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robGCJAX



Joined: 01 Jul 2012
Posts: 10
Location: St. Simons Island

PostPosted: Mon Sep 03, 2012 2:49 pm    Post subject: Suffering Reply with quote

I too have had some encounters with suffering. There was a a time not long ago when my inner spiritual life was vibrant, but my outer life had rapidly getting worse. The ex-wife won a second big judgment against me. I got demoted about three times at work. My relationship with my children had fallen apart. I had a minor persistent health problem that drained my energy. It felt like I was living in a deep hole and every time I tried to get out someone would push me back in. And this went on not for several months, but for many years.

Good Christians kept telling me what I was doing wrong. Word of Faith people said I wasn’t speaking over myself in faith. Holiness people said I was too sinful. Mainline people said I was taking all this way too seriously. Evangelicals told me I was not focused enough on living the Christian life. Health and Wealth people told me to give more. Legalistic Christians told me to follow their rules. Spiritual people told me to pray more and do more warfare.

But as I kept looking for the source of my problems, all evidence kept pointing to God. It is hard to come up with some religious gimmick that works at controlling God Himself. I did not get it. I was trying to seek Him and not the good life. I had prayed to be like Jesus, so why was God abusing me?
Some of my problems were definitely the result of my own foolishness. I did pray against evil and try to do the right things. I studied up on how God prunes and disciplines. But none of this halted the continuing onslaught of suffering. Graham Cooke, a cool prophetic teacher, has this great line. He says God and Satan have one thing in common. They are both trying to kill you. Satan is trying to kill the new you and God is trying to kill the old you.

Evelyn Underhill, who understood the mystic’s path better at first than she understood Christ, wrote of five steps to the mystical goal of union with God: Awakening, Purgation, Illumination, The Dark Night of the Soul, and Union.

I was so full of myself I thought I must have entered Level Four, The Dark Night of the Soul. I had tried to read St. John of the Cross’s famous work on the Dark Night, but I could not get through it. I was sure this was what was happening to me. The Dark Night is that in-between place where we long for God but cannot find him.
Really, I did not long for God in that way. I keep saying I was searching for Him for His own sake, but really I wasn’t. I, like most everyone else, was looking for a good life. My definition of the good life was not the standard American Dream, but still I was looking for my own version of happiness.

Finally I had to admit that I was not at Level Four but at Level Two, the step of Purgation. In this step God is trying to get you to die to yourself and all your schemes. I wish I could tell you that I whole-heartedly cooperated with God’s work of purgation once I figured out what was going on, but by now you know me well enough to guess that I opposed God as best I could. I wandered through this wilderness partly for my own good and partly because of my own rebellion.
Over time Purgation did give way to Illumination. But it was here that I stopped pursuing Evelyn’s steps. I barely survived Purgation; there was no way I was going to ask to enter into the Dark Night. I gave up on the notion of entering into Mystical Union with God.

Although I gave up on the Mystic Way, I still wanted to understand why God would let me languish in my misery. I began where I had on most other things, by asking and then reading what came as the result of the asking. I worked though three commentaries on the book of Job. The totality of my suffering did not even come close to any one of Job’s tragic losses. And it was somewhat embarrassing even to try to identify with his cosmic struggle, but his story was the classic place to begin to look into the matter.

Job was a hero. He lost everything; and, while he contended with God, he did so firmly believing in God’s continued goodness. I was not heroic. I got increasingly angry at God as the
years of futility rolled on. Job refused to curse God. I often struggled with an overwhelming desire to scream the vilest profane words at God.
Theodicy is a theological attempt to explain how God can be both good and also allow the innocent to suffer. The theodicy question was the question Job directed to God.

Job’s friends told him he was suffering because of his sin. Job said that he had not sinned, and he justified himself at God’s expense. Job then challenged God to explain why he was suffering although he was righteous. God finally showed up and asked Job four chapters’ worth of questions, none of which Job could answer.
The point was that not only did Job not understand why the innocent suffer, but he also did not understand many other things that God controlled. And if you don’t know what you don’t know, maybe it would be a good idea to trust the One who does know. Trust frees us to believe in God’s goodness even when our circumstances tell us otherwise. And if we can believe that God is good, then maybe He is working out something so wonderful we could not possibly imagine it.

Finally Job got the point:
Then Job answered the LORD and said,
“I know that You can do all things,
And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.
‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’
Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand,
Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”
‘Hear, now, and I will speak;
I will ask You, and You instruct me.’
“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear;
But now my eye sees You;
Therefore I retract,
And I repent in dust and ashes.” Job 42:1-6

Job never got his question answered, but he got to encounter God directly. And when he encountered God directly his question no longer needed an answer.

I did encounter God in my suffering. Suffering forces you to reach out to God continually. Suffering requires you to look at yourself and your life. Suffering motivates you to make costly changes. Suffering ends up being a friend. Suffering is something of a gift: a hard gift, but a gift nonetheless.

I wish I could say that at the end of this difficult stretch of years I was purged of all my sins, but I wasn’t. In fact I was even more aware of my deep-seated vileness. I was able to let go of some things, mostly because they had already been taken away. But slowly I also began to let go of not only the things but the desire for these things too. I was not a model to emulate like Job. I was more like Dostoevsky, hoping that maybe God could, if nothing else, use me as a bad example.

There is a difference between ordinary pain and redemptive suffering. For ordinary pain you visit the medicine cabinet, but redemptive pain is working to transform you. There are some lessons you learn only from suffering.
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