Tag Archive: WHY DO WE SUFFER?


WHEN YOU’RE DOWN AND TROUBLED

Filed under: APOLOGETICS, DEVOTION, FAITH, JESUS CHRIST, The Meaning of Life — Leave a comment
February 4, 2018

What do you do when you’re down and troubled? Do you cuddle the dog? Do you put the TV on? Do you pop a pill or light a joint?

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We’ve probably all had someone tell us when we’re down that there are people worse off than us. That’s supposed to cheer us up. But as a 20th century British comedian, Peter Cook, observed, that just makes us feel bad about the other people as well.

One thing that’s helped me in recent times of feeling down is facing up to the fact that I’m feeling down. And with it I’ve also found comfort in the fact, after all, that others are suffering. I’m not saying that it’s a good thing to suffer, and I’m not saying that we should wallow in our trouble, or that we should not cuddle the dog or do something to “shake out of it”. But there’s a very real sense in which knowing that humanity is born into trouble and suffering, and that just being alive exposes us all to the consequences of being in a fallen world of nature and people…is half of the cure. It’s normal. It’s not an aberration to be down and troubled: it’s natural. It’s part of who we are. It’s life. It’s reality. It’s what humans do.

The other half of the cure (the subject of the third part of my “dark side” series, still to come) is stated clearly in this New Testament quote from Jesus Christ:

I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world (John 16:33 NIV).

By facing up to the reality of our human plight, we can also find the answer to it, in Jesus Christ.

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UNDERSTANDING THE DARK SIDE OF GOD

Filed under: APOLOGETICS, Evolution/Creation, FAITH, The Meaning of Life — Leave a comment
January 28, 2018

We suffer as does all life on earth. Neo-Darwinists put this down to evolution, and if that’s true then suffering, trouble and problems are natural and normal and we have nothing to complain about-we can just attempt to minimize them.

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Under evolution the strong and the beautiful should survive and procreate and the rest of us should bow out. However, if there’s a person we call God who created us, he either allows suffering, or he is unable to stop it, or he causes at least some of it himself…or there’s another explanation we don’t consider.

If we just ignore God by saying that he’s unknowable, as many people do, we will never come to an understanding of suffering. In complete contrast, the God of the Bible claims to have inspired a Book explaining much of what we suffer and why: you can take it or leave it. From my experience the Bible is trustworthy and stands up to reason and testing. More than that, if God is God, we are not. He is far above us in intellect, power and standards. We can’t ignore God indefinitely. We can’t go off and form our own universe: we’re totally at his mercy, and so we need to somehow understand our plight and come to terms with it.

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Does God have a dark side? Does the Creator who made this beautiful, amazing world, along with our incredible bodies, brains and minds, hate his creation and wish us all harm? I’m here to argue that the opposite is true.

Biblically speaking, the events and conditions which may appear to us to be the result of a pernicious, unreliable, inattentive and unpredictable God can be for the most part explained. Unfortunately most of us fail to look, or fail to accept what our God has told us. Consequently we have, for example, some people-Christians-believing that everything that goes wrong in life is the action of the devil who has free reign, while God goes around attempting to fix things, but only for those who can work up enough faith. This is wrong and un-Biblical.

Our creator has standards which we as humans have consistently broken from the very start. If we were perfect, there would be no problems whatsoever. So what can we do? Its impossible to be perfect, and those who think they are are just fooling themselves. It’s important here to consider that God gave man free will. This explains the choice of whether or not to eat the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden. God gave us the dignity of making our own choices, and he wanted us to love him by choice, rather than by creating a world of robots which are programmed to act a certain way.

You may ask, as we all do from time to time, why God doesn’t at least step in and patch up the problems. I think that sometimes he does, and that’s where prayer comes in. However, God has apparently decided to let nature-which he created after all-to run its course. The ultimate cure to suffering; the resolution; the fix, will come, but it’s still future.  Many of my brothers and sisters in the faith will complain to me that Jesus has already implemented the fix. With respect, look around you, look at the news, look in the hospitals.

