When we raise the question of suffering with God, which God are we asking?
Are we asking the gods of hinduism, which will tell you that your suffering is the result of sin in a previous life?
Are we asking the god of Islam, who will tell you “don’t question. Submit.”
Are we asking the god most people think of, who sits in heaven on a comfy throne peering down through binoculars at us little ants crawling around?
Or are we asking the God of the Bible. The God who hangs on a cross, naked, whipped, abandoned, bleeding, dying.
We might walk up to the comfy-throne God and say “what are you doing? Don’t you care? Are you so removed from us that all this pain is nothing to you?”
But we wouldn’t say that to God on the cross.
Those who have read John Stott’s The Cross of Christ may remember ‘The Long Silence’ – a short story showing that God has entered the very depths of human suffering. I’ve posted it here for your use, after the break. Like most illustrations of biblical teaching, it is open to mis-use. In particular, this story could give the impression that God really is in the dock, and has no claim over us unless he suffered. That is not the case. Note who is silent at the end of the story: we are.
I have been doing some work recently on the question of God and suffering. I’ll post some of the resources I’ve found as well as the work I’ve done. This question comes up again and again with both Christians and non-Christians, but we shouldn’t try to avoid it because this conversation takes us straight into the good news we proclaim.
First of all,I have on many times used the illustration of a tapestry; we can’t understand why our life is full of frayed ends and dark threads, but we should remember we only see the underside of the tapestry. I didn’t know there was a poem about this, so here it is:
The Weaver (B M Franklin 1882-1965)
My Life is but a weaving
between my Lord and me;
I cannot choose the colors
He worketh steadily.
Oft times He weaveth sorrow
And I, in foolish pride,
Forget He sees the upper,
And I the under side.
Not til the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly,
Shall God unroll the canvas
And explain the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful
In the Weaver’s skillful hand,
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned.
He knows, He loves, He cares,
Nothing this truth can dim.
He gives His very best to those
Who leave the choice with Him.
This is my 100th published post (which isn’t much, really) but it’s a good number for an announcement like this.
Last week I was offered – and accepted – the post of Vicar of St Bartholomew, Wednesbury!
I will be Licensed on June 16th in a service at St Bartholomew which will start at 7.30pm. To all three of my blog readers: you are most welcome to attend.
If you are interested in finding out a bit more about the parish and the church building, these links might help.
We subscribe to Lovefilm which, if you haven’t heard of it, then this post really won’t interest you!
For the uninitiated, it’s a DVD rental club. A monthly fee gives you the opportunity to rent DVDs which are sent in the post. You watch it then return it (in a pre-paid envelope). We’ve just finished watching series 2 of “Chuck” – which I highly recommend!
If you’re interested in giving it a try – for free – then this post will interest you. We have codes to allow 2 people give Lovefilm a 2 month free trial (worth up to £37).
E-mail me: tim@work_it_out_from_the_address_of_this_blog.net and the first two people will get the code.
I’ll update this post when I’ve the offers have gone.
Okay Keller fans. Christmas has come early.
Around the web you can find lots of great Tim Keller sermons. Steve McCoy has the definitive list here. The Redeemer site has released 150 free sermons, but there is no easy way of downloading them quickly. They are organised into 3 main categories: Discovery, Growth and Mission, with lots of sub-categories. Within these sermons you will find
- Six sermons that lie behind The Reason for God
- Six sermons on The Prodigal God
I have downloaded them all, and kept them in their categories by arranging them in a hierarchical folder structure.
Discovery Sermons are here (1.24GB zip file)
Growth Sermons are here (930MB zip file)
Mission Sermons are here (705MB zip file)
In addition, I have compiled all of the free resources I have, from various sources, which are here (1.1GB zip file)
This contains:
- A number of sermons and lectures from various conferences.
- Preaching lectures from Oak Hill
- The 35 part series on ‘Preaching Christ in a Postmodern World’ (together with Ed Clowney) which is available for free from iTunes. This includes the 189 page handout (pdf format), although the page numbering might not be exactly the same as that used when the lectures were recorded.
- Sermon series from the recent ‘Renew’ Campaign as Redeemer Church looks to the next 10 years of ministry.
- Over 30 articles (pdf and html files) on ministry, leadership, evangelism, preaching, church planting, and more.
If anyone feels like producing a document that indexes the free sermons, i.e. goes through Redeemer’s free sermons pages and copies the passage and mini-description for each sermon, that would be an amazing resource!
All in all, this is 4GB containing 250 sermons which will take you 150 hours to listen to.
