If God Is Real, Why Doesn't My Life Get Better?
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If God is Real, Why doesn't My Life Get Better? Patrick Vaughn In 1871 the only son of Horatio Spafford died, shortly after that the great Chicago Fire struck him with a large financial blow. In 1873 he planned a trip to Europe and sent his wife and four daughters ahead of him while he was delayed on business. Not far into the voyage their ship the SS Ville de Havre collided with an English freighter and sank. Once in the water Anna was separated from her daughters and eventually exhausted and freezing lost hold of the youngest who was only 18 months. Anna was saved and sent her husband a two word telegram, “Saved alone”. In two years Horatio Spafford had suffered the loss of all five of his children and been struck with financial misfortune. Horatio Spafford was a man of faith, he and his wife loved Christ. Why then if God is real, did Horatio Spafford’s life not get better after the death of his son? Or, after the fire? Why was his suffering prolonged with the death of his daughters? I don’t know for sure but I would be surprised if Horatio Spafford in the years that followed 1873 didn’t ask, if you are real God, why doesn’t my life get better? Or maybe he asked it even more boldly as the Psalmist cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?” (Psalm 22:1) So how do we begin to answer this question? To whom do we turn? Hebrews 12:1-2 reminds us, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. .” It is to Jesus Christ we are to turn because in him we find the full revelation of who God is and what it means to be human. He is the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith who has endured great suffering and shame even death. We cannot understand the ways of God if we do not turn to the One who shows us the character of God and God’s relationship to creation. This morning I want to focus on two assumptions that might be underneath the question, if God is real, why doesn’t my life get better? The first assumes that maybe your life is not getting better because God actually isn’t good. 1 John 4:8 is a bunch of bologna when it says “God is love”. For if God was love then, He would hear my prayers and see my suffering and my life would get better. We could choose to make this judgment upon God’s character based on our life and circumstances in the world. Or, we could choose to base our assessment of God’s character based on who God has shown Himself to be. Looking at Jesus is God good? During his life he believed in those who nobody else believed in, calling tax collectors and fishermen to be disciples and apostles. He made friends with the outcast and the brokenhearted, the widow, prostitutes, tax collectors, thieves, and Roman soldiers. The blind and lame came in throngs and believed that he could heal them and many were some by merely touching his cloak. He brought Lazarus back from the dead and the Centurion's servant too. Many religious leaders respected his teaching and were intrigued by his insights. He challenged the status quo and when they came to arrest him he did not fight back in violence or with hateful words. He suffered beatings and humiliation and was killed. God is good because in the cross not only does God confront all that is evil but he actually suffers himself the fullness of evil’s assault upon the love of God.1 God is not a masochist, he does not self inflict wounds. In Jesus’ teaching and healing throughout his entire ministry we see him fighting against the forces of evil and in the cross he suffers just as we do at the hands of all that is evil. The crucifixion is proof that once and for all God is indeed good and compassionate. We see that he is not the source of all that is evil nor does he sit idly by and watch as we suffer like ants under a magnify glass. God in Christ shares in our suffering and experiences the horror of separation from God as Jesus cries from the cross, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Matt. 27:46). When we look to Jesus Christ we know not only that God is not evil, we know that God is greater than evil. For God enters into the depths of our pain and even suffers death but on the third day he rose showing that evil’s 1T.F. Torrance, Divine and Contingent Order, p. 117-118. “in the passion of Christ there took place a terribly real and anguished struggle on the part of God incarnate with something utterly sinister and relentlessly hostile, from which emerged the realization by Christian thought that evil is an assault upon the love of God. an anarchic force making for the [invalidation] and destruction of all that is true and good and orderly in God’s creation.”Original word in brackets was “vitiation”. greatest assault upon the love of God could not destroy it. God’s victory over evil in Christ reassures us that indeed the rest of Scripture is true when it proclaims: that God created and it was good, that God desires all the earth to be blessed, that God is love, and that “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5). So the reason that your life does not get better is not because God is evil. God is good and we must remind ourselves of this truth. In Kenya I learned this call and response, “God is Good” and you say “All the time”. God is good ….. God is good …. All the time …. All the time ….. God is good. Amen. If God is good, then is the reason that life does not get better that you are not good? Are we undeserving? Are we lacking faith? Again we must turn to Jesus Christ the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. Jesus came to bring freedom from sin and the evil that binds itself to us. Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. 36 So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:34-36). God is fully aware of our separation from Him and our enslavement to sin. John 3:17 "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” God did not send Jesus to go around striking those who did not have enough faith dead with lightening bolts. He did not rise from the dead and go after Pilate and the high priests to avenge his wrongful death. Jesus came to set us free, free from the evil that binds itself to the freedom that God has given us to be independent thinking and free willed people. Jesus came that we might be saved from the annihilation that awaits us if we follow evil. God is not the clock maker who made the world cranked it up and left it to work itself out. Nor, is God the grand puppet master pulling all the strings. God’s character is one of radical freedom and the world created in His image reflects that freedom. We are thus free to love God and to make decisions free from God. Yet at the same time it is in God that all life exists, without God all of the creation, the universe itself would evaporate into nothingness. God is the one who sustains all things and sets the limits of the universe. We exist freely as creatures created in God’s image within these appointed limits and thanks to God’s life sustaining power. After God created the human in Genesis 1:31, God surveys all of creation and affirms it all by saying it is “very good”. We are good and God loves us beyond measure. We know it because starting with Abraham leading up to Jesus we see that God desires to bless all the nations of the earth (Genesis 12) and in Christ we see most clearly God’s desire to bring us back to Him not through force or coercive power. God brings us back by coming to us, suffering with us, and ultimately showing that God’s goodness and love is greater than all evil. God forgives our wandering, forgives our misuse of the freedom he has given us and sets us free from the power that evil has to corrupt us.2 All this is to 2 T.F. Torrance, Divine and Contingent Order, “It is the intertwining of evil with the act and being of the creature that is so difficult to grasp and express, for while evil does not originate from creaturely being as such, but enters in as an alien invader, it nevertheless becomes rooted in the creature in such a way that the creature becomes evil and does evil of itself.