Why Does a Good God let Bad Things Happen?

In my last blog post about I answered a question from a friend about why I believed in God. I then expanded that to explain why I believed Jesus is that God. A comment was left on that blog that goes like this:

 A lot of people have asked me not why is there so much evil in the world, but why is God letting it happen? Why is He letting people suffer? What would your response to that be? I can answer it but it seems a very uncompassionate answer. One thing I suddenly think of is what you moved on to talking about - Jesus. Before Jesus, God seemed to mostly worry about what the Israelites were doing, as the people of God. But when Jesus came, God in human form, he started to heal people and talk them through stuff in a way I don't think God had so much, BC. It was the human that went out and started the process of 'healing the world' and giving that example of what we should be doing.So it appears to be our duty to be the change we wish to see in the world (together with others).
I still don't get where cancer comes from, though. It doesn't make enough sense that 'God is with us through the suffering'. It's almost like a parent saying, 'oh whoops, you got hit by a car and got paralysed. But it's okay, cos I'll sit with you in hospital'. 
I am kind of thinking that one's faith cannot be based on knowledge alone, but as you say, a personal encounter with Christ, which cannot be scientifically proven, or completely falsified, because it is each person's experience. Even when people have experienced miracles, others will not believe because, well, maybe because those miracles have not happened to them. Maybe their friend died of cancer. Maybe they themselves still haven't been healed. Sorry about the rant but I am putting stuff out there that probably lots of people are thinking. The kind of questions that don't go away..

There are so many things I want to respond to in this comment that it took me a couple of days to get my head in order! First off, thank you for leaving this post and asking the questions that are difficult and that Christians and non-Christians alike struggle with. The problem of suffering is a HUGE issue that often we are too afraid to speak about in case we sound stupid or whiny or because we are afraid that the answers (or lack thereof) will hurt our faith. So thank you for your bravery and you 'rant' haha.

Secondly, I think the only way I am gonna be able to tackle this is to state from the get go that there is a lot about God that I don't know (shock! haha) and that anything I say are my opinions and not necessarily the Truth about the situation. I have only my biblical study, my opinions, my experiences, and my community to draw on. These are big questions that I more than likely will not resolve but maybe I will help add to the discussion, clarify it, or even just point people in the direction of where to look to wrestle with these sorts of things. In other words, this blog post is not going to attempt to solve the issue of suffering in the world, and I am ok with that.

So I am gonna break this down into sections with what I believe are the big issues being talked about here. If I have read this wrong please feel free to redefine and get me to answer the actual question :p

Ok, here it goes.

I see three big topics in this comment:

1) Why does God allow suffering to happen?
2) What is the relation of the OT to the NT in terms of suffering in the world?
3) What is the role of Christians in the face of the suffering we see? How do we respond to it?

1) Why does God allow suffering to happen?

In order to answer this question I actually want to start with the second one. So...

2) What is the relation of the OT to the NT in terms of suffering in the world?

The reason I want to start with this question is because the only way we know the truth about who God is and how God acts is through Scripture. It's the starting point from where we can judge all experiences of God in our lives, or the theology we are taught in churches, and figure out what is God and what is not by seeing if it is compatible with the God in the Bible. For example, if someone says "God told me to steal that person's wallet", chances are God didn't actually tell them that because we know that God in the Bible was really against people stealing. Comprende? 

So by looking at the OT and the NT we should be able to answer question 1) a little better (hopefully....fingers crossed).

It is true that in the OT God seems a little preoccupied with Israel as opposed to the rest of the world. Remember that these books were written by Israelis for Israelis about Israel and Israel's God. They aren't gonna talk a lot about the rest of the world. BUT, in amongst this history of a chosen people, there are whole sections dedicated to people who weren't part of Israel and yet are called Godly people and are seen as saved by God!!! This is pretty mind blowing that they were included in the story of a people who thought God's salvation was for Israel alone!

