A New Year's Tradition: Getting Your Theology on Track
Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 11:48AM If you’ve read here much, you’ll know that I love theology. One of my favorite things to say about theology is that it makes my heart sing. Some of you will know exactly what I mean by that and some of you won’t, because theology doesn’t seem to do that for everyone. Once in a while, someone will ask me why I tie my noodle in knots trying to understand all those dry and airy doctrinal things. After all what really matters is doing and loving and relieving the suffering in this world, isn’t it?
You know what? I don’t think I can over-emphasize the importance doing and loving and hugging. I am so thankful that there are believers who specialize in these things. Where would I be without them? But here’s the thing: It’s not theology or mercy, but both. Huggers need a firm place to stand. I got that last sentence from John Piper in a sermon on suffering called Subjected in Hope, which you really, really, really—triply emphasized—should listen to. “If the ground gives way underneath while you’re hugging” says Piper, “all the hugging in the world doesn’t help. … It doesn’t work, over time, only to hug.”
Yep, you need a firm place, and that means knowing something about ourselves and our God and his workings in this suffering world, and that is theology. Theology is not dry and airy or impractical. It is solid ground where I can stand when I hug those who are suffering and solid ground where I can keep on doing when I’m the one who needs the hugs. And maybe, if you’re wired like me, solid ground will also make your heart sing. But no matter who you are, solid ground is worth tying your noodle in a knot over.
This brings me to the New Year’s tradition. It seems that every Christmas brings me new knowledge of family and friends who are enduring difficult trials and when it’s over, I feel like reposting this post I wrote right after Christmas 2005. It’s theology, but it’s also—like theology usually is—practical. Because if you don’t wrestle with these things before the trials come, you’re going to be hit with a double-whammy when you find yourself struggling with your trials and wrestling with your God at the same time.
So here’s the annual repost of Getting Your Theology on Track.
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 and his helpful explanations of some complicated things. There is, however, a book of his I didn’t like much—A Grief Observed. It was recommended to me as helpful to the Christian who is grieving, so I read it twice after my husband died, but I found it much more disturbing than helpful. Lewis’s wife’s death brought him to a place of real despair, a response to the death of a spouse that I tried to understand, but couldn’t, even though my circumstances were very similar to his. I couldn’t help wondering what his view of God’s relationship to suffering had been if something like his wife’s death could pull the rug out from under his faith.
That’s why I enjoyed reading this post at Triablogue. The whole post is good, but here’s the paragraph that I believe is crucial:
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 believe was God’s providential preparation, in the years right before my husband’s cancer diagnosis, we came to a much fuller understanding of some things about God: that he is working his plan in every bit of the universe all the time; that he has righteous reasons for everything he does, even though we might not—and probably won’t—understand them; and that suffering and death, when they occur, are God’s chosen means to accomplish good things.
When the cancer diagnosis with its grim prognosis was announced, my first thought—really and truly—was, “Aha! We learned all that just so we could go through this.” We had no crisis of faith because we had already come to an understanding of God’s work in the world that included his choices of suffering and death as the best way to accomplish his right and good purposes. I won’t pretend that ours weren’t difficult circumstances, but I will say that we were not unsettled by them. No, they 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 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. She wrote that over time, they came to understand that for the most part God simply lets his universe run without intervening. Thinking of God as one who chooses not to interpose himself in affairs of the world 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. When I read her book, I kept thinking that this solution to the problem of human suffering was much worse than the solutions they had rejected. How could anyone trust a God with a hands-off policy in his creation?
Someone else who went to the same Bible college 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 pushed him toward his belief that God does not know the future choices of human beings and takes the risk that bad things will happen in order to allow for autonomy in his creatures. I have the same question about the open theist’s God: How could I trust him?
Why have I told you these stories? Because these are two 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 whom you understand to be purposefully working in all things—even the terribly 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 who 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 cannot be there if God is simply creation’s uninterested or unknowing overseer. You still suffer, but you suffer with God as a firm comfort and a source of steadfast hope, for you know that your tragedy, in his hands, is working good things.
Reader Comments (10)
Good post, and I agree completely, however, was not C.S. Lewis a rather new believer when his wife died? From what I remember he was an atheist confirmed bachelor who came to faith later in life concurrent or close to the time of meeting and marrying his wife. If I remember that correctly, would not a Grief Observed be a reflection of that as well, which just goes to underscore the importance of getting ones theology in line before times of affliction.
Absolutely amazing post. Thank you so much for sharing. I'm a "theology makes me sing" type person also.
You write a lot of good things, Rebecca, but this post has been my favorite. I'm glad you posted it again. And I agree that John Piper's "Subjected in Hope" is a must-listen-to sermon. Suffering is serious business, and we desperately need a firm theological foundation lest we sink into a quicksand of unbelief and as, John Piper put it, "bail out."
I'm going to have to remember the sentence "Huggers need a place to stand."
was not C.S. Lewis a rather new believer when his wife died?
I don't know. And I don't object to him writing what he wrote, really. It's an honest reflection of what he was feeling and it's useful for us to know what others go through in order to help them.
What I do object to is the thinking that his book is helpful for those who are presently grieving. What people need when they are grieving is hugs and hope, and hope is lacking in that book.
I agree completely, Rebecca, and have definitely found it to be true.
Another concept I really liked and mulled over from Piper's sermon was the concept that God has removed the curse through Christ and that this means that all suffering is meant for purification and for His glory - Piper really put things together for me.
Terry likes to say that pastors should prepare their people to die well. Having that solid foundation of theology will enable people to do that. I remember telling a friend shortly after our daughter's death that the best thing she could do for herself and her family would be to get her theology sorted out ("what exactly do you believe about God's sovereignty?" for example) before suffering comes.
Juanita
Amen and amen! My own life is a testimony (not in a good way) of the truth of these observations.
Lewis professed faith in Christ in 1931, which was almost 30 years before his wife died. Note also that the work he is probably most famous for (Mere Christianity) consists of edited and expanded versions of transcribed radio broadcasts that originally aired during WWII. So, he definitely was not a new believer when he wrote that book.
I think I'm repeating myself from one of the previous re-posts (hope that's ok): this is absolutely the last book to give to someone who is grieving over the death of a loved one. Please don't do it! As Rebecca said, there's no hope in it at all -- only dreariness and despair.
Another concept I really liked and mulled over from Piper's sermon was the concept that God has removed the curse through Christ and that this means that all suffering is meant for purification and for His glory...
I don't know that I've ever heard a sermon like this one— on the big picture of suffering—the very thing posts like mine don't get at.
I have never read this annual repost. It will stand in memory now because of all it reminds me of God's severe but wonderful mercies. I definitely did not have a proper theology of God when my son became ill and subsequently died. And in the years of his illness, the years after his death, I traveled through many "options" of theology for why God had allowed the tragedy.
It is all His grace that He brought me to a proper understanding of Himself and caused me to stand on theology that to this day does "make my heart sing" as well. On this New Year's Day, I am humbly grateful for His blessings of enduring truth.
As I have in year's past, I want to register my hearty 'amen' to your "Getting Your Theology on Track"!!! My theology has seen me through many challenging and confusing times--my knowledge/understanding of God and His Word have provided a sure foundation!!!