PRELIMINARY
SURVEY
For a commencement, regard this short excerpt from SMR p.
431:
WHAT IS SEEN ?
And what is seen ? morality and putridity, personalities
in arrears in ... down-payments on truth, escaping personalities, repentant
personalities, guilty personalities, personalities flickering alive with
self-destruct, distrust of others, seeking and humbled, overcome and
remorseful: personalities sensing greatness and finding littleness through
warped desires, warped treatment of conscience, warped relationship to the
divinity who constructed them, pell-mell distortion of morality; and evoking
hideous seeming vengeance on desecrated liberty... Yet all this is not without
pity, pathos or poignancy, often even increased by the feeling that
opportunities to repent, and realise and conform to design and designer, were
avoided, even when new chances came. The hideous is the obverse of happiness.
All this is merely
one literary expression of these daily experienced facts; and the basis is
found in the concept of One Universal Design and One Universal Designer, such
as the One who put the one universal micro-biological genetic language in our
cells. Where the matter is visible, it is seen; where it is invisible, it is
felt, it is observed.
HUMAN
PERSONALITY and the GENERIC CAUSE OF SUFFERING
The fact of human
personality, in brief, is hereby accounted for with nothing left over.
In a short, simple, superbly adequate and uniquely explanatory fashion, the image
of God statement of Genesis accounts for it all. Oh, given that this
image means nothing geometrical, since God is statedly a spirit, and that it
implies an aptitude for fellowship with God, a degree of independence and a
capacity for good or evil, being in some ways free: and there it is. The rest ?
the presence of the remedy; the folly of not finding it, using it; and
the additional guilt and repression and frustration which this
occasions (like seeing the only one to win Wimbledon twenty times and ignoring
such a person in seeking the best player over time): all this exacerbates and
explains the ever new, but always old overtones that exhibit the rotting design,
the frantic failure to find the Designer's Panel-beating yard, and alas with
extraordinary frequency, the failure to enter it. Cf. pp. 251 ff.,
316E-G,
329 ff. supra.
Natural goodness
is the natural design, soiled in sin, and the residue of conscience, appealing
to right, however imperfect the flicker: this is such in principle; and the
ultimate, unsoiled, unspoiled, unchanged, unmoved, the supernaturally good One,
from whom goodness comes, it is God. Achieved goodness is the virtue which, a
fruit of His Spirit in His people, works itself out in them, as they abide in
the Lord (John 15, Romans 5:1-5), being first restored to spiritual vitality,
by being changed (John 3).
End of
Excerpt
Actually, in
terms of evils suffered, the generic cause is sin, from whomever, seen or
unseen; while the individualising grounds in dealing with it move from strict
and straight rebuke for it to appeal, patient entreaty or judgment direct. One
prominent example occurred when Nathan, the prophet, rebuked
the morally marauding King David in his once only folly, by an incisive
but indirect method. To do this acutely, he told a story of a man who had done
an evil thing, and drawing the King’s wrath on that evil told in an imaginary
story, one really enshrining the King's own guilt, then declared:
- "YOU ARE THE MAN!" ( II Samuel 12:1-9).
In
that way, the story which had been taken as reality, ceased to be indirect, or
strange or deep! The failure in the story, it was David. The evil in the story,
David exhibited it!
You
did it, you suffer in terms of your trespass. It may be that you suffer though
a child of God, to straighten or strengthen or purify or develop your
character; to remind you of the scalding wrath which accompanies the ruin of
beauty by wild, and insupportable acts of will and so on.
So does ‘evil’ in the sense of rebuke, punishment,
discipline arrive.
It may in another
situation be this: that you suffer as an alien to the mercy of God, in an
extreme case, by endless seeming wild rejections of sensed mercy, which you
carry out with a grandeur of peril, a disregard like that of an adult spoilt
brat, and that you gain a magnificent rebuke; or that you do not do so, but
rather find the goodness of God humbling you to the earth by contrast with your
own self-righteous veneer over sin (cf. Romans 2:1ff.). It may even be that you
have despised THAT display of divine mercy to lead you to repentance, and so
enter into more depths and turmoil, displaying a disdain for mercy, like a
cancer patient scoffing at the specialist who has the power to remove the
degrading threat before it is ... too late, before it is opportunity lost, once
and for all.
The options are
phenomenal, the depths can become inconceivable, for God is infinite (Psalm
147:5).
Let us look further into the seething situation of
sin, that generic which brings on results, on the one hand, while their
distribution is a matter of vast depth, on the other. Sin, it comes and
breathes and grows, reminiscent of a crafty virus, misusing what it infects and
using the very resources of the "host" to bring about its
destruction. Sin, that ultimate harassment and R.S.P.V. for judgment, is often
found presenting its card, its request for ... results again and again, before
'rewarded' with its shame and its self-menacing ruin for renegacy.
This ruin may be physical, moral, ethical, mental, financial, personal,
irremediable or tendential. The variations are like the rainbow, different in
kind and degree, in portent and in divine intent.
THE YOUNG IN PARTICULAR - the nations, races
and epochs too
Then there is the anguish and
the angst as the young are doomed in the puny defeated 'triumphs', the
ludicrous crowings of deluded adults who teach the young the ways of hell
under the canopy of hope, and then wonder why these tender-aged victims
fall into such delusive desires, barren activities and sheer debasements of
heart and mind in musics unthinkable, morals unmentionable and slack laxities
pitiable. Abandoned, and more than this, mistaught (see That Magnificent
Rock, Ch.8), the young,
being often not only without guide, but misled in the midst of the circling
waters of meaningless whirl-pools of forces, created by the clashing tides of
human desire, are 'liberated' from their Maker, 'freed' from their Guide
and 'rescued' from the love of the Shepherd.
But youth ? it is is
one of the measures of iniquity of a civilisation, which brings out the
necessity of the mercy of God to intervene like a missionary doctor in the
midst of the jungle. Alas, often it would seem, more sinned against than
sinning, yet the youth quickly develop the cataracts of evil conventions, and
carry them on with their robust ways, like blind, moral dragsters, bored with
life and measuring death by indifference and the 'conquest' of what kills in the
end, and sometimes near the beginning. (Cf.
The Generation of the Dispossessed,
Appendix 1 , Barbs, Arrows and Balms.)
Sin has many coasts and crags. There are also sins of city, race and province,
of nation and of philosophy, of pride in this or that, there are depths and
dimensions of rebuke, of restoration and redemption, of turning full circle from
wildness to child-likeness. There are demonstrations of the divine mercy and
remonstrations of the divine wrath. You cannot predict God, for His is the
perfect understanding; but this you can predict, that the God who is love does
not willingly afflict the children of men.
It
sometimes seems to me all but incredible that He suffers the race at all, in its
nooks and crannies
of self-deception, incredible cruelty, malevolent and self-seeking distortion,
disregard and wild sprees of mind,
spirit and body, while many are claiming to be religious or moral or good,
while their ways are in fact devilish in design or in dereliction of duty to
God. God is not mocked, but here is another thing you can predict in the midst
of it all: God delights in mercy, and takes no pleasure in the death of the
wicked, but that such people should turn from their evil ways and live.
THE LOVE OF GOD -
AND ITS COSTLY EXHIBITION, AND ENTIRE
EFFECTIVENESS
We know this
because He says so (Lamentations 3:33,
Ezekiel 33:11, Matthew 23:37, Luke 19:42, I Timothy
2:3-6). We find it so. We love to find it so. We often find it so. Yet it is
not like physics, where the personality does not enter, or even like
simultaneous equations, where a number of stated variables interact to a
narrowed result. Rather the
heart of man is desperately wicked, and who can know it, but the Lord (Jeremiah 17:9-10). The shafts of
mercy enter like a splendour of light, suddenly overcoming the industrial smog
of the city of debased life, picking out in its swath the ones He finds. You
cannot tell mercy what it shall do, but God tells us of His desire, of His
precious and priceless provision, and so of the direct opportunity to find Him,
from any quarter, in any smog, past any human relief, when He is called upon in
faith, in terms of His Gospel (cf. That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 2 and 3).
