Christian Philosophy: Everyone Has a Philosophy. It's The Lens Through Which They View The World and Make Decisions. (16 page)

What About Suffering?

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ertain Bible verses dealing with suffering have frequently been misinterpreted and are sometimes used to suggest that God uses suffering to teach us a lesson or to help us grow spiritually. I believe those interpretations are harmful and cause people to have a wrong understanding of God’s true nature. One of the frequently misinterpreted scriptures says,

My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

James 1:2-4

These verses have been used by many to imply that praying for patience means God will put trials and temptations in our way in order to teach us patience. We’ve all heard someone say, “Be careful what you pray for,” as if problems are actually the work of God intended to bring us to maturity. The church I grew up in talked about problems as “heavenly sandpaper” that rubbed off all of our rough edges and made us better people.

Let me make an obvious statement: If suffering and problems were what make you a better person, then the people who have suffered the most should be the holiest, most godly people on earth—but that isn’t the case. In fact, the opposite is usually true. The people who have suffered the most are often bitter, angry people whose lives are a mess. It simply is not an observable truth to say that suffering produces holiness.

On the other hand, it is true to say that when you respond to hardship by trusting in God, it brings to the surface things God has placed on the inside of you. As you depend on God’s strength, you become stronger in your faith—but the hardships aren’t what make you better. What makes you stronger is exercising your faith in God and trusting in Him. The strength comes through the improvement of your relationship with God as you seek Him, so hardship might cause you to seek God, but suffering doesn’t make you a better person.

The Vietnam War was a trying situation on my faith, and I came out of it much stronger than when I went in—but God didn’t organize the war to make me holy. God didn’t have people criticize me for my stance on Christianity or put me in a bunker that was wallpapered with pictures of nude women. The Lord didn’t do those things to make me stronger, but I did become stronger through those trials because I kept my faith and trust in God.

When I was drafted into the Army, they taught me how to fire a rifle, how to throw grenades, plant mines, and defend myself in hand-to-hand combat. The Army spent six months training me to fight in a war, and then they sent me to Vietnam. But training and information are not equal to experience. After I had been in Vietnam for a short period of time, I learned to be wary of new recruits who had just arrived in country because they were dangerous. Officers were particularly dangerous because they could arrive straight from school—with no combat experience—and start ordering people around.

I remember being on bunker guard one night with a brand new guy and a bunch of other soldiers who had been in Vietnam for a while. We were sitting around eating our Crations and the new guy said, “Can I throw a hand grenade? Can I fire my rifle?” On the fire support base I was at, we did those things all the time; it was a normal part of pulling bunker guard. We would just randomly fire outside the perimeter to deter the enemy from sneaking up on us. The new guy was all excited to blow some stuff up, so we told him to go ahead. He pulled the pin on a grenade, and as he did, the grenade came out of his hand and bounced down between my feet. The way we all scattered you’d have thought the grenade exploded, but it didn’t. Luckily, it was a new style of grenade with an extra safety on it. The point is that the new guy was dangerous because he had knowledge but lacked experience.

Becoming a good soldier involves putting into practice all of the things you learn through training, so you do become a better soldier after you have engaged in combat. You learn things through experience that you can’t learn from a book. But it would be insane to embrace the enemy when he attacks you, as if his purpose is to make you a better soldier. The enemy isn’t there to make you better—he’s there to kill you. Only by resisting the enemy and overcoming him will you live through the attack and become a better soldier.

Likewise, God doesn’t send problems into your life to make you a better person—the enemy tries to create problems in order to cause suffering. It would be crazy to embrace trials and tribulations as if they are good things. Afflictions and persecutions come to steal the Word of God out of your heart (Mark 4:17). They come to discourage you and to undermine your faith. Sickness comes to defeat you. Financial problems come to cause anxiety and to limit what you can do for the kingdom of God. To embrace those problems as if they are sent by God to make you a better person is crazy. But if, through faith, you continue to trust in God’s promises and resist the enemy, then you will overcome the challenges and prosper in spite of them.

Going through hardship and using your faith in God is going to make you a stronger Christian on the other side, but I am not encouraging anybody to accept hardship as a blessing from God. Hardship is not a blessing. It’s a curse from the enemy. You are only made stronger through hardship by resisting it and standing in faith.

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.

James 1:13-14

Scripture couldn’t be any clearer in saying that suffering and temptation are not from God, yet many religious traditions continue to blame God. The foundation of this teaching on Christian Philosophy is the apostle Paul’s warning for us not to be spoiled through philosophy (Colossians 2:8). This teaching that God sends hardships to make us better is a religious tradition that has spoiled untold numbers of Christians. They believe God is orchestrating the problems in their lives, and using suffering for some redemptive purpose. That attitude will make you passive because it takes away your desire to resist problems.

If it was God’s will for you to have cancer, why would you go to the doctor and try to get out of His will? If God wants you to be sick, why would you fight against Him by trying to get better? The more sincere your desire to please God, the more likely you are to give up in the face of hardship if you believe God is behind your problems. Believing God will send problems into our lives is a false teaching that has kept us from having a positive relationship with Him. It’s impossible to really trust someone and have a healthy relationship with them if you are constantly wondering whether they might hurt you—even if they are supposedly doing it for your own good.

