Generic Repair Process

Things break. Stuff happens. Here is a one-size=fits-all repair process [in order]:

1. Turn it off, then on. For computers try a restart, then hard reboot.
2. Rap it sharply with the heel of your hand or the heel of your boot (brogan maintenance)
   [I know, we are talking about repair and not maintenance]
3. Unplug it and replug it
4. Take it apart and reassemble it. Discard remaining parts.
5. Use outside repair [store, manufacturer, or on-site repairman.]
6. Read the instructions.
   

Words I can't remember.

1. Anabasis: (from Greek ana = "upward", bainein = "go") is an expedition from a coastline up into the interior of a country. Katabasis, or catabasis, (from Greek κατὰ, "down" βαίνω "go") is a descent of some type. Katabasis may be a moving downhill, a sinking of winds, a military retreat, or a trip to the underworld. It may also mean a trip from the interior of a country down to the coast, and has related meanings in poetry, rhetoric, and modern psychology.

2. Amanesis: An oral history, given by a patient to his doctor. Heteroanamnesis is an oral history given by someone other than the patient. The process is outlined in a Wikipedia article.

Shortage of Short Greeks Ruining Us

By Mike Royko
The Chicago Daily News published this column on Dec. 5, year unknown.
This is classic, found all over the Internet. I found it here.

The moment we sat down for lunch, I knew it was a mistake. It was one of those cute new yuppie-poo restaurants with ferns and a menu that listed calories.

I knew it was an even bigger mistake when five minutes passed before the busboy dropped the silverware and napkins in front of us.

About 10 minutes later, I snared a waitress as she was hurrying by and asked: "Is there any chance we can see a menu?"

"I'm so sorry," she said. "We're short-handed. One of the girls didn't show up today."

When she finally brought the food it wasn't what I had ordered.

"There are some problems in the kitchen," she said. "We have a new cook."

"Never mind," I said. "I'll eat it, whatever it is. But what about the beer?

"Oh, I forgot, you wanted a beer," she said. The beer arrived just in time to wash down the last bite of the sandwich.

When she brought the check, which was wrong because she charged me for what I ordered instead of what I got, I asked: "Who runs this place?"

"The manager?" she said. "He's in the end booth having lunch."

On the way out, I stopped at the manager's booth. He was a yuppie in a business suit. He and a clone were leisurely sipping their coffee and looking at a computer print-out.

"Nice place you have here," I lied. "Do you own it?"

The young man shook his head. It was owned by one of those big corporations that operates restaurants in far-flung office buildings and health clubs.

He also proudly told me that he had recently left college with a degree in restaurant and hotel management.

That explained it all. His waitresses were short-handed, his cook was goofing up the orders, the customers were fuming, and what was he doing?

He was having lunch. Or, as he'd probably say, he was doing lunch.

I don't want to be an alarmist, but when this nation collapses, he and those like him will be the cause.

First, we had the MBA - especially the Harvard MBA - who came along after World War II and took over American industry. With his bottom-line approach, the MBA did such a brilliant job that the Japanese might soon buy the whole country and evict us.

But we're told not to worry. Now that we don't manufacture as much as we used to, we'll be saved by the growing service industry.

The problem is that the service industry is being taken over by people like the restaurant manager and his corporation. They go to college and study service. Then they install computers programmed for service. And they have meetings and look at service charts and graphs and talk about service.

But what they don't do is provide service. That's because they are not short Greeks.

You probably wonder what that means. I'll explain.

If that corporation expects the restaurant to succeed, it should fire the young restaurant-hotel degree holder. Or demote him to cleaning washrooms.

It should then go to my friend Sam Sianis, who owns Billy Goat's Tavern, and say: "Do you know a short Greek that wants to manage a restaurant?"

Sam will say: "Shoo. I send you one my cousins. Jus' got here from the old country."

Then he'd go to Greek Town and tell his cousin, who works as a waiter, that his big chance had come.

When the next lunch hour rolled around, and a waitress failed to show up for work, Sam's cousin would not sit down to do lunch. He would put on an apron and wait tables himself.

If the cook goofed up orders, Sam's cousin would go into the kitchen, pick up a cleaver, and say, "You want I keel you?"

He wouldn't know how to read a computer printout, but he'd get drinks in the glasses, food on the table, and money in the cash register.

That simple approach is why restaurants run by short Greeks stay in business and make money. And why restaurants that are run by corporations and managed by young men who are educated beyond their intelligence come and go. And mostly go.