Over the
centuries since Christ paid the necessary price and met the cost for all who
should ever come to Him, God stays His hand until the mercy in the Gospel -
like fuel , gained from the tanker plane and enabling the continuance of fighter
planes - circumnavigates and enters the earth in its nations (II Peter 3:9,
Matthew 24:14). If it is amazing how long it takes, yet it is equally amazing
how vast is the endeavour and how huge the inroads with mass media, reaching
with the Gospel, with the word of God, many millions, milling into the
midst of the inconceivably wretched miseries of man. These are found amid
the wars and rumours of wars which man has made his own, though God has
predicted this with unerring exactitude. It is as if the boil of
pathology, now comes to its head in the body of man. Much has underlain its
production, and much results from its painful presence.
On this see
NEWS 45, Parts 1 and 2, for account of some of the
grandiose pretensions of man and the hopes waylaid because mislaid from their
true place in God. This leads naturally to the thrusting terrain of the end, for the end shall come, as Christ intimated so
deliciously clearly and explicitly (cf. Matthew 24:14 - on which also see A Spiritual Potpourri, Ch. 18
"Touchdown").
Just as He stays His hand, holding back that time as Peter foreshadowed (II
Peter 3:9) - so it comes unimpeded at the time appointed; and when the
end comes, there will be many who would that He had waited yet longer (Cf.
Matthew 25:1-10, Revelation 1:7). Thus now there are developing the immense and
ramifying pathogens of society, psychology, psychiatry, some iatrogenic, caused
by the treatments themselves, barren in many cases of the understanding of the
essential nature of man who is sick in dimensions almost innumerable, until
healed in Christ.
Yet while there
are depths and movements of mercy and rebuke, of tenderness and appeal, of
long-withheld judgments and of judgments to the third and fourth generation of
those who wilfully "hate" the Lord, despising His countenance,
slighting His gifts and pretending He is not to be found, through shutting
their eyes so tightly it is enough to develop facial contortions (cf. Matthew
13:15), there are also very different forms of suffering. Not always does
suffering come in terms of the follies of an individual's sin. There are
sufferings which are only very indirectly related to sin at all, and even
then, essentially they may deal rather with the sins of those who are not put
to this form of suffering.
Suffering not
penal ? But of course! To "fill
up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body's
sake" , "the fellowship of His sufferings" as the Lord is served, of which Paul speaks (cf.
Philippians 3:10, Colossians 1:24): these things of course are those practical
demonstrations which exhibit the realities which the Redeemer paid for, which
express some part of the love which it took, and bear practical application to
the generation now before us, so that with their own eyes they may see things
their minds have long cast out. (Cf. SMR pp.
92-96, *27, where Corrie ten Boom's suffering had such an effect, seemingly
over many years through a highly specialised ministry following her own
concentration camp suffering. This, it resulted from a lovingkindness to
Jewish people shown by her family, in the days of Hitler!).
Before we look at
this area, let us remember also that the cyclotron effect of sin unrepented and
more and more actively corrosive over the erring generations is only one side
of the matter.
The other is
this: at ANY POINT, the whole cyclotron is shut down, or the acidic corrosion
is turned to salt with alkali, for the intervention of the mercy of God is
utter and devastating to evil. God can and often DOES ACT, rescuing from depths
not only justly deserved but moving towards the bottomless, and may do
so by acts of grace so majestic as to belong to the King of Kings.
- The positive intrusion of mercy is
thus the wonder just as the negative consequences, when not met in the
cancellation of guilt given by Christ, are the curse.
It is a curse which may be conquered, and the
cost of the conquest was infinite, one which only God could pay (cf. II
Corinthians 5:19-21). This He has
paid, already having covered all who would ever come to Him (John 10, Ephesians
1:4).
Yet it is time to return to the case of suffering only very indirectly
related to sin unrepented.
SUFFERING THAT TEACHES, AGONY THAT REACHES
Job (see
SMR Index) is the acme of this case, for this
righteous and lovable man, though of course not perfect, was made a target by
express permission of the Lord, in answer to the challenge of the devil to this
effect: that only Job's wealth or power or position or protected status as
belonging to the Lord, led to his worship and testimony of trust in God.
"Does Job serve God for
nothing!" came his cynical leer! LET
HIM BE TRIED! He will then curse you to your face! cried the devil.
God is marvellously practical, never afraid of a challenge, fearless in that He
IS the truth and knows it.
The trial proceeded,
Job suffered excruciatingly socially, financially, in the death of his erring
children (for whom he used to pray continually despite their bad ways), and
came through this distressing trial, with a few cracks here and there, but no
breakage, in the end. He was also restored to his place.
That, it is
perhaps the least part of it, his subsequent prosperity. WHILE he was
being tried, a few other things were tried too. The devil, as sometimes, was
used despite and in the very face of his active, destructive malevolence.
Seeking evil, this proud spirit was to find that his work resulted in good!
This neither extenuated nor confirmed it; for it merely rebutted it, like a
failed assault. In this case, the failure was a triumph of the power and grace of
God, in the vulnerability of one man, Job.
As to the devil:
Wanting to be where God is, and not in fact being what God is, his delusive
desire is not least seen in the active fostering of evil, misconception,
confusion and frustration. His smell or spiritual stink is plentiful, often
empowering the weakness of folly with delusive dignity, for a time, before it
falls like a mud-slide under the houses built on it. His malice and envy is no
excuse, naturally, for the yielding to it; just as it is no excuse if an
aeroplane in a wind tunnel collapses under trial. That simply shows it does not
have what is necessary.
The Christian
DOES have what is necessary, for as John says, "Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the
world," I John 4:3-4, 2:12-14. With Job, the devil exposed perhaps some crucial
cracks, but there was no cleavage, and the Lord delivered Job despite this
severe and searching trial, which strengthened his faith and brought his
purified heart close to God, ample recipient of His divine and beautiful
blessing. In the process the immortal sight of eternal wonder in the Redeemer,
rescuer even from death, was given to Job, and has, as he wished, been relayed
to mankind ever since (cf. Job 19:23-27).
In the
development of Job's situation, the relief was in the end. In the meantime,
however, Job had other trials. Thus his pontificating friends who assumed
constantly, either with direct insult or surreptitiously, that Job must
have sinned in order to DESERVE the trials he suddenly found, they too
were tried - and found wanting, appallingly so! To them, the case was JOB ON
TRIAL, but in fact THEY were on trial, and were later divinely rebuked (Job
42:5-10) , so that when Job was vindicated, Job, their victim himself PRAYED
FOR THEM who had so persecuted him, just as God desired.
In the process of
Job's trial, then, foolish philosophies were exposed, proud simplistic stick
and carrot ideas were exposed for the unlovely substitute for love that they
really are. Trends in Job were exposed and corrected gloriously, like some
flower being prepared for a prize exhibit.
Yet perhaps even
more importantly, as we have just noted, JOB CRIED OUT FOR HIS REDEEMER, first
wishing he had one who could talk to God for him, a daysman (Job 9:33-35), a
barrister of compassion to put his case to God, during his acute suffering. How
marvellously in his suffering he dramatised our need, and found the case
answered as in Job 19, with the deed, the Redeemer Himself being very much
available (cf. I John 2:1-2).
Later, in that famous Job 19, we find him in FAITH and with PRECISE ASSURANCE
KNOWING that his Redeemer would come to earth in the end, crying out
emphatically. What was his assertion? It was this: that he, Job would see the
Redeemer with his own eyes in the latter times, and thus from his own flesh,
would he see God. He would see Him for himself - there would be no
intermediary or indirection, for he Job, would do the seeing and what he would
see would be the REDEEMER.
Death itself, he cried, would not stop this, for what after all is a Redeemer
who does not redeem; and that, it was the task, to redeem, to restore from the
punishments deserved, the death impending and fateful, the pitfalls and the
failures, from the corruption of mind and body, that comes or may come
slowly, or fast, and to restore to Himself what He had bought.
THIS, this would
happen, cried Job in a wonder of faith in the midst of purifying and trying
fires of a burning which yet did not destroy his soul. His cry stays still upon
the listening air; his courage and conviction, his need and his realisation,
the vision and the hope, the meaning in the midst of anguish, the assurance
amidst what had seemed a sacking of his soul: this stands like an inspiring
bridge over the turmoiled ocean. He ministered to them, he ministers to us.
