True Comfort
This is the last meditation on grief in honor of my father, Peter C. Moore who died a year ago. In this piece I grapple with the notion that God is in control even though we suffer death. In fact, that’s the only hope we have.
Jesus is with us in grief for he has suffered it first. He has gone ahead. The prophet Isaiah saw what Jesus would do for us when he described God’s suffering servant: “He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief... by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53: 3, 5). Jesus did not say: believe in me and you will never suffer! Instead, he prepared us for it: “In this world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). He stated we will suffer in this world: sin will continue; death will continue; evil will continue. Our best life is promised to us—in glory, in power, in health—in heaven. But here, we live in his promise. We know him more in suffering—the one who waded through our muck and saved us from it. The muck will not win out, but it looks like it will to someone on the outside of this relationship. Sometimes it feels like it does to the person on the inside. It is because he is killing all our stuff that keeps us from him. His love for us is stronger than the grave. Even angels long to know this love he has for us (1 Peter 1:12). He will love you through suffering all the way into heaven. I grapple with his sovereignty every time I suffer—or anyone else does. Every time, he reveals his love for me, for us, again, but every time deeper.
In his book, “A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss,“ Jerry Sittser grapples with his own “catastrophic loss.” A drunk driver killed his wife, mother, and four-year old daughter. His other three children and he survived the crash. He describes how angry he got at God. If God was sovereign, why did he let this happen? He describes a moment a year into his grief when he was given a waking vision of the car crash (he replayed it often in his mind as a way to reconnect with his family). This time, the scene was different. “Suddenly, a beautiful light enveloped the scene. It illuminated everything. The light forced us to see in even greater detail the destruction of the accident. But it also enabled us to see the presence of God in that place. I knew in that moment that God was there at the accident. God was there to welcome our loved ones into heaven. God was there to comfort us. God was there to send those of us who survived in a new direction” (Sittser, 131). God reassured him that yes, he was in control. God saw. God knew. God was loving them. All. It gave him peace. “Take heart, I have overcome the world.”
Within Christianity, there is a tradition of saying God is not in control when evil happens. Let me be clear: God does not cause evil. The theologians I’ve quoted, Augustine, Steven Paulson, and the Scriptures never say that. God does not cause evil but he is in control over it. The Christian martyrs over the centuries did not die for a weak God who was impotent in the face of evil or an absent God who was indifferent to evil. God is stronger than evil, death, and the devil. He must be if he is to overturn them. Thus, he must allow bad things to happen. He is not absent in them. He is also not aloof in them. He is active to redeem. He is preparing us for a far better life to come.
A God who is far away, aloof, not in charge, not responsible, or non-existent is not the God of the Bible and the Father of Jesus Christ. Deism says that. Deism says God is a clockmaker, far away. He wound up the world and now sits out in space and watches us spin. That is not Christianity. Jerry Sittser experienced God’s nearness at the time of the car crash. His first inclination was to get rip-roaring mad at God and doubt his goodness. Any victim could and would and should feel these things. This is the cry of someone who knows God is near—even in the evil.
“Divine hiddenness is not about absence but presence. The trouble for sinners with a hidden God is not distance, transcendence, and emptiness but God’s overwhelming nearness, ubiquity, and immanence. Sinners want space, and so invent a hiddenness that is opposite God’s own, which allows sinners no space” (Paulson, Luther’s Outlaw God Volume 1: Hiddenness, Evil, and Predestination, xxxiii).
God hides from the question “why” in suffering in order to push us to his mercy and comfort. He is near in the pain; he has opposed this evil; he will redeem it and shower us with comfort.
Trinity School for Ministry, Ambridge, PA
The Very Rev. Dr. Justyn Terry, the former Dean of my seminary (Trinity School for Ministry) and professor at the time, recounted this pastoral question in class one day. He told this story to illustrate the comfort of God’s sovereignty. (Imagine his British accent) He said a well-meaning pastor went to visit a widow who was grieving after the tragic, sudden death of her husband.
The pastor tried to console her, “God is good. He did not do this…”
She replied, “…You just took away the only comfort I have.”
She needed God to be bigger than her husband’s death. Only then could he redeem such an evil. She hated that he allowed it. It hurt terribly. But then God hated the death too. That’s why God died: to redeem us from evil, our own sin and the death it causes us.
God is so powerful that he masters even evil and makes it serve his own people. In heaven, we will no longer need faith. We will no longer need to grasp God’s hand outstretched in Jesus Christ. We will be fully in him, with him. But until then, we live by faith. We need encouragement – especially in the pain. Paulson explains (that Luther explains) this about evil:
“Evil is meant to serve faith. It does not rejoice in evil—it suffers it. Against any intention of evil, suffering ends up guaranteeing the promise. Suffering will end when we no longer need faith. Until then, God will capture every evil intention and action and overcome it in order to encourage the faith of his own.”[1]
He will use everything—the glioblastoma, the car crash, the sin that haunts us—to strengthen our faith that he is a redeemer. He promised. He never lies. He always keeps his promise.
Nothing can shake us or our loved one out of his promise. Nothing—no life, no death, no sin, no demon, nothing can separate us from his love for us. “For he works everything for the good of those who love him and are called by him” (Romans 8). We will suffer here. Every generation of Christians who have testified to this hope, have suffered… and have grown in faith! Every World War, every genocide, every pandemic, every besetting sin has not stopped his church. Because the Lord has gotten down in the muck with us and strengthens our faith as the One who has gone ahead. Suffering is God’s opponent. Evil, death, and the devil are his opponents. And Christ has won. He makes us witnesses of it, even in our own heartache. He births and encourages our faith through it. We cry out – have mercy! Comfort! Hear us! Save us! In doing so, he makes us more human and more hopeful in suffering. He brings us together with others who know his hope. We sink deeper into his grace. Our suffering will end. One day, faith will be realized. Hope fulfilled. And all our mourning will give way to joy.
“‘What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived’—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—”(1 Corinthians 2:9).
“You heavens above, rain down my righteousness;
let the clouds shower it down.
Let the earth open wide,
let salvation spring up,
let righteousness flourish with it;
I, the Lord, have created it.” (Isaiah 45:8)
“In this world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” (Revelation 21:5)
“There and then, in heaven, suffering is over and done… in heaven, God’s word has no opponents and the eye has no tear” (Paulson, 243).
[1] Steven Paulson, Luther’s Outlaw God Volume 1: Hiddenness, Evil, and Predestination, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2018, pg. 243).