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Here then is a partial list of the Bible’s explanations for suffering and trouble in the world.

  • The CURSE.  A perfect God would not allow imperfect man to live life his own way in disobedience. The choices and actions of man have brought a curse on a world which was once perfect. The curse affects our bodies, our minds, and all of nature. Nature is running down. It’s the reason we get sick and die, because God will not allow rebellious mankind to steal his world and live forever in it. Try to imagine some of the worst characters you’ve heard of living forever.
  • GOD’S JUDGMENT. God is patient with us, but eventually sends judgment and trouble upon a rebellious nation, city or individual.
  • TESTING. We’re all tested throughout life to assess and reveal the condition of our hearts.
  • THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR ACTIONS. We hurt others and they hurt us. Admit it-we’ve all done it, and we all know people who have hurt us. The prisons are full of the evidence of this (as is Washington!).
  • THE CONSEQUENCES OF REJECTING GOD. By consistently rejecting him and his pattern for a happy healthy life, we’re not always protected by his providence or mercy. This applies to nations, cities and individuals. By going our own way persistently, we’re inviting trouble. It’s like driving a Ferrari over ploughed fields and rocks-eventually something is going to go wrong.
  • SATAN, a created angel, and the spirit beings who have sided with him are against us because they hate God and his creation.
  • DISCIPLINE. God disciplines those he loves in order to make us more like Him.
  • HUMBLING. Sometimes only suffering breaks our pride.
  • A WAKE UP CALL. Sometimes only suffering gets our attention. Our cleansing and refinement is more important than our comfort and ease.
  • MURPHY’S LAW/ Sod’s Law/ Fate/ Determinism/ Bad luck. (See my post on Murphy’s Law).

Here I’ve explained some of the reasons why we suffer and why God allows it, but I haven’t yet discussed the antidote. That will come next time. Thanks for reading.

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LUKE, REY, AND THE DARK SIDE OF GOD

Filed under: APOLOGETICS, FAITH, JESUS CHRIST, The Meaning of Life — Leave a comment
January 20, 2018

All ye who are weak and squeamish… all ye who are already teetering on the edge of that great chasm of despair…all ye who cannot bear to see truth in all its gory frightening detail…be warned! Herein lies your very own darkest nightmare! Enter ye not without strength, fortitude and courage…!

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Greetings, fellow travelers in time and space! I established in my last post the sense that even if God doesn’t have a “dark side” to his nature, it certainly seems like he has. Just look at the trouble and suffering we see all around us. Look at all the wars and commotion in the Bible. And why, in Heaven’s name, does God admit in Scripture to even causing some of the suffering directly? It’s enough to provide an excuse for millions to ignore God or pretend God doesn’t exist, and for many more to turn away from the faith or be weakened. Surely an all-powerful, all-loving God would stop us from suffering, wouldn’t he?

This human tendency to blame God for everything which isn’t according to our own plans and schemes is starkly conveyed in the Bible book of Job. For those who don’t know, Job was a good man, and also very prosperous. Satan accused God of spoiling Job. Surely if Job’s life was tougher, he reasoned, Job would turn against God. Job, claimed Satan, was “only in it for the money”. God then allowed Satan to give Job a very bad time in many tangible ways. Job seemed to be totally unaware of Satan’s involvement in his afflictions and even of Satan’s existence. He put the blame for his dire circumstances squarely on God, and felt like God had turned on him and viciously attacked him without a good reason.

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Here I must declare that I’m not one of those who thinks that anytime something goes wrong it’s the devil causing the problem. Neither does the devil make us do wrong. There are many reasons why we suffer: I’ve written about some of them in my series “Why Do We Suffer”, and I’m convinced that most of our problems are not direct attacks from the truly “dark side” of the spirit world.

