Top 3 Concerns

Contributed the following article to the JAN '14 issue of VANAMUTHAM,

a Tamil Christian Monthly magazine published by Serve India Mission,

that attempts to connect the world (with its events and practical issues) to God's word.

My Friend,

   I wanted to share my views on three issues that I believe will be weighing heavily on the mind of any individual.  It is for you to accept my view or reject it, but I cannot withhold it from you for fear of either being rejected or mocked.  It has helped me handle three of the biggest problems in my life, and it is out of friendship and love that I want to share it with you.

   All of us have done things that we are not proud of -- Things that we did out of some compulsion that we felt in our body and mind; Things that we did hoping it would bring us happiness.  We might have lied to someone who trusted us, cheated our elders, grabbed what is rightfully someone else’s, hurt those who suddenly turned enemies, disobeyed our parents, disrespected our teachers, and humiliated someone who was not as wealthy or handsome (beautiful) or knowledgeable as we are.  All of us may not have done all of these things, but I am sure there is none who has not done any of these things. 

   Memories of some of these things haunt us.  Depending on the values we hold today, we try our best to erase memories of these or justify them.  Some of us justify these by looking at people around us and concluding that none is exempt from these and therefore to be human is to be imperfect.  Others among us justify these by attributing our past actions to impulses in the body which are determined by our Chromosomes, something that we are not responsible for.  To be sure, I have had a good share of these from all the years of my existence.

   Next, all of us want to rise above ourselves. We all want to be good people who will not lie, cheat, grab, hurt or disrespect.  We want to be good, kind and do good to others. But our dormant nature rears its ugly head, just when we think we have moved on.  When we stand in any queue, be it at the Post Office, at the Ticket Counter or at a Wedding Reception, the urge to edge out some and gain a few slots up just would not die down. When we are in a crowd, be it at a social party or a team meeting, the urge to stand up and be counted, even at the cost of putting down someone else, just would not go away. When we are moved in our hearts and would want to extend a helping hand, the thought of what it will cost us in time, money and effort just does not help our actions to match with our intentions.

   We are all struggling with these contradictions within us.  We want to do something beautiful but end up doing something else.  But we tell ourselves that we will improve.  We read self-help books and attend camps.

   We are told that we are intrinsically good; that it is what we have acquired over the years through our up-bringing and environment that is causing our actions to be incongruent with our true self; and that they can be shed by inward gazing to see our self in isolation from our actions.  But we have not become any better.

   Others have asked us to wake up the lion inside us.  But we feel ever smaller as we realize again and again that we just don’t measure up to our own expectations.

   Finally, given our past and our present struggles, we wonder what life is all about.  Is there any meaning in life?  Is it not all about finding happiness?  If happiness is what is paramount, does it really matter if we are kind or cruel?  Does it make any difference whether we are proud or humble?  Despite all our blemishes, if we can still be happy, is that not what we should pursue rather than be bogged by this discussion about good and evil?

   We are told that there is no over-arching meaning in life; that we are to give small meanings to our day-to-day activities and events that we come across; that if we can have small things line up our lives that bring us a smile, or a laughter or happiness, we can provide meaning to our life.

   Accordingly, we have crowded our lives with parties, celebrations, ceremonies and travels.  We have arranged trainings, competitions and performances for our children.  But the emptiness refuses to go away.

   If you have read thus far, it is likely you agree with me that you share the Top 3 concerns for life:

1. We all have done things we are not proud of.  2. We want to rise above ourselves.   3. We want to find what will bring meaning and purpose to life.  I will now want to share how I have got these concerns addressed in my life.

   When I have done things that I am not proud of, obviously they are things that are not right.  I find a moral law written in my conscience that is telling me what is right and what is wrong.  If I know they are not right, I deserve punishment.  My own conscience will judge me as a culprit, as someone who has trespassed.  If my own conscience judges me, God the maker of you and me, is greater than my conscience and He being just is sure to judge me.  I therefore deserve and await God’s judgment.  It is this burden of knowing I deserve punishment that is called GUILT.

   I cannot wish my Guilt away.  The fact that others are equally guilty or worse does not help me.  I still deserve God’s punishment, like all others.  Thankfully God understands and He has provided me a way.  He loved me so much that He came down to pay the penalty so I can be free.  I have chosen to trust Him and enjoy freedom. The alternative will be to refuse to acknowledge His kind act for me, and continue to grovel in guilt.

   When I have found that no self-help helps, obviously I need help from outside.   I find that no matter how hard I will, I just don’t have it in me to carry it out.  It is true that when I sow an action, I reap a habit, when I sow a habit, I reap a character and when I sow a character, I reap a destiny.  But the trouble is with the start.  If I am brutally honest with myself, sowing a thought is not necessarily helping me reap an action.  Despite the amount of good books I have read, the discourses I have listened to and the trainings I have attended, being good is something alien.  I am just too selfish.

   Here again, if I am not too proud to recognize my limitation, help from outside is available.  God Himself comes to live inside me.  He gives me a sensitive heart that easily recognizes His prompting. When I obey His prompting, He enables me to carry it out.  The power of Him that created the universe and all that we see around us with His word is available for me to resist the tug from my weak self. God living inside me transforms me by renewing my mind, and enables me to act as He would.

