You know the
routine by now. I'm going through a great book by Tim Keller called Walking
With God Through Pain and Suffering. Here's the latest from the book.
In Chapter
10 Keller makes an important point (I underlined it for emphasis). People
who have not suffered much are often shallow, unacquainted with both their
weaknesses and strengths, naïve about human nature and life, and almost always
fragile and unresilient. I say amen to that. Even in my own life, I have
seen the same attitude. I get humbled fast when I realize how shallow my faith
and general outlook on life is after dealing with my own problems.
Keller says
a one-size-fits-all prescription for handling suffering is bound to fail. As
introduction to that concept, he starts by covering four kinds of suffering
that the Bible speaks of. One kind of suffering is directly caused by our own
failures. Secondly, there is suffering caused by good and brave behavior (think
of Jeremiah). The first kind of suffering requires that you learn repentance.
The second kind of suffering will entail that you wrestle with the issues of
forgiveness. The temptation will be to become bitter and to hide your growing
hardness.
He moves on
to the third kind of suffering.It is grief and loss in the face of mortality,
decay, and death. When facing this, Christians must learn to direct their minds
and hearts to the various forms of comfort and hope that their faith offers
them (1 Thessalonians 4:13 and 2 Corinthians 16-18). Finally, there is the fourth type of pain. This
is mysterious, unlooked for, and the suffering that people most often call
senseless. It leaves the sufferer not so much filled with guilt or resentment
toward others or pure grief – but with anger toward life and God. When this
type of suffering comes, our journey is a long one. It requires a process of
honest prayer and crying, the hard work of deliberate trusting God, and a
re-ordering of our loves.
The author
then points out that suffering is not external alone. It also deals in the
internal recesses of our souls – isolation, implosion (self-absorbed),
condemnation (we think we are being punished), anger, temptation.
Every
affliction, then, according to Keller, is virtually unique. And it means that
every sufferer will need to find a somewhat different path through it. When it
comes to suffering, there are diversities of shape, temperaments, and pathways.
There are multiple truths that the Bible teaches about suffering, and these
different truths need to be applied in a different order depending on
circumstance, stage, and temperament. But there is also a diversity of
expression of those truths and ideas. He mentions a couple good verses– Psalm
119:71, 27:4. I really liked this part of his book because he is showing that
there is no one answer we can give or one type of discipline for us to follow
in tough circumstances.
OK, enough
for now. Plenty to think about here.