This was the conclusion to this morning's message based on the book of Job, If God Is Good And God Is Great, Then Why Does Life Hurt So Bad?

Back when I was in college, Vicky Fought, my English teacher passed out a story that she had found in a magazine.  I lost my copy of that story, but I’ve never forgotten the gist of it.  One of the goals of my ministry has been to remember the lesson of this story. I want to put some present day flesh and skin on those fifty year old bones and share that story with you today:

Behold a preacher ascended to his pulpit and looked out on his congregation.  Two-hundred eyes looked up at him, and in the eyes of the100 could be seen the eyes of the world. 

The preacher sipped his honey and tea, and his voice was smooth as his words emerged from between his brilliant white smile.

Let us Pray.

Amen, said the 100, but there was no joy in their “Amen.”

The preacher, drawing inspiration from his tea, said,

Lord, we thank you for our health our ability to walk, and dance, and enjoy the wonders of creation, eyes that see and ears that hear. . .

The preacher was so enamored with his eloquence that he didn’t notice as a blind man felt his way down the aisle, and a woman, hard of hearing, went out into a world of silence.  Crutches clicked and wheel chairs quietly rolled.  Those who ate their food painfully, and others who nightly fought their beds to win a few moments of sleep, together with a man who just that day had read the bad news from an MRI, stepped out into the darkness--eight in all.

Taking a sip of tea, the preacher went on with renewed sweetness in his voice,

Lord, thank You for family and friends, those who love us, bring joy to our lives, and on whom we count as the years pass . . .

Residents of foul-smelling nursing homes far from families long-forgotten, the abused, the battered, the put-down, the abandoned, the lonely man who eats in isolation at the corner restaurant, and the old woman who lives behind closed shades, one by one, never making eye contact with one another, each going his own way, a dozen in all left the little group.

But the preacher, impressed with the power of his prayer and warmed by his cup, gave no heed and plunged on . . .

Lord, we may not be as wealthy as Trump or Gates, but we thank you for the material blessing that you have poured out on us—houses and cars, clothing and food, things that make our lives enjoyable.

With holes in their shoes--or none at all--clutching their rags against the cold wind, stomachs bloated by hunger, and minds warped by need, 20 more stepped into a world where they had no home and no prospects.  Some in groups and others all alone, as they had for millions of nights, they shivered in the darkness, and both hoped for and dreaded the coming day.

But the preacher enraptured by the music of his voice continued . . .

We are grateful for virtuous lives, lives that point the way for others to follow, not like the masses out there . . .

Those that struggled with addictions of demonic proportions, a boy who sought out dark corners in his world so he could view that which was darker still and hated himself for it, a woman who secretly hated her father who came nightly to her room, those who struggled with thievery, prostitution, laziness, covetousness, lying and adultery, a quarter of a hundred in all, seemed to vanish through the cracks in the floor, and they were no more a part of that assembly.

Not because the people were leaving, for in his self-induced bliss, the preacher was unaware, but from sheer enjoyment of his own fluency, the preacher sped on . . .

How grateful we are, God, for the justice we receive—the fairness and equity of our world.  We live and work and enjoy the fruit of our labor . . .

But before the words were out, the downsized, and the outsourced, the disenfranchised, and the persecuted, the ghetto kid stuck with a public defender who advised pleading guilty to a crime he didn’t commit, the children whose parents drank up their welfare checks, the Christian from Iran, and the Jew from Iraq, quietly--they had learned to be silent--stepped out into the world awaiting the next blow fate will deal them.

Lord, You are the God of beauty, and we thank you for the loveliness you have bestowed on us, pleasant faces and forms agreeable to behold . . .

Hoping no one would notice, the cross-eyed, the bald, and gap-toothed, together with the fat girl who endures daily bullying, and the skinny guy who avoided the rest room at school, the misshapen both real and imagined, clinging to the shadows, hoping no one would see, melted into the darkness and its momentary relief.

The preacher looked out as he his prayer oozed toward its finish and saw that the room was empty—no eyes looked back, no heads were bowed.

He rushed to the door and flinging it open he surveyed the darkness.  He hurled his empty teacup into the night and cried in a voice no longer smoothed with honey,

Where have they gone Lord, Where are the 100?

And the voice of the Lord replied,

Because you have spoken of things that I did not promise, they have forsaken you.

When did I promise that in this world my children would be comfortable and well treated with kindness?  When did I say that the way I asked my children to walk would be an easy road?  Look at how they treated my Son.

And the preacher cried out,

Then, O Lord, what will you give us?

And the voice replied,

I will give you myself, and that is enough.

And the preacher called out into the darkness with a voice that was cracked and raw,

Oh, people, forgive me. I have promised you that which the Lord did not.  He has given us Himself, and if we have nothing more that is enough.