The book of Job
is very deep and delightful, but its major message is thus clear and inspiring.
Accordingly, you may be tried for a purpose not at all concerned with
rebuke, but rather with the demonstration through you of the love and
loveliness of God. DO YOU NOT WANT THIS, if you are a Christian, if it will
serve to awaken others ? Does not a practical example often walk into the heart
which even tanks cannot otherwise enter in some cases, the mind being set
against the word, but the spirit softened by sight! SUffering in the saints in
their anguished work of spreading the Gospel at cost, can preach to the heart
that gives interest to the ear to listen to the Gospel!
You cannot merely
imagine simplistic grounds of suffering as if the wonder of God were satisfied
by such insults - as Job's friends found to their demerit when God Himself
rebuked them.
¨
Yet there is this point which is
simple:
without sin there would be no suffering,
and its distribution in the toils and spoils of sin,
has a multitude of grounds.
¨
There
is this second point.
Since only those reborn of God are His children,
then NONE is innocent
for all have sinned;
and the varieties of sin's just impact, though numerous,
are governed by God,
who INSTRUCTS US (in Psalm 1) of those who do not turn to Him,
that they become as the chaff
which the wind blows away.
Detached living things, separated by severance from source,
tend to be that way. You CANNOT have it both ways. You live in your source or
are scatterable.
The wonder is that divine mercy is available, designed as adequate for any,
sufficient for all, applied to those who believing, receive Christ. It is small
wonder that Christ
descended into hell as the Apostles' Creed has it, that He predestined before
time,
as Ephesians states, that following the record of His resurrection,
we read that He preached to the 'spirits in prison'
(I Peter
3:19ff., cf. Jude 6, said
of those so confined ready for judgment,
and The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 4),
those lost en masse in the time of the flood.
As to predestination, we find that this,
the way in which His love is assured
to reach
all who in the realm of liberty in HIS sight, relate to His love
(Colossians 1:19ff., I Timothy 2:1ff., I Peter 3:9),
none is lost who MIGHT have been saved, for He chose in Christ before time
began (Ephesians 1:4),
and loses none of His own
(Romans 8:30ff.).
This CAN be because God is almighty and omniscient and the Creator of ALL
that
is not God
(John 1:3, Colossians 1:15);
and it in fact is so because God is love
(I John 4:7ff.),
and this is the desire of His heart.
(Cf. The Glow of Predestinative Power
Ch. 8,
Great Execrations, Great Enervations, Greater Grace Chs. 7 and
9.)
This is a fact of scripture which nothing
can subvert. It is written.
IF you do not
know God, your eyes shut in a wilful blindness, then of course like chaff, you
may be blown away by this or that event, for such is the nature of chaff, which
has no grain in it; and this is precisely what Psalm 1 tells us. IF you do know
God, then you also may know that God PROMISES not to try you beyond what you
are able to bear, and never willingly does He afflict man (I Corinthians 10:13,
Lamentations 3:33).
MAN AS A SOURCE OF AFFLICTIONS,
PUTTING ON THE MANTLE OF MERCILESSNESS
As to affliction,
look at Kosovo, at Iraq, at Rwanda, at Afghanistan, and wonder where is mercy in man in millions, and
where restraint; and what is the sin that makes men proud
v
of their race
(some being taught, according to report on
Rwanda, that one tribe was more 'evolved' than another, hence activating a
wide spectrum of spiritual follies in response); or
v
of their
qualities and ideas (cf.
The Aviary of
Idolatry, Appendix IV in Barbs, Arrows and Balms, and
Chapter 7 in Repent or Perish,
and
Ch.5, esp.
The Phantom Flotilla, Section 2).
Man is readily a very marvel of malevolence
when amiss, heightened by the follies of illusory "ideals", like
those of Mao, of Hitler, of Stalin, of Darwin (cf.
Aviary of Idolatry), ideals which do not
work and which in the case of Darwin, were so negative in their proud glory,
that it seems he had vast amounts of physical vomiting before production of his
simplistic irrationality, his vast rush beyond evidence into the void,
occurring in his Origin of Species. As to that, it might rather better
have been called, Origin
of Speciousness, if there were not more than enough other
vain efforts before it. This combined
brew of philosophic folly and wild misdemeanour of spirit seems able to
accomplish almost any ruin, any folly, any disregard of mercy, any height of
hate, any spree of spirit.
Again, the marvel
of God's restraint is not least this: His willingness still to rescue from the
dusty throng which now even goes so far as to imagine, its glory in its shame.
In millions of cases, that you can have the works of God without the worker, the
result without a sufficient cause, the brilliance from folly, and the whole
works from what is less intelligent than a moron!
Man suffers ? it is far less than his insufferable looking grandiosity of spirit
and nebulosity of mind, the worse in that it is still in fine working order,
apart from its abuse.
Moreover, here appears an apparent belief that man's thronging follies
have MADE THE HUMAN RACE WHAT IT IS, rather than ruined what it might have
been, ejecting its hope into an almost unrecognisable vomit of virtue into the
mud that masks the mind, and sinks the soul. In one sense, It is always so, when
the heights aspire to the depths, or find them.
The more
marvellous the construction, the more horrible the devastation when it goes
awry. Not the suffering but the enduring deliverance is the marvel; and while
the depths of God's wisdom are infinite as He directs history, the one simply
reality of His love, His delight in mercy, His ONE WAY home, His pre-payment on
the Cross for all who will ever come to Him, this is a contrast to the point.
WE do not have to direct history; WE DO HAVE TO FIND GOD, and the way is clear,
and the cost is His.
His sincere and
glorious appeal to come and His explicit exhibition of the nature of sin as it
showed what happened to HIM in His suffering vicariously for His own, these
remain the Rockies of the faith, sublime and indifferent to calumny.
Yet it is not for ever; the wait is long; it is not without ground. The
evangelisation of the world, the proclamation of the Gospel, nears its
appointed end.
There is thus an advocacy many times to be found in
suffering; for it may be exemplary, illustrative, didactic, through endurance making a display of
what needs to be understood, not by any means only by the recipient, but often
by a whole nation, or even epoch, a race, a civilisation or a family, a social
group or an individual, who may in some cases not even BE the one who
chiefly suffers. The case of Corrie ten Book has already been mentioned as both acute
and famous. There is often talk of the spirit of an Age, and this too can be
diverted from its often foolish preoccupations by the exposure of its
blinded eye-sockets, perhaps most painfully, to a dim light which can
awaken, or rather help to awaken the heart.
Nations can suffer as can those which have not subdued or stopped this
vastly merciless and grossly extravagant aggression and inhuman desires for
extinction of the nation. Time comes when multiplied iniquities reach to those
who indulge their whims and wills, and ignore the word of God (cf. Galloping
Events
Ch. 4), as well as justice. There are indeed times when one has to consider
whether to STAY in a given nation, if its iniquity and hypocrisy reaches, say,
that of Germany in Hitler's day! Not all can move, so the Lord must
be sought, who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think,
for a close intelligence of His will for each one of Us (Ephesians 3:17ff.,
Acts 13, 16).
Nations can indeed suffer as did Israel in precisely the
way foretold in Deuteronomy 29-32, Leviticus 26, that being a very special case
of a body chosen for a special purpose, as a testimony of truth to the world
(Isaiah 43:21). Such is the hostility of this world to the word of God, that
otherwise it would be starkly amazing that so many want not to regard Israel in
its deprived state, most of the promised Palestine (from the Balfour Declaration
of 1917 and the League of Nations provisions in the 1920s) being robbed from it,
and little left, with its citizens subjected to continual murder both from North
and South, and in each case from land restored for peace, to its adversaries, as
a gruesome ogre.
Why ? It is because after being threatened with
extinction for so long by so many of those surrounding it with multiplied
billions of oil money and vast tracts of land in many nations, after being
molested continually, after seeking peace repeatedly, after withdrawing only to
be further assaulted, it is taking action to reduce the endless murders in its
small compass.
Israel on
its return ? It has had its triumphs because
the Lord foretold that on return to its land, this would be so (Zechariah 12 cf. SMR
Ch. 9); and it has been a source of
international tension and heaviness, for precisely the same reason, as seen also
in Zech. 12, a 'burdensome stone' to those trying to move it!