   Now that I have accepted God’s forgiveness and have Him living with me, fellowship with Him has become a reality.  I am no longer alone.  The all-knowing God is living in me.  He knows best and that is true with knowing what brings me happiness and fulfillment too.

   He made me for Himself.  He did not make me for myself, nor did I create myself.  I am therefore incapable of defining purpose.  My creator alone knows what He made me for.

   He does not give me a blue-print about my future.  He does not tell me what I will become in the next 5 or 10 years, and how I will get there.  He tells me what I should do every moment and in every situation.  He has laid out principles in His written word for me, by which I should direct my steps.  When it is His pleasure that becomes paramount to me, I can be sure that my life will be lived out beautifully and meaningfully.  Any time I turn back and look at how my years have been spent, I will see how wonderfully He has accomplished His purposes through me.

   Would you like to have Him, know His purpose, and enjoy His Enabling presence and power to make your life meaningful?

God's Active PROVIDENCE

Some feel that God after fashioning the world like a master clockmaker, has let it slowly unwind on its own. On the contrary, the Bible tells us that He continues to take care of all His creation as a Father cares for his little ones. Jesus himself said “If [that is how] God clothes the grass of the field which is here today and tomorrow is thrown in to the fire, will he not much more clothe you . . . So do not worry, saying ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow.” [Mat 6:30-34] When sending out the twelve disciples, Jesus gave them an assurance while also providing an eternal perspective. He assured them that nothing can happen outside the will of God. Jesus told them “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet none of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid, you are worth more than many sparrows.” [Mat 10:29-31] We have record of several glorious promises in the Old Testament. “Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”[Isa 46:4] “Whoever touches you touches the apple of his eye.” [Zec 2:8] “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” [Isa 49:15, 16] “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” [Isa 43:2]

We might wonder then, “How come we find so much suffering!” The Bible tells us that this is so because the devil is the ‘God of this age’ [2 Cor.4:4] and that “the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” [I John 5:19] However, the devil cannot touch God’s children without His permission. When Pilate threatened Jesus saying, “Do you refuse to speak to me? Don’t you realize that I have power either to free you or crucify you", Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.” [John 19:10, 11] We find the same principle in the case of Job. “Does Job fear God for nothing”, Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has?” [Job 1:9] We find this in Peter’s case too. “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.” [Luke 22:31] We will do well to remember his parting comments during the Last Supper. “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” [John 16:33] All the promises and the assurances that we looked at earlier all stand good. The God of Love who cares for us is also powerful to keep us safe in His care. No evil or suffering can thwart the purposes of God. He has said, “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.” [Isa 46:10]

I have heard Dr.Ravi Zacharias speak of a miraculous escape of an Eastern Airlines plane that took off from Miami to a resort destination. Suddenly, while it was cruising at 35,000 feet above the sea level, one of its engines lost power. Soon, the 2nd engine too lost power and the plane began to plummet down to the sea. A frightened pilot spoke on the microphone, “Ditching is inevitable”. As the plane was about to hit the waters, just a few feet about the sea, one of the engine started and the pilot was able to lift the plane to safety. I am sure the passengers onboard the flight and the pilots thanked God for the wondrous escape. However, our problem is that not all accidents are averted! And we struggle for an answer.

In his book “Disappointment with God”, Yancey records an account by a disappointed Richard of a Sunday evening church service. After the usual testimonies and praise, one report in particular rankled him. Earlier that week, a plane carrying nine missionaries had crashed in the Alaskan outback, killing all aboard. The pastor solemnly related the details and then introduced a church member who had survived an unrelated plane crash the same week. When the church member finished describing his narrow escape, the congregation responded, “Praise the Lord!” The pastor prayed, “Lord, we thank you for bringing our brother to safety and for having your guardian angels watch over him. And please be with the families of those who died in Alaska.” That prayer triggered revulsion, something like nausea, in Richard. “You can’t have it both ways”, he thought. “If God gets credit for the survivor, he should also get blamed for the casualties.”

Saint Augustine writes of God’s providence, “You give us many things when we pray for them, and whatever good we received before we prayed, we have received from you. We have received it so that we might afterwards know that we received it from you. I was never a drunkard but I have known drunkards who were made sober by you. It was from you that they who never were drunkards should never be so, and it was from you that they who were drunkards should not be so any longer. And it was by you that both might know from whom they came”. It is the same God who rescues on certain occasions while sustaining us or carrying us through the suffering on other occasions.

We see this contrast at several places in the Bible. In Acts 12, we find that the King Herod had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. When he saw that this pleased the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. While God allowed James to die, yet he sent an angel to rescue Peter. [Ver 3-17] In I Kings 19:20, we find Elijah praying “The Israelites have . . . put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left.” In Jer 26:23, of the two prophets who prophesied against king Jehoiakim, Uriah is struck down with a sword, but Jeremiah finds support so that he is not handed over to the people to be put to death. We can be absolutely sure that nothing, not even death can touch us, until God’s purpose in our life is fulfilled.

