Cross Angle

One of the things that the modern church, and to be honest most of us, avoid at all costs is suffering. One of my favorite sayings is, “I don’t like pain; it hurts me”. But Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulation”. One of the most intrinsic questions in humans when suffering happens is “Why did this happen to me?”. Two common answers are given to this question. One answer is that somehow God is not good after all. The other idea is this must be some kind of punishment from God. However God’s perspective is often quite different than ours. I am drawn to the passage of Scripture in John chapter nine. Here was a man blind from birth. Jesus’ disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind”. The prevailing thought was sickness was the result of yours or your parent’s sin. Jesus however had a quite different answer. He replied, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life”. (John 9:3) Think of that statement! God was not angry at this man nor his parents, but this was part of God’s plan. God was not looking at this as a bad circumstance, but an opportunity to for the glory of God to be revealed. Job struggled with this concept as well. Dr. Zacharias pinpoints the struggle in his book, Cries of the Heart. “Job had repeatedly said that as far as he knew he lived an honorable life. But he had assumed all along that if one walked the straight and narrow, and lived a life of purity, prosperity and freedom from pain would naturally follow. The was a false conclusion.” Because we know that God is good, and we know that we are serving Him, a natural conclusion is that suffering should be non-existent. When suffering happens is that God is not good, or I am bad. However, Jesus completely demolishes both of this ideas through His life. Here was the God-man on the cross suffering immeasurably. Jesus Christ was not suffering on the Cross because He was being punished, nor to make Him a better person. He was suffering for our sin, to abolish it. So in one sense suffering is a result of someone’s sin, Adam’s. And it took the suffering of the second Adam to atone for the first Adam’s sin. So in our personal pain as Christians, it does not do much good to question God, or search for something in our lives which we think God might be punishing us for. I recall again what Ravi Zacharias said when a news reporter asked him where God was on 9-11. Ravi’s classic answer was, “Right where you asked Him to be”. That I think is the real answer. God must so be the anchor of our lives, that he can also say, “This happened so that the work of God might be displayed in my life”.