Let's start with Abraham. He is what we call a pagan (a worshipper of many manmade gods) when God calls him and tells him to go to a 'land which I will show you'. So Abraham (at this point called Abram) goes. Talk about a leap of faith! Leaving everything you know to follow a God you have never heard of and can't see! Like Noah before him, Abraham was seen a a solo righteous man among many unrighteous men. Noah and Abraham were both called and they both followed. Both are really messed up!! Noah gets drunk and naked one night after the flood, and Abraham lies about his wife (calling her his sister) in order to save his own life. Not exactly perfect men but God still used them.

Abraham meets a man called Melchizedek on his travels. This man is outside of the covenant God formed with Abraham, so he isn't part of the nation that will spread God's word. He appears from nowhere, no history of him, and is called the King of Salem (translated as the King of Peace). He is recognised by Abraham as a righteous man and yet not part of the 'elect'.

Jonah is sent to Ninevah, the ENEMIES of Israel who God said were outside the elect people of Israel, and God saves their lives because the repent!

Job is not from Israel, he is not a Jew. Yet a whole book is given over to him as a holy man who God cares about. He suffers greatly and dares to address God and God ANSWERS him. Trust me, in Hebrew literature for God to answer a pagan is a flippin big deal.

When the Jews leave Egypt they also take with them, as part of their number, Egyptians who wished to follow them and they become part of Israel when the land is given to the Jews. So does Rahab, a Moabite prostitute, and Ruth, a Moabite pagan. Both these women are great, great, great....grandmothers of Jesus.

What I am trying to get at here is that God in the OT wasn't just concerned with Israel. Through Israel God is forming a great plan (Jesus) that will save the world, but in the mean time he is also working outside of Israel to save the world also. Jesus acts in the same way. He purposely shows up the Jewish religious leaders by acting in a way that says "God cared about these people, the people you rejected, and always has. It is YOU that has read the text wrong, not God asking you to reject them".

In this the OT and the NT line up. God doesn't act differently. In both he is concerned with the care for the poor, alien, widowed etc (check out the laws in Leviticus, there are heaps of these). God is not only focused on Israel. They are a people that he is making in order to send his Son, but he is at work with love and concern for those not in Israel too.

I hope that answers this question.

That said, let's go back to number 1.

1) Why does God allow suffering to happen?

I think I need to clarify three different forms of suffering here. There is suffering from natural causes (earthquakes, tsunamis etc), there is suffering at the hands of others (rape, child abuse, name calling), and there is suffering through illness.

Suffering at the hands of others is the easiest to answer. In these cases God has given everyone the free will to act as they chose. Though this means that we will all act in a bad way at some point in our lives, some people will chose to act in a way that is purposely harmful to others. It is their choice. It sucks for the person who is at the hands of perpetrator (and as a sexual abuse survivor, I know what I am talking about) but God has chosen, out of love for us, to let us make our choices, even when they hurt others.

Now I know people out there are gonna say "but why doesn't he stop them? What if they are hurting a child?" I get that, I really do. Nothing makes my blood boil like child abuse and I would quite willing castrate anyone who lays a hand on anyone else in violence. But if we would let God take away free will there, when do we say stop? What about stealing? Cheating? Lying to your parents? When does intervention actually start meaning no free will and we become robots made to serve God, instead of people who can chose to love him? When is it ok for God to intervene and it not ok? As someone who has been through it I would say God did intervene in the fact that he gave me a choice to either live on in anger, or to give it to him and learn to forgive. He didn't have to do that. 

Suffering from natural causes is a little harder. The bible tells us in Romans (I think chapter 6?) that the earth is groaning with birthing pangs. In other words, when death entered this world it didn't just affect us, it affected the whole of creation. Everything started breaking down. Global warming is an example of where things are breaking down and it is from our choices. We haven't treated this planet well and it is feeling the affects. And when laws of nature come into affect then these things are going to start affecting at least some of the millions of people who live on this planet. It sucks. It is awful and sad to watch it happen. But God created this world to work with certain natural laws. Unfortunately, those laws work really well and cause catastrophes at times. 

Illness is the one that gets me every time. I don't know why God doesn't heal everyone. I don't know why Jesus at times heals everyone who comes to him and then the next day it is only a few. I don't why I was healed and others haven't been. It can make me angry, thinking of the people I know who get sick, and it makes me feel survivors guilt that I escaped and others have died from their illnesses. Perhaps it has to do with choices (ie lung cancer from smoking) and to do with creation breaking down and our bodies going all wrong. 

