I had a nightmare.
My three sons were taken away. They were in a large factory where they were being processed along a ragged assembly line. I could tell from the talk that they were being packaged up to be sold as human slaves. I charged down the line, trying to find them……to rescue them. I found my oldest son, the first of my sons to be saved. I continued to look for my other two sons. Then I woke up. I never found the other two.
My first waking thought was to pray, “God! strike down the evil people causing human slavery!” And I did. I prayed a hard, fervent, angry prayer.
My second thought was, “Why hasn’t God done this already?” This goes to the heart of a question that has haunted Christianity from the start:
“Why does a loving God allow suffering?”
When faced with suffering, my first response has always been to trust God: “I have to believe that God knows what he is doing”.
But, this morning, that just didn’t seem to be enough. The suffering in my nightmare was so huge…….so immediate. So I dug a little deeper.
Consider the human condition.
Suffering exists. But, it is confined to our temporal world. All suffering is temporary…….by definition. Relationship with God, on the other hand, is a function of the spiritual world. It is, by definition, eternal.
God either creates suffering……..or at the very least……..he allows it to go on. In Job, God gives Satan explicit permission to make Job suffer. Even worse, this is repeated……..which means that it is important. I have to conclude that eradicating human suffering is not God’s highest priority. Eradicating my own suffering may be my highest priority, followed by eradicating the suffering of others. But, I am not God. The fact that God allows suffering: Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, disease, crime, and much more…….tells me that God has other priorities. Human suffering may not even be one of the top ten problems on God’s “to-do” list.
Which leads me to the question: “What does God want more than anything else?”
Relationship
God wants an ongoing, daily, two way conversation. What God wants is to hear from me…….and you.
I think that it is quite possible that when a child suffering the pain of human slavery prays to God fervently…….daily……God may see that as a win. God could very well be more pleased by the relationship than he is saddened by the suffering.
We see suffering as a problem because we don’t like it………because our human priority is to make it go away.
But, God has different priorities. God’s biggest problem is not our suffering. God’s biggest problem is our relationship with him. The problem of relationship is what he is focused on. He has used…..and he will continue to use suffering to create relationship and to salvage relationship. If you don’t believe me……..just look at the cross.
The next step in my analysis is troubling.
Suppose I am driving my car and some jerk cuts me off and gives me a “one finger salute”. I respond with a blast of obscenity. In the process, I fail in my obedience to the command “love others” …..and several other commands as well. I have damaged my relationship with God. God may very well see my road rage and the damage to our relationship that it has caused as a bigger problem than the suffering of the human slave who is praying to him right now.
And there is another disturbing side of our suffering. I think you can make a strong case……..that taken as a whole, mankind spends more effort on our relationship with God when we are suffering than when we are not suffering.
Sad…….but true.
So……
The key to dealing with the problem of suffering is to focus on God’s priority……..that is…..relationship. When we focus on the suffering instead of relationship, it is because we put our priorities ahead of God’s priority.
In short:
Focus more energy on increasing your eternal relationship with God.
Focus less energy on worrying about temporary suffering.
But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
Jesus clarifying the priority of God vs. the priorities of mankind, Matthew 16:23, ESV