So if you are ever approached by a stockbroker who wants to sell you shares in any of the giant service corporations, tell him not to bother showing you the annual report. Just ask him one question.

"Is it run by short Greeks?"

If he says no, leave your money under the mattress.

How to Improve Your Vision in Five Easy Steps

Matthew E. May (In Pursuit of Elegance) found here.

Sep 22, 2009 -

In my previous post, The Art of Visual Thinking, I told the story of how Kerry Morrison catalyzed the renewal of Hollywood underway through her ability to paint a vivid picture of the present and the desired future. In this companion piece, I explain how to hone the visualization skills of your team with a practical exercise.

The first part of the activity is a “heads up” that draws out the dream of the team. The second part of the meeting is “sleeves up,” to focus energy on a real world strategy that achieves the dream. The exercise is designed to be fast-paced, highly interactive, and visually oriented. Here’s how it works:

1. Hammer out a vision: Our Company R.I.P. (forty-five minutes) The goal of this activity is to get to the big picture and bring the future to the present so that it can be addressed. The traditional approach is to write a success story for the media as if it were some number of years or months in the future. But a better way, albeit unconventional, is to draft a detailed corporate obituary.
   
   This is what Kerry Morrison did in her interview since Hollywood already was dead at the time. The outcome is a much more realistic and vivid picture of perfection, but in exact reverse. What would the article say about your organization’s demise? What would the headline read?


2. Remove obstacles. (forty-five minutes) Understanding what the goal or vision isn’t is often more important than understanding what it is because this process outlines the restraints and obstacles. The reality is that restraints always rule. For most people, painting the disaster scene provides more accessible mental images because they’ve seen these situations before. When the roadblocks appear in the future, they are more easily recognized and effectively addressed.
   
   To do this, make a master list of all the items identified in the obituary—the company “killers.” To the right of each deadly factor, list the countermeasure. What is the opposite of the ailment? How will each obstacle be overcome or avoided? These now become the critical success factors that form the framework of the future vision.


3. Set goals. (thirty minutes) For each success factor, list a key objective or measurable goal. Use the list you just developed to spark a discussion of the major goals. Combine ideas, wordsmith, refine, remove—whatever is needed to arrive at what the group agrees is a comprehensive list of goals incorporating all the critical ideas from the visioning exercise.


4. Prioritize. (thirty minutes) There’s nothing sophisticated here: have each individual write down what they believe are the three most important goals. Then go down the list and ask for a show of hands indicating how many chose each item as the number-one priority. Tally the votes to identify the top five.


5. Form projects. (thirty minutes) Now turn the top five priorities into key projects, assign a champion, and put thought into who does what by when. Don’t make this exhaustive and detailed logistics planning, but rather high-level action planning.

You now have working template from which future planning can be conducted. Companies spend days in off-site retreats developing visions and strategies. You can do it in about three hours if you follow this procedure.

Matthew E. May is the author of In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing, and blogs here. You can follow him on Twitter here.

Grant Writing Tips

Notes from a Federal Reviewer as found in a Grantstation article.

by Sandra Jewell, Grant Writing Consultant and Writer

The Objective (Peer) Review

"The applications have arrived and the objective review begins."

The central procedure in the federal funding cycle is the objective, or peer, review, which is carefully, legally, designed to maintain the integrity of the decision making process.

Before the peer review panel meets, non-voting (technical) reviewers from the branch sponsoring the RFA vet each application to ensure its compliance with the goals of the branch.

Because objective review is so crucial to the ethical strength of the process, the peer reviewers who score the application are never from the branch soliciting the proposal because the likely applicants are generally constituents of that branch, sometimes known personally to branch staff.

The grant writer would do well to remember that funding decisions rest largely in the hands of reviewers who almost certainly have no direct experience with the subject area.

There are other important issues to remember when replying to an RFA:

First, no one is ever hired by an agency specifically to review grant applications. Reviewers take time away from their day jobs, usually in other parts of the agency, to do this as a service to the soliciting branch. They also know that their branch will need reviewers for their own RFAs.

The reviewer is often given three to five applications to evaluate within a brief time frame. Before the review panel meets, s/he first must invest the considerable effort needed to get up to speed with a new subject area and with the needs of the funding branch as documented in the RFA and any supporting materials. The next step is to read and score the applications, each of which can easily require a full day, and then to spend one or more days participating on the panel.

The entire review process is a massive investment of time and emotional energy and can leave reviewers bleary eyed.