But what I do know is that in the face of all this suffering God has said "this ISN'T it!" He sent Jesus to die for us and to rise again to show us that this life isn't just "life's a bitch and then you die." There is healing to be found, if not in this life then in the next. There will be miracles for all who believe. That when a friend dies of cancer we can grieve but also be glad that they are free from their suffering and made whole with Jesus. There is HOPE. And that is a wonderful thing. Because God will heal everyone, and he will stop all natural disasters, and we will live without fear of what others can do for us. So God HAS done something about suffering, he HAS intervened. It is just not on our timeline.

And this leads to,

3) What is the role of Christians in the face of the suffering we see? How do we respond to it?

We are to tell others that this isn't it! That there is hope. That they don't have to only experience life this way. We are to sit with them and grieve with them and pray with them and hold them. And we are to love them as people who are worthy of love, people who are worthy of attention. We don't ignore them like the rest of society does. We aren't to put sick and suffering people away where we can't see them. We are to embrace them as children of God and invite them into seeing themselves that way. Because we love them we will want them to know the truth, that God has intervened, that he has a time limit for suffering and one day it will be finished. That this life with these broken bodies in this broken world is not forever but life and joy can be. 

We are to live in such a way that we point them to the one that will heal their suffering and give them peace.

That is my hope. 

That is my joy. 

I am honoured to share it with you.

Why I Believe in God

I got a text the other night from a friend asking why I believed in God. This sent me into 24+ hours of thinking why I do actually have faith. What I came up with is below. 

I am not an apologist, and sometimes not good with explaining things that are really personal to me. Ask me about the different theories of atonement and I could go for hours. But ask me about my faith and I get tongue-tied. So here it is, in all its inadequate glory. But maybe it will help someone or point them towards others who are much better at explaining these arguments than me (William Lane Craig and Ravi Zacharias are good people to start with).

So here we are. Feel free to add your own insights to this in comment form below.

Why do I believe in God?

1. One of the biggest things I hear from non-believers is 'if there is a God why is there so much evil in the world?' The thing is, how would we know what was evil if there wasn't a higher understanding of the good that should be? In other words, if this is all there is, why should it be any different? Evil and suffering, if morality is invented by humanity, is just part of everyday life. We wouldn't be shocked by it, argue against it, or think that people should act better. But the fact that we DO get shocked, argue, and think people should act better is because there is a higher moral standard that is above our own. It is one that says some things are inherently right and other are inherently wrong and that there SHOULD be something better than this.

If humanity is the one who creates objective morals then morality is relative depending on who you are talking to, the culture they are in, the time in history that they are born etc. So when people say that morality is relative then when a Hitler kills millions Jews and says it is right in his eyes, we should be ok with that because his morality is just as 'right' as anyone elses. Yet we don't say that. We say that he is wrong. This to me points to a higher objective morality, ie God.

2. Everything that begins to exist has a cause, the universe began to exist therefore there is a cause (the cosmological argument). That cause would be a god.

3. Humanity is hardwired to worship something. If it isn't a god then it is mon

ey, ourselves, science etc. This to me points to the fact that we are made to point to something and worship it as the foundation of our lives.

WHY I BELIEVE JESUS IS THAT GOD.

1. Historically speaking, the gospels have far more evidence for them being historically acurate than any other manuscript ever. We don't argue the existence of Alexander the Great, yet there is more evidence (within and outside of the biblical cannon) for Jesus than any other major ancient figure. So he did exist. And not only did he exist but he claimed something that no one else has ever claimed, to actually BE the same as the monotheistic God of the Jews.

2. The radical change from devout Jews who believed in a monotheistic God to including Jesus AS that God is astounding and calls for a serious consideration of the claims that Jesus was actually who they say he is. The eye witness accounts to miracles etc (all written within one lifetime of Jesus) would show that there is something at work here that needs to be considered.

