’t know what to do, but I know that God is there and I have to hang on to him even though he isn’t taking the pain away. I’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left me, even though I can’t sense him. What life did to Jesus, it’s doing to me. This is so awful, but I refuse to give up the comfort of the knowledge that God holds my soul.”

Faith is not just ignoring your pain, or pretending it isn’t there. Faith empowers you to not be enslaved by your pain. Faith bridges the gap between humanity and eternity. Faith puts you into a different kind of existence that this life, as real as it is, can’t touch. Faith transforms your mind, renewing it, so that you can test and approve God’s reality (Rom. 12.2). It’s not just a different mindset; it’s a different reality.

You want practical help. This is the best I have.

[MolyRoly]

Dead. worthless. useless. that's my life. I am a created being—made from God, created for a purpose. I have gifts, talents, passions to do good in this world, not evil. But I'm a lump. A lump of nothingness. I can not serve my God, help my children, my husband, my neighbor. It's physically impossible. Many people would be content to sit and do nothing - I am not. But......

I have given God everything even though it hurts like crazy. But the more I give to him the more those things cry out to me. Not bad things. Good things. Like my kids, my husband, my passions, desires to do good. But I have given them up. Maybe in word only. There was a point maybe 6 months ago where I gave it all to God. I didn't care about my life, my family. Some people call that depression. To me it wasn't that—it was sacrificing everything I loved for God. I guess I have to give up my expectations that God is going to make me "useful" again. I feel so useless. My family eats prepackaged, processed, frozen food—not healthy homecooked meals like before. They watch 10x more videos than before because I don't have the energy to interact with them. We don't get out and do healthy activities like we should. We don't have devotions any more. We don't have discussions and family time like we use to. My poor husband doesn't have much of a wife. Things are allowed where they weren't allowed before. My 17 year old is doing things I would never allow before. But I've given up all control. I've let go of everything but I'm sad. I've let go and now everything seems OUT of control. But it's not about how I FEEL. I've let go but that hasn't made me feel any better. I'm still the same lousy-feeling, depressed person. I accept that. I accept that people have misjudged me and will think wrongly of me. I'm still in the "emptying" process. It's taking a long time. Allowing Jesus to fill my emptiness—well, I'm waiting. Waiting for that peace.

[jimwalton]

Yep. Can you see my footprints in the road ahead of you? I had those exact same thoughts. It's as if you read my script. I have gifts and talents too, and I so badly want to be used by God. I've given myself to him, and I felt like he took what I gave him and walked away laughing, leaving me empty and dead. You hear preachers so glibly say, "God doesn't need your ability, he needs your availability!" So I gave myself to him, making myself totally available, only to be without all the things I gave him, and then ignored.

Like you, I don't want to be a spectator in God's kingdom, I want to be a player. I want him to use me, and I want to bear fruit for him. But suppose he just wants me to be a pawn in the chessboard of life? Suppose he wants me to be the sufferer, not the leader? "But," I would protest, "I have gifts and talents and I'm making myself AVAILABLE!" It took me a long time to come to grips with the idea that maybe he wanted me to be a nobody. Maybe I get to be the downtrodden one. Frankly, it wasn't my vision for myself or for my life. Maybe I get to be the "he who is last" person. *sigh* Then I think, "Well, why did you give me these passions and desires just to let them rot inside a corpse's shell?" Does this make sense?

We're back to a couple of real basic underpinnings: first of all, it's God's prerogative to do with me as he wishes, and I have to mean that even if it means I get to be the sewer rat in the game of life. Secondly, if I deny myself, take up my cross, and follow him, then I need to do exactly that. If i deny myself, I don't get to call any shots. If I take up my cross, I take up sacrifice of everything, and if I follow him, then he does with me as he wishes. Thirdly, I am still quite convinced that most of the time God does not intervene in our circumstances, and we are expected to walk the most godly course we can over the wreckage of life.

All of this has so much pain and agony with it. We dream of lives that are full and happy, significant and pleasing to God. We dream of all the best of the stereotypes of Christianity and the cliches we were taught as children about God answering our prayers and having the joy joy joy joy down in our hearts. And when it seems that God is ignoring us, letting our desires, energy, passions, and gifts go to waste, and we're just wallowing and wasting away in the gutter of suffering we (I) honestly think, "I didn't sign up for this." Yes, it turns out, I did, but this isn't what I was taught, and it wasn't what I expected. But it is what the Bible ACTUALLY teaches, and I did sign up for it. But, just like marriage, I expected all these wonderful days of sunshine and roses, and not the down-and-dirty realities of life.

GOD DOES NOT PROTECT US FROM THE DOWN-AND-DIRTY REALITIES OF LIFE, but he does redeem them. So is life a stupid waste? You've sacrificed everything and gotten nothing but grief in return. Your family is stumbling, your soul is scarred, and your life is empty. Is this what you signed up for? Yes, but it's not what you wanted or expected out of life. Just like for marriage, you signed up with God for richer or poorer, for better or worse, in sickness and in health. We all want the richer, better, healthy stuff. And it especially hurts when other people seem to have that, and they take it for granted, or they are worse people, or whatever. Jealousy and envy rise in us like a rattlesnake. The unfairness and cruelty of it undo us.