It’s been said that half of all grant applications are poorly written, which may be an underestimate. And to be honest, almost all applications make for tedious reading for reviewers who, as mentioned earlier, are rarely more than temporarily and peripherally involved in the subject.

There are several strategies to consider when developing a response to an RFA that will reinvigorate a reviewer:

First, to help ensure that a proposal ends up in the fundable range, which will generally be well above 90 points on a scale to 100, present a great, new, idea. Reviewers love to have the possibility of helping along a creative and significant initiative.

Although grant writers may have little control over the proposed project, they have considerable control over something equally essential: its presentation. If a grant writer can create an application that is professional, well written, and responsive without being terminally colorless, reviewers will be grateful. More important, they’ll pay attention.

Here are a few more suggestions:

Many requirements are included in an RFA but one of the most crucial is unwritten: Responders must convince the reviewer that the proposal is important. Every word in the application should be strictly, concisely, targeted to that goal. That means that the writer should diligently avoid unexplained assumptions and field-specific jargon.

Conversely, there is no point in over explaining anything that is common knowledge. Reviewers may regard too much irrelevant verbiage as a loss of focus within the proposal and, worse, have their own attentiveness derailed by insignificant details.

No matter how good the idea, it’s not going to sell itself. So, right up front in the beginning paragraphs of the narrative, tell the reader why this proposal is worth doing. Never assume that the reviewer knows or will spend extra time filling in gaps that should be part of the presentation. If applicable, spell out what is known, what is unknown, and where the proposed activities fit. Bring the reviewer up to speed at the start or risk the possibility of permanently losing traction.

Don’t underestimate the potential for confounding the reviewer in the dozens of pages of detail that comprise the usual application. Eliminate cross references that require diversions to another part of the proposal and, where feasible, include an abstract-type summary of each section.

Applications that do well are concise and clear. They flow. They have none of the confusing juxtapositions and inconsistencies that so often baffle and frustrate reviewers. They tell why the project activities are needed, what the applicant expects to achieve, and the methods that will be used. They explain how their progress will be assessed and what happens if and when federal funding ends. Depending on the RFA and agency goals, reviewers often expect funded proposals to be eventually self sustaining.

The application should be internally consistent. Nothing is quite as unmistakable, or as jarring, as an application put together by a number of writers with different writing styles. To get the money in cases like this, someone must do the editing.

In terms of style, another extreme is the application transparently created by a coolly disinterested, professional grant writer. Occasionally an application is so slick it reads as though it was untouched by human hands, sort of like a house decorated by Holiday Inn. Proposals that sound as though humans are only an after thought rarely do well in the review process.

Where Have All The Leaders Gone?

Remember Lee Iacocca, the man who rescued Chrysler Corporation from its death throes? He's now 82 years old and has a new book, 'Where Have All The Leaders Gone?'.

Lee Iacocca Says:

'Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the heck is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder! We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, 'Stay the course..'

Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America , not the dang, 'Titanic'. I'll give you a sound bite: 'Throw all the bums out!'

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore..

The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs.. While we're fiddling in Iraq , the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving 'pom-poms' instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of the ' America ' my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have. The Biggest 'C' is Crisis! (Iacocca elaborates on nine C's of leadership, with crisis being the first.)

Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.

On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. A hell of a mess, so here's where we stand.

We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving.

We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country.

We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia , while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs.

Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble.

Our borders are like sieves.

The middle class is being squeezed every which way.

These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: 'Where have all the leaders gone?' Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, omnipotence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo?

We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm.

Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen.. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when 'The Big Three' referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen, and more important, what are we going to do about it?

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debit, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bonehead on NBC news or CNN news will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?

Had Enough? Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope - I believe in America . In my lifetime, I've had the privilege of living through some of America 's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises: The 'Great Depression,' 'World War II,' the 'Korean War,' the 'Kennedy Assassination,' the 'Vietnam War,' the 1970's oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11.

If I've learned one thing, it's this: 'You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a "Call to Action" for people who, like me, believe in America '. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the crap and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had 'enough.'

Make your own contribution by sending this to everyone you know and care about. It's our country, folks, and it's our future. Our future is at stake!!

Perry Noble: I Principles for Leading a Team

Perry Noble article:
I recently sat down with all of our worship leaders here at NewSpring Church for two hours…it was seriously an amazing series of conversations.

At one point, Lee McDerment, our worship leader at the Anderson campus asked me, “What are some things all of us need to keep in mind as we lead teams.”  I gave a decent answer … but after I got back to my office I began to write my thoughts down … and here are eight things I believe that every leader needs to keep in mind when leading a team.