Slowly, eyes appeared from the darkness, as they passed the preacher they gave a light of their own—the flicker of hope.

Behold, the preacher ascended to his pulpit and looked out on his congregation.  Two-hundred eyes looked up at him, and in the eyes of the 100 could be seen the eyes of the world.

And in a voice plain and simple he said,

Let us pray.

And with joy the 100 said,

Amen!  

The Face of Evil:

(I posted this over at STTA, but it is one of those that kinda fits both places, so I am posting it here as well.  Maybe somebody else will find it that way.) What does the face of evil look like? We see it all around us, but most often we see it in silhouette, if you will.  In fact, often as we sort through the aftermath of grotesque wickedness, like the law-enforcement investigators in Boston, we see the horrendous aftermath, but we don't see the face that perpetrated the crime.    The fact is, evil wears different masks:  They are found all across the spectrum from the distortion of extreme righteousness, so called, as was the case with evil on that first Good Friday, all the way to the just out-and-out, unadulterated badness, that too often stalks our streets.     The Bible is clear that evil is here.  The Devil is not merely a personification; he is a real, spiritual person, Satan, Lucifer, the Dragon, and he gets around, and gets a lot done.  In the book of Job, he describes the territory he has marked with his foul scent:  "I've been 'roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.'"   (Job 1:7)  In the New Testament he is described as the "Prince of the Power of the Air."  (Ephesians 2:2)--no more localized than the air we breath.  He is not the evil opposite of God.  He lacks, for instance, the omni attributes: omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. He does get around, though, he is cunning and powerful, and he does have help.  His network is so widespread and effective that John says "The whole world lies in the power of the wicked one."  (1 John 5:19)    Not only are these spiritual entities busily spreading evil, you and I, the Bible makes clear, have evil in our core, and in the same way that the physical ecosystems of our world are degraded, the moral spiritual realm is polluted.  (Read Romans 8, and Ephesians 2:1-10 for both description and hope.  An evil tempter, tempting people with a propensity to sin, in a world that is skewed in an evil direction--there is a recipe for a mess.   Carnage, like that in Boston, gets our attention and causes us to cry out for answers:   "Who?" "Why?" "Where is God?" As to the last question, I assert that God is both here, with you, and in Boston.  The Bible teaches that He doesn't take coffee-breaks.  Look here, here, and especially here to see some things I have written after past tragedies. The face of evil is sometimes sanctimonious, at other times on fire with raw hatred.  It often is heavily colored with selfishness.  If you look around the eyes you can detect deception.  Ironically, and in a way that troubles me the mouth on the face of evil is often seen to be grinning.   I guess what troubles me most about thinking of the face of evil is I sometimes see it looking back at me from the mirror.   It's STTA.

Evil, A Demonstration of God's Love:

Last Sunday I presented the first message in a three part series on John 3:16.  I found my thoughts stimulated by J. Sidlow Baxter.  In the opening pages of his book he raises some objections to the concept of God’s love.  One of the problems he and others raise has to do with the horrendous evil in this world. 

The following few paragraphs, taken from my sermon notes, are some of my thoughts on the matter.

How can you talk about a God who loves when you look around at the mess this world is in?  Read the newspaper, or if you are more up to date, surf the web.  Either way you will find this world is a mess.
Disasters manmade and natural abound. 
In a 15 minute span the other day I personally—not via any public media--heard of two, one an utter display of depravity, the other a severe blow to a family.  I have no doubt that some research would have revealed thousands of instances of injustice, tragedy, and mayhem that took place in that quarter of an hour.  

God’s plan is not thwarted by this evil around us.  The fact of the matter is that God’s glory—and that is the grand purpose of creation—will ultimately be enhanced by God’s redeeming a group of people for His very own, from out of this suffering, perishing world, to live with Him in harmony  for all eternity.  (See  Romans 8:16-39)

The concept of God having people who would love Him and the possibility of evil in the world are not incompatible at all, in fact they are more related than you might think. 

Love, by its nature, involves a choice.  As any person who has tried and failed at love knows, you can’t make someone love you.   God did not create a race of automatons who are programed to act like they love Him--a world full of Stepford Christians.
Rather He created humans, who have the capacity to love.  The same abilities that enable us to love, also make possible sin and rebellion, and all the ugly results that brings. 

It will likely make your head hurt for a while as you try to wrap your mind around it, but there is evil in this world because God is a loving God.  God is so committed to the concept of love that He made the world so that people—the pinnacle of God’s creation in this world—could choose to love Him.  In making them with that ability to choose, it was necessary that we also have the ability to choose not to love, to not relate to God as we should.