What I’ve never personally heard in any preaching or teaching on the story of Job is this question, or any answer to it: Why did God draw Satan’s attention to Job in the first place? Couldn’t God have just kept Satan’s attention away from Job? Or then, once Satan’s sick and dastardly ire was aroused, couldn’t God have just told Satan exactly where he could go, i.e. the Lake of Fire? But instead, God called Satan’s attention to Job-virtually inviting him to pick on the poor guy, and then gave Satan the go-ahead to seriously afflict Job and his entire family, to see what Job’s reaction would be.

I hate to say this, but we could probably spot many similar situations in the Bible. And such questions apply to our own lives and times, don’t they? They’re the same questions, essentially, as I outlined in the first paragraph.

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But this is dark stuff indeed! This is where many or most Christian ministers fear to tread, as do most believers. This, dear reader, is one of those matters we all refuse to even consider for a moment, because it’s just too horrible. It’s like Luke having to face Darth Vader while being trained by Yoda, or Rey having to face the truth about her parents and herself while being trained by Luke. Yes, we’re back to the Star Wars analogy!

How can we even imagine that a God who we are told is both “Love” and “Light” would allow or even encourage the most evil creature in the universe to put any of us to the test! It seems almost like we as humans are the subject of some enormous game, or in a freak show, or that we’re entertainment for our cosmic spiritual masters!

Ah, but before you believers give up on me and dismiss me as a snake in the grass, and accuse me of pouring discouragement upon you, I will here clearly state that I’m certain that “God is Love” and that “God is Light”. There is an ultimate resolution-an ultimate and entirely good “balance” to all things. Here we are considering the great paradox-the problem and the question all humans at one time or another wrestle with: God loves his world and his creation, yet also allows the dark side of our existence to take its course.

There is a way through (but not around) the dark side of our universe, and there will be a time when Light and light alone will prevail. There is an answer to our problems, and no, God is not both light and darkness. However, I’m sorry to say that the resolution will not be discussed today! Come back for part three!

 

 

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DOES GOD HAVE A DARK SIDE?

Filed under: APOLOGETICS, DEVOTION, FAITH, JESUS CHRIST — Leave a comment
January 15, 2018

If there is a God, why do so many bad things happen? Is God really everything we want to think he is…or is he something altogether different? More specifically, is there a “dark side” to the God of the Bible?
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The concept of the “dark side” of George Lucas’ “Force” in Star Wars is compelling in many ways, and fits in with the beliefs of certain world religions. Is there a “dark side” in the real universe, responsible for all the suffering we experience in life?

Suffering is cited as the biggest reason people reject the idea of the existence of God, or at least, the idea of a caring, personal God. To my mind the earth and life on it is obviously designed, and not cobbled together by time plus chance plus countless trillions of fortuitous and impossible events and circumstances. But I can understand why people do turn away from faith in the face of suffering, because we humans sometimes suffer unspeakable things, and it’s difficult even for those of us who believe in his infinite power not to sometimes question his motives or his methods.

THE DARK SIDE OF GOD?

Anyone who reads a sizable portion of the Old Testament can’t fail to notice some very heavy-handed dealings by God with his people and those around them. As an example, consider the punishment of Korah, his family and all who rebelled against Moses with him:

“…the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all who belonged to Korah…and the earth closed over them…” (Numbers 17:31-35 ESV).

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In fact, the Old Testament is strewn with plain statements from God about himself which demonstrate a side of him that most of us choose to ignore:

“I form the light and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7 KJV).

By “create evil” I assume not that he’s a “Yin-Yang” type of God who is both good and evil, but that some of those terrible things we hear of in our world, and which we ourselves suffer, are without doubt sent by Him, or allowed within his plan.

Who hasn’t read the account of Job’s testing without a chill running down his back or without asking some very serious questions about God, and who hasn’t wondered why God put that tree…that baaad tree, in the perfect Garden, along with the serpent?

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Here are two more examples:

Then the LORD said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? (Exodus 4:11 ESV);

When ye be come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession, and I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession… (Leviticus 14:34 KJV).

