Keller again

I'm continuing my coverage of Tim Keller's book Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering. It's important we think about this topic before we are in the middle of a huge mess. It's too difficult to come up with a plan and a firm basis to deal with suffering while we are in the middle of it.

Keller starts Part Three by asking  how we can actually, practically face getting through the suffering that has come upon us. The Bible often talks about walking through affliction. This points to the idea of progress. We are not to lose our footing and just let the suffering have its way with us. But we are also not to think we can somehow avoid it or be completely impervious to it either. We are to meet and move through suffering without shock and surprise, without denial of our sorrow and weakness, without resentment or paralyzing fear, and also without acquiescence or capitulation, without surrender or despair. See Isaiah 43:2-3, 5. God does not say if you go through the fire but when you go. 1 Peter depicts suffering not just as fire but as a forge or furnace which can obliterate or improve. Suffering can destroy some things within us and can purify and strengthen other things – it depends on our response. We must recognize, depend on, speak with, and believe in God while in the fire. God will not always rescue us – the idea God will rescue us may seem confident, but it is filled with anxiety and insecurity. We are scared that maybe he won't answer the prayer for deliverance. Our greatest joy would be to honor God, not to use God to get what we want in life.

I really like what Keller says next, so I underlined it: Think of four things that we want. Do you want to know who you are, your strengths and weaknesses? Do you want to be a compassionate person who skillfully helps people who are hurting? Do you want to have such profound trust in God that you are fortified against the disappointments of life? Do you want simply to be wise about how life goes? None of these are readily achievable without suffering. OK, I'm not saying this statement is wonderful news. But it is realistic. No pain, no gain, as the saying goes.

We must walk with God to grow during suffering. The author says that means we must treat God as God and as really there. We must see with the eyes of our heart how Jesus plunged into the fire for us when he went to the cross. If you remember with grateful amazement that Jesus was thrown into the ultimate furnace for you, you can begin to sense him in your smaller furnaces with you. This means remembering the gospel. We need to say, "This is my furnace. I'm not being punished for my sins, because Jesus was thrown into the ultimate fire for me. And so if he went through the greatest fire steadfastly for me, I can go through the smaller furnace steadfastly for him. And I also know it means that if I trust in him, this furnace will only make me better."

Again, this is enough to think over. I'll stop here. More to come next time.

More from Keller

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.

Keller on pain and suffering

Another in a series on Walking With God by Tim Keller. I hope you have read enough to go get his book. But if not, I hope this will give you a brief idea of how Christians can face times of suffering.

In this section, Keller talks about how God uses suffering. He says, first, that suffering transforms our attitude toward ourselves. It humbles us and removes unrealistic self-regard and pride. It shows us how fragile we are. Suffering also leads us to examine ourselves and see weaknesses because it brings out the worst in us. Our weak faith, sharp tongues, laziness, insensitivity to people… will all become evident to us in hard times. Secondly, suffering will profoundly change our relationship to the good things in our lives. We will see that some things have become too important to us. Third, and most important of all, suffering can strengthen our relationship to God as nothing else can. In prosperity God whispers to us, but in adversity he shouts to us (echoes of C. S. Lewis). When times are good, how do you know if you love God or just love the things he is giving you or doing for you? It can drive us toward prayer. Finally, suffering is almost a prerequisite if we are going to be of much use to other people. It makes us more compassionate. Suffering creates wisdom in people. See 2 Corinthians 1:3-7. We need to see suffering as a gymnasium – we strip out of our clothes and see the real us.  We are put through exercises which stress various parts of our bodies; this will lead to increased strength. We should neither be Stoics who just grit our teeth and refuse to see that suffering is God's training, nor should we become faint by giving up, despairing and walking away from God.

He says we have to prepare our minds and hearts before suffering strikes so that we are not surprised by it. The foundational doctrines of the faith help us endure suffering – creation and fall, atonement, and resurrection. We need to know the Bible and have a strong prayer life. We need to do some theological reflection – bad things can happen to good people (Jesus Christ is a good example), the world is filled with disease/death/natural disasters because of sin, God is infinite in majesty and wisdom, so we expect not to understand all his ways.

We must also prepare our hearts for suffering. We must have a rich prayer life. It's one thing to know in our minds a lot about suffering. It is quite another to know how to apply them to our own heart, life, and experience in such a way that they produce wisdom, endurance, joy, self-knowledge, courage, and humility.

OK, enough for now. This is rich material, so take your time reflecting on it.