3. The 'stickability' of Christianity throughout the ages, despite persecution and politics, would testify to the truth that people found in it. Even today the accounts of personal experiences with Jesus are vast and varied but at the same time hold similar elements of facts about forgiveness, peace, and hope. This is true in the majority world (also known as the Third World) as in the West where the church seems to be dying.

4. My own story of healing and deliverance cannot be scientifically explained, even though my doctors tried. I have seen my life changed at the power of his name, I have experience the hope and freedom that comes with believing in Jesus (and you have told me of times past where you have to). It is particularly poignant to point out that when I was healed I was anti-God, anti-Jesus, angry, and not wanting anything to do with him. This wasn't my own mind making things up. I cannot deny what I have been through, what I have seen in my own life and in others. This lead me to Christ, all the other arguments cemented my faith for me.

Someone to Hold, Someone to Blame

I was talking to some friends on the way home from church today and an interesting comment was made. It went something along these lines:

"It seems that the people who are suffering have more hope in God than the family members and loved ones that watch them suffer. It is the watchers that tend to blame God."

This comment came out of all of us recollecting various stories of people who had suffered and those that had blamed God. This is a generalisation but one that seems to hold true to various people in various circumstances.

For example, one friend of ours has a sister that is in serious pain and illness. She clings to God. He is angry at God for what she is going through.

So we came up with a hypothesis of why this is.

For anyone who has been in suffering for a long period of time, there tends to be a point when you know that it may never change. With long term illness or mental disorders, divorce, death etc, there is a point when you either accept that the pain will be there for a long time, perhaps forever, or you give up.  If you give up then this tends to lead to isolation from others, depression, and suicide or, in faith terms, ditching your faith and hating the world around you. Acceptance of the pain doesn't mean that you are ok with what is happening, but it tends to pull you outward, draws you into acknowledging that you won't survive this on your own strength. In faith terms, this tends to mean a deepening of faith.

This is because in times of weaknesses we need someone to cling to. When we are children and we are hurting we don't blame our parents for it, we cling to them because they are the biggest, strongest people they know and they may be able to fix it.

It is similar to faith at times. God is the biggest thing we know and so in times of struggle when our pain is too much for us to bear we cling to our faith, hoping that it will give us strength. 

The people who are not directly involved in the suffering but are affected by it (our friends and family) may not understand our need to cling to God. Because for them all they see is someone they love in pain. And they need someone to blame. They need to be able to get angry and yell at someone for the hurt they see us going through. It is often through witnessing pain that people lose faith in God and God's goodness.

Now the complete opposite can be true in both cases. The sufferer can lose faith because they reject what is happening to them and need to blame someone, and the watcher can have faith because it is the only thing they have left to lean on.

But, and here is my point, in times of suffering we all need someone to hold or someone to blame.

I find that really profound.

It speaks of a deep-seated need within us all for love and comfort.

It speaks of a desire for justice.

It speaks of God.

See, if we are all just random atoms that came together and started an evolutionary chain, why would we need justice in a situation that is outside of anyone's control? Wouldn't we just write it off as survival of the fittest and grieve, but not get angry?

I would argue that it is because at the very core of who we are we know that there is something wrong with our world. Children are not meant to die. People are not meant to suffer. Mental illness should not exist. And we know that, everyone of us, we feel it deep inside. So when we do watch a loved one in pain we get angry and the wrongness of it and need something to blame. 

We tend to blame God.

And yet we are pointing in the wrong direction.

It is not God's fault that this happens. It is because there is something really wrong with the world. It is called sin. We are broken. Creation is broken. I don't mean that because a child lies to their parents they then get cancer! That's ridiculous. Illness is not a punishment. 

What I mean by sin is that we as humanity, not just as individuals, have decided to not love God and not love other people and not respect creation. We have pushed God out of the picture and wanted to make ourselves God for millennia. We haven't loved other people and so rape, prostitution, porn, child abuse, theft...you name it... happens because humanity has no love for each other. We haven't respected creation so we have used and abused resources, so some kids die of obesity related illness while others starve. Carcinogenic are our fault, as is skin cancer from a depleted ozone.