#1 – You will never effectively motivate someone with feelings of guilt
I’ve made that mistake as a leader before, thinking if I could just get someone to feel bad they would do a better job … WRONG!  No one has ever brought about significant change in the world because guilt propelled them to do so.  AND … if a leader finds himself always motivating by guilt … he will also soon find himself without anyone to lead.  NO ONE likes going on a guilt trip.

#2 – People don’t respond to need – they respond to vision
When a leader talks about a need, some people will respond.  BUT, when a leader can cast a compelling vision about what SHOULD BE – and with God’s grace and our participation, WOULD BE – CHANGE HAPPENS!  Many times a team leader will drift off course – NOT because they are lazy and/or pathetic, but because maybe they have forgotten why they do what they do – and a shot of vision will cure that every time.

#3 – A person cannot be held accountable for unspoken expectations
Another mistake I’ve made in the past as a leader is assuming people could read my mind and so when they didn’t do what I thought should have been done I would get angry with them.  After some very confusing looks and some really tough conversations I began to realize that I was expecting things out of people that I hadn’t clearly explained!  Our job as leaders is to give clear, realistic expectations and then resource the people to make those things happen.

#4 – Keep short accounts
The Bible says in Ephesians 4:26-27 that we are to not let the sun go down on us while we are angry.  In other words, we should act with URGENCY when it comes to conflict among the teams we lead.  Unresolved conflict is like cancer that begins to eat away at the body.  It must be dealt with OR its destruction will bring about death.  Many leaders RUN FROM conflict because it is uncomfortable, but I’ve learned the hard way that we must embrace a little discomfort now or A LOT of it in the future!

#5 – Don’t be afraid to set high standards
One of the problems I’ve discovered when it comes to leadership in the Church is that some people are perfectly fine with setting the bar of excellence really low ... and then allowing the people they lead to crawl under it.  I know leaders who literally fear that if they set high standards that people will get offended.  However, the thing I’ve learned around here at NewSpring is if we DON’T set high standards people do not feel challenged … which leads to boredom!  (BTW … I said “high standards,” not “unrealistic ones!”)

#6 – Beware of the all-star
One of the things that cripples any team is when it has an all star who believes ministry simply cannot take place without them.  And when a leader begins to believe that about an individual on the team then they will often fear what might happen if the all-star left rather than what would happen if the presence of God left!!!  Every “star player” who truly has an intimate walk with God understands that it’s the TEAMWORK that makes the DREAMWORK – period.

#7 – Each team member is a human being
The leader who views the team he leads as people who are assembled to do what he wants them to do – and that’s it – sucks as a leader!  A leader MUST care about the people he leads and NOT just the tasks they perform.  If a team member sees themselves as merely a tool in the leaders hand rather than a valued team member … they will soon be looking to join another team.

#8 – Ask questions
One of the biggest mistakes a leader can make is assuming that they have to have the answer to every question that comes their way.  (BTW … NO leader is that good!)  One of the things I am realizing more and more is how incredibly gifted and talented the people around me are … and over the past several years I’ve asked this question in so many meetings when someone presents an issue to me, “So, what do you think we should do?”  Often times the person already has the solution planned out … which saves me (and everyone else on the team) all kinds of time and energy!  The reason God blesses a leader with a team is so that leader can harness the collective wisdom of everyone involved and make the best decision.
Besides … people ARE going to share their opinion somewhere … a leader might as well be the first to hear it … because it can save a lot of problems in the future.

One more thing … the only reasons a leader might not ask questions is because he is insecure (thinks doing so will show weakness), full of pride (thinks he is better than everyone else) or fear (because he knows the answer he is going to hear from the team is the right one – but not the one he prefers!)

Perry Noble is the Senior Pastor of NewSpring Church in Anderson, Greenville and Florence, South Carolina. At just nine years old the church averages over 10,000 people during weekend services and is launching another campus in Columbia, South Carolina this year to reach even more people.

4 Comments

1. 
   