Again, the
land is a
source of suffering for those who cannot cease from troubling it, despising,
trampling on it, using billions of oil money for its extirpation in ways
inhuman, and almost inconceivable, lured by sybaritic delights or passionate mischiefs, without the slightest evidential support, incomparable entirely with
the Bible in every category (More Marvels ...
Ch. 4, Divine Agenda
Ch. 6),
with the result that belligerence to the nation which has already suffered
divine affliction for its sins, is becoming a way into needless pain and
suffering for those who cannot, nay will not restrain their inveterate hatred
and ill-assorted lust for glory. God has already condemned such thrust and
assault not once, not twice! (Isaiah 51:21-23, Micah 7:16-20, Ezekiel 39:25-29).
Indeed, the principle of divine retribution for Israel-hater-baiters in
principle is clearly put in Jeremiah 51:49, 50:33ff.).
Thus Israel has
sinned in crucifying their own Christ, the Christ for all; and the assailants of
Israel sin in seeking to dispossess them of what God has appointed, even He who
has brought them back as promised (Ezekiel 36-37), to stay. The one has failed
to repent of their own internal sin, and the other refuses to relent in seeking
to exterminate Israel - now both Hezbollah and Hamas dedicated to such ludicrous
propositions, as if God were at their beck and call, even the God of the Bible,
even the Father of Jesus Christ.
Hence suffering
comes here, as an illustration, in three phases. Israel is still unrepentant,
and hence suffers AMIDST the predicted and now fulfilled wars of vast overthrow
of those numerically in the ascendancy, but militarily defeated by it. The
assailing nations - including those who want to cut more out of Israel, a
diplomatic war - suffer, as they must, for they are fighting the Lord. The
region suffers for those to whom it belongs are still alienated as a nation,
from their God, and those who want to sequester it, never satisfied, no, not
even when the UN offered them a State in 1947, with an international Jerusalem,
they know no end to their ambition.
Such are the orphans
of comfort; and so all suffer. What then does the Bible teach, and evidence
attest ?
It is not that God
needed evil to perform good, for that is the inheritance of the anti-biblical
thought, that assault on biblical revelation, bare of logic and contrary to
scientific method known as organic evolution (cf. That Magnficent
Rock
Ch. 1, SMR
Chs. 1-2, esp. pp. 140ff., Sparkling Life ...
Ch. 8); and it is not different with theistic evolution,
since in either case, these inventors would have God involved in the turmoils of
creation with evil ingredients, contrary to His nature, His word and His witness
(SMR pp.
179-190,
485ff.), as to the
evidence of the nature of creation as above. Being good, He does good. Being
complete, He has neither psychological nor mental nor emotional need or desire
for anything by which to fulfil Himself, any creation with any fault line to
satisfy a kinkish and hence delimited and determinate nature.
God is
good, and man has made a mess of that good thing, liberty.
Being
love, as the Bible declares and its system of salvation depicts and requires,
God deploys love (I John 4:7ff). Evil has no part in His premisses or
premises (Deuteronomy 32:1-4, Psalm 89, II Timothy 4:18, Luke 6:35, Matthew
12:22ff., cf. Sparkling Life ...
Ch. 8).
Judgment however has
a significant element. Truth requires it wherever mercy does not reach.
Mercifully, mercy and truth go before His face, while justice is the foundation
of His throne (Psalm 89). From man, HE needs nothing (cf. Psalm 50:8-12).
Man nevertheless often
loves to set himself in the pinnacle, like a crow on a crow's nest, and to
imagine great things concerning himself, who is born without consultation and
dies without agreement, who seeks to understand his construction and remains
perpetually amazed as he finds it successively more brilliant as he probes. He
wants to be in the action, even of his own creation, in monumental confusion of
thought, dreaming himself like many, into affluence, here not in mere money, but
in power: a foolish illusion. In the freedom which is no small part of his
entire nature, by which he continually imagines recklessly and purposively for
his self-aggrandisement, or freedom from guilt, he endues its opportunities with
pollutions unthinkable, seeking to blame something else for his excursions into
infamy.
On such alien
premises, the 'god' imagined would be constructing the world of life by the
horrors adapted to hell, not the creative goodness that relates to His being. In
such a world, Hitler and Stalin, Mao and other marvels of modern villainy would
be remorselessly doing just what massive slaughters and senseless diversions in
wild dreams, that they accomplished, sowing hatred, vengeance and ruin with tiny
wisdom and irrelevant thought, magnifications of evil energy and survival
syndromes. In these, they imagine that to exist is the point of existence, and
ignore the point of the purpose of life, from God, thus degrading and debasing,
as if one did not know if a car were for flying or submergence under water.
God however needs NO
EVIL, to create, SANCTIONS no evil in man, and rewards evil, advising us of the
fatal formula: Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind! in Hosea.
He will BY NO MEANS
acquit the guilty (Zephaniah), and an entire remedy of the ruinous follies of
imagining that one's little plan or people or segment of people or nation or
self is the centre of the universe and the criterion of its purpose, the
egotistic fantasy, of which organic evolution is merely a scientistic version
for 'whatever survives': this is guilt, gilt-edged guilt. It impugns the name of
the Creator, imports into it the baseness of fallen man in his spurious
exculpations, ignores His wisdom, breaches His commands and tilts the tiller to
mere force, where those brutish enough are quick to volunteer!
This, then, it comes
to be at the hand of those created by a wisdom and intelligence far beyond
their own, while they themselves a work beyond any intelligence they can
contemplate for themselves, while imagining feyly and fecklessly that laws
construct themselves from their absence, form fashions itself from its nothing
and nothing invents something. In fact the divine adequacy is the pre-condition
of anything; and it must be eternal, or we would never be (SMR
Chs. 1, 3, 10).
FOURTHLY,
we consider
THE
RATIONALE OF FREEDOM,
together with
the example, the peak
and the origin
of good and evil
THE LOVE OF
LIBERTY AND LIBERTY TO LOVE
What then is the
rationale of freedom ? It is necessary if anyone is to love. What is the
consequence of this facility ? One must be able to do otherwise, as to hate, or
reject. What is the result of this to others ? Possible injustice, violence and
villainy, theft, marring and viciousness. Is this necessary in order to create
them ? Of course not: that is an act of independent divine action in which man
has no more to do with it than does a baby in its construction in the womb. Is
evil then a necessary product of freedom ? No, it is not necessary, merely an
option. What then is the place of evil before the God of love and creation
without addition from the creatures, the God of stark, absolute creation such as
the evidence shows and the word of God attests (cf.
The gods of naturalism have no go!).
It is this. Where
freedom is founded, in diverse modes, phases and functions, such as attitude to
God and self, then the specifications of usage of the creation called man may be
violated. What happens then ? Then one finds that the results of misuse, as in
any other product, may be specified. What specifications exist ? It has always
been one: death. The gift is life, in this case human life, and the result is
death.
This result has
several dimensions, since man is multi-faceted. One is physical, the dissolution
of design (cf. Dig Deeper ... Chs.
1 and
2); one is spiritual, since man has spirit (cf. SMR pp.
348ff., Little
Things Ch. 5, It Bubbles... Ch. 9), so that this energy in creation in the
'image' of God, with certain self-disposition even in the derivative case of
man, has its own particular form of come-uppance. In life, it can become a
burden to itself, disenchanted, cynical, seedy, irascible, reckless, and flower
with evil flowering sessions into preoccupation with drink, drugs, sexuality,
power plays and the like, leading to increments of guilt and decrements to life
in folly, stinging sentencing from truth and an appearance before judgment.
The wages of sin
have always been death (Romans 5:1ff., 6:23, Genesis 3); and death is not in
itself a fitting thing for man, as life in the realms of thought and spirit to
which he is related is not rupturable by nature, but continual in its kind, play
and purport. Death is a severance that speaks of sentencing and that is the way
it has been as the Bible has shown, from the first.