Our desire to run this world our way, instead of God's way, has meant that creation has broken to the point where our own cells are in rebellion against us. Death is a part of everything, sickness invades our lives. And because it is all consuming, because it affects everything, because it is so huge, we point to the biggest thing we know and blame them. We blame God.

And yet it is NOT God's fault. God didn't want my friend's baby to die of cot death at only a few months old. God didn't want me to have schizophrenia. God doesn't want our friends sister to be in constant pain. God hates sin and death and proved it by showing us that it is defeated! God showed us that there is life after all the crap by dying first and coming back to life. God showed us by example.

In our times of deepest struggle God is there. God is breathing live and love. God is giving strength and hope. God is speaking a message of salvation and redemption that means even though we go through crap now it will not be forever. We will be renewed. We will live without pain.

So to all of those that are struggling...there is hope. 

And to all of those watching...there is hope.

And to all of us who get angry and confused and cry for justice...there is hope!

Don't give up, don't walk away from faith, don't lose hope. God was there, God is here, God will always be there.

The Death of YOLO

For those of you who are older than 30, YOLO is the new expression for justifying pretty much any behaviour that lets you live for the moment. The reasoning goes “you only live once so go out and have fun”.

This video clip from a girl called Kesha that really exemplifies this life style.

We see here the belief that to live in the moment is to get drunk, have sex, cheat on our partners, party wildly, vandalism throw away responsibility. This song tells us that if we are going to die young then we may as well live it up as best we can now by not feeling any shame or guilt for the way we act. Rebellion against the established order is also shown through anti-Christian symbols. Did any one spot the pentagram, sign of witch craft, and the upside down cross?

There is another way to view YOLO though, and this video clip that shows this understanding....

Ok so this is obviously meant to be poking fun but it really does have an interesting view point. The idea of YOLO, you only live once, leads to a fear of death. In fact both clips show this.

The second clip shows it in an extreme way, telling us that we really need to lock ourselves away in order to live a careful life and preserve it at all costs. The first clip doesn't seem to be showing fear of death, but think about it this way. It is only fear of not living long enough to fulfill all our dreams, or have enough fun, that fuels a lifestyle like this. It is the fear of missing out, or FOMO, that comes from the fear that if this life is it then we really have to milk it for all its worth.

So what do we do with this? What is the alternative to partying it up or hiding ourselves away?

Surprise, surprise, but the Bible actually has A LOT to say about YOLO!!! Who would've thought it! Here we are 2000ish years after this book has been written and it can speak directly into a situation that they had never even heard of!

HEBREWS 12:1-4 (MESSAGE version)

 Do you see what this means - all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running - and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. 2 Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed - that exhilarating finish in and with God - he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. 3 When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls! 4 In this all-out match against sin, others have suffered far worse than you, to say nothing of what Jesus went through - all that bloodshed!

Ok, so it doesn't mention YOLO or even FOMO or anything like that.

It might not mention those directly but look at what it is saying. It is telling us that somehow other people know what we are facing, that Jesus knows what we are facing!

But before I go into it too much I want to give you a little context. Before this particular passage the author has just had a huge talk about all these other dudes who show up in the Bible. They talk about what they got up to and how they trusted in God. They pretty much sum up the Bible story in terms of individuals and their walks with God. So at the beginning when they say “all these veterans” what they are talking about are people who have gone before us who had to put their faith in God too, even when it got tough.

This author knows what it is like to live a hard life when being a Christian. Christians weren't exactly the favourite people in those days. In fact they were pretty hated. They were abused and laughed at and seen as kind of weird for living differently to the rest of society.

I don't know about you but that sounds awfully similar to what it is like to be a Christian now who says no to going to parties or having sex before marriage and all that stuff. People think we are strange. They think we are party-poopers, kill joys, fun sponges. Anyone else find that sometimes?

This author doesn't tell us that, actually, we should try really hard to fit in because it is better if you live in such a way that people don't know your a Christian. They don't tell us that they understand how hard it is and really it is understandable that we give in every now and then because we want to have a bit of fun and don't want to miss out.

Nope. Look at what they do say.

They tell us to start running and never quit!

