Chapter 5: The Challenge to Faith

Walking with God through Pain & Suffering

by Tim Keller

 

Chapter 5: The Challenge to Faith

 

Answers for the Heart

• The visceral argument against God happens at the heart level.
• We all have “reasons of the heart” or intuitions:
  • Explanations that give some light to the mind and…
  • Are comforting and satisfying to our souls
• “Reasons of the heart” affect and change attitudes and actions.
• Christianity offers three “reasons of the heart” that help us understand suffering.

 

• The first Christian teaching that offers “reasons for the heart” is Creation and Fall.
• Our intuition that death and suffering are wrong is correct – this was not the original created order. The original creation did not have death or suffering.
• Because humanity rejected God’s authority, everything about our world stopped working as it should. The original design of the world is broken.

 

• The original good pattern of the world God created is not completely eradicated, but it now falls far short of its original intent.
• The doctrine of the Fall gives us a remarkably nuanced understanding of suffering.
  • Hard work should lead to prosperity, but it doesn’t always work out that way. There is frustration and injustice.
  • Pain and suffering should be equal to the sin committed, but this is frequently not the case.

 

• The world is too deeply broken to divide into a neat pattern of good people having good lives and bad people having bad lives.
• We can never say that a particular instance of death or suffering is the direct result of a specific sin; however, we can say that death and suffering in general are the result of humanity’s sinfulness in general.
• So, given our record, we cannot protest that the human race deserves a better life than the one we have now.

 

• Acknowledging the Christian doctrines of Creation and Fall provides a “reason for the heart” that brings humility.
• The prevailing notion is that it is God’s job to provide a world for our happiness and enjoyment (practical Deism).
• But the problem is that real life does not match up with this expectation.
• The problem is not with God; the problem is with our starting assumption.
• If there really is an infinitely glorious God, why should the universe revolve around us rather than around him?

 

• When we consider how far we have fallen short of God’s commands and moral absolutes, we really should wonder why God allows as much happiness as he does.
• The doctrines of Creation and the Fall remove the self-pity that afflicts people with a deistic view of life; instead, they point us to true humility before God.
• These teachings strengthen the soul, preparing it to be unsurprised when life is hard.

 

The Renewal of the World

• The second Christian doctrine that speaks so well to our hearts is that of the final judgment and the renewal of the world.
• Most moderns hate the idea of God judging people, but if there is no Judgment Day, then there is no justice.
• If there is no justice, all the wrongs ever committed are left untreated.
• If there is no Judgment Day, then we either lose all hope and meaning, or we are forced to take justice into our own hands.

 

• The biblical doctrine of Judgment Day, far from being a gloomy idea, enables us to live with both hope and grace.
• We can work for justice now, knowing that whatever is left unjudged will be remedied at Judgment Day.
• It also allows us to be gracious and forgiving. If we know that ultimately all wrongs will be judged, then we can live at peace and leave vengeance to God.
• Belief in Judgment Day keeps us from being too passive or too violently aggressive in our pursuit of justice.

 

• An even greater hope for us is what lies beyond Judgment Day.
• The Christian doctrine of resurrection and the renewal of all things gives hope because we do not merely receive a consolation for the life we have lost but a restoration of it.
• We get a glorious, perfect life in a renewed material world.
• In God’s working all things together for our good, could it be that our suffering now will cause us to enjoy eternity more?

 

• How can we know light without darkness? How can we know courage without danger? Or grace and mercy without sin?
• “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18, NIV)
• Jonathan Edwards taught that because of our fall and redemption we will achieve a level of intimacy with God that could not have been received in any other way.

 

• What if, in the future, we came to see that just as Jesus could not have displayed such glory and love any other way except through suffering, we would not have been able to experience such transcendent glory, joy, and love any other way except by going through a world of suffering?

 

The Wounds of God

• The Christian doctrines of incarnation and atonement also serve as hopeful resources for our hearts.
• In a general sense, we deserve suffering because of the Fall. But in specific cases of suffering we cannot understand the mind of God or question God.
• There is more consolation, however, because in Christ, we have a God who is fully acquainted with our suffering, having endured it himself. We have a God who has suffered with us and for us.

 

• The Sovereign God himself has come down into this world and has experienced its darkness. And he did it not to justify himself but to justify
• He bore the suffering, death, and curse for sin that we have earned.
• He takes the punishment upon himself so that someday he can return and end all evil without having to condemn and punish us.
• The full incarnation of Christ means that his suffering was real. He is able to empathize with our weaknesses.

 

• Not only did he endure the physical horrors of pain and suffering; he also went beyond the worst human suffering and experienced cosmic rejection and a pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his knowledge and power exceeds ours.
• Jesus experienced Godforsakenness on the cross when he assumed our guilt.
• No other religion or philosophy even comes close to the Christian doctrines of incarnation and atonement. God voluntarily became weak and became a suffering servant to save unworthy sinners because he loved us.

 

• We do not know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, or why it is so random, but now at least we know what the reason is not. It cannot be that he does not love us. It cannot be that he does not care. He gave us Christ.
• If God actually gave us reasons for why he did everything he did, our finite minds would not even be able to handle it.
• We may not fully understand God’s reasons, but we can understand his love.

 

The Light in the Darkness

• Eventually, the lesser lights of our lives will go out (love, health, home, work). When that happens, we will need something more than what our own understanding, competence, and power can give us.
• Why did Jesus not come as a conquering king and seek to eliminate injustice at his first coming?
• It is because the evil and the darkness of this world comes to a great degree from within us.

 

• Christ had to save us spiritually before he could renew the world and establish true peace.
• If Christ had come to bring social, political, and economic renewal without dying as an atonement for our sins, then there would be no humans
• In his purge of evil and injustice, he would have to purge us. Instead, he came to redeem us, so that one day he might renew us and all of creation.

 

• Jesus did not come to earth the first time to bring justice but rather to bear it.
• Jesus died on the cross in our place, taking the punishment our sins deserve, so that someday he can return to earth and end evil without destroying us.
• Jesus’ death and resurrection created a people in the world who now have a unique ability to diminish the evil in their own hearts as well as a mandate to oppose the evil in their communities.

 

• Jesus is the light of the world.
• If you know you are in his love, and that nothing can snatch you out of his hand, and that he is taking you to God’s house and God’s future—then he can be a light for you in dark places when all other lights go out.
• His love for you now—and this infallible hope for the future—are indeed a light in the darkness, by which we can find our way.