(If you like this, and are feeling generous, my Amazon wish list is here…)
This blog is in serious danger of being a list of posts about Tim Keller. Believe me, I do not spend all my life reading and listening to him. Do you want proof? I have a very large quantity of mp3 sermons by him sitting on my hard-drive which I haven’t listened to yet.
Hmm, that doesn’t exactly prove my case!
Tim Keller Reviews The Shack
Tim finally gets around to reading The Shack and posts a review here. [HT: Buzzard Blog] To whet your appetite:
At the heart of the book is a noble effort — to help modern people understand why God allows suffering, using a narrative form. The argument Young makes at various parts of the book is this. First, this world’s evil and suffering is the result of our abuse of free will. Second, God has not prevented evil in order to accomplish some glorious, greater good that humans cannot now understand. Third, when we stay bitter at God for a particular tragedy we put ourselves in the seat of the ‘Judge of the world and God’, and we are unqualified for such a job. Fourth, we must get an ‘eternal perspective’ and see all God’s people in joy in his presence forever.
…However, sprinkled throughout the book, Young’s story undermines a number of traditional Christian doctrines. Many have gotten involved in debates about Young’s theological beliefs, and I have my own strong concerns. But here is my main problem with the book. Anyone who is strongly influenced by the imaginative world of The Shack will be totally unprepared for the far more multi-dimensional and complex God that you actually meet when you read the Bible.
In his review, Tim references a “good (and devastating)” review from the most recent print edition of Books and Culture: A Christian Review (Jan/Feb 2010.) I’m pretty sure he means this one here: I am not who you think I am.
For what it’s worth, I read The Shack last summer and enjoyed a lot of it. There are lots of good and helpful things he says about the problem of suffering and the way we foolishly respond to suffering. But William Young has a serious problem with authority – he cannot conceive of authority and love coming together, which is why he ends up emphasising God’s love but not his rule or anger against sin. For someone who tries hard genuinely to allow Jesus to be the revelation of God, it seems strange he misses the obvious fact that Jesus does reveal both authority and love.
Mini-review over. Back to Keller.
Tim Keller and The Prodigal God
I mentioned The Prodigal God before. You’ll find a very favourable review of the DVD over at Tim Chester’s blog.
I can’t praise this resource too much – it’s magnificent. The presentation of the DVD is beautiful and the content is dynamite. Even though I was familiar with the material from sermon mp3s and the book, I cried as I watched – twice!
Well, that pushed me over the edge and I’ve just gone and ordered my own copy. I’m inclined to say “I’ll post a review when I’ve seen it” but, let’s be honest, this blog is so irregular it would be an empty promise.
Finally… the next post will give you easy access to lots of free Keller sermons, in 4 easy downloads. Watch this space!
This post is basically to list a number of articles about Haiti that I’m reading. This is by no means an attempt to give a fully balanced response! The earthquake is a terrible disaster and our church, like many others, has been good in responding with prayer and financial help (in our case, via Tearfund).
Last week I read this quote in The Week magazine.
“This is not a natural-disaster story,” said David Brooks in The New York Times. “This is a poverty story.” In October 1989, another quake of magnitude 7.0 hit the densely populated but wealthy Bay Area in Northern California; only 63 people died.
Here’s a few articles that explore this:
“The fault line in Haiti runs straight to France” explores some of the historical problems that left Haiti in such poverty. I’m not interested in bashing the French, but, as the author states, “in few countries is there a more direct link between the sins of the past and the horrors of the present.”
“Why Tough Love is needed” explores the cultural problems in Haiti. The country has been exploited and abused in the past. But there is also a culture of dependency on others, not least foreign aid. Haiti needs material assets, but in the long term the country needs the intangible assets of skills, hard work and a desire for change.
“Haiti’s Avoidable Death Toll” makes the point that Haiti’s poverty is the result of severe corruption and restrictions on economic liberty. Free Trade and transparent justice would dramatically improve the economy.
The conclusion, therefore, is “To Help Haiti, End Foreign Aid” (from the Wall Street Journal). Lots of foreign money has poured into Haiti over the years, yet reports reveal very little (if any) long term benefit. Foreign Aid can often destroy the local economy (e.g. if tonnes of food are imported, local food producers are forced out of business).
“More than a million dead” reminds us that 150,000 people die every day, and this article takes us straight to the gospel response.
The Lord has a salvation so audacious He can call earthquakes ‘birth-pains’. (As can Paul – Rom 8:22). Certainly they are birth-pains. But they are birth-pains. Jesus has a redemption so all-embracing that it will include even these evils. It won’t simply side-step Haiti, or make the best of a bad situation, it will (somehow!) lift Haiti through this calamity and birth something more glorious out of the pain.