 I am trying to loose weight at the moment and I tell ya, going to the gym every day is NOT my favourite thing to do.

Anyone who has had to train in anything knows that it is hard. It is brutal. Making yourself get up every day and do the same thing, to knowingly have to push yourself through pain, is sometimes just the opposite of what you want to do. Some days there is a pay off and you feel good afterwards, and some days you just feel more tired and exhausted and you just want to give up and never do it again. 

Usually at those times you will have a goal that you want to achieve that pushes you to keep going. Maybe it is a gold medal, or in my case a weight I want to achieve. Whatever it is, in your mind you keep your eye on the prize because there are days when that is the only reason you have to push through.

This author is using that analogy. They are saying that life isn't about wild living that ignores the pain in the world. It isn't about instant gratification that makes us feel good. Nor is it about quitting, running away and hiding from everything. Instead it is race.

We start the race when we accept Jesus into our lives, when we go “yeah, Jesus, I want you to be the head of my life because really, I have done a crap job up until now”. That day when we ask him to lead, that is the day we start running.

And we keep going. Everyday. We study how Jesus lived his life so we can train in the same way. We look at the love he had for others and the complete submission he had to the Father and we practice that in our own lives. We look at the pain he went through, the suffering, and we know that we can face anything with God beside and inside us. We read the stories of other people who have gone before us. We see that at times they fail, but they do not give up, and it is those stories that give us strength to keep going.

And above all we see that for Jesus the race didn't end in death. We don't run this race for nothing. Our prize at the end is that we don't only live once. We live again, in an eternity of God's rest. We will see this world renewed without the pain and the heartache, and we will finally get to see the man that we were running for. We will get to see Jesus.

 But there is the question of how do we train for life? It seems like a rather strange thing to ask us to do really when we have no idea what life will bring. How do you prepare for something that you can predict?

There are 3 easy steps that I think can help us all train in Christ for whatever may happen in life.

1. Read your Bible's. Now I know this seems like such the obvious Christian thing to say right now. But I am talking about more than just picking up the book and saying “Jesus speak to me today” and then hoping that we get it right in what we read. No. I mean study it. Get books out on how to interpret the verses. Get a good daily reading plan that helps explain the verses. Talk to people who have studied it. This church is full of leaders who have study the Bible. Use them, utilize their knowledge. Because the Bible doesn't start “Dear Christine” and end “Love from God”. Not everything is clear and we may get it really wrong. But we need to train our minds with Scripture if we are to know what it says.

And this leads to my second step:

2. Once we actually know what the Bible is saying to us we need to obey it. There is no point doing all that hard work of reading the thing if we are going to ignore it. Once we have trained our minds we need to train our actions. This becomes easier as you fill your minds with good stuff. Our conscience becomes more clear when we are doing things that might not be good. We start to analyse tv programmes, video clips and books better because we do it through the lens of the Bible. We start living more like Christ and loving God and people. And the more the do this the easier it becomes to
   
   
   
   
   
3. Persevere. This last step is about training no matter what. About studying the Bible, analysing our thoughts and feelings and actions through it, no matter what happens, no matter what life throws at us. Because there will be times when it is harder to do than others, and it is only training in 1) and 2) that will help you with 3).
   
   
   

Now I know that this doesn't sound fun. Things like study, training, perseverance, obedience aren't exactly words that make us jump up and yell “sign me up. I so want a piece of that!”

I'm not gonna lie to you and tell you that life with Jesus is sunshine and roses. In fact life may get harder for you as you live in the world but as someone who lives differently to it. There are times when you will want to throw it all away and party and forget the hardship of life. Trust me, we have all been there. Talk to anyone who has been a Christian for a while and they will tell you that they have moments where doubts creep in, where temptation is strong, when they wish they could just walk away.

But here is the amazing thing.

You don't do it alone.

You aren't a marathon runner who is out there pounding the streets alone. You have a great cloud of witnesses, past and present, who have gone before you and who cheer you on. They help you with their writings and sermons, the things that they have learned. And you have Christ, who has showed us the way and modeled how to do it.