God does not always intervene in the way we want, but He has all along been intervening in line with his purpose. People often want God to be predictable. C.S.Lewis wrote of Pantheism in his book Miracles, “An ‘impersonal God’ – well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads – better still. A formless life-force surging through us; a vast power which we can tap – best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the chord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the Hunter, King, Husband – that’s quite another matter . . . People who have been dabbling in Man’s search for God suddenly draw back. . . . It is a sort of rubicon. One goes across, or not. But if one does . . . One may be in for anything”. Even Christians often think of God as a Genie. They want to be able to tap into His power to serve their ends. They do not want to submit to His will as their King, as the Church’s groom. When we intend to 'use' God rather than 'be used' as an instrument to serve God’s purpose, we are set for disappointment. On the other hand, if we submit to His purpose and have a close relationship with Him, we can trust Him even when God’s intervention does not come along the lines we expect. We will then be able to see how he carries us and sustains us.

Let me sum it up with a quote. In the words of Dr.Ravi Zacharias: "Faith is confidence in the person of Jesus Christ and in his power, so that even when His power does not serve my end, my confidence is in Him because of who he is.”

God, Why do you let me suffer?

When we are hurt the first question that comes up in our mind is "Why Me?" It is easy to philosophize and explain away sorrow and suffering in this world until it hits us personally. C.S.Lewis once remarked "I can write another chapter on pain, if only my toothache will go away". Years after coming out with an excellent treatise on "The problem of Pain", when it struck him personally in the demise of his loved wife, he wrote "Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, if you turn to Him then with praise, you will be welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away."

When trouble comes our way, we are confused by the cacophony of voices that we hear around us.

• "Surely you must have done something that has displeased God. He is trying to tell you something."
• "Suffering is never God's will. Have you not read in the Bible that faith can move mountains? Name your promise, muster your faith and claim victory."
• "Praise God for everything that happens, good ones and bad ones."
• "You have been appointed to suffer for Christ because of your great strength and integrity. He is using you as an example to others. You should feel privileged not bitter."

And the resultant confusion just adds to our misery:

• What unconfessed sin do I have ?
• Why am I not able to muster enough faith to see deliverance ?
• How do I thank him for the suffering ? Is he a sadist who will hurt me and then desire to see me thank him for the hurt?
• Couldn't God choose someone more stronger than me to suffer for Him ?

Philip Yancey begins his book Where is GOD When it Hurts? with an appreciation for pain. Pain alerts us of dangers and keeps us from harm. When we have a ligament tear in our ankle, the pain alerts us of the problem and demands that we provide rest so it can heal. A hurt in our soul such as guilt helps us to locate the cause and undo the wrong. It is said that you appreciate shade only when you are out in the sun. Even so, to appreciate the benefit of pain, one needs to look at what absence of it does. For thousands of years it was believed that the loss of tissue in leprosy patients was caused by a certain fungus. Dr. Paul Brand through his pioneering research uncovered the fact that the ulcers were actually caused by abuse of body parts in the absence of pain. He therefore relishes pain as God’s gift. He points out how to even mop a floor without hurting or to dress nicely and walk normally, one needs the gift of pain. In Dr.Brand's words, "Pain is often seen as the great inhibitor, keeping us from happiness. But I see it as a giver of freedom." People generally tend to view pain as God's singular mistake in an otherwise wonderful creation. Why not alert of danger through some means that does not hurt? Simply alerting does not lead one to respond; the stimulus has to be unpleasant to demand action. The Bible tells us that “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope”. (Rom 5:3,4). The pain network in the human body is a brilliant design by the Creator to keep us from danger and to build our character.

But what about pain that rages out of control? In patients suffering from Cancer or Arthritis, even after pain has given away the underlying problem and treatment has commenced, pain refuses to die. What do we make of such pain? Yancey points out that just as pain is a symptom of a deeper problem, sorrow and suffering in this world are symptoms of a world that has gone awry. He points out that we now live on a groaning planet. Paul tells the Romans in Rom 8:22, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time". 24,000different types of bacteria have been identified and only a few of them cause illness. The earth's climatic system needs major disturbances such as the Tropical storms to bring rains. But why permit hurricanes? God looked at His creation and found it to be good, but today we see the consequences of man’s fall. C.S.Lewis said, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience but shouts in our pains. It is His Megaphone to rouse a dead world." Three centuries before him, John Donne used a different phrase to describe the same concept. "I need thy thunder, O my God; thy music will not serve thee." His father-in-law got him fired and brought his law career to a halt. He then turned to church and took order as an Anglican priest. A year later his wife Anne died of cancer and a few years later he himself contracted the bubonic plague. On his death bed, he wrote the book Devotions which contains the celebrated passage: “No man is an island . . . Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee”. Suffering and death serve as stark reminders of what everyone spends a lifetime trying to forget -- We will all die.

Thirdly, Yancey looks at what the Bible tells us about suffering and how Jesus himself responded to suffering while on this earth.

• Many Old Testament passages warn against painful consequences that follow specific actions. Proverbs is full of such advice: Laziness brings on deep sleep; shiftless man goes hungry (Prov 19:15). A person who speeds on rain-slick highways courts the danger of hydroplaning. A person who eats all fried-foods exposes his body to health hazards such as heart-attack and cancer.

