Disillusioned with modern “Christianity” – musings on the problem of pain and suffering.The foundation of disillusionment with God is based on a profound feeling of hurt and disappointment after not getting the expected results from following a set of “Christian” rules and doctrines. It then begs the question, can one be a Christian – a child of God – and yet be skeptical about the way it is generally practiced or defined in today’s setting? I believe the answer to this question is “yes”, as I am disillusioned with some of the implications of contemporary “Christianity”. Call me a skeptic or heretic, I really don’t care, my pain is the catalyst for my writings and my desperate attraction to God’s grace, the only genuine source of hope in a fallen world. I can honestly say that if I did not discover that God is indeed gracious, I would have abandoned my Christian faith long time ago. I am forever grateful for finding out the truth about Him. Nonetheless, I wrestle with certain “unspoken issues” that we don’t like to talk about in the church for fear of being labeled unfaithful. It was not until a few years ago when I read Philip Yancey’s bestseller, Disappointment with God, that I realized that it is okay to authentically voice ones qualms. After all, it is a theme that runs true throughout the writings of the prophets and many other great saints in the Bible.
I am coming to the simple conclusion that what we call Christianity today is a subtle form of idolatry where we worship results and blessings and not God. Allow me to explain a little further; If you listen to the average sermon today, it is broken down into a simple formula..if you want something from God, then you must obey Him in that particular area: “Is your life full of negative circumstances or conditions? Then it must be because you ‘sowed’ negative seeds earlier in your life”; “ Low on finances? Then you must not be tithing”; “not having a breakthrough with finding friends, then be a loving friend to someone else”…”need healing? Then confess your sins, repent and turn to God”. The bottom line with these sets of formulas is that there is a sequential explanation for every single problem in life. Now, hear me out first, I know that God is able and does often bless obedience, and having values that foster kind acts of obedience is a great thing, but the downside of these equations [blessings for obedience, suffering for disobedience] is that they infer that suffering is always a result of disobedience to God; so if you want to reverse the suffering, trace the disobedience and clip it by confession, repentance, fasting, prayer, and enough good works to negate the suffering and produce joy. We all know, however, that just because you are obedient, or at least make a valiant effort to be obedient does not mean that suffering will not come your way, there are ample examples of this truth in the Bible, Job being a classic case. Jesus Himself even said in John 16:33, “…Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”
Reaping what you sow is a Biblical principle in the Bible, but it cannot be used like the Eastern religious philosophy of karma to explain every single situation like a mathematical formula, because the realities of life are not that simple from an eternal perspective. We overuse the clichés “you reap what you sow”, “what goes around comes around”, and “karma” as simple explanations for all experiences – good or bad – in life. But can this principle really explain everything? Remember when the disciples asked Jesus in John chapter 9 about whose sin had caused a man to be born blind? Jesus answered by saying that it had nothing to do with his sin; he was born blind so that God’s work could be manifested in his life. The principle of reaping what you sow in the context that it was given in Galatians refers mainly to the issue of eternal life and the acceptance (or rejection) of Jesus as Savior. We usually stop at Galatians 6, verse 7, where it ends by saying “a man reaps what he sows”, but we must also look at verse 8 to get the full context of that passage, “The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” And we know that it is impossible to please the Spirit if you don’t have the Spirit alive within you by accepting Jesus as Savior. In other words, we reap eternal life through the grace of God as His spirit is made alive and manifested within our souls.