See we run for Christ, to Christ, with Christ, and through the strength of Christ. We run to be like Christ, so we train under Christ, because we stand firm on our foundation which is Christ. And as we keep running, it is the story of Christ that renews our strength and faith when we feel it failing.

We are coming up to Easter now, a time when we remember that Christ died and rose again. We remember why we are running the race in the first place. We remember that we follow a God who not only went into the grave, but came back out of it, and promised us the same.

We remember that we don't only live once. Don't live waiting to die. Don't live as Kesha would tell you to live, so scared that you will die before you do anything fun that you go wild. Don't live as Lonely Island tells you to live, so scared of something going wrong that you barracade yourself away from the world. Both of these types of people are living waiting for death. Death is what shapes and forms their lives. In trying to hide from it, in reality it is ruling them.

Christ on the other hand brings life and life in full. He frees us from sin. What that means is we don't have to live afraid of death because we have no hope in anything after it. It means that he gives us strength to say no to things that are bad for us. It means that we don't carry around guilt or shame for things that we have done. It means having the weight of the world, of fear, of shame, taken off our shoulders because he already carried it.

The Christian churchy way of saying all this is that we die to ourselves. It's a kind of hard concept to grasp, I mean how do we actually do that. It is easier if I give you some examples than to try and explain it in words.

Dying to self is when a young 17 year old man fails in a suicide attempt that he tried because his life was meaningless. When he came through it he said to God that his own attempts to fix his life had failed so now he was going to give God a chance to sort it out. Since then he has let God direct his path, has fallen in love with Scripture, and has a meaning and purpose that he never had before. He died to himself by giving up his own wish to die, by letting God take control. He gave up what he wanted and listened to what God wanted instead.

Dying to self is the 16 year old girl who had a moment of passion with her boyfriend and ended up pregnant. She went to church and was a sunday school leader but had fallen into temptation that changed her life. She wanted to get an abortion but on the way to the clinic changed her mind. She pulled the car over and prayed that God would give her strength to raise a baby even though she was a child herself. She died to self in that she gave up her own fear to God, her desire to remain young and carefree, and the shame that she would feel in facing her peers. She raised that child to follow God and thanks Jesus everyday that he is in control and that he gave her strength to keep her baby.

Dying to self is the 20 year old who looks at porn everyday. He knows others do too but it is destroying him inside. He feels so ashamed and dirty every time he goes to the websites but the temptation seems too strong and he feels he can't stop. He has tried praying and reading his bible but he fails over and over as the desire takes hold. In desperation he asks God to help him overcome his shame and he reaches out to a friend for help. He died to himself in that he gave it to God, he gave up his desires and his fear of rejection and, with the strength of God asked others for help. He still fails, it is still a struggle, but he gives it over to God every time and dies to himself everyday.

See, if you really believe in Christ then it is time to start living it. Because if we don't live out what we believe then the grace we have been given we are throwing in God's face. We are saying that Jesus' death wasn't important enough for you to give up drinking, drugs, sleeping around, downloading music illegally, watching porn...whatever it is. You are saying that your happiness in that moment is sooooo important, that it is more important than what Jesus did for you. You are saying that your sin is more powerful that his love. That you would rather be a slave to culture than free in Christ.

It is time for the death of YOLO. Stop living as if you are waiting to die. Die to yourself, your own selfish desires and sin, so that you may live in Christ, that you might live forever.

Watch this clip!!

The Lie of Death, the Death of a Lie

I originally wrote a post with this title that was about a lady that was dying. It was a hard time for the family and they requested that I take it down. I honoured that request.

However, I still feel that a lot of what I had to say in that blog is applicable to many people. I am not gonna reference the same lady again but I still want to talk about the topic.

The topic is death.

I am writing an essay at the moment about euthanasia and the ethical issues surrounding it. It is a say essay to write; reflecting on the pain and dying of people doesn't exactly put you in the best mood.

But I also think that we as a Western nation do not talk about death enough. We are afraid of it and so try to control it. We buy things to make our skin look younger to trick ourselves into thinking that we are putting off the inevitable. Those of us rich enough get our body's cryo-genically frozen in the hope that one day we will live again. We use death itself to control death, committing suicide or euthanasia to dictate when we die rather than leaving it up to chance.