   I enjoyed your “8 Principles to leading a team”.
   I’m not a pastor, I’m a production supervisor at a large machine tool company and a Coach on my son’s basketball teams.
   Team building is a specialty of mine.
   A few observations…
   Vision isn’t just important, it’s vital.
   Developing a vision for a team and effectively communicating it and enrolling the right people into it IS leadership to me.
   Set high standards and clear expectations, yes…then hold people accountable to the commitments they make regarding a project. I prefer people to step up for jobs and then own them. And most will push to see if they are going to be held accountable or allowed to slide through assignments.
   It’s human nature.
   If I’m firm, fair and consistent with following up, the team will keep the momentum.
   If not, the project will die.
   Treat team members as human beings, ...yes.
   To me that means learning about and understanding their strengths and weaknesses. What do they bring to the team and when do I have THEM take the lead? Everybody should feel the heat/thrill of leading meetings, developing ideas, or running a fast break. I need to be able to move the chess pieces around and then step aside and watch them run with the ball. And, if it goes sideways, use that as a teachable moment. Pick them up, dust them off and compassionately walk them through the decisions made and let them see where the mistakes were made and how to correct them.
   “What could you have done differently?”
   Ask questions?
   Absolutely…and then LISTEN attentively.
   Your vision should be big enough to allowing some improvisation on the method of getting there.
   Agendas are made to be broken.
   Go with the flow of ideas that come from your team members and check your ego at the door.
   The team is greater than the sum of its parts…and that includes the leader!
   You’re really just the facillitator to the process of problem solving.
   When teams find their solution and contribute to the process, they get so fired up you may find yourself reigning them back in.
   That’s motivation!
   That’s what jumped out at me as I read your work.
   Hope this finds you well and leading from the heart!
   Rick Roman
   Comment by Rick Roman - Sep 07, 2009 @ 11:11 A

Chapter Summary Excerpts from If God Is Good..

Used with permission From epm.org

Posted in: Randy's Books

By Randy Alcorn

Chapter Summary Excerpts from

If God Is Good…

 by Randy Alcorn

 

 

SECTION ONE

Understanding the Problem of Evil and Suffering

 

Chapter One: Why is the Problem of Evil and Suffering So Important?

 

More people point to the problem of evil and suffering as their reason for not believing in God than any other—it is not merely a problem, it is the problem. You will not get far in a conversation with someone who rejects the Christian faith before the problem of evil is raised. Pulled out like the ultimate trump card, it’s supposed to silence believers and prove that the all-good and all-powerful God of the Bible doesn’t exist.

 

Suffering and evil exert a force that either pushes us away from God or pulls us toward him. If you base your faith on lack of affliction, your faith lives on the brink of extinction and will fall apart because of a frightening diagnosis or a shattering phone call. Token faith will not survive suffering, nor should it.

 

Chapter Two: What is the Problem of Evil and Suffering?

 

If God is all-good, then he would want to prevent evil and suffering. If he is all-knowing, then he would know how to prevent it. If God is all-powerful, then he is able to prevent it. And yet…a great deal of evil and suffering exists. Why?

 

The problem of evil has found a prominent voice in what may seem the most unlikely place…the Bible. No other book asks so bluntly, passionately, and frequently why God permits evil and why evil people sometimes thrive while the righteous suffer. Barely have the first two chapters of the Bible described the original creation, saying, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” before a terrible shadow falls—evil and suffering burst into the world.

 

Chapter Three: What is Evil and How Does it Differ from Suffering?

 

Evil, in its essence, refuses to accept God as God and puts someone or something else in his place. The Bible uses the word evil to describe anything that violates God’s moral will. The first human evil occurred when Eve and Adam disobeyed God. From that original sin—a moral evil—came the consequence of suffering. Although suffering results from moral evil, it is distinguishable from it, just as an injury caused by drunken driving isn’t synonymous with the offense.

 

Chapter Four: What are Some Possible Responses to the Problem of Evil and Suffering?

 

Besides the irrational solution that evil and suffering do not exist, and the atheistic solution that God does not exist, the most popular ways of addressing the problem of evil minimize one or more of God’s attributes, especially his power, knowledge, or goodness. In contrast, the Bible never shrinks God but always magnifies him.

 

To glorify and magnify God is not to make more of him than he is; that’s impossible. Rather, it’s to affirm his greatness, attempting to do justice to his infinite majesty and power and wisdom and love, even though inevitably we’ll fall short.

 

To address good and evil without gazing upon God is fruitless. Good flows from the life connected to God. Evil flows from the life alienated from God.

 

Chapter Five: A Closer Look at Central Issues in the Problem of Evil

 

Believers share common ground with unbelievers. We feel mutual horror at the reality, depth, and duration of human and animal suffering. We share a conviction that this kind of pain is terribly wrong and that it should be made right. In this way, evil and suffering serve as a bridge to the biblical account and its promise of redemption.