• Some Old Testament passages show God causing human suffering as punishment for wrong behaviour. Amos, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Habakkuk, Hosea and Ezekiel all bristle with dire warnings of judgment but also hold out the hope that God will restrain himself if Israel turns to God. The people of Israel know why they were being punished; the prophets had warned them in excruciating detail. They do not sit around asking “Why?” They know very well why they are suffering. To be effective a punishment needs to be clearly tied to a behaviour. A parent who sneaks up at odd times and whacks the child with no explanation, will not produce an obedient child. Therefore, unless God distinctly reveals that we are being punished, it would do us good to look at other models in the Bible. [In the New Testament too, we see suffering as punishment -- as in Paul’s warning about participating in the communion without due regard (I Cor 11:29,30) and in the case of Ananias & Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11).]

• When we turn to Jesus, we find him extremely sensitive to suffering and setting about to remedy. He never spoke about “accepting your lot in life” or “taking the medicine God has given you”. In Luke 13, Jesus talks about Satan causing the disease of a woman bound for 18 years (v10-16). But early on in the same chapter, Jesus is asked about 2 “current events” that had evidently prompted much local discussion – the parallels to today’s accidents and gruesome crimes. One was an act of political oppression in which Roman soldiers slaughtered a religious minority, and the other a construction accident that killed 18 people. He does not answer the question most on their mind with a “Here’s why these tragedies occurred”. But he makes it clear that they did not occur as a result of specific wrong-doing. "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no!" He quickly adds, “But unless you repent, you too will all perish." He implies that we “bystanders of catastrophe” have as much to learn from the event as do the victims. It does not help to ask "Why?" He will not answer just as He did not explain the cause to Job. A tragedy should rather alert us to make ourselves ready in case we are the next victim of an accident or an act of terrorism.

We see that Pain is God’s grand design to protect us from harm. We also see that Pain that today ravages out of control, is a result of Adam’s fall in the Garden of Eden. However, the Lord who transforms and redeems pain has allowed it to serve as His Megaphone, His thunder to remind us that we are not to find comfort in temporal things but to set our sights on what is eternal. In the meantime, pain hurts. But he has given us a glorious hope that lightens the pain and makes it bearable.

• “Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who . . . will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” (Phil 3:20,21)

• “We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for . . . the redemption of our bodies.” (Rom 8:23)

• “The God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.” (I Per 5:10)

• “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (II Cor 4:17,18)

• “For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality." (I Cor 15:52,53)

We all seek deliverance from pain and suffering. Our good Lord gives all of us a sample of his miraculous healing at some point in our life, but it is just a sample. Anyone who has experienced God’s healing may still experience pain or suffering again at some later point in life. Even Lazarus and the widow’s son who were raised by Jesus had to die again. We will all experience perfect deliverance only in eternity. In Hebrews 11, we find two types of deliverance. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jeptha and the prophets all received miraculous deliverance. Others were tortured, jeered, flogged, chained, imprisoned, sawed, killed by sword. They did not receive what was promised in this world but will be made perfect together with us in the world to come. Cheer up. A glorious future awaits us.

We'll NOT be Consumed

There is a promise in the Bible that has absolutely blessed me right from my youth. In Isaiah 43:1,2, God tells his children, "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze." This verse subtly warns us that we may see torrents and infernos, but we are not to lose heart. Humans have a tendency to imagine the worst when the see the slightest indications of danger, but God tells us that we can be sure of the final outcome. We will not be consumed, annihilated, devoured, utterly defeated !

This promise was given to the Israelites about 700 years before Christ. It is likely that Daniel, Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego who were part of the royalty that was exiled from Judah to Babylon about a hundred years later, had read this promise while studying their scripture. When Daniel's 3 friends later came across the prospect of being thrown into an inferno, I am sure, this promise weighed heavily in their minds, as can be seen from their response to King Nebuchadnezzar: "If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it . . ." What a confidence on God's power! They continued ". . . he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." They seem to have had a small amount of uncertainty about what God will do . . will he save or will he not -- that is for his sovereignty to decide. But they had no doubt on whether he can. And knowing that He besides being an all-powerful God is also faithful to his children, let them experience perfect peace with no anxiety about their future. They serve as ideal role models for us in these turbulent times.

In the new testament, we find similar trust on God's promise in Paul. While writing to the Corinthians, we find Paul stating in his second letter: "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed." (II Cor 4:8,9) Here was a man who had gone through lot of suffering in life -- great endurance; troubles, hardships and distresses; beatings, imprisonments and riots; hard work, sleepless nights and hunger. His circumstances were such that should leave him dying, beaten, sorrowful, poor and having nothing. Yet he says he is living on, not killed, rejoicing, making many rich and possessing everything. (II Cor 6:3-10) How could he speak with such courage. Because he knew that the Lord who had given wonderful promises was living inside him.

• We too may face failures in life - failure in a critical exam, a broken relationship, loss of a loved one's life, etc., but we do not respond like those who have no hope. We do not handle a failure by commiting suicide or by resorting to addiction to forget the failure or by even becoming slothful and wallowing in self-pity. We are never crushed to the point of losing hope and giving up -- we have a glorious promise "you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze".
• When critical illness or a loss of job hits us, we may not know why they happen, but we will rest assured in the fact that the one who cares for us more than we ourselves do, is fully aware of what is happening to us and is sufficient to ensure that the worst does not hit us. We do not despair as the one who has promised to be with us has told us "Fear Not".
• People who we trusted may let us down when we expected them to defend our cause, but we never feel abandoned and alone. The one who said "I will be with you" came down to live among men as Christ. Is he not called Immanuel (God with Us), Jehovah Shammah (The Lord is present) and Ebenezer (The Lord who helps)? Today, through his Holy Spirit, he lives right inside of us even when we find ourselves in the eye of life's storm.
• We could fall in sin, lose to temptation again and again, but our Lord has promised that the Righteous shall rise up even if he falls seven times. We and not the Devil our adversary will have the last laugh.