More on pain and suffering

Tim Keller is an amazing man. He communicates so effectively that I wanted to slow down and give you lots to think about from his book Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering. Here's more:

In Chapter 8 Keller states that, according to Christian theology, suffering is not meaningless – neither in general nor in particular instances. For God has purposed to defeat evil so exhaustively on the cross that all the ravages of evil will someday be undone and we, despite participating in it so deeply, will be saved. God is accomplishing this not in spite of suffering, agony, and loss but through it – it is through the suffering of God that the suffering of humankind will eventually be overcome and undone. The cross assures us that, whatever the unfathomable councils and purposes behind the course of history, they're motivated by love for us and absolute commitment to our joy and glory. Those are amazing things to consider.

He then tells something interesting about people. A psychologist says people need adversity, setbacks, and perhaps even trauma to reach the highest levels of strength, fulfillment, and personal development. Keller notes there are three values of suffering. For one thing, people who endure and get through suffering become more resilient. Romans 5:3-4 sums it up: suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Suffering also strengthens relationships. The third benefit is important too--suffering changes priorities and philosophies. People who invest much of their energy into the goals of personal achievement and happiness are the most vulnerable to the adverse circumstances of life.

Keller says the Bible explains the benefits of suffering and its purposes. For one thing, it helps us glorify God. This is a God beyond our comprehension. Glorifying God does not mean obeying him only because you have to. It means to obey him because you want to. To trust God when we do not understand him is to treat him as God and not as another human being. Trusting God in suffering also glorifies him to others. Patient endurance of suffering when onlookers know that the sufferers are Christians can reveal the power of God. Suffering glorifies God to the universe and eventually even achieves a glory for us.

He notes a second benefit of suffering that the Bible tells us about. It has to do with our glory. If we seek not our own benefit but God's glory, it will lead paradoxically to the development of our own glory, that is, of our character, humility, hope, love, joy, and peace. Suffering can lead to personal growth, training, and transformation. Suffering tends to make a person self-absorbed. If it is seen as mainly about you and your own growth, it will strangle you truly. Primarily we must look at suffering as a way to know God better. Then if we make God's glory primary, it will help us achieve our own glory as well. In the Western view, suffering is seen as an interruption of the freedom to live in a way to make us happiest. However, non-Western cultures believe suffering helps us apprehend new portions of reality. People who have been through depression become wiser and more realistic about life than those who have not. People who have never been depressed tend to overestimate the amount of control they have over their lives. Suffering will either leave you a much better person or a much worse one than you were before. Something to consider . . .

OK, that's enough to chew on for now. More in the next blog.

More Tim Keller--the role of pain and suffering in a Christian's life

I'm working my way through Tim Keller's book Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering. Here's the latest:

After discussing the first aspect of suffering as revealed in the Bible (that suffering is both just and unjust), Keller moves to the second point--the sovereignty and suffering of God. Christians believe God is completely in control of what happens in history, yet he allows humans to have freely chosen actions. God's plan works through our choices, not around or despite them. Suffering is not outside God's plan for part of it. Many texts in the Bible weave free will and divine sovereignty together. At the most practical level, we have the crucial assurance that even wickedness and tragedy, which we know is not part of God's original design, is nonetheless being woven into a wise plan.

In Chapter 7  Keller covers the other side of the sovereignty of God: the suffering of God himself. The main reason that Christians insist that God can be trusted in the midst of suffering is that God himself has first-hand experience of suffering. This goes back to many verses in the Old Testament. Of course, the gospels show Jesus experiencing the difficulties of normal human life. Because God is both sovereign and suffering, we know our suffering always has meaning even though we cannot see it. It is not just that he is sovereign and all-powerful. We should also trust him because he earned our trust on the cross. The book of Revelation promises more than judgment. It is accompanied by the coming of Jesus, the resurrection of the dead, and the renewal of heaven and earth. Without the suffering of Jesus, evil wins. It is only Jesus' suffering that makes it possible to end suffering – to judge and renew the world – without having to destroy us. So while Christianity never claims to be able to offer a full explanation of all God's reasons behind every instance of evil and suffering, it does have a final answer to it. With the new heaven and new earth in Revelation, Christianity holds out hope unlike any other religion or secular response. The secular view sees no future good of any kind, and other religions believe in an eternity or heaven that is a consolation for the losses and pain of this life and all the joys that might have been. But Christianity offers not merely consolation but a restoration – not just of the life we had but of the life we always wanted but never achieved.

Great book and good answers from Keller. More to follow in another blog.