Trials of faith

In the parable of the sower the two groups of people who receive the word of God in vain are those with a shallow faith that is put off by trouble or persecution, and those with a pressured faith that is squeezed out by worries or wealth and their pressures on time and energy. In our world we think that the latter problem is the greater, but there is still a sizeable group who are put off by trouble - their own or that of others.

Part of the problem is due to the pervading thought that those who follow Christ should be kept problem free. He is the good shepherd, after all! Yet the New Testament is full of teaching about the inevitablity of suffering, especially for the Christian - e.g. 'We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God' (Acts 14:22). The reason given for this seems to me two-fold: first, we are in a spiritual battle with those who oppose God's purposes, especially Satan and his forces, and are therefore targets for attack; and second, we are being grown and refined through a process that results in perseverance, character and hope, and that process has to involve some degree of suffering. Unless we take up our cross and follow Christ, we cannot be his disciples.

This does not really answer the deeper questions about why there is suffering, and how it relates to faith in God's protection. What troubles many is the arbitrary nature of suffering: why do some people get all the pain, and others get none? Why does God seem to answer some people's cries for help, and ignore those of other people who are just as good and faithful? Does God need to allow a 7.0 magnitude earthquake killing tens of thousands of people, many of them children, in order to achieve victory over evil or to grow better people?

Two things help me in my thinking. One is the old adage, 'Do not allow the things you don't understand to negate the things you do understand.'  If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then there is no reason to believe in him or follow him, and every reason to go along with those who say there is no God and no ultimate meaning or purpose to life, disasters strike at random and we just have to get on with living. But the evidence for the resurrection seems to me overwhelming, so I see every reason to believe in him and follow him, to believe in his teaching about God as a loving heavenly Father and to try to please him in all we do. It makes sense to me to hold onto his hand in the darkness.

The other thing that helps me is my inability to see how this world would be better if all causes of suffering were removed. I don't like the idea of a flat earth without mountains and valleys, or a world with no risks, or a world where no-one was able to choose wrong. I do believe in a new creation to come, where there will be no evil or suffering or death, a world with different natural laws in operation; but it seems to me necessary for that world to be the culmination of a process in which change and chance and choice have played a full part. And that world in process is the world we live in, with all its suffering and all its beauty - and, through Jesus, all its hope of transformation, a transformation which we all may help to bring about. 'Your labour in the Lord is not in vain.' (1 Corinthians 15:58).