It really doesn’t help our fear of God’s “darker” side to dismiss the Old Testament and only follow the New, because by dismissing the Old you are also bringing into question the entire New Testament. You can’t read any one of the gospels without finding numerous examples of Jesus Christ quoting the Old as though he believed it were totally true, and the letters are similarly packed with references to it. In fact, putting the Pharisees on the spot as he loved to do, Jesus said:

For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me (John 5:46 NASB).

The two disciples on the road to Emmaus were given a Bible study from what we call the Old Testament (Luke 24:13-35). Jesus was showing the validity and importance of Old Testament scripture, and how it gave the background to his own ministry and person. The genealogy and history of Jesus’ human side is recorded there, and then confirmed in Matthew’s gospel. The two testaments are inextricably linked. You can’t have one without the other.

In the New Testament there’s no escaping God’s “other” side, because statements throughout it apparently echo what we saw in the Old Testament:

…let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:28 KJV).

It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God… (Hebrews 10:31 NIV)

This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might (2 Thessalonians 1:6-9 NIV).

And here is one I often refer to in my own daily life:

For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it (Romans 8:20 NIV).

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We seem to be stuck with the fact that the God who sent plagues upon the Egyptians, and who ordered the cleansing of Canaanites from the land, and who said “I make peace and create evil”, is the same God who sent his son Jesus into the world for us to find life, forgiveness and hope. The same Bible that tells us about the love of God also tells us that many of the things which go wrong in our lives and in our world are directly from the hand of the one who created it, or they are allowed to occur by him. God does, then, have what appears to be a “dark side” to his nature.

However, as any Bible student will have been itching to inform me up to this point, John the apostle wrote that:

 

God is light; in him there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5 NIV).

No darkness at all! How can God be said in his own book to be all “light” and yet at the same time to cause or allow frustration, trouble, testing and suffering? We obviously have in the Scriptures what is either a serious contradiction, or a strange paradox which we need to come to terms with. So in part two of this post-in a few days-I’ll discuss why the fact that God’s “other”, darker side does not have to exclude the reality that God is all “Light”, and I’ll discuss God’s provision for our deliverance.

I’ve published an entire series on the causes of suffering as revealed in the Bible. While I don’t pretend to have all the answers, some of them are there for your consideration. I’m not trying to sell them to you in “my latest insightful book”-they’re free. Start here: https://nickyfisher.com/2017/05/31/why-do-we-suffer-part-1/

 

 

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THE END OF AN IRE

Filed under: APOLOGETICS, BIBLE PROPHECY, FAITH, JESUS CHRIST, Politics, Uncategorized — Leave a comment
November 5, 2017

No, dear reader, I haven’t mis-spelled a word in my title, I’m just rather partial to puns…

393px-Gojira_1954_poster_3Do you ever wish you could read a book or watch a movie in which nothing goes wrong, where nobody gets hurt and there are no problems to solve? I’ve discussed with my sons the fact that works of fiction probably would never meet with much, if any success, without trouble at their center.

Without some sort of tension to resolve-injustice, war, loss, unfulfilled desires, threats or enemies-any movie, novel or drama would probably be rather hum-drum and not very interesting to the majority of people. Can you think of any work of fiction without at least one problem to put right? Even Christian stories center on family break-up, loss, persecution or aggressive debate.

It seems that while we all hate to suffer ourselves, we want to see others suffering, at a distance…but then perhaps to see the problem resolved at the end of the story. The hero must win the battle, or wreak revenge, or get his desired lover. If there isn’t a problem, we like to create one…don_quijote_and_sancho_panzaWe like to tell ourselves that we enjoy seeing suffering because it “reflects reality” and touches upon our own struggles. Even sci-fi and fantasy stories are really just dressed up hypothesized versions of real-life problems, although in these times some Hollywood-style stories attempt or hope to shape reality rather than mirror it.