 

Paul insists that our sufferings will result in our greater good—God’s people will be better off eternally because they suffer temporarily. From Paul’s perspective, this trade-off will in eternity prove to be a great bargain.

 

In fact, the argument for the greater good may be the strongest biblical case for God permitting evil and suffering. However, it requires trust, since the promised greater good is future…If Paul is right, then by eliminating temporary evil and suffering, God would also eliminate eternal good.

 

 

SECTION TWO

Understanding Evil: Its Origins, Nature, and Consequences

 

Chapter Six: Evil’s Entry into the Universe: A Rebellion of Angels

 

Scripture addresses when evil came into being, but not how…God has chosen to remain silent on this question, which may mean something significant. If evil is irrational, how can its point of origin be rationally explained? Perhaps God does not offer any explanation because evil defies explanation. It might make sense to an all-knowing God but no sense at all to us.

 

In cultures where everyone realizes there’s a supernatural world, demons make themselves known as false gods to intimidate people, demanding worship and exacting retribution. In modern Western cultures where people routinely deny the supernatural, demons often accomplish their purposes more effectively by flying under the radar and working covertly. If we had eyes to see, we’d realize that all around us, fallen humans become the unwitting tools of evil spirits, harming themselves and others, and living wretched lives, sometimes quietly under the facade of social respectability.

 

Chapter Seven: Humanity’s Evil and the Suffering it Has Caused

 

Somehow, as the first human couple weighed their alternatives, evil entered their hearts. Adam and Eve rebelled, choosing to violate God’s explicit command. They trusted a fallen creature’s logic, rather than their Creator’s goodness, when he’d given them no reason to doubt him. They ate, the curse fell on them, their pain greatly increased, the earth became a world of hurt, and they forfeited paradise.

 

A just and merciful God chose a measured punishment for the first human sin: suffering. Had God meted out the full and immediate punishment, the first humans would have died on the spot (see Romans 6:23). In that case, there would have been no redemptive history—no human history at all.

 

The history of the human race, in every culture and time, demonstrates the dire consequences of living life as we prefer rather than as God commands.

 

Chapter Eight: Inherited Sin and Our Sin Nature

 

The sin nature refers to our fallen state that distrusts, dishonors, and rejects God.

 

The sin nature compels us to love ourselves. In our reckless pursuit of self-gratification, we impose upon ourselves gnawing emptiness rather than the joy and contentment that comes in loving God and others.

 

Though we naturally resist the biblical revelation about our sin natures, we find freedom when we recognize its reality.

 

To view evil accurately, we must see it above all as an outrageous offense against God.

 

We tend to minimize our sin because we fail to see its real object… because we do not see God and see how our sin hurts him, we don’t see either the frequency or the gravity of our offenses. We imagine our sin has no effect on him.

 

We couldn’t be more wrong.

 

Chapter Nine: A Deeper Consideration of What Our Sin Nature Does and Doesn’t Mean

 

Apart from Christ…I am Osama bin Laden. I am Hitler. Only by the virtue of Christ can I stand forgiven before a holy God. This isn’t hyperbole; it’s biblical truth. Unless we come to grips with the fact that we’re of precisely the same stock as…Stalin and Mao, we’ll never get over thinking that we deserve better. Evil done to us will offend us, and having to suffer will outrage us. We’ll never appreciate Christ’s grace so long as we hold on to the proud illusion that we’re better than we are. We flatter ourselves when we look at evil acts and say, “I would never do that.” Given our evil natures and a similar background, resources, and opportunities, we would.

 

Chapter Ten: Natural Disasters: Creation Under the Curse of Human Evil

 

Earthquakes and tsunamis are not moral agents and therefore cannot be morally evil. A tidal wave is not malicious—water cannot have malice any more than it can have kindness.

 

The best answer to the question “Why would God create a world with natural disasters?” is that he didn’t. Many experts believe the world’s atmosphere originally acted like an umbrella, protecting its inhabitants from harm. But now the umbrella has holes in it, sometimes protecting us, sometimes not. While Barbara Ehrenreich blames God for death and disaster, Scripture blames human evil for the cataclysmic Fall and consequent distortion of a once-perfect world (see Romans 8:18–22).

 

People who have survived disasters often say they understand on a far deeper level the biblical truth that this world as it now is—under the Curse—is not our home.