I contend that the reason why most contemporary and charismatic preachers are so popular today is that they promise a solution to every problem that you face. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but most of the really popular preachers today are popular because of their “feel good” messages, which promise health, wealth, abundance and prosperity for all. And while there is nothing inherently wrong with seeking solutions to problems (after all, who wants to suffer or live a miserable or broke life?), the real question is, would you still worship God if He refuses to solve all of your problems? Would you still worship God if He allows you to struggle with your “besetting sin” or “thorn in your flesh” for the rest of your natural life? It is here that the theological wrestling match begins between the sufferer and God. Read Job carefully and you see Job trying to abdicate himself from the suffering by making his case to God. But the real issue when we suffer is not why we are suffering, but if we can still have faith in the midst of the storm, even if it is a shaky faith. It is here that we find the difference between idol-worship and God-worship, the idol-worshipper is obsessed with the solution and refuses to believe that God may not solve the problem in this life time, because for the idol-worshiper (the idol being a self-gratifying “god”), self is the center of the universe and must be gratified at all costs, so the idol-worshiper sifts out all those passages of Scripture that justify his position of self-gratification. For the God-worshiper, however, there is the realization that God can solve all problems, but sometimes he chooses not to. Like the Hebrew boys in the book of Daniel who were about to be thrown in the furnace of fire for refusing to bow to an idol, they said that they knew that God was able to deliver them, but even if He did not, they would not bow to the idol god. Can we honestly say that we would still worship God if He does not deliver us from suffering? This is, in my mind, the ultimate test of faith. There is ample evidence throughout history of instances when God did not miraculously intervene to stop unnecessary evil or suffering, numerous cases where His permissive will allowed Satan to wreck havoc in the lives of many: wars in the name of religion, the Holocaust, child abuse, terrorism, spousal abuse, theft, suicides, cruel-dictatorship, murders, and untold natural and man-made disasters..I could go on and on. And I can tell you one thing for sure, show me an atheist, an agnostic or even a Christian wrestling with their faith, and this problem of pain (to borrow the title of C.S Lewis classic book) will come to mind. If you read C.S Lewis’ book of grief after he lost his wife, (the book was apply titled, “A Grief Observed”) you will often wonder if he was truly a Christian at all. The book is just an authentic and often shocking tale of grief from a Christian, that when it was first published, he wrote it not under his own name but using a pseudonym. We need more people who have the courage to expose their authenticity to the church. The error the church often makes, however, is that we discourage an authentic discussion of the problem of pain with our sweet platitudes of appeasement, we always whip out Romans 8:28 when we have no more “answers”, so we utter out the words “He is working this out for your ultimate good” in sheer desperation..And while this may be true, it does not negate the feeling of sheer hopelessness and despair that often overcomes the destitute and leads them down the road of addiction and other forms of idolatrous behavior. I can relate to the pain that a young man expressed on a TV documentary recently when he talked about the day he lost faith in God; he was just a young boy who was part of a church going and God-trusting family, one day he and his sister came back home from visiting a friend, just to find his mom, dad and other siblings brutally murdered by a psychopathic serial killer. That was the day the young man, now an adult, abandoned his faith in God, and has forsaken Christianity altogether. What would you tell him if you could speak to him now? That God chose his family as part of a grand plan; that God allowed Satan to get his family? Then why not another family..say one that was not as faithful to God? These are questions that we dare not attempt to answer because we do not know the big picture. How would Job (in the Bible) have reacted if he realized that his suffering was essentially the result of what amounted to something similar to a wager between Satan and God, a wager similar to the one Dan Ackroyd’s character had to endure because his bosses wanted to prove a point (in the movie Trading Places with Eddie Murphy)? Of course, we know the truth about why Job suffered because we have the full text of the Bible, but he did not.
We know that easy theological response to the problem of pain and suffering is that God is not the author of suffering, but that suffering is a direct or indirect result of the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. And since God gave man free will, man has a responsibility to choose good over evil and it is in choosing evil that suffering finds its gateway into our lives under Satan’s subtle influence. While this is true, it still leaves many unanswered questions and loopholes. Because if we tie every act of suffering to a persons’ preceding sin, then every last one of us should be in a perpetual state of suffering or hell (since we have all sinned, and all sin warrants death), but there are ample examples of people who are making sincere efforts to live godly lives, and yet are going through deep trials and valleys. Just the other day, I was watching the authentic tale of a lady who works for a popular televangelist, she was seriously wrestling with her faith: She was still a virgin when she got married, she had accepted Jesus at a young age, and had been sincerely trying to live for God in every area of her life since her youth. She and her husband tried to have children, but they were unable to, so they prayed about adopting and then were presented with the opportunity to adopt a beautiful baby who brought so much joy to their lives. Not too long after the adoption, however, the baby got seriously ill and died. Her mom (who was retelling her story) was devastated and wondered why after years of praying, having faith and trusting and sincerely trying to love for God, He would let this happen. Weren’t there people out there living in deliberate sin that God was still blessing, and yet He allowed this in her life? The simple-minded person may say, well, maybe this was punishment for some unconfessed sin in her life..But what if that is not the case? How do you explain it then? And what about from the child’s perspective, the baby had not yet even reached the age of accountability and did not even know what sin was, so are you saying God was punishing the baby for some unconfessed sin? Or could it be that this was payment for her parents or fore parent’s sin? The truth is that we don’t know. It would be fair to say then that there are simply some things that we do not understand, things that we should stop trying to place into our neat little formulas….One of my favorite verses is now Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong to the LORD our God.”