But on a careful reading the Bible warns us. "The rain falls on the just and unjust." "Why, O God, do you not listen when I call, but the ungodly become wealthy and powerful?" "Rejoice with those who rejoice." "Don't envy others."

I will never be content to sit and do nothing. Some days the only prayer I pray is "God, I need you," and I pray it 1000 times. I will seek God even if I get nothing, because I know that's what right and true. I have come to the point where I don't care anymore. Let him stinkin' kill me. I don't care. I will do what the Bible says, no matter what. I will learn to transform my thinking and renew my mind to see things the way the Bible tells me to see them. I refuse to be envious of other people, because I don't care anymore. I will do the best that I can with the hand I've been dealt, and live the life I have for as long as I have it.

The peace that I have is not this comfortable smile inside me. Only one thing counts, and I have chosen it. There's peace there, but it's not "what the world gives." It's not even what other Christians talk about. But it's a real peace deeper than anything else. I have chosen what really counts. My life is aimed in that direction, and my every thought supports it. As for the rest, it's all crap. That's what Paul said in Philippians 3.8. Yeah, I know, you feel like your whole life is worthless, but you're seeing with your eyes, dreams, expectations, and hopes. It's all rubbish. If the Bible is true (and it is, duh), then God says the things I've been telling you in my emails for the past months, and our eyes and minds are not to be trusted. "He restores my soul. He leads me in the path of righteousness for His name's sake."

One thing I ask for, and one thing I desire: to be in the presence of God all the days of my life; to seek him in his temple and to gaze upon his beauty.

Early in the morning I will seek God in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

As the deer pants for water, my soul longs after God. But where can I go to find him? My suffering is my food all day long, and my enemies oppress me. Where is the Lord? (go back to previous sentence.)

God's strength is made perfect in my weakness. so then I glory in my weakness.

I die daily, so the life of God can be revealed in my body.

I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

I live by faith, not by sight.

Even though the sheep pens are empty, and there are no figs on the vine, yet will I rejoice in God my Savior. The joy of the Lord is my strength. (And he sure ain't talkin' about happiness, or even feelin' good.)

To the one who overcomes belongs the crown of life.

And I'm going to be one of the ones who overcomes. I AM going to; I will not fail. I have no one else but God. There is nothing else to give my life to.

[jimwalton]

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

"Unless a person realizes her complete emptiness and inability to fill the void, she will not be filled."

Thomas Merton says, "As soon as we know our dependence, our own nothingness, we begin, by dying, to live. In this is our only hope: that knowing our nothingness, we come to learn from tribulation—and then tribulation, instead of paralyzing us and beating us to death and despair, is the necessary condition for us to learn how to live and tribulation teaches us the truth: it teaches us that our philosophy in which everything is centered on ourselves is false and deadly, because evil, in itself, is inexplicable, and increases more and more as we try to avoid it more and more.”

The person who sees himself as poor in spirit has learned the need for total dependence upon God. He sees himself clearly—perhaps for the first time—as one whose resources have run out. It is this spiritual bankruptcy before God that is the basis of spiritual power and fulfillment. Only an empty vessel can be filled. Only as we forsake our own resources can we turn and lay hold of God’s abundant resources. To be poor in spirit means you see yourself in such need that you constantly turn to God for strength, love, patience—for all you need to face life. (-Bill Mills)

Larry Hein, a spiritual director, wrote this blessing: “May all your expectations be frustrated, may all your plans be thwarted, may all your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing and dance in the love of God who is Father, Son, and Spirit. And today on planet Earth, may you experience the wonder and beauty of yourself as Abba’s child and temple of the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

And Oswald Chambers says, "As long as we have a conceited, self-righteous idea that we can do this thing if God will help us, God has to allow us to go on until we break the neck of our ignorance over some obstacle, then we will be willing to come and receive from Him. The bedrock of Jesus Christ's kingdom is poverty, not possession; not decisions for Christ, but a sense of absolute futility, 'I cannot begin to do it.' Then, Jesus says, 'Blessed are you.' That is the entrance, and it takes us a long while to believe we are poor. The knowledge of our own poverty brings us to the moral frontier where Jesus Christ works."

I am writing these things to you to keep you on your journey and to nurture your soul. You've probably read things like this a hundred times before, but NOW YOU UNDERSTAND THEM AS NEVER BEFORE. You alone, and not the others whose suffering if more shallow, are able to grasp the height and depth and width and breadth of these teachings, because you have been to the deep and seen the dark dark animal that wants to devour you. You alone know the gaping hole that is the death of all that is meaningful and precious, including our expectations, hopes, and dreams—even our very lives. It is only when you sink to the very bottom that you find a rock to stand on.

Read these quotes over carefully and deeply. These men don't write cavalierly, but intensely because they too have seen the empty despair. We see their footprints crossing the path we are walking, knowing that they too have been here, and are writing to guide us.

Heb. 12.1-2: Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses (in other words, people who have walked the same path we are on and know the truth about death and life, expectations and despair), let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles (our expectations, our envy, our lack of faith), and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us (we have to play with the hand we were dealt, by God's sovereignty). Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith (he ran the same path we have to, but his was much darker and harder), who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and shat down at the right hand of the throne of God..., so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.