Suffering - I don't believe you

In the CU world, 'Mission's weeks' are kicking off all over the country.

Thousands of students will be hearing about Jesus Christ - particularly in lunchbars - What he has to offer, why he's the only way, whether he takes away freedom... and does he have a satisfactory response to suffering?

The latter is what I want to think about today.
Forgive me for it being rather a lazy post: there's a lot of quotation.

Don't book Johnny Cash for a lunchbar

In one of my favourite films, Walk the Line, Johnny Cash finds himself face to face with Sam Phillips, the rock 'n' roll producer, to audition for a label.

It is utterly cringeworthy to hear which song he goes for: He refers to it as gospel - it's trite, tacky, and (to its credit) true ("Yes I know that Jesus saved me" (mumbled echo: "saved mah soul") The very moment he forgave me ("gave me hope")). If you really want to hear what it sounds like, here's the link - feel free to listen as you read, but I beg of you not to put yourself through the whole thing.

Don't worry - Sam Phillips couldn't listen to it all either and stops him.

Cash is not pleased:

"Well, what's wrong with the way I sing it?"

"I don't believe you."

"You saying I don't believe in God!?"

"You know exactly what I'm telling you. We've already heard that song a hundred times...just like that, just like how you sang that...If you was hit by a truck and you were lying out in that gutter dying...and you had time to sing one song, one song people would remember before you're dirt... one song that would let God know what you felt about your time here on earth... one song that would sum you up... you telling me that's the song you'd sing? About your peace within and how it's real and how you're gonna shout it? 
Or would you sing something different? Something real, something you felt? Because I'm telling you right now... that's the kind of song people want to hear. That's the kind of song that truly saves people"

Tell the Truth

This is how I've felt so often while listening to talks on suffering - I think "I don't believe you."
It's not that I don't believe that the speaker believes in God. Nor even that I don't believe there's genuine philosophical and theological merit to his points.

But I don't believe that when his parents die, he'll comfort his sister with the words "Adam brought God's wrath onto himself and all his descendants" (true though it may be).

I don't believe that when his wife dies he will tearlessly commit her into God's hands - he knows she's saved - why on earth be sad?

Please do not misunderstand me - there is truth in these...and a place for them in evangelism. But in this form they do not speak truly into the situation. They do not replace the lies of a despairing heart with the joys that come from Truth.

We have allowed the world's philosophy to take the lead on this. Christians now reflect the stoicism that is the last port of pseudo-comfort for the humanist. We say that death does not matter. It's part of life. It's the natural cycle and the good news for the Christian is that we get more life afterwards - Life-death-eternal life.

But there's an imposter, right in the middle. Death does not belong in this world. And we give it such a kingly status - did ever a pretender last so long when all who encountered him wept at his existence? When everyone knew instinctively that he did not belong?
Yet still we bow the knee and admire the emperor's lovely new clothes:

A while back, I was speaking to a Christian friend who'd just lost a family member. After a long, tearful conversation, he got up and I will never forget what he said next. 

He shrugged and forced a smile. "Still, ashes to ashes, dust to dust and all that, eh?"

It was downright bizarre - he was cheering himself up with the curse that God had put upon humanity! Is that the voice of comfort!?: "Don't worry, God's cursed us"?

Circle of Life

This is as bizarre as the joy the impala seem to have while singing 'Circle of Life' in The Lion King - Dudes! You get EATEN!!

Because we, as a culture, having no other apparent way to deal with death, have developed an entirely pagan Stockholm syndrome toward death. We celebrate it - 'Look! look, how beautiful: life gives way to life!'
Aside from the somewhat unlikely scenario of a gazelle taking joy in the fact that, even if she does get mauled today, at least the grass she ate yesterday possibly took nutrients from a lion that died of old age; it is perverse to think there is aught but tragedy in a mother dying in childbirth (which is surely the ultimate image for this philosophy) or to expect to see the war widows dancing among the poppies in those fertilised fields?

Death is a wickedness, even in light of the resurrection. The resurrection sheds light on just how evil death really is.

Let us, just to finish, look at two occasions where Jesus came across death. The first is surely a joyful one - Jesus' friend has just died...but Jesus has the power to raise him, and is going to. So, in the full knowledge of the resuscitation of his beloved friend, and full confidence in the ultimate sting-lessness of death, how does he react? 

An angry cry:

"Jesus wept."

The good news

This second occasion will hopefully caveat some of the things you were slightly afraid that I might be saying.

I'm not saying that the gospel isn't quite as good news as we thought. Quite the contrary. I'm saying that life, death and everything in between serve as a constant reminder of the need for our awaited joy - the return of the King. 

That the gospel deals with the problem, it doesn't just say there isn't one.

Here it is, - the Cross - John Stott will take it from here:

“In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world.

But each time, after a while I have had to look away. And in imagination I have turned instead to the lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness.

That is the God for me! He laid aside His immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of His. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering: The Cross of Christ..."

I suppose all I'm saying is, remember, when you preach the gospel to hurting hearts, when you talk to your friends after a lunchbar - If you're answering the question of suffering with dry eyes... then you haven't answered the question.