Redemption and Hope in a Broken World

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         Scripture provides numerous examples of followers of God trying to reconcile their belief in a perfectly good, loving, and powerful God with their circumstances:

•  Joseph, who was sold into slavery before languishing in Egyptian prisons for years in spite of God’s very personal interaction with him; 
• David, “a man after God’s own heart,” who spent years of his life on the run from a homicidal king; 
• Job, an extraordinarily godly man who lost everything; and the disciples of Christ, all of whom faced considerable persecution.

     While some religions view pain as an illusion, an obstacle to be overcome through the correction of the mind, Christianity believes that pain and suffering are very real.  As a result, followers of Christ have sought to develop a theology that provides a coherent framework for understanding this dilemma. Christians face the difficult task of embracing the reality of evil and making it compatible with the existence of God as portrayed in Scripture: all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. 

     Christians have developed different responses to explain why the goodness of God is not compromised in the face of evil, even evil that is apparently unredemptive in any fashion.  Perhaps good things such as free will more than compensate for the pain experienced during life; perhaps, as in John Hick’s appeal to mystery, there are unknown goods that make up for the suffering we see; perhaps there will be a system of rewards and punishments in place after this life that will adequately provide a framework in which one will see the justice and love of God vindicated.  

     Defenders of the Christian faith have developed these explanations, or theodicies, to better understand the ways of God.  A theodicy, rather than being a mere defense of the compatibility of God and evil, seeks to proactively show God’s reasons for allowing evil to occur.  And even though Scripture allows one to peer into and analyze the issue of pain, Scripture often seems less concerned with the defense of God’s character than with the development of individuals as they seek to handle the difficulties in life. 


     This is the religious or emotional aspect of pain, as opposed to the philosophical or apologetic: rather than question the existence of God because of the presence of pain, the religious aspect of the Scriptures helps the believer whose faith is tested by trials.

   The question moves from, “What kind of God could allow this to happen?” to “What is the proper way for me to view instances of suffering and pain?”  We often expect God to meet us on our terms; from a Scriptural perspective, we are required to meet God on his terms. 

Wintery Theology

    We got about 2 feet of snow here in Traverse City last night.  The view from my window this morning was beautiful.

But the beauty of winter is a mixed blessing. While the snow hangs delightfully on the trees, and my boys made a 6-foot-tall snowball, and snowmobilers are out in force, there is downside. Thousands are without power, a lot of people ended up in the ditch, and the city declared a State of Emergency.
 

In my own yard I see this tension between beauty and pain. The branches on the apple tree hang to the ground like a wintery willow, but some of those branches will break, and I will not get apples next fall.  My dog loved playing in the snow - but my dogwoods were smashed to the ground by the weight of the storm.

     Winter is one of those seasons that highlights the tension between the pain embedded in a fallen creation and the beauty that still lingers from God's original design.  Winter has moments that remind us what this world could have been like if it had not fallen: a world where the beauty of snow does not carry with it the danger of death and destruction; a world in which happiness and awe do not have to be tempered by the sobering reality of death and destruction. While we enjoy the displays of God's creativity and power, in the background we hear the groaning of a creation waiting for redemption. (Or was that my boys when I told them it was time to shovel?)

  In Game of Thrones, Eddard Stark keeps warning people: "Winter is coming."  For us, winter is already here.  There is a season in which living things die, killed by that which is simultaneously beautiful, stark, glorious and dark. We live in a world inhabited by a lot of things that go bump in the night, that crouch just around the corner waiting to do us in.  If we are not careful, our very souls become wintery, frozen and blustery, refusing to see the beauty around us as we slide into the ditches that rob us of life.

    But Spring is on the way. New life is just around the corner.  The winter of our discontent does not have to turn into a life of disillusionment.  Even on the coldest, most blustery days, God embeds his beautiful, broken world with reminders that He is not limited by the ravaging effect that our freely chosen sin has had on our existence.  Even as I type this, I know that underneath the snow in my front yard hyacinths have already broken through, ready for the warmth and life of spring.
 
   The world may be temporarily broken - it is still wintery - but it is still His.  And He is pretty good at putting things right.