What then ? God
invents man, God grants liberty, man misuses it and falls into a death trap of
His own oblivious and reckless contrivance, as if one were to use a razor meant
for shaving, for cutting one's throat. This is not wise, is not a necessary
attribute of freedom, and has a result in the field of evil, where misdirected
spirit, misused body, mis-deployed mind unite in a horrible travesty of man, as
wretched as the construction itself is beautiful. It is always so with what is
wonderful and vastly misused, in any field.
As the Bible depicts
the cause, so the cure.
In His magnificent
goodness and love, God has provided by mercy a satisfaction to justice which,
all men having fallen, meets the needs of any, and being broad enough for any,
gives a free elevator back to the right estate in spirit, and the destiny which
is not finally to be disrupted by death. Rather is it to be restored by
resurrection as in the case of Jesus Christ, who paid the price in His own
person, by bearing guilt in shame on the Cross vicariously.
SINCE man
in freedom CHOSE
to move to evil, it is there; since love has provided the escape, that is there
(cf. Hebrews 2:1-3). To imagine that God needs the folly of man, his stark abuse
of liberty, in order to give him liberty resembles imagining that a Boeing 737
has to crash in order to be built. It is not merely wholly contrary to the
Bible, which from the first (Genesis 3, Romans 5), focusses on man's misuse of
liberty, to divorce himself from good; it is contrary to the evidence of
creation as such, of design as such, of the stasis of kinds, of the
magnificently underangeable complexity, and integrality of nature of the
interwoven, subtle systems of creation, not only mutually dependent in arrays of
inter-related systems, but integral in their overall function as in any other
rational creation. Goodness radiates in creation, defilement ruins it, the curse
conditions it (cf. Romans 5:1-12, 8:17ff.), sin suels it on, judgment underlines
it, and mercy beckons out of it, while divine sacrifice provides the way, like
an elevator from the dungeon of anguish, lifting in one movement.
Meanwhile,
lounging in the voluntary prison, man finds derangement brings evil, both in the
abuse of the equipment, mental, spiritual, physical of the one offending, and
that of others, with ramifying horrors now becoming more obvious as
communication increases on earth, as does power to show the spirit of things by
magnifying means, of which the atomic bomb is not least.
God needs evil as
much as a young man needs a bullet in the midst of his automobile engine. It is
the last step in defamation to seek to apply to the God who made liberty and the
whole ability for that matter, to caricature Him and seek to immerse Him in
man's madness through folly, or to seek to inundate Him with our racial guilt,
derange Him with man's limited power, pathological distortions, psychological
burial sites, inept longings or self-serving wanderings. Man loves to make
models of God with his own limitations and distortions; but the confusion of
pathological products with the Author, eternal and complete, is mere logical
illiteracy.
The
world whirls on to its destiny, and even the blind begin to realise that it is
enough; but madness pursues the sinner with power, as an army pursuing its
victim. Even now false prophets, just as Christ decreed would be the case in
multiplying evils as the end of the Age approached (Matthew 24:24), are inciting
millions to unleash greed, ambition, violence and misusing the name of God, to
pervert their mentalities into acts of 'devotion' which make passion king, and
truth to lie fallen in the street (as in Isaiah 59, which proceeds to sketch the
coming end).
We have noted the
case of Israel, and this is one example, to which, being famous, it is well to
return.
Nations can suffer
as can those which have not subdued or stopped this vastly merciless and grossly
extravagant aggression and inhuman desires for extinction of the nation of
Israel. Nebuchadnezzar suffered from his vast vanity, and his abuse of Israel,
whom he sought to chew up, as a cow chews the cud (Jeremiah 51:34)l and now
modern nations with similar ambition suffer both for their inequity and
iniquity, in seeking to circumvent what in fact, God has decreed. It is as if
they wish to add
to His own disciplines on their sins, His concerns for His plan for Israel,
making a double assault. It hurts ? What else is new ? It is always ruinous to
assault heaven, imagining that because God is gracious and merciful, that He
capitulates to mere force! In fact, He even went to the work of TELLING the
world that it would hurt if it tried it, while predicting that it would
(Zechariah 12).
This is one,
admittedly major, but one example of the folly of man; and others buzz like a
disturbed hive of bees, with many others nearby joining in.
It is amazing indeed that the earth can continue at all
with such vast national, racial, religious, such inexorable hatreds and vile
ambitions. Mercy allays sufferings while sin shouts from the mountains,
resounding in the valleys, for more confrontation, guileful discord, reckless
discards both of logic and goodness. How CAN the Lord bear with us at all so
long ? Love is like that, but it is not without wisdom in the Lord, and He has
set a time, a method, a procedure, made a provision, and when all is shown, the
truth manifest anew, the Gospel complete in its mission, the end will come.
God is very merciful, yet will not clear the guilty, except in
Christ, so that the world inflames itself, like one running on blisters. It
refuses to be healed, to listen, to repent, but gallops like a horse at war,
neighing as it achieves the lance to the heart from an enemy rider. This vast
obsession with death which has consumed the world for the last 65 years, has
developed into plague proportions as predicted in Revelation 6, and Matthew 24.
It is a disingenuous dynamic, suicidal for the world which must eventually be
dissolved, when judgment is added to its other woes; and its name is the
opposite of that of life.
Let us not forget that the time comes when multiplied iniquities reach to the very
heavens for those who indulge their whims and wills, and ignore the word of God
(cf. Galloping Events
Ch. 4), as well as justice. It is already
stratospheric! False religions inflame, thoughts irrational benumb, devilish
results of a freedom, made from God’s image yet rejecting God, appal the earth.
Concentric circles of sin encircle the spheres of conduct and entity on the
earth, lightnings of interchange and interaction blast, incendiary motivations
energise, blindness casts its dark light on the path of crazed confidence: the
results ricochet and interact, and all are taught in the end, the cost of
enterprise misplaced, the inanity of life without salvation. The testimony of
truth thus echoes down the ages, applicable for ever, attestation invincible, as
godless disgrace shows its face, and its face its pocks. Cross a road without
acknowledging the traffic, and in time, your lot is cast. Ignore your Creator
and construction, its defilement and remedy, and multiply you fall!
There are indeed times
when one might have to consider whether to STAY in a
given nation, if its iniquity and hypocrisy reaches in drab follies to the
heights of the divine: say, that of Germany in
Hitler's day! Not all can move, so the Lord must be sought, who is able to do
exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think, for a close intelligence of
His will for each one of us who knows Him (Ephesians 3:17ff., Acts 13, 16,
Jeremiah 9:23-24, John 17:1-3, 14:21ff.).
Whether however it
be nation, or culture, or philosophic junta, or political ideologues in their
non-innocence of diversion and confusion, or those who follow their evil ways,
there is a vast provocation continually, widespread, colonising like a cancer to
the parts of the body politic of man, and aggressively seeking to infect all
with its burdens.
Many follow the follies of these ideas,
while many more seek just to live
and have enough, ignoring what life is for or about, and stand horrified when
the direction of their people or body is exposed as evil; or else they
capitulate in spirit, body or both to aggressive inanities, for the sake of
peace or protection; but none lies here! Thus suffering
results for their oblivion of vision and blindness of heart. In any ship, it is not nearly sufficient to seek to avoid obvious sins
and inequities, while you live and work. You HAVE to CONSIDER where it is GOING!
The Christian has
already found that: it is from the Creator, through the Redeemer to the haven in
heaven of the Holy God of Truth. For God's people, resting on His proven word
(cf.
SMR), HIS is the way, and for Him,
having to suffer is a reality which can be of
service to Him, as one labours for Him in His love, mercy and redemptive
passion, and hence to be endured with fortitude, and even conceived in joy.
Does a mother lament at the pains for her child ?
Thus the Christian
is privileged to suffer, if need be, as in His love God seeks for the full complement of the people of
the Lord, as many as may be found, precisely as in Matthew 22:10, where the
invitation of ALL is shown, and the neglect of MANY, to the 'wedding feast.
With what zeal do
the King's servants go into the highways and byways to find those who will come,
for the king's grace is vast and His mission is superb!