Finally, here’s a sermon by Mark Driscoll who visited Haiti soon after the earthquake. I haven’t seen it myself, but I think it will be very good.
Update: My interest in these articles is not to accuse the Haitians of deserving the disaster. Of course not. But I am interested in the link between ‘natural disasters’ and human sin. A lot of people instinctively respond to the earthquake with “There cannot be a good and powerful God.” I think a better response would be “Humanity is deeply entangled in sin and suffering. Have Mercy O Lord.”
Neither am I suggesting that Disaster Response and Aid should not be given. If we are tempted to think, “Oh, there’s so much sin to blame, I’d rather not give help” then that means we have entirely missed the point of the gospel. “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” These posts do show that Foreign Aid needs to be carefully thought about so that corruption and poverty is not maintained. Most of all, they show us that the people of Haiti – like all of us – need Jesus Christ.
You’ve read the post on Isaiah 62, right? And you’ve read Glen’s post on Jesus praying for us, right?
Okay, now it’s safe to think about our own prayer life. In Isaiah 62:6-7 Jesus says he has posted watchmen to pray ceaselessly. We are encourage to “give ourselves no rest” and “give him [the LORD] no rest” until the Church is the praise of the earth.
(Note, see Hebrews 12:22 on why followers of Jesus are the true Jerusalem.)
For a good illustration, taken from my most recent sermon:
One group of Christians took this seriously, and made a huge impact for the growth of Christianity. In the 1720s, in Germany, Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf had established a community of refugees on his estate, a real mix of Christians. He called this community Herrnhut, meaning ‘The Lord’s watch’ after this chapter. There were a lot of tensions between the differing Christian groups, and Zinzendorf’s response was the set up a round-the-clock prayer watch, with the Moravian Christians praying in one hour shifts.
I’ve been in prayer meeting that were several hours long, on this principle. But this prayer watch lasted over 100 years!
The Holy Spirit came with power upon these Christians, resulting in missionary teams being sent out across the world. John Wesley was converted through a Moravian missionary. Some felt called to be missionaries to Caribbean slaves – and the only way to reach the slaves was for the missionaries to sell themselves into slavery. William Carey, known as the father of the missionary movement, was in fact inspired by the Moravians.
Here were Christians, watchmen on the walls, who gave themselves no rest, and gave God no rest, and the church exploded with life bringing thousands into the Kingdom of God.
(You’ll find this information all over the web e.g. here and here.)
Is my prayer life rubbish? Or is it divine? Glen gives us the answer here. Remember Isaiah 62: Jesus will not stop praying until his Church shines with salvation and righteousness. That is good news for a sinner like me!
I preached on Isaiah 62 last night. What an amazing chapter! Alec Motyer (who probably quotes Isaiah in his sleep, in Hebrew) reckons that this is Jesus speaking, and I’m not going to argue with that!
If I put a link to it, you won’t go and read it. So here it is, in all its goodness. Listen to Jesus speak about his Church, and think about the new name we have in Christ.
Zion’s New Name
1 For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet,
till her righteousness shines out like the dawn,
her salvation like a blazing torch.
2 The nations will see your righteousness,
and all kings your glory;
you will be called by a new name
that the mouth of the LORD will bestow.
3 You will be a crown of splendor in the LORD’s hand,
a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
4 No longer will they call you Deserted,
or name your land Desolate.
But you will be called Hephzibah, ['My delight is in her']
and your land Beulah ['Married'];
for the LORD will take delight in you,
and your land will be married.
5 As a young man marries a maiden,
so will your sons [or 'Builder'] marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,
so will your God rejoice over you.
6 I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem;
they will never be silent day or night.
You who call on the LORD,
give yourselves no rest,
7 and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem
and makes her the praise of the earth.
8 The LORD has sworn by his right hand
and by his mighty arm:
“Never again will I give your grain
as food for your enemies,
and never again will foreigners drink the new wine
for which you have toiled;
9 but those who harvest it will eat it
and praise the LORD,
and those who gather the grapes will drink it
in the courts of my sanctuary.”
10 Pass through, pass through the gates!
Prepare the way for the people.
Build up, build up the highway!
Remove the stones.
Raise a banner for the nations.
11 The LORD has made proclamation
to the ends of the earth:
“Say to the Daughter of Zion,
‘See, your Savior comes!
See, his reward is with him,
and his recompense accompanies him.’ ”
12 They will be called the Holy People,
the Redeemed of the LORD;
and you will be called Sought After,
the City No Longer Deserted.
