Popular Posts from the Past: Getting Your Theology on Track
Thursday, August 9, 2007 at 9:02PM [This is yet another post from my blogging past. The day after Christmas 2005, I put this post together on the spur of the moment right before I flew off to Vancouver for a week’s holiday. During my holiday, I pretty much forgot I even had a blog, and it I was a little surprised to come back and find that there had been quite a bit of response to this post, both in the comments and on other blogs. Current events, not to mention a little summertime blogger’s block, played a part in my choosing to repost this particular post right now . ]
Generally speaking, I’m a C. S. Lewis fan. I’m willing to overlook disagreements I have with his theology because of the clarity of his writing. There is, however, a book of his I didn’t like at all, and that’s A Grief Observed. It came highly recommended to me, and I read it twice after my husband died, but I found it much more disturbing than helpful. His wife’s death brings Lewis to a place of real despair, something I tried to understand, but just couldn’t, even though our circumstances were very similar. I couldn’t help wondering how he’d thought God worked in the world that something like his wife’s suffering and death would pull the rug out from under his faith.
It is important to get your theology on track before disaster strikes. It won’t spare you heartache. But it will spare you gratuitous heartache, and it will hasten the healing process.In what I can only believe was God’s providential preparation, in the years right before my husband’s cancer diagnosis, the two of us together came to a much fuller understanding of some things about God: that he was present and working in every bit of the universe all the time; that he always had right reasons for everything he did, even though we might not (and probably wouldn’t) understand them; and that suffering and death, filtered through his almighty hands, become chosen means by which he accomplishes good things.
When the cancer diagnosis with its grim prognosis was announced, my first thought—really and truly—was, “Aha! So that’s why we learned all that! So we could go through this.” We had no crisis of faith because we had already come to an understanding of God as a God who sometimes chooses suffering and death as the best way to accomplish his good and right purposes. Instead of being something confusing to us, this illness made sense from the get-go, because we already had a theological framework with a cubbyhole for difficult suffering.
I had a friend in Bible college who went on to have a child who was severely handicapped, and then, on top of it all, was horribly burned when his clothes caught fire on a burner in the kitchen. She wrote a book (out of print now) that explained the understanding about God that she and her husband had come to as a result of their child’s suffering. Some of the answers they’d been given when they questioned pastors and relatives about God’s role in their child’s suffering were what I consider to be orthodox and satisfying answers, but they found them unsatisfactory. Over time, they came to understand, she said, that for the most part God just lets the universe run without intervening in things. Thinking of God that way was the way out of their crisis of faith—it allowed them to keep loving God and stop seeing him as cruel for not stepping in and keeping their child safe. Even though I hadn’t yet had much suffering of my own, I couldn’t see this as a very satisfying answer. How could someone trust a God with a hands-off policy in his creation?
Another person who went to the same Bible college I did and whose family, for a while, attended the same church as ours, became one of the more well-known proponents of open theism. He mentions his brother’s death in a motorcycle accident as one of the things that eventually led him to his view of God as a God who does not know the future choices of human beings, a God who was willing to take risks to allow autonomy in his creatures. I have the same question about the open theist’s God: How could I trust him?
What’s my point with these stories? These are examples of people whose crisis of faith following tragedy led them to less-than-orthodox views of God. It sometimes works this way, I think, when people have no firm theology of God’s relationship to human suffering before a crisis strikes. It’s more difficult to come to see God as a God who knowingly works good things through suffering while we’re in the midst of it.
If you’ve already come to love a God you understand to be purposefully working in all things, even the tragic ones, for his good purposes, then you keep on loving and trusting him when real tragedy strikes you. And more than that: You cling to him as the only sort of God that could be a rock for you in difficult times. That you weren’t spared suffering doesn’t throw you for a loop, because you expected that somewhere, sometime, you would have your share of it as God conforms you to the likeness of his son.
You still suffer, of course, but you suffer knowing that there is meaning in your suffering, something that there cannot be if God is simply creation’s uninterested (or intentionally risk-taking) overseer. You still suffer, but you suffer with God as a firm comfort and a source of steadfast hope, because you know that your tragedy, in his hands, is working good things.
Reader Comments (4)
I think I remember this post from the first time.
We have had some issues with our daughter of the last number of months, issues that I could not have dealt with if I was not solid in my theology. It's hard enough dealing with them when one is solid; if I couldn't rely on what I know to be true, I think I'd be kinda out to lunch.
I'm glad that you reposted this. I agree that if you have a proper theology of God and suffering, then when disaster strikes you will have the Rock to stand upon. I could spend much time in regret, and have previously, that I did not have a right theology during my son's illness and death. Therefore, the process that followed was long and difficult. I certainly considered, if not lightly embraced, the different conclusions that came of those other families. But praise to God who does not let His sheep go! At its end, my process resulted in an assurance, maturity and thanksgiving for how God does all things well. A secondary result has been a fervor for right teaching to peers of that proper theology--because suffering does not have an "if", but a "when."
I've had numerous ocassions recently to help sisters-in-Christ understand this same Biblical truth! One author I enjoy put it this way, "The sovereignty of God is comforting only to those who believe God is entirely good and completely in control of all things...After all, what real comfort is there in a God who is sovereign but cannot be trusted to always do good on our behalf?"
Often, it is tragedy that puts our theology (our understanding of God) to the test, and sadly many of us find our theology seriously wanting!
Thanks for reposting this, I'm relatively new to your blog and missed this when it was first posted. Blessings!
do you recall in 'a grief observed' that c.s. lewis thought he was praying to 'thin air'? i told an anglican clergyman that my prayers during depression were like that. "jesus is there, is listening. it's just that he's very quiet" he replied sensibly.