We are deathly afraid of death.

The thing is, we were never meant to die. We were never meant to face the fear of our bodies failing, of pain and dementia, of losing children and loved ones. Death came into the world because we invited it. Because we thought that we could control our own lives, and in the process destroyed them. 

Death is a force that destroys Gods creation. The price of humanity choosing to live outside of God is death. It is an unstoppable force that touches all of us and destroys all we hold dear. It lies to us and tells us that it is forever, that there is nothing after this life, that this life itself is meaningless.

Death is a lie.

The fear of death is so strong because we have lost faith in the one that is in control. We want to control our lives and believe that we are autonomous and so when faced with a force that is outside of our control, we panic. We don't want to think of ourselves feeding worms, but when we have asked God to stay out of our lives for so long, that is the only image we are left with.

And God knows this.

God knows that we fear that which we cannot control. God knows that we face the end with shaking and crying. And God wanted to save us from this. So Jesus put himself through it.

Jesus is God. Jesus died. This means that God chose to die, in an horrific and bloody way. God faced the fear of death with us. But something incredible happened. Jesus rose back out of his gave! God faced the lie of death and came out the winner.

Jesus put to death death.

Through his actions he showed us that death is not the end, that there is life after it. We follow a God who we know will give us life after death because Jesus went through it first. Death cannot be final in the face of God's love and power. The lie of the permanence of death is over.

So now we can face death without fear because it is not the end.

I know people who have died. I have watched two people die in pain from illness. One was a believer, the other was not. One went knowing that her pain would soon be over, the other went in fear of what lay beyond.

Do not underestimate the amount of influence that your view of death can have on your life. It tells you the worth of your life now. It tells you what awaits you after. It leads you to fear getting older and leads to things like YOLO (you only live once) and FOMO (fear of missing out) mentalities that promote selfish living and stupidity.

You need not fear death, you can experience the freedom that comes with knowing where you are going. 

And if you are a believer and afraid of age and death, then look at where your hope is found, why you are scared, and know that your God has already put to death the lie of death.

Who the heck is Lazarus?!

If you don't know the story of Lazarus rising from the dead, here is a brief overview:

Lazarus sick.

Sisters ask Jesus for help.

Jesus is late.

Lazarus dies.

Jesus cries.

Jesus prays.

Miracle recovery is understatement of history.

This is an awesome story that I have been taught since I was knee high to a grasshopper and playing with the wooden blocks in Sunday School while spilling orange Raro juice down the front of my best clothes. If you were a church kid you know what I am talking about. In fact I am pretty sure there is a funny song that goes with this story but for the life of me I cannot remember how it goes.

As I grew in wisdom and understanding I realised that this story raises more questions than it answers. Firstly, why the heck did Jesus not take the time to go and see a dying friend? For someone who is all loving that seems a little harsh by my reckoning. Second, if Jesus had the power to raise Lazarus from the dead, why on earth was he crying about his death? If I knew I could bring him back I would be like "chill guys, I got this" but instead he acts like a mourner at a funeral (funnily enough).

Third, and perhaps the most perplexing for me, is that Jesus is NOT the first to be raised to life after dying. Now some of you may be thinking "well, duh" but lemme explain. 

Jesus, the God-man that he is, defeated death by coming back out of the grave. The consequences of sin is death so by defeating death he also defeated sin and the hold that it has on humanity. This means that not only are we forgiven, but we now can live in eternity in bodies that are all shiny and sparkly and never decay (Twilight anyone?). That is the briefest explanation in history of what happened on the cross, and the shallowest too, but what does it mean if there was someone who was risen BEFORE Christ?

Sayings like "firstborn among the dead" that are attributed to Jesus seem to be a little more confusing. I read this now and think "Hold on, but what about our good friend Laz?" Maybe Jesus was the first to take on a renewed body. But then old Lazzy was walking around in a body that had been dead for four days in the heat of the middle east! No amount of Lynx is gonna make woman come running to that smell. 

So how does Lazarus fit in with the whole resurrection thing? Thoughts?