What would you think of me if I were personally responsible for every baby born with a deformity or disability? How much would you like me if you knew that I was responsible for every death, disease, hardship, and tragedy in the world? Would you want to be my friend or spend any time with me? Who in their right mind would want to get close to me if having a relationship with me might mean that I would “bless” you with some incurable disease or kill the people you love most? I can guarantee you that if I were guilty of all the things people are blaming God for, society would lock me up and throw away the key.

Just as Satan convinced Adam and Eve that the Lord wasn’t all good, but that He had withheld His best from them, so religion (which is the devil’s creation) has put forth the lie that the Lord is responsible for all the bad things in our lives. That just isn’t so.

Many people have misunderstood the true nature of God, and they are proclaiming that nothing happens without God’s permission. Therefore, they say, He must be responsible for all of the suffering in our world. Then they try to defend their position by saying God is sending the evil for our own good. It’s a total misrepresentation of who God is and how He relates to us.

I know a number of people who are running from God because they think He is responsible for the evil in the world. One of their main arguments is, “How could a good God allow all of this to happen?” But God is not the source of the suffering in our world. God does not tempt us with hardship, there is no shadow of evil in Him, and He only blesses us with good things.

Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

James 1:16-17

“Do not err” is another way of saying, “Unless you believe what I’m saying, you’re wrong.” The simplest Christian philosophy you can have is to know that if something is good, then it’s from God; if it’s bad, then it’s from the devil. Only good and perfect gifts come down from our Heavenly Father—sickness, hardship, and suffering are not good and perfect gifts.

The goodness of God has to be the trump card against all arguments and circumstances in your life. No matter what is going on, you have to know absolutely that God is a good God. The moment someone starts trying to tell you that God gave you a sickness or put hardship in your life, the absolute certainty of God’s goodness should rise up within you and immediately reject what they are saying.

Unfortunately, a lot of religious teaching portrays God in a very bad light. These teachers are trying to say God is dangling people over hell by a thin thread—that He is angry with us, and He is out to get us. I’ve even heard people say that if you don’t tithe, God is going to punish you by taking the money from you in doctors’ bills. Other preachers say that if you leave their church, you are departing from God’s will, and the wrath of God will descend on you by destroying your family, contracting some disease, or some other tragedy. A lot of those teachers are trying to drive people to God through fear of punishment, but Scripture says it is the goodness of God that leads men to repentance (Romans 2:4). We should be telling people about the extravagant goodness of God, not threatening them.

God doesn’t send problems into your life, but if you believe He does, then it is going to be hard for you to believe that He is truly good. It is easy to say God is a good God in theory, but if you don’t really believe it, then your relationship is going to be hindered. Every time someone you love becomes ill or tragedy strikes, it is going to chip away at your resolve that God only wants good things for you. Look at this scripture:

But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Titus 3:4-6

God’s kindness and love toward us have nothing to do with any righteousness on our part. Too many people are preaching that you have to earn God’s favor, and that He is only good toward us when we deserve it, but that isn’t true. If you think you have to earn God’s love, then you will never believe God is good because your conscience will always condemn you. It doesn’t matter how holy you live, you are always going to fall short of God’s standard of holiness, which will leave you feeling separated from God. Our righteousness comes from God, so if you are depending on your own righteousness to make you feel worthy of God’s love, then you are never going to feel worthy.

The summer before Oral Roberts died, I was privileged to have the opportunity to meet with him in his home. While I was there, people were asking him questions about all of the things God had done in his life. Oral’s response was that he didn’t understand how or why God had used him. He said that there was nothing special about him, except that God touched his life. The same thing is true of every Christian.

When I look at all of the things God has done for me, I am overwhelmed by His goodness. God has sought after me more than I have searched for Him. My life could have turned out a lot differently than it has if it wasn’t for the goodness of God. For instance, one of my sons was dead for five hours. My wife Jamie and I prayed that God would raise him from the dead, and out of His mercy and love, God did raise him back to life, but it wasn’t because of anything I deserved. I now have a granddaughter I wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for the goodness of God.

My father died when I was 12 years old—and he was only 54 at the time. I don’t believe it was God’s will for him to die. I have never believed that God took my father, even though my pastor told me that he died because God needed him in heaven. It wasn’t God’s fault that my father died, but God was with me and He blessed me through the ordeal. I remember the Sunday morning our pastor came to our house to talk to my brother and me about our father’s death. Immediately, a supernatural peace of God came over me and the Lord brought to my remembrance a scripture from Psalm 27: “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD
will take me up” (v. 10). From that moment on, God took me up. He became my Father and my best friend. Even though it wasn’t God’s will for my father to die, I can look back and see the goodness of God blessing me through that experience.

I can’t tell you how many aspects of my life have been affected by the goodness of God. I believe that we can all look back on our lives and see how God worked to bless us, despite tragedy we may have endured. I remember the Holy Spirit giving me supernatural knowledge about a woman at one of my meetings who had suffered a history of abuse. Terrible things had been done to her, but God had saved her life. He delivered her from the hands of the abusers whose plan was to kill her. Through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, I began to help her see that God had blessed her. She had a husband and a wonderful family, and God had been good to her. She went from being focused on the horrors of the abuse, to seeing how God had intervened in her life with mercy and love. In the same way, each one of us can see the goodness of God in our lives, even if we have suffered tragedy.