Three things should comfort us. One: Our Lord knows our every situation. There is nothing that can come to us except with His knowledge, because we are His. Two: He loves us so much that he never lets go our hands and is always with us to help us tide over our situation. Three: The one who promised that we will never be swept away or set ablaze knows what he says and is able to keep his word. Therefore, Fear not . . Take heart . . and Cheer up!

Do I respond in Faith!

Philip Yancey in the second part of his book ‘Disappointment with God’ looks at Job to find how we too can have his faith in the face of disappointments. He acknowledges, “Studying someone like Job as an example of faith is a little like studying the history of civilization by examining only the wars.” However, he does that because there are others that promise victory alone and make no mention of the wars.

The book of Job portrays one man confronting misery that makes no sense. He lost 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 5000 oxen, 500 donkeys and numerous servants. He then lost all children – seven sons and three daughters – in one mighty gust of wind. Finally, his last consolation too failed – he lost his health as sores broke out from the sole of his fee to the top of his head. Yancey asks us to think of it as a “mystery play”, a “Whodunit” detective story. Before the play begins, we in the audience get a sneak preview. The plot and the main characters are described to us and every mystery is solved except one: How will the main character respond? He points out, that the book is not about suffering as most people think; it is primarily about faith in its starkest form. The book is not about ‘Where is God when it Hurts?’, the preview settles that issue; it is about ‘How does Job respond?’ Will he trust God or deny Him? Satan scoffs that God, unworthy of love in himself, only attracts people like Job because they have been ‘bribed’ to follow him. When God accepts the challenge to test Satan’s theory, calamities begin to rain down on unsuspecting Job.

God’s critics protest that Job paid one hell of a price to just make God feel good. Yancey points out that the wager, the bet, the wresting match was not between Job and God. Satan and God were the chief combatants – Job was just performing in a cosmic showdown before spectators in the unknown world. Many people get up, eat, drive their cars, work, make phone calls, tend to their children and go to bed without giving a single thought to the existence of an unseen world. Hence they find it absurd to believe that one human being, a tiny dot on a tiny planet, can make a difference in the history of the universe. Job’s friend Elihu too had the same thought: “If you sin, how does it affect God? . . If you are righteous what do you give him? Your wickedness affects only a man like yourself”. But according to the Bible, human history is a staging ground for the battle of the universe. The opening and closing chapters of Job prove that God was greatly affected by the response of one man and that cosmic issues were at stake.

The bible rustles with hints that something like The Wager is played out in other believers as well. Apostle Paul, borrowing an image from gladiators being lead into the Colosseum, pictured himself as on public display, “We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men”. He is emphatic, “The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own”. God who had created from nothing and ended up with an universe rich in splendor is now engaged in Re-Creation employing the very humans who had spoiled his work. Creation progressed through stages: stars, sky and sea, plants and animals and finally man. Recreation reverses the sequence, starting with man and culminating in the restoration of all creation. Yancey is convinced that The Wager is a stark reenactment of God’s original question in creation: Will man choose for or against me? Satan denied that human beings are truly free. Man has freedom to descend . . . but freedom to ascend, to believe in God for no reason at all? Often disappointments with God begin in Job-like situations. The death of a loved one, a tragic accident or loss of job may bring on the same questions that job asked. Why me? What does God have against me? We may beg God to change the circumstances – the ill health, the bank account, the run of bad luck. In our own trials, we will not have the insight that we got as readers of Job’s story. Will we trust God? Job affirms that our response to testing matters.

The book of Job does not answer the question ‘Why?’ When God himself arrives on the scene, one would have expected God to say, “Job, I’m truly sorry about what’s happened. You’ve endured many unfair trials on my behalf, and I’m proud of you. You don’t know what it means to me and to the universe”. God says nothing of this kind. He rather seems to guide Job through a course of appreciation for the created world. Perhaps God keeps us ignorant because enlightenment might not help us. No intellectual answer will solve suffering. Perhaps this is why God sent his own son as an active and personal response to human pain, to experience it and absorb it into himself. Perhaps God keeps us ignorant because we are incapable of comprehending the answer. A tiny creature on a tiny planet in a remote galaxy simply can not fathom the grand design of the Universe. In Yancey’s view, the book of Job substitutes the question ‘Why?’ with another question ‘To what end?’ Every act of faith by every one of the people of God is like the tolling of a bell, in the struggle to reverse all that is wrong with the universe.

At some point, everyone confronts the question –- Is God unfair? Yancey lists out several ways in which we respond.