In the end having the new heaven and the new earth populated with people who genuinely love Him will bring the greatest  glory to God and greatest good to all creation.

Hauling Water to a Thirsty, Unbelieving, Unconvinced World:

The view through my keyhole is narrow--bound as it is by my perception--but, magnified by the Internet, it is long.
Some friends of mine serve as Christ's witnesses in Phnom Penh. The tragic bridge collapse, of a few days ago, took place in their neighborhood. T. recently wrote:

We're writing with sad hearts. As you've probably seen or heard on the news, the
Water Festival ended with tragedy here in Phnom Penh last night. The latest
reports are claiming about 400 people died and 400 more were hospitalized after
a stampede on a bridge not too far from our apartment.
. . . To be honest, we are feeling sad and frustrated. . . . 400 people almost all of whom did not know Jesus suffocated or were crushed to death, 400 families lost
children, parents, siblings and just as many are in hospitals fighting for their
lives.
Because there was no way to really help besides praying for the families, I spent the day driving my motorbike with as many cases of water as I could carry to deliver to families waiting outside three of the major hospitals which received stampede victims. . . .
At the last hospital, the people in charge directed me to take the water to the place where families came to claim bodies. There were so many exhausted, hopeless faces. I felt incredibly inadequate showing up on a motorbike loaded down with a measly 10 cases of water in the face of such loss; but the workers there were kind and thanked me. . . .

The scripture comes to mind, "And whoever in the name of a disciple gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water to drink, truly I say to you, he shall not lose his reward." (Matthew 10:42, NASB95)
My friend sees his act as insignificant, and by the metric of the horrendous scale of the disaster, I have to agree, but apparently there is a Divine measurement that imputes far greater significance to a moped loaded with water delivered by a kind, though foreign face.
A few days after receiving the note above, I happened to see T. online. We chatted for a moment. He observed that most of the people affected by the tragedy believe in reincarnation. They are comforted that because these loved ones died in such a terrible manner while participating in a religious event, they would come back in a better state in the next life. He asked,
"How do we argue with that?"
I don't think my friend's question was primarily intellectual. He is well versed in apologetics, and knows how to share the Gospel. His query came from the gut more than from the head. How can we take away this shred of hope--false, though it may be--when lack of language, trust, and cultural awareness make it nearly impossible for me to share the real hope. Like his meager offering of water in the face of such overwhelming need, T. felt that what he had to offer was inadequate.
My reply to T.'s question, "How do we argue with that?" was brief.
"We don't."
I went on to offer some further explanation about how we trust God to penetrate hearts with the Good News. He and I know, however, that such penetration is usually frustratingly slow and sporadic. I wished for a jet plane, a couple of cups of coffee and time to listen and talk.

I share some further thoughts here not only, not even primarily, for my friends there on the front-line--I figure they already know more than me--but mostly for all of us who constantly struggle with questions related to tragic events.

• First, T., though your offering of water is literally a drop in an ocean, you were precisely and profoundly right to offer it.
  I don't have his book in front of me but Theologian and pastor, Millard Ericson, in his book, Christian Theology, makes the important distinction between a pastoral and a Theological answer to the problem of evil. People who are hurting are much more in need of a drink of water, offered from a kind hand, than they are a tightly reasoned Theodicy offered from a brilliant mind.
• While my answer was brief--partly due to the constraints of i-chatting & slow-typing--I still think it is right. Clearly there is at least (I say "at least knowing that many, to one degree or another, hold to and practice evidential-apologetics.) an element of truth in presuppositionalism. Our task is not so much to prove the validity of the Gospel as to proclaim it. We believe that "Life and reality make sense only on the basis of Christian presuppositions." (http://home.comcast.net/~webpages54/ap/presup.html) As Jesus said, "If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. (John 7:17, ESV) There is always an element of risk in faith, at least on the front end. No apologetic safety line can make the plunge into faith--especially when the starting point is a culture largely devoid of Christian influence--totally free of fear. Examples abound of those who received the Good News when it appeared to many outsiders that it was totally unreasonable for them to do so. Later they found it made perfect sense. Often those Saul/Paul-like conversions lead to significant penetration of the truth of God into a people-group. Keep hauling water, both in plastic bottles and the "Living" kind.
• We cannot get away from the reality that our security in the Lord is not primarily based on our complete understanding of His ways, but in our trust of Him. We need to refer to Deuteronomy 29:29 often.
• We are far better to offer no answer than to traffic in easy, pat, feel-good pseudo-truths. Following another disaster, Al Mohler shared some words worth reading in this regard, "God and the Tsunami."

To my friends in Cambodia, thanks. To the rest of us, Let's haul some water.