Articles
A Problem-Free Life?
I expect unbelievers to fuss about war, disease, and natural disasters. I’m not shocked when they want this world to be a paradise (because it’s the only life they believe they will have). And I can, to a degree, understand the disappointment they feel when they are shortchanged somehow, falling into despair over injustice and suffering. But Christians need to be more careful about this line of delusional thinking. We, of all people, should be aware of the temporal, cursed, disjointed condition of this sin-permeated life.
We are told, over and over and over again, that this life will be full of trials. Put so plainly that a kindergartener could understand it, Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). His first disciples knew what the cost was (Matthew 10:21-33). Peter remarked that his readers shouldn’t be surprised at the “fiery ordeal” they were facing, as though it was a strange thing (1 Peter 4:12).
Without seeming unsympathetic or harsh, if a Christian wants to guarantee his or her own spiritual failure, becoming fixated on some present physical condition is one of the best ways to do it. “Why did I lose my job?” “Why did my loved one die?” “Why am I sick?” “Why are we burdened with anxieties over politics, debt, bills, grades, expectations, failures, scrutiny, unfair laws or corruption in government?” Those are the kinds of questions the tempter wants you obsessing over in order to firm up your reservation in hell.
This life has the potential for great pain. God knows that, and His Son experienced the full gamut of it when He came to fulfill His mission as the “man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3). When Paul considered His discipleship, he took suffering very seriously, knowing that how he handled it – how he endured it – was an inseparable part of following the example of Jesus. “For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake” (Philippian 1:29). “…That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death” (Philippians 3:10).
Believing that you can avoid suffering is like believing you can buy a car and never change the oil. You cannot avoid it forever. Due to the presence of sin, permeating every human soul since Adam and Eve, death and disease, struggle and suffering cannot be divorced from the human experience. The beauty of the gospel cannot be comprehended without it. Release from sin and death mean nothing if we do not come face to face with the consequences of those things. “For I consider the that sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).