• Some respond like Job’s wife who advised Job, “Curse God and die”. Why hold on to a sentimental belief about a loving God when so much in life conspires against it. Still they cannot avoid a tinge of outrage, as if they have been betrayed. They overlook the underlying issue of where their primal sense of fairness comes from.
• Others equally mindful of the world’s unfairness cannot bring themselves to deny God’s existence. They propose that perhaps God agrees that life is unfair but cannot do anything about it. Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of the best-seller ‘When Bad things happen to Good people’ portrayed God as compassionate but powerless, and millions of his readers found comfort in such a conclusion. If God is indeed less-than-powerful, why did he choose the worst possible situation (when he was being tried by Pilate) – when his power was most called into question – to insist on his omnipotence?
• Still others evade the problem of unfairness by looking to the future when an exacting justice will work itself out in the universe. The Hindu doctrine of Karma calculates that it may take a soul 6.8 million incarnations to realize perfect justice. At the end, a person will have experienced exactly the amount of pain and pleasure he deserves.
• Yet another approach is to flatly deny the problem and insist that the world is fair. Echoing Job’s friends, these people insist that the world does run according to fixed laws: good people will prosper and evil ones will fail.

Is God unfair? The cross settled that issue for ever. God is not, but surely life on earth is. No one is exempt from tragedy or disappointment – God himself was not exempt. Jesus offered no immunity, no way out of the unfairness, but rather a way through it to the other side. Just as Good Friday demolished the belief that this life is supposed to be fair, Easter Sunday followed with its startling clue to the riddle of the Universe. Out of the darkness, a bright light shone. Someday, God will restore all creation to its proper place under his reign. Until then, it is good to remember that we live out our days on Easter Saturday.

Was Job’s case exceptional? Yancey finds from reading through the Bible that Job stands as merely the most extreme example of what appears to be an universal law of faith. The kind of faith God values seems to develop best when everything fuzzes over, when God stays silent, when the fog rolls in. Yancey gives a new label “Survivors of the Fog” to Hebrews 11, a chapter most have labeled ‘The Faith Hall of Fame’. He draws distinction between two kinds of Faith: child-like Faith and the greater Fidelity. David exercised childlike faith when he strode out to meet Goliath, as did the Roman Centurion whom Jesus commended. Today, “faith missionaries” write stirring accounts of miracles – houseful of orphans being fed and mountains being moved - resulting from “seed faith”, a childlike trust. Childlike trust may not survive when the miracle does not come, when the urgent prayer gets no answer, when a dense grey mist obscures any sign of God’s concern. Such times call for something more – hang-on-at-any-cost faith that can be called fidelity. God did not exempt himself from the same demands of faith. Job sat on ashes, scratching his sores. Jesus hung on a cross, unable to reach his wounds. In a sense, God tied his own hands in The Wager over Job; in the most literal sense, he let his hands be tied the night of crucifixion. The three day pattern – tragedy, darkness, triumph – will someday be enlarged to a cosmic scale. We have little comprehension of what our faith means to God. According to the Bible, human beings serve as the principal foot soldiers in the warfare between unseen forces of good and evil, and faith is our primary weapon.

Why doesn’t GOD intervene? Living in a seen world of trees and buildings, we have difficulty in believing in another, unseen world existing alongside it. “We want proof”, we say. “How can we be certain that God even exists if he will not enter into our world?” We look for a blinding difference between the natural and supernatural worlds; a gulf separated by barbed wire. But in reality, we do not stop being ‘natural’ persons when we pray; we still get sleepy and lose concentration. Yancey quotes C. S. Lewis who talked of the obvious continuity between things which are admittedly natural and things which are claimed to be spiritual. He talked of the reappearance of all the same old elements which make up our natural life in what is professed to be our supernatural life. The modern world can reduce most natural phenomena and even most spiritual phenomena, to their component parts. Should it surprise us then to find the same universal principle operating in the realm of the spirit? From below we tend to think of miracle as an invasion, a breaking into the natural world with spectacular force, and we long for such signs. But from above, from God’s point of view, the real miracle is one of transposition: that human beings can become vessels filled with his Spirit; that ordinary human acts of charity and goodness can become nothing less than the incarnation of God on earth. Jesus Christ, said Paul, serves now as the head of the body. The risen Christ accomplishes his will through us, members of his body.

A final objection that one might have: Job got a personal appearance by God, but how does that help me who has not had a visitation from God, with my struggles? In a sense, our days on earth resemble Job’s before God came to Him in a whirlwind. We too live among clues and rumors, some of which argue against a powerful, loving God. We too must exercise faith. Paul told the Corinthians that in spite of incredible hardships, he did not ‘lose heart’. “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary [!] troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal”. Let us fix our eyes on eternity and respond to God in Faith.

Are you there, GOD !

Is God Hidden, Silent and Unfair? Philip Yancey gives voice to these questions that no one asks aloud, in his book Disappointment with God.

• “Is God hidden? Why doesn’t he simply show up sometime, visibly, and dumbfound the skeptics once and for all?”
• “Is God silent? If he is so concerned about our doing his will, why doesn’t he reveal that will more plainly?”
• “Is God unfair? Why doesn’t he consistently punish evil and reward good people? Why do awful things happen to people good and bad, with no discernible pattern?”