History is a long succession of stories filled with tensions and resolutions, and in many cases there is no happy ending. So it is even in the Biblical narrative. Problems begin almost on the first page, when Adam and Eve fail a simple test. But wait a minute: why is there a test to pass or fail in the first place? Wasn’t it God himself who put that nasty tree in the garden? And wasn’t it God who seems to have turned his back while the Tempter came to persuade Eve to disobey? Behind it all, God had a grand plan-a scheme, the subject of the Bible: a narrative which is still in process of being acted out and fulfilled. I’ve written about this in my series “Why Do We Suffer?”Ary_Scheffer_-_The_Temptation_of_Christ_(1854)I was looking at a few facebook pages of people I used to know, and I was amazed to see even there that a common source of mirth and hilarity these days is ridicule of Donald Trump. Of course this isn’t news to any of us-it’s going on in many places. And the things they say about him are hateful, spiteful and most often completely false. They come from a media and an entertainment industry which has declared war on the world’s leader and his supporters.

So what do they want in Trump’s place? Who would they replace him with? I’m convinced they want more of the same. They want what President Obama was working hard to give them: a throwing off of the influence Christianity has had over the past two millennia, and a reversal of the confusion and separation of Babel. At Babel God acted to prevent the world of men from being unified. He did that because he knew that any such unity would be in opposition against him and against all that he created mankind for. And sure enough, the modern socialistic, one-world movement seeks to redefine marriage, spirituality, gender, love, and just about everything you can think of which relates to the original plan of God for mankind. Trump, imperfect though he is-as we all are-and his supporters, seeks to set back the clock on the perversion of God’s plan. The dissenters, the “jokers” and the haters all seek to continue the movement away from God, which was so enthusiastically facilitated and encouraged by our last president, his appointed judges and his devoted followers.800px-Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Tower_of_Babel_(Vienna)_-_Google_Art_Project_-_editedThe history of man has been likened to a tale of two cities: one the celestial city of God, and the other Babel, the city of man. It’s all actually one story only: history is His-story. I’ve written before about the “Beautiful City”, a place in which man will one day, he hopes, realize his Utopian dreams; where he can do whatever he wants without consequence or criticism, and from which God is banished forever. However, proponents of modern humanism and secularism do seem to like the idea of inviting into the free world one version of god and his followers, in the hope that this god will aid in the removal of the one they see as the great ogre-the Biblical God.

Why do the nations rage, and the people plot in vain? (Psalm 2:1 ESV).

Behind it all the devil works to take down free society so that the gospel of Jesus Christ can be strangled once and for all. Many people see this as a top priority in life. They just refuse to see the fact that the gospel cannot be controlled or suffocated, any more now than it ever has been; any more than it was at the beginning when Jesus Christ was crucified and his disciples scattered and persecuted throughout the world. Persecution, as horrible as it is, only serves to further the cause of the gospel.What-is-truth02All these people will accomplish is the loss of freedom. But freedom will not only be lost for those that they hate: it will be gone from them also, because the system they work to impose in God’s place is intentionally excluding the only source of freedom.

All the machinations of those who seek to destroy what the West has stood for, with all its failures and weaknesses, may succeed temporarily, and on a superficial level- the only level they’re willing or able to see and detect. But in fact they’re expending all their energies only upon that which God has already planned and foreseen. Man without God is like a convict digging an escape tunnel, only to find that the entire prison guard are waiting for him at the other end.

God’s grand story is still unfolding-we’re in the middle of it now. The last page of the story of rebellious man is not far away, and man himself is helping to write some of the detail. Our Creator will bring to completion the Resolution of all resolutions, when those who’ve sided with God’s only son Jesus Christ will experience the happiest ending of all. And the happiest ending of all will begin a never-ending succession of wonderful, amazing stories without tension, trouble, or problems.

There can be no other outcome for the world than God’s victory over man’s rebellion, because God is the creator and sustainer of all things. Not only this, but he, and his Son, are the beginning and the end of the grand story:

Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end (Revelation 22:12 The words of Jesus Christ-see verse 16)

 

 

 

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