 

 

SECTION THREE

Problems for Non-Theists: Moral Standards, Goodness, and Extreme Evil

 

Chapter Eleven: A Case Study: Bart Ehrman, a “Christian” Who Lost His Faith

 

Even Christians who do not outright reject their faith may quietly lose confidence and commitment because of their struggle with this issue. Christian students in every university, including Christian ones, face frequent, impassioned arguments against biblical teachings, whether from professors, fellow students, or textbooks. Knowing a few Bible stories proves insufficient when facing an issue of the magnitude of evil and suffering.

 

We all trust something. When we abandon trust in God’s revelation, we replace it with trust in our own feelings, opinions, and preferences, or those of our friends and teachers—all of which can drift with popular culture, including academic culture.

 

Ehrman’s story should challenge us to come to the problem of evil and suffering with a Christian worldview rooted in a well-informed belief in the reliability and authority of God’s Word. If we vacillate on that conviction, we will first reinterpret the Bible, then outright reject it.

 

Chapter Twelve: Non-Theistic Worldviews Lack a Substantial Basis for Condemning Evil

 

I have talked with individuals whose ethics have evolved over time, who now believe that any consensual sex between adults is moral. Adultery is consensual sex. So is it moral? Well, yes, some convince themselves, so long as they commit adultery with a person they genuinely love. But how moral is this same adultery in the eyes of the betrayed spouse?

 

Choosing moral behaviors because they make you feel happy can make sense, in a Bertrand Russell/Sam Harris sort of way, but what if it makes you feel happy to torture animals or kill Jews or steal from your employer?

 

Such hopeless subjectivity is no moral framework at all…if there is no God who has revealed his standards and no God who informs our consciences—then surely any morality we forge on our own will ultimately amount to a mirror image of our own subjective opinions.

 

Chapter Thirteen: The Unbeliever’s Problem of Goodness

 

From a non-theistic viewpoint, what is evil? Isn’t it just nature at work? In a strictly natural, physical world, shouldn’t everything be neither good nor evil? Good and evil imply an “ought” and an “ought not” that nature is incapable of producing.

 

We have no logical reason to take good for granted; its existence demands an explanation. Setting aside the issues of …how life can come from nonlife, great goodness and nobility pose a serious problem: why would we expect to find such goodness in a world that came about through blind force, time, and chance?

 

The atheist who points out the horrors of evil unwittingly testifies to good as the norm. When we speak of children dying, we acknowledge they usually don’t. When a natural disaster hits, 99 percent of the world remains untouched. Though fallen, nature still contains more beauty than ugliness.

 

Chapter Fourteen: The Unbeliever’s Problem of Extreme Evil

 

The atheistic worldview simply cannot account for superhuman evil. Death, yes; suffering, yes. But calculated, relentless, exhausting brutality toward the weak and innocent? The death camps? The Nazi doctors? The Killing Fields?

 

Why commit evil just for evil’s sake, or why take pleasure in inflicting suffering? All pragmatic, naturalistic, and evolutionary explanations of such evil prove inadequate.

 

The Bible, on the other hand, speaks of an unseen realm full of powerful spirit beings that project their cruel and malignant thoughts and wills on humans. These beings, far more powerful than human beings, also exceed humans in their evil. These malevolent beings push us to expand our evil beyond the boundaries of what could be expected even of fallen humans.

 

No naturalistic worldview can explain extreme evil. Since non-theists believe in nothing outside of the visible realm, they must explain such evils on the basis of human perversity alone.

 

 

SECTION FOUR

Proposed Solutions to the Problem of Evil and Suffering

 

Chapter Fifteen: Is God’s Limited Power a Solution?

 

If God lacks power, his good intentions are inadequate. Probably you already have friends who can’t control the universe. Do you really need another one, named “God”?

 

Those who believe in a God of limited power might respond, “It isn’t that God can’t do anything, just that he can’t do everything.” But what can he do? If God is doing the best he can, then he doesn’t permit evil and suffering, rather he is overtaken by them, since he can’t stop them. Why frustrate God with prayers he can’t answer, since if he could, he already would have?

 

Limiting God may appear to get him off the hook for life’s difficulties. It might make us feel warmer toward him. But this is a god of man’s invention, not the God revealed in Scripture.

 

Chapter Sixteen: Is God’s Limited Knowledge a Solution?

 

A loving God took a calculated risk, open theists suggest, but had he known the horrible things that would occur—the rapes and killings and tortures and abuse—he might never have created this world as he did. Hence, proponents of open theism argue, God cannot be held responsible for his creatures’ evil, since he could not foresee it.