He looks at what many consider to be the golden period and yearn for as the panacea for disappointment – the Old Testament days when God was so visible, vocal and indulgent – to see if indeed that is where the solution lies. God showed up in Moses’ time in a pillar of cloud by day (and fire by night) and spoke to him face to face as he might with a friend. He had simplified matters of guidance for the Israelites in the wilderness. A glance at the cloud over the tabernacle was all that was needed to determine if they should move today or stay put. Most things were pre-decided and communicated to them in a set of rules, codified into 613 laws that covered a wide range of behavior. For the rest, God had set up Urim and Thummim. And he had set up a “fair” system based on rewards and punishment -- health and wealth in exchange for obedience, and sickness and misery if they were to disobey. We would think that all this would produce great results. Yet, as one scans through Joshua and Judges, one finds that within fifty years the Israelites had disintegrated into a state of utter anarchy.

Yancey then turns around to consider from the Bible, God’s point of view -- “What does it feel like to be God?” Genesis begins with God’s creation and his exuberance that everything he had made was very good. He designed man and woman -- creatures unlike all others, reflecting back God’s own likeness and with a moral capacity to rebel. God had taken a risk and when the first man and woman chose to rebel, intimacy between man and God was spoilt leading to disappointment in man’s relationship with God ever since. Following Adam, Cain rebelled and soon the entire human race rebelled so much that the Bible tells us, “The Lord was grieved that he had made man on earth, and his heart was filled with pain”. Each time he intervened like a parent of a rebellious child and punished. God’s intention to have a mature relationship with free human beings was met with child-like behavior.

God then set in motion a new plan for human history, starting with Abraham. He set before man alternating experiences of revelation and lonely waiting, as if to help man reach a new level of maturity. After dangling a bright dream before Abraham, he seemed to sit on his hands and watch as Abraham advanced towards tottery old age. Isaac married a barren woman and so did his son Jacob – Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel, all spending their best child-bearing years in despair. Joseph's valiant stabs at goodness - visiting his brothers in obedience to his father, resisting a sexual advance in Egypt and interpreting a dream to save a cell-mate's life - brought nothing but trouble. In Yancey’s words, “A gambler would say God stacked the odds against himself. A cynic would say God taunted the creatures he was supposed to love. The Bible simply uses the cryptic phrase “by faith” to describe what they went through.” Faith was what God seemed to value as the expression of man’s love for God.

During Israelites' wandering in the wilderness, just as God found it nearly impossible to live among sinful people, the Israelites too found it nearly impossible to live with a Holy God in their midst. The elaborate rituals laid down for the Israelites to approach God with zero margin for error, made them feel distant and cry out, “Let us not hear the voice of the Lord our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die”. Looking back at that period one might ask, “Who wouldn’t lose heart in harsh circumstances? If only there were happier times, when God seemed close and granted heart’s desires!” God granted exactly that in Solomon’s time. He ruled over a golden age within a long tormented history of the Hebrews. With everything working in his favor, Solomon at first seemed to gratefully follow God. But by the end of his reign he had taken Israel from a fledgling Kingdom dependent on God for bare survival to a self-sufficient political power that took God for granted once his presence centered in the temple.

When the Kings who followed Solomon continued to lead Israel away, God turned to the prophets. But after spectacular demonstrations through Elijah and Elisha for a brief while, he seemed to rein in his supernatural power, turning from spectacle to word. Isaiah, Hosea, Habakkuk, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, all had no stunning displays of God’s power but only words. After all, miracles had not had a lasting impact on his people’s faith; he decided to inscribe a permanent record of how He felt. He felt like a betrayed lover and poured out emotions pent up for centuries. It was He not Israel, that was truly the disappointed party. The books of the Prophets reveal God struggling for a language, any language that might break through to his people. To the prophets too, it seemed like God was getting farther and farther that they protested loudly with disappointment. However God did not consider his ‘words’ as an inferior form of proof. Heaven then went silent for four hundred years.

What else could God do? God then set to win his people’s love through suffering, what he could not win through power. Supernatural encounters had always caused fear , sometime sounding like thunder, sometimes stirring the air like a whirlwind and sometimes lighting up the scene like burning phosphorous. God decided to span the vast chasm of fear that distanced him from his creation. On Christmas day, God became a baby, giving up language, muscle coordination and the ability to eat solid food or control bladder. God took on a shape in the world, acquiring a face, a name and an address. He made possible an intimacy that had never existed before – a bridge between ordinary human beings and a perfect God. Because of him, we can come directly to God. But his very ordinary appearance did not let Israel accept him as their Messiah, as it did not match with their expectation of what God should look like.

The problem of unfairness just did not go away and only seemed to worsen. Jesus’ own life ended in the greatest unfairness of history: the best man who ever lived becoming yet another victim of a cruel world. Though Jesus fed five thousand, raised Lazarus from the dead and calmed the raging storm, people disappointed with God are more interested in the miracles that Jesus did not perform. Why does a God who can right any wrong, choose not to sometimes? Why heal one paralyzed man at Bethesda – but only one? His selective miracles far from solving every human disappointment serve as previews of what God would someday do for all creation. Jesus refused temptations from the devil – to pull out a miracle to satisfy his hunger after forty days of fasting, to pull out another to defy nature and guarantee his physical safety, and to take the shortcut to achieve his messianic goal of making the world his own. The spectacle of the Cross – the one event that took place in the open for all the world to see - reveals a God who would not prove himself through power but rather through love. He had come to become one of us, and live and die as one of us. He passionately loved the people he had made but had a terrible urge to destroy the Evil that enslave them. On the cross, God’s son absorbed the destructive force and transformed it into love.