THE APOSTOLIC EXAMPLE - and the case of a King
Thus GLADLY will Paul
suffer his infirmities (II Corinthians 12:4-10), fill up what remains of the
suffering of Christ for His body's sake (Colossians 1), the church, both
drawing those who might come and advancing those who have already come to
Christ, by the selfless sacrificial endurance in the cause of truth and
righteousness. Suffering there becomes voluntary, lovingly endured, graciously
schematised, buoyantly declared (cf. Acts 4:23-31,
5:28,40-42, II Corinthians 6:3ff., I Corinthians 4:6-16).
It is this not least which can inspire and fire the heart, teach the mind and
stir the spirit of those who see.
There are types
of suffering also, and degrees. Thus Paul had to endure what appears to have
been a rather humiliating and certainly limiting eye problem (II Cor. 12). He
who had healed so many with miracles as if autumn leaves (Acts 19:11ff.), he
had himself to endure some affliction which evidently limited even his capacity
to write clearly, unaided, at the physical level - we see reference once to his
large letters, which recalls my own mother to me, who in her late
nineties had difficulty in small print and would write things very large, but
quite clearly.
Three times the
apostle called on the Lord to deliver him from this affliction evidently of the
eye (cf. Galatians 4:15,
II Corinthians 12:7-9), and the Lord gave an answer very assuredly: MY GRACE IS
SUFFICIENT FOR YOU. In his own weakness, the apostle cries, is Christ's
strength made perfect. When he is weak, then he is strong (II Corinthians 12:10). Doubtless the limiting in this field, for the
apostle who had such extraordinary facility in many others, was a reminder, and
a call and a cause of seeking more grace, which was given to him continually,
and which in itself was a constant divine blessing inducing blessedness.
It was a crown of
light, a touch of help, a call to co-operation and the avoidance of anything
heady or headstrong, or whatever the precise dimensions of the education which
it produces, were for him in the mind of the Almighty (cf. II Corinthians
12:7). Indeed, there is even a further help. "Who is weak, and I am not weak ? who is offended,
and I do not burn ?" (II
Corinthians 11:29). In his weakness is love operative, in empathetic solace to
the afflicted. By Christ's strength, it is effective! Through the salvation in
Christ, it gains meaning and establishment of the whole proceeds in pity and
care, love and patience.
As to Paul's
affliction noted, then, it certainly seems to have helped or sharpened or
called for more light in the field of being strong when weak, that is, of being
so reinforced by the Lord in His own personal presence in one's work that it is
in itself a blessedness of companionship, a field of fellowship and a thrust to
a creativity which is not at all barrenly selfish, self-centred, self-willed or
even too tempestuous.
Indeed, in Romans
5 Paul dwells, through the inspiration of the Spirit of God, on the beautiful
patience wrought amid tribulation when one is standing in the grace of God, a sort of
lustre and gleam like that of polished brass, burnished and drawing to the eye.
In this sort of trial and experience, says the apostle, to the eye of
faith, is hope; for the consistency and availability of the divine aid and
presence in the midst of what one suffers can so solace as to represent an
enduement, call forth a growth in spirit, a patience of
soul that we repeatedly find of great delight when it is witnessed in others!
and in the midst of this hope is the impression and awareness, the evidence of the
love of God poured out in our hearts (Romans 5:5).
This passage in
Romans 5 evidences still further dimensions of suffering, specifically here for
the child of God. It can temper, like seasoning in wood, like water for steel,
when there might instead have been a tampering from evil; it can endue with
qualities merely potential before it,; it can be an avenue for the expression
of a patient loveliness, which experiences the forbearing patience of God, like
exquisite workmanship in the pillars of the Parthenon, made so that although
not apparently precise in their shape, yet to the eye afar they were yet more
attractive.
In all this,
moreover, we can readily cite further examples. Was not King David taught in
his folly of the affair of Uriah and Bath-Sheba, by the later atrocious
outbreaks in his own household (murder because one of the
children had violated a half-sister, treachery and rebellion against his own
person, on the part of much loved son, Absolam) ? But what was he taught ?
¨
Perhaps it was the
significance of self-control
that he was taught; and perhaps,
¨
in view of his
'medicine' of death, which he would statedly have given to the imaginary
pitiless grasper
in the tale told by the prophet Nathan, to illustrate the folly of the king's
own action concerning Uriah,
¨
a
more exquisite pity! (II Samuel 12).
Again, these things, delightful in others, may also
be formative in oneself, for much good to many.
If we were all perfect, none need suffer; but
since we are not, there are many purposes not only TO us but THROUGH us which
may be of value and blessing. It is always necessary to realise that none is
innocent (Psalm 51:1-5); and for any, deliverance is a mercy unspeakable, of
grace illimitable; while the way in which the multiform plans of God bring out
of love into the horror of mankind, the truth of His Gospel as as wide, as
varied, as intense, as immense as His own wisdom.
For all this, let us never forget the Biblical
message: suffering may also be straightforwardly judicial, when the harsh sun
of 'reality', untempered rebuke and rebuttal, hits hard on the sun-dried clay
of simple unbelief. As noted in Psalm 1, the wicked are like chaff which the
wind drives away; and NOW is the time to seek the Lord, while He MAY be found
(Isaiah 55 - please read this with the eyes of the heart).
BUT GOD! - THE PEAK AND PINNACLE
OF THE
BEAUTY OF HOLINESS, SHOWN IN CHRIST
v
But wait! God
has not merely stood back and watched. He has not measured out potions like a
chemist. HE HAS COME and SUFFERED IN THE FORM AND FORMAT OF A MAN, in Christ
Jesus the Lord (I Peter 3:17-18,
Philippians 2).
v
He who inhabits
eternity as the Son of God and the eternal Word, has experienced and been
burnished as man in the human frame (Miah 5:1-3, Philippians 2, Hebrews 2:10-11),
enduring as well as being endued, was made an example, a vicarious sufferer, an
experient on behalf of violations, a purger of sin by adopting it to Himself
who yet in His own Person had no sin (I Peter 2:22).
THERE, it is innocence indeed, suffering more than all, vicariously,
unspeakably in the unsoiled purity of infinity in His soul, for those of His
creation who receive Him, who seeks for all, and in His omnipotence loses none
given to Him.
v
Yes, the
illustrative, the educative, the noble, the vicarious, the substitutionary
indeed (Galatians 3:1-13, Isaiah 53, II Corinthians
5:19-21), appear in the redeeming glorious act of God in
Christ. This is the acme and the unique wonder; for no man can redeem by
any means another (Psalm 49:7,8,15): for the life of all perishes by itself,
and sin like a crouching wolf, grabs and menaces, dealing death to all, EXCEPT
FOR CHRIST and what He has provided.
¨
Here in Him who made us (John 1:1-3) is the sum and summary
of suffering, in all facets, yet with this one difference,
CHRIST DID NOT ASK FOR SUCH A
RESULT, OR EARN IT,
AT
ALL THROUGH HIS OWN FAILINGS; FOR HE NEVER FAILED.
HE DID NOT ASK FOR IT, NOT EVEN IN ANY DEGREE OR MEASURE,
DEPTH OR DIMENSION, ALLOY OR PLACE.
IN NOTHING, did He deserve it. In ALL THINGS He was willing to suffer for it,
but not with it, for sin was never His; and hence the love of God was given
straight,
without alloy, in a peace provision so glorious and simple to receive,
so profound and difficult to attain, yet attained for any who come,
achieved by Christ Jesus the Lord.
¨
The
penal guilt for sin, the sin of others ? All of it however He took
from every place that would be found in the hearts of those who should ever
come to Him,
from any part in the world, place in history, race or space
(cf. Colossians 1:19-23 in its profound parameters).
For in His predestining power, His own have already been chosen in Him
BEFORE HISTORY BEGAN, AND BEFORE OUR SERIAL TIME
MADE ITS STACCATO START
IN THE DAYS AND THE EVENINGS OF EARTHLY CHRONOLOGY
(Ephesians 1:4, Hebrews 13:8, John 8:58, 14:1-14, Micah 5:1-3).
Suffering is therefore not the end of man or
for all men;
for the God who made man has endured suffering as man, that man might be
delivered from merely penal suffering, judicial blighting, however righteous in
itself
(Hebrews 1, 2, 9);
that through grace by faith many should come
(Ephesians 2:1-12),
and become, one by one, children of God
(John 1:12),
accepted in the beloved, engraced in His powers and performance,
adopted through Him, and given by Him visa to the Kingdom of Heaven
(Ephesians
1:5-14).