This just goes to show that much of what we call Christianity today is an attempt to make God the servant and us the “god”. Why do I say this? Well, if for instance God was so easily coercible by all of our prayers and puny attempts at obedience [using the formula: I do this, therefore God blesses me with that] then what would that make God? What would that make us? If everytime I tithed, there was a 100-fold blessing waiting for me, if every time I did something good, a direct blessing was waiting for me, then God would not be God, He would just be a means to an end and our servant who exists simply to please our every whim. Most of us, if we are to be perfectly honest with ourselves, try and use God as a means to an end, instead of Him being the end (and beginning) Himself. So we turn to God because he can make our marriages better, we turn to Him so that He can make our jobs better (and more financially rewarding) we turn to Him (politicians do) so that He can give us power and validate our agenda, we turn to Him for more and more blessings. When we do this, without realizing it, we don’t really worship God because He is God, we worship Him simply because He grants us our wishes at our beck and call. We “worship” Him not because He is who He is, but because He can grant us gifts like a heavenly Santa Claus. That would make us gods, and Him the servant, which ironically is what most of today’s preaching implies. This is where authentic faith comes in. True faith is the subtance of things hoped for, yes it is, but it is also the realization that God ultimately has the final say so and that we are His design created for His purpose, not the other way around. True faith realizes that, as Jesus says, life does not consist of the abundance of things, and while being prosperous is a great thing that can be used for His glory, it is not always the end result of obedience (would we say that all the millions of Christians in third world countries who are not rich, are simply in their state because they are not faithful or obedient enough?), the real question is “would you still worship God if He supposedly does not come true for you and your agenda?”
When we imply that all suffering is always a result of something that we have done, you set the sufferer up for a catch-22. Yes, disobedience is often the cause of suffering, but it cannot always be seen that way. Would it not be cruel to say that all the victims who died on 9/11 in the planes and in the towers and the pentagon died that day as a direct consequence of some unconfessed sin? Yes, we have all sinned and deserve death, but then why does God not just wipe us all out right now? I guess you see where I am going with this…We have these simplistic answers to complex questions, and they do not always make sense.
This is where I empathize with Ted Turner, the billionaire founder of CNN. Ted Turner considered himself a born-again Christian for years (saying in a recent TV interview that he had given his life to Christ seven times, once at a Billy Graham crusade….ironic being that you only have to give your life to Christ once to be eternally secure). He read through the entire Bible twice and was a faithful evangelical Christian. Something happened in his life, however, that left him disillusioned with God and the brand of Christianity that he had been sold. As a young Christian, He was told during the sickness of a relative that if he prayed long enough and had enough faith, if he went to God sincerely in prayer in earnest petition, God would heal her. God did not heal her, in fact she died. Since then, Turner has been a vocal critic of Christianity and does not want to have anything to do with God, so much so that he even divorced his former wife, Jane Fonda, because she became a Christian.. It may surpsise you, but unlike most evangelicals, I can empathize with Ted Turner. I truly believe that whether he wants to admit it or not, Ted Turner is still a child of God (if Grace is true, you don’t simply lose your salvation because you wrestle with God, you are just a disgruntled child who refuses to have fellowship with you father – God). This is why I consider it nothing short of a miracle that I am a Christian. After I saw the emotional turmoil that my mother went through before her death and the “non-responses” that I got from my prayers to God to help her out of her misery..I wonder sometimes why I even turned to Jesus. Could it be because there are no viable alternatives? The fact is that you can be a Christian and wrestle with God, prophets in the Bible did it, Jacob did it, Job did it, and John The Baptist did it..Wrestling with Him does not necessarily mean that you are trying to beat God at a fight, but that you are sincerely troubled by certain issues and have the courage to be authentic with Him, even when things don’t make sense. We love to quote Job’s saying of “though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” earlier in the book, but keep reading on, and you read the prose of a man who was in a state of sheer despair and literally questioning why God had made him to suffer like that.
Having empathy for those in pain, having empathy for the destitute and those inn sheer despair stems from having gone through something similar to their psychological ordeal. That is where my life is right now. A life with many questions, but few answers, but the object of my faith – as shaky as it is – is the only God that I know, the God of love, mercy and grace. I am disillusioned with Christianity, but I can take my musings to God, because I know that He won’t turn me away. His Grace has taught me that sometimes life is not fair. “Favor ain’t fair” as bishop T.D. Jakes put it in his now classic sermon, but God loves us unconditionally anyway.