During his life on earth, after the seventy he had sent out returned with reports of people being healed and devils being cast out, Jesus jubilantly exclaimed, “I see Satan fall like lightning from heaven!” During the last supper on the eve of his arrest he told the disciples with a finality, “I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me”. While his disciples anticipated a call to take arms and overthrow the Roman Empire, he asked them to wait for the Holy Spirit and ascended to heaven. He had indeed come to settle divine justice and to show us what God is like. But more than that, he came to establish a Church, a new dwelling place for the Spirit of God. The New Testament uses the phrase “body of Christ” to refer to this church. Humans on earth in whom God himself –the Holy Spirit – was living, extended the arms, legs and eyes of God on earth. Here, God took another risk, of letting us represent him badly and Christian have indeed represented him badly – Slavery, the Crusades, pogroms against Jews, colonialism, wars, Ku Klux clan. A prefect God now lives inside very imperfect human beings. According to Dorothy Sayers, after the Incarnation and the Cross, the Church is his third humiliation.

In the Old Testament days, God's voice was thunderingly loud. When the voice spoke from the trembling mountain at Sinai or when fire licked up the altar on Mount Carmel, no one could deny it. Yet, amazingly those who heard the voice and feared it soon learned to ignore it. Its very volume got in the way. For a few decades the Voice of God took on the volume and rural accent of a country Jew in Palestine. It did not cause people to flee and was soft enough to kill. After Jesus' ascent, the Voice of God speaks to our spirit, as close as breath and as gentle as a whisper. It is the most vulnerable voice of all and the easiest to ignore. The change from the visible presence of God in the wilderness to the invisible presence of the Holy Spirit involves a certain kind of loss. We lose the clear, sure proof that God exists. But he has elevated us from being a permanently stunted child to becoming a mature lover. For a baby, dependence is everything; someone else must meet its every need or the child will die. A lover, on the other hand, possesses complete freedom, yet chooses to give it away and become dependent. He desires not the clinging helpless love of a child who has no choice but the mature, freely given love of a lover. His Spirit in us will not remove all disappointment with God. His titles – Intercessor, helper, Counselor, Comforter, - imply there will be problems. However, his Spirit inside us reminds us that such disappointments are temporary, a prelude to an eternal life with God.

[Philip Yancey's Disappointment with God includes 2 books that treat the same subject from two different perspectives. In the first book he looks at the whole Bible from beginning to end, to find an answer to our disappointment. In the second book he looks for an answer from 'Job'. I would be naive to believe that I can summarize 152 pages of rich arguments put forth by the author in the first book, in a few pages here. I therefore greatly recommend that you read Philip Yancey's insightful book to glean more of the Answer. I just hope that your appetite has been sufficiently whetted by this summary.]

Balm to soothe our Pain

No one can escape pain in his lifetime. It therefore helps to understand how God views our pain and where he figures in our world of sorrow and pain. The Bible makes it amply clear that our creator God feels our pain, helps us bear the pain, redeems our pain and ultimately removes our pain.

The King on the Judgment throne tells the righteous on his right, "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me". When they fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, invited a stranger, clothed a naked, cared for a sick and visited a prisoner, they had done it all to Jesus. Every time a hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, stranger or prisoner was comforted, Jesus himself had been comforted. He also tells those on his left, "whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me". So whenever a hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, stranger or prisoner continued in his predicament without comfort, Jesus himself had been denied comfort. (Mat 25:34-45). How comforting to know that our God feels our pain -- whether it is that of hunger, thirst, loneliness, sickness or shame.

God reveals through prophet Isaiah, "In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old". (Isa 63:9) Irrespective of how the pain was caused - by devil's specific targetting as with Job, by accident when a nature's law is violated, or by rebellion against God as with the Israelites - our Lord does not leave us alone. He has promised in Isa 43:2, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze". How heartening to know that our Lord helps us in our pain - he will be right beside us in our hour of grief to carry us through.

He is a god who brings out streams in the desert. He is our eternal Provider who bestows on us a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair (Isa 61:3). The greatest example of how he redeems pain can be seen in Jesus. When Jesus hung on the cross, he was considered stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. He was in effect taking away our infirmities and carrying away our sorrows. We were brought peace from the punishment that was upon him. We were brought healing from his wounds. How encouraging to note that our Saviour redeems our pain - what our foes (including the devil) intend for harm, he intends for good.

The whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time (Rom 8:22). Sin has caused God's beautiful creation to stray from the trajectory that the creator had launched it on. The creator's finger is on the button like that of the Authority watching a Rocket's launch to determine if it is on erratic line of flight and needs to be commanded to self-destruct. A day is coming, when all the stars of the heavens will be dissolved and the sky rolled up like a scroll (Isa 34:4). He will then wipe every tear from all eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. How glorious when our Healer will remove our pain - he has already provided the way through the cross.

Therefore in times of pain, let us persevere. Peter tells us that "when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised (Heb 10:36)".