The Bible Nerd

I can still remember almost every detail about that moment.  I can see the light coming in out of the corner of the window.   I can hear the tone change when the doctor is speaking to us.  Exactly how Katie is sitting is fixed in my mind.  It was the moment when the doctor told us that our first baby didn’t have a heartbeat.  Katie was 10 weeks pregnant, and something had gone horribly wrong.  That was 16 years ago, but sometimes it feels like it was yesterday.  We were in Bible school when it happened, right in the middle of 1 and 2 Samuel.  Now, I think about the odd timing of this happening as I was reading about David losing his first child with Bathsheba.  Katie dealt with her grief with many tears and sadness.  I wanted answers from God, and it pushed me to study the Bible and find an answer for why Christians suffer.

A strong motivation for that came from some things that people said to us when this occurred.  I know that they meant well, and just didn’t know what to say to help comfort us.  I do recall one in specific, “God must be trying to teach you something.”  Clearly, this made things worse rather than better.  Did God take our baby away because we needed to learn something?  really???  If you read the works of several open theists, you will often find some tragedy like this in their lives that drove them to their theology (that God isn’t in control and doesn’t know the future).  I can understand how that can happen, as another response you can get from Christians is, “I know God has a plan, He must have wanted that child with Him”.  I don’t think that made me feel any better either.  God is in control, we prayed, and the baby still died?  Isn’t God good and loving?  What is the point of praying?

The end of this story (not that it is really ended yet) is that we eventually had four children of our own, and I found some answers in the Bible.  For the next few posts, I will share what things I found, but we have to establish something first.  There is no formula.  We want a formula, or set answer, that explains in every situation and with every person, why something bad happened to us or those we love.  There is none.  The Bible shares with us reasons for suffering, but doesn’t give us a way to just apply some principles or guidelines and know which reason explains each incident.  Nothing can replace our personal relationship with God.  In each trial, we must humbly pray and ask God for explanations and understanding in our specific lives.  That answer may not always be thorough or comforting, and none of it will remove our need for faith in the goodness and love of God.

The main reasons for suffering that I found were: 1) the fall of man- our world is under a curse due to sin, and that curse brings suffering on this world.  We don’t get to choose whether or not we want to be born into a world with tornadoes, cancer, or death.  2) spiritual warfare- we will suffer in this world because we are doing the RIGHT thing.  Jesus made it clear in the Gospel of John 15:20, “Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”  3) discipline- for Christians, we have a loving Father who desires to see us transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.  Just like we discipline our own children to help them mature and be safe, so our heavenly Father disciplines us to help us remove sin from our lives.  4) consequences of others’ actions- we suffer in this world because it is full of sinful people.  We are not punished for the sins of others, but we unfortunately are harmed by their selfish choices.   In the next four posts, I will deal with each of these separately, and show Scriptures that explain them.

I want to start with the end in mind, and that means offering some advice when you are trying to comfort someone who is suffering.  Be quiet (I originally wrote “shut up” but could hear my wife’s voice in my head telling me “shut up” is too harsh.  Funny how wives help us not be jerks).  Just be there for them, listen to them, pray with them, and don’t try defend God or give some fancy theological answer.  Of course, the time will come when their immediate grief subsides, and they begin their own search through the Bible for answers.  Then we can humbly point them towards passages without attempting to give them “the one answer” why something bad happened to them.  Only God can do that, and He does it in His timing and in His way.  Until then, we can make dinners, pick up their kids at school, buy them a worship CD, and just be there for them.  It is what we will and do want when something like that happens with us.  God is always with us.