On
predestination, and the vast scale of the operations of God in the field of
salvation and suffering, before our time and in it, see
Predestination and Freewill, especially
Section
III, and in that,
the end.
Never however forget, that PRECISELY what Christ was on earth, so in His character
and heart He has always been, for GOD does NOT change; and in predestining, God
therefore had just that love in heart which was later shown in history; so that
none ever manages to find hell, however worthy of it, except DESPITE the love
of God (see The Kingdom of Heaven,
Ch.4,
John 15:21-23).
For all that,
such is the character of sin, many there be that go in that door, and few into
that straight and blessedly narrow way of God to heaven (Matthew 7:15ff.).
Blessed is such narrowness. It is rather like the narrow and precise
specifications of a car manufacturer (I like to imagine the care disposed on
a Jaguar, for example, but this may be merely a part of a boyish
admiration for the sleek lines and noble appearance), yet of some car
manufacturer: it is not least BECAUSE they are narrow that they are admirable
and the car is reliable.
If its specifications are broad and lax, the car is not for me! When
safety and truth are paramount, precise specifications are comforting, and indeed,
in the end, necessary. That HE can make the crooked straight is the other side
of freedom which through sin has created the vacuum which calls in suffering,
like a mouse plague, the little items scattering onto the scene, drawn by this
folly.
BUT GOD can
overturn (see Hosea 13:14, where HE HIMSELF will be death's destruction); and
it is the glory of God that not only these penalties of suffering, not only
such has He taken for His own, but that the glories of His presence, power and
direction are available past all these, in the freedom and restored liberties
of the children of God (Romans 8:15-16, II Corinthians 3:17-18, 4:16-5:6).
Within those hallowed walls which none can penetrate (John 10:9,27-28), He may
permit a measure of suffering to demonstrate, illustrate or inculcate the truth
of His word, of His love. Thus in Philippians 1:29ff., Paul gives this
understanding (bold added).
"Only let your conduct be worthy of the
gospel of Christ,
so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of your affairs,
that you stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the
faith of the gospel, and not in any way terrified by your adversaries,
which is
to them a proof of perdition,
but to you of salvation, and that from God.
"For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not
only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake, having the same
conflict which you saw in me and now hear is in me.
Again, He
may like a loving Father, use the prongs of suffering at times to help in our
correction, direction and enduement; but it is no more like chaff that we are.
Thus, in one way or another, we may be given scope for tutelary suffering,
either for our own soul's enlivening and advance, or even for the help of
others, the opportunity to suffer for His glory (Philippians 1:29ff.), as did
the apostles (and those who live in a godly fashion WILL suffer persecution,
declares Paul, in II Timothy 3:12. It is then that suffering from the
Shepherd is tutelary in truth itself.
As to the
Fatherly function of the Lord is providing chastening by suffering, we find
this explained in Hebrews 12:9-12.
Let us
quote a little of this:
“FURTHERMORE, WE HAVE HAD FATHERS OF OUR FLESH WHO CORRECTED US AND
WE GAVE THEM REVERENCE; SHALL W E NOT MUCH RATHER BE IN SUBJECTION TO THE
FATHER OF SPIRITS, AND LIVE ? ... WE, FOR OUR PROFIT, THAT WE MIGHT BE
PARTAKERS OF HIS HOLINESS... IT YIELDS THE PEACEABLE FRUIT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS TO
THOSE WHO ARE EXERCISED BY IT. THEREFORE LIFT UP THE HANDS WHICH HANG DOWN, AND
THE FEEBLE KNEES; AND MAKE STRAIGHT PATHS FOR YOUR FEET.”
You may
now care to turn to SMR p.
428.
For any who for any reason find this difficult,
it is presented below. At the end," so much that is seen", it reaches
the point at which this Chapter begins, above, namely
"And what is seen
?" That below begins a section
in Ch. 5 of SMR, available from
this link.
Chapter 5 of SMR is one of application of the demonstration of the
divine origin and
absolute truth of the Bible, which precedes, and is further verified in the Chapters
which follow.
ETERNITY. PERSONALITY AND ORIGINS ...
Good and Evil
Similarly,
there is no other answer to the question of the origin and operation of good
and evil, which has ever been able to stand. In the Bible, the basic answer
is stunning in its simplicity, and in increasing depth, every detail is
covered.
Let
us now consider for good and evil:
Part A: The Base
If
the whole thing, the world and so on, is a war between good (in some form or
format) and evil; then how is the system, thus set up and diverse and
divergent, to be accounted for ? We have already seen, it cannot be done; but
that from such an hypothesis, you would be forced back to the God who made the
system in which all this is. If evil is the beginning and the real, whence good
? If good, whence evil ?
But, if God is the beginning
(self-sufficient, and eternal and one), then from limited initial freedom - the
choice to receive and rely on God, or to deny and depart from His care -
something not at all evil in itself, you have possible sin.
Humanly that is the position; and divinely those are the conditions. If now
this possible sin becomes actual, why then the result will be certain
evil. This applies whether you think of "evil" as God's judgments on
sin; or as the consequences of conflict with the creator; or both. Indeed, evil
may be seen not only as judgment, but as the internal consequences of breaking
the conferred constitution made available to you by God. Consider doing the
same to your auto: then, both the mechanics, and the thing and ultimately the
law of the land, might attest your error. (See Romans 1:28 ff., Hosea 8:7, Proverbs 1:20-31 esp. 31. Otherwise
put: such a consequence is an implicit judgment, to which explicit judgments
may be added Hosea 8:7.)
How
then does sin arise ? It arises from the disposability of the will: and how is
this will so disposable ? It is so because that is how God made it. But why did
He so make it ? He did so because it seemed good to Him to have such freedom
and personality and everything that goes with it. I for
one am exceedingly glad that He did, and certainly you can
prove no evil in that, or any intellectual inconsistency.
If
man could not will evil, he could not be free, being programmed
or constrained or restrained to the point of puppetry; if by design, he can
do evil, then a failure to be so able would simply mean a fault
in the construction. On the other hand, a success, if he so wills (and we refer
to the Biblical test case, the first man, freedom towards God being defiled by
the sin which the race gained through the first failure, and its enduring
consequences)... means that he may will good, and he may will
evil: and then do it. Success, in the special case of deciding to will evil
does nothing to show an evil 'bent', merely a good design. What a
masterpiece is such a construction of personality!
Returning
now to the aspects of good and evil, we come to:
Part B: The Application
to Human Personality (cf. Ext.1)
A
related point arises. For centuries, philosophers and pedants have wrestled
with the fact that there is goodness that seems natural and goodness that seems
achieved, that guilt and blame are accorded, by one to another, with an
assurance that is not merely cultural, is often anti-cultural, cross-cultural
or other, but comes with a sort of vision or splendour.
What is the nature of
man, that this should be so? Why do we not simply note the data base for
each individual, ah yes, so much good, meritorious, so much not so good, type
A-2b, etc., neatly categorising it all, as with microbes for their
characteristics or'achievements' ?
There
is in man a longing which is correlative with a languishing;
there is an admiration which parallels blame, a joy which
relates intimately to shame, in its negative format. There is a readiness to
blame, a sort of assumed or assured set of criteria which, differ how
they will, seem to touch the same background or basis, as if they were all
radio sets, some not properly tuned, but all setting forth the noise with
prodigious assurance.
C.S.
Lewis has been at pains to discuss the similarities of so much of the purely
ethical side of human aspirations, expectations or notations, in very many
cases. He notes the tendency to blame for a certain sort of thing, over and
beyond specialised details which may differ or diverge, in his Mere Christianity,
the opening chapter.
Amusingly
and accordingly, we recall that the Communists blame and speak of shame with no
ground on their materialist system. There is no shame if you do not
think there is on such a system; only punishment. Yet they do not so act or
speak.
The
ideologically materialist Western phalanx, often deeply entrenched with their
superficial codes and self-contradictions, do no less. People will talk
of ethical systems, but they practise shame and blame on very readily
recognisable grounds with very considerable continuity and conformity. Why ?
It
is explained by nothing else but this: that this is not universal racial lunacy
(not well documented); but the result of what we are. We follow a trend
because of our design. That is the way we think, because that is our
construction. That is the way we blame; for we have, however dim and repressed,
an awareness of what ought to be. People fume or fret because so-and-so did this
or did not do that! and clearly he ought to have done so; and this
happens all but routinely in wholly uncontracted circumstances.
We
have a ground for our conduct; and this is that we have a ground
for our personalities, and that ground is such that we react and respond
with moral criteria inbuilt, even when brash theories do not agree with
the way we feel and act. Man does have the power to propose otherwise; but he
expresses it consistently neither in theory nor practice. Indeed godless man
lacks power to account (*6) for these
phenomena in ways which are verified in experience.
When
we look at the fact that we are a design (that is what the scripture says, and
we have proved it truth: here we merely verify what it says), then we see all
this answered with a simplicity, a thoroughness and a total rational
explanatory power which is quite overwhelming in its total success. Nothing
is left out, all is dealt with - and easily!
We
know that there is right and wrong, there is what is apt for our design
and not apt, good for our souls (however disease may erode that knowledge); we
are aware of the transcendent magnitude of God who created our designs and
talked the language of our cells into them (however this may be repressed and
rantingly argued against in desperate and often guilty fits of rebellion and
folly). Hence human souls, especially in this century of the ultimate in
irrational rationalisation, play-boy theories which neither explain nor satisfy
nor provide the goods of living together, this ultimate century for barbarism,
perhaps, in all of history: these souls suffer in torpidity, stupidity,
gullibility. (Cf. Romans 1:28
ff..)
Especially
is this so in religion, where rebellion makes the right answer wrong in
advance, by a necessity of the will! (It is like rebellious teenagers
who, whatever else, will not take 'home' for an answer.) Man thus blames and
admires, rejoices and regrets, accuses and excuses, is thrilled and appalled
because he is a design with responsibilities inbuilt, and to which he may
consciously address himself, or from within try to escape. This increases
his severity in judgments on others, because guilt writhes and a tortured or
abashed soul swaggers, often, in self defence, lashing out with a frustration
which exacerbates, and with a vigour derived from stored up mountains of known,
if repressed wrong within.
This
is one syndrome, common and often found in practice and revealed on conversion.
Because
man is a design with self- and world-consciousness, he reacts according
to design. Because his design incorporates a certain freedom of thought, he may
reason, often ludicrously, to seek to justify what he wants; and he is not
seldom disturbed because there is an innate, or partly occluded awareness that
he is both wrong in action and wrong in motive to justify
himself; and wrong in his reasons.1
The
fact is that he often indulges in arguments in this field so absurd, so
wholly absurd that for a reasonable being, we have to postulate some enormous,
intrinsic force within, defiling his equipment. The Bible states that
this is so, names it sin, and denotes it as a subject to both the wrath and the
judgment of God. (The aids and helps... of the specialist in fallen pathology,
and in applied temptation in particular, the devil, the Satan, the adversary,
'help' considerably with man's blindness, sometimes like gnats, stinging the
exposed flesh. They do nothing to remove his responsibility for accepting such
futile and fallacious offers of assistance, born from the first from doubt,
defiance or irrational assertiveness towards the loveliness of the Lord, and
the beauty of His provisions.)
Sin
then is individually subject to the wrath and judgment of God (Ephesians 2:3,
4:19 - see Chapter 7 for Scriptural treatment). Of
course, so it is. This is also felt to more or less degree, repressed to more
or less extent, and that creates a vortex of vice within, which often leads to
explosive and sometimes to expulsive results, amounting at times to ruthless
conduct, so well articulated by Shakespeare, of Macbeth.
Incidentally,
it is to be noted that many of the most famous plays of Shakespeare imply or
teach a moral universe, a moral law, a moral accountability, a divine
responsibility and a human perversity in ways expressed with singular aptitude.
That is one reason why they have been so amazingly popular, granted that
they are not particularly easy reading. We read of the universality and
so forth, with which Shakespeare has painted his pictures: meaning the ability
to touch on many things found in many cultures with much facility, because he
has principles, analyses and perceptions which seem so true to so much that is
seen.
ETERNITY
AND ORIGINS ...
PERSONAL APPLICATION
In
all matters of pain, suffering and evil, for the individual, several important
strands need a more personal application.
Thus
as in all matters, if you do not understand, it is far harder. As in all family
matters, if you are not in liaison and fellowship with the Head of it, is more
remote that you become from comprehension; you may even imagine things and
impute evil wrongly or even falsely.
Nothing like alienation is available, so fitted for making first-class
distortions, whether with a degree of imaginative realisation of sin, or not.
Thus
if there is not a complete clearing of the heart from all known sin, wrong done
to others, to oneself, to the Lord, if there is no repentance in all frankness
of evils done, intentionally or not, if there is no desire to restore things to
rights in any affair, then how does one imagine there will be a good
understanding with the Lord, since this is like poking out the tongue and
wiggling the fingers in the ears. Instead, consider Psalm 51 for the
comprehensive character of dealing earnestly with the guilt and godlessness of
sin. Repentance and the cleansing of the blood of Christ is needed (Romans 6, I
John 1:7ff.).
If
there IS such a cleansing however, even this is not all. That is the past. There
is the present.
Thus
there needs to a complete surrender to the Lord of one’s will, so that one is
indeed a servant of the Lord: for how else IS He one’s Lord! (Luke 14:27ff.).
Without this, you CANNOT be His disciple; and it is He who says so (cf. Luke
6:46). In weakness, you seek strength (I Corinthians 9:25-27). When one is a
family member in the Lord's house, then the things that are of alien nature
flee. It is not without a fight at times indeed! (Galatians 5), as the flesh
loves to invade, and carnality of heart and spirit delights to oppose: but the
result is sure (Galatians 5:24). Some seeing the pit are drawn into it; others
call on the Lord and being His, are delivered (I Timothy 1:8ff.), for those who
are His, are already predestined, and His seed remains in one as soon as one is
born again as the apostle John declares (I John 3:9). The profane may attack,
but it can never become Lord for the children of God, begotten not of the will
of the flesh or of blood, but of Him! (John 1:12, 5:24).
In
addition, and thirdly, there needs to be a consecration of one’s life to Him, to
His will, service and the use of His gifts to show His grace (Romans 12:1-2 and
ff.). In this case, one has to realise that one’s life is not one’s own, it is
bought with a price (I Corinthians 6:19-20). Christ is not a pastime or a neat
addition to a self-directed life. That is one of the basics of Christianity: HE
IS LORD. If He is an additive, and your FIRST desire is anything else, or even
if it is competitive, you cannot be His disciple. Even relatives cannot compete
(Luke 14:26). In comparison with dedication to Him, such kind of relationship –
as indeed to one’s OWN life – is more like hatred: love for Him is as
overpowering as that. As to Him, His Creator’s truth, justice and mercy are
perfect. It is a matter of trusting Him, and in Him.
The
flesh, carnal thoughts of any kind not based on God but desire, if these direct
one’s ways, how can the Lord do so. There is no room for two masters as Christ
made so clear in the sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7).
THEN, and only then, can one hope to understand some problem with sin, evil,
suffering or pain with any depth. Being in a friendly disposition towards God
enlightens the conscience, removes the guilt, massages the heart with godliness,
opens the eyes to the obvious, makes spiritual things available in perspective
(cf. Colossians 1:17ff.): even things such as this, that we are all sinners
deserving NOTHING (Romans 6:23). Grace is the arm of salvation and of operation
(Ephesians 2:1-8). The gift of eternal life is gratuitous, though blessedly
utterly assured (I John 5:11-12). The reception of gifts however is no key to
defiling one’s relationship with the King, but occasion for implementing His
gracious will: only discipline can result from the former.
As
soon as we think we deserve something, like an absolving pat on the back giving
us liberty JUST TO THIS OR THAT, in fulfilment perhaps of some large life
desire, then we want a movable God. But God does not move (Matthew 16:24-27).
In
fact, He gives back what we need, and all He desires, and when our desires
govern the ‘operation’, then the surgeon cannot act! It is as obvious as that.