 

Open theists suppose we should find comfort in believing God has not ordained our suffering from eternity past. I find it easier to trust a God who has known all along and planned how he will use the tragedy for his glory and our good, than one who just found out about it but chose not to stop it anyway.

 

Open theism is not only biblically wrong; it’s a shallow answer to the problem of evil.

 

Chapter Seventeen: Is God’s Limited Goodness a Solution?

 

A good man does not knowingly allow his neighbor to beat his child. If he had all power, he would not only stop the man from beating the child, he would not allow him to begin beating the child in the first place. Such an appraisal is completely apt regarding humans.

 

But we err in judging God by our standards.

 

We can envision a dog recognizing his master as good when he feeds and walks him, but questioning his goodness when he doesn’t let him have a Hershey bar. He might even write a book (Dog’s Problem?) or go on the lecture circuit telling everyone why his master isn’t good.

 

The existence of evil does not contradict God’s goodness, since God can ultimately use evil to bring about a greater good.

 

Chapter Eighteen: Is God’s Limited Love a Solution?

 

While few critics make a philosophical argument that God lacks love, many, when personally facing evil and suffering, interpret the terrible things happening to them to mean that God doesn’t love them after all. Doubt about their salvation may grip them, causing despair.

 

God’s attributes, while varied, work together in complete harmony. If in our eyes his holiness contradicts his love and his justice conflicts with his mercy, then that is our problem, not his. The almighty God who created us is the same holy God who condemned us as sinners and the same loving God who went to extraordinary lengths that we might go to Heaven. God’s self-consistency demands the simultaneous and full expression of his holiness, his love, and all his other attributes.

 

 

SECTION FIVE

Evil and Suffering in the Great Drama of Christ’s Redemptive Work

 

Chapter Nineteen: Evil and Suffering as Seen in Scripture’s Redemptive Story

 

God’s redemptive plan was not an ad-lib response to unanticipated events. From before the very beginning, God knew the very worst. And the very best it would one day bring.

 

God wrote the script of the unfolding drama of redemption long before Satan, demons, Adam and Eve—and you and I—took the stage. And from the beginning, he knew that the utterly spectacular end would make the dark middle worth it.

 

You may feel your choices have been reduced to whether you want Jell-O, or a window opened, or an extra blanket. On the contrary, your choice of whether you will trust God and worship him today reverberates throughout the universe, honoring or dishonoring your God. It also has enormous implications for eternal rewards God promises us in the next life.

 

Chapter Twenty: If You Were the Author, How Would You have Written the Story?

 

As a member of the real-life story’s cast, you might wish for a world untouched by evil and suffering. That’s understandable, because life is hard as the story unfolds; and it will be hard until it culminates or you leave the stage, having played your part.

 

But if you sat in the audience, which story would you prefer to watch? And if you wrote the story, which version would you prefer to write? And even as a cast member, having endured such difficulty, ten thousand years from now at the ongoing cast party in honor of the Writer and Director, when grand tales make the rounds at dinner tables on the New Earth—which story do you think you would cast your vote for?

 

“All’s well that ends well” is a cliché, but there’s truth in it. There’s no substitute for a happy ending.

 

Chapter Twenty-one: Jesus: The Only Answer Bigger than the Questions

 

The Cross is God’s answer to the question “Why don’t you do something about evil?”

 

But what if God did do something about it? What if what he did was so great and unprecedented that it shook the angelic realm’s foundation, and ripped in half, from the top down, not only the temple curtain but the fabric of the universe itself?

 

A powerful moment in the movie The Passion of the Christ occurs when Jesus, overwhelmed with pain and exhaustion, lies on the ground as guards kick, mock, and spit on him. A horrified woman, her hand outstretched, pleads, “Someone, stop this!”

 

The great irony is that “Someone,” God’s Son, was doing something unspeakably great that required it not be stopped.

 

Had someone delivered Jesus from his suffering that day, he could not now deliver us from ours.

 

 

SECTION SIX

Divine Sovereignty and Meaningful Human Choice: Accounting for Evil and Suffering

 

Chapter Twenty-two: God’s Sovereignty and Its Reach

 

God didn’t devise his redemptive plan on the fly. Evil didn’t take him by surprise. God isn’t the author of evil, but he is the author of a story that includes evil. He intended from the beginning to permit evil, then to turn evil on its head, to take what evil angels and evil people intended for evil and use it for good. In the face of the lowest evil, God intended to show his highest good.

 

It is possible to plan for something you know is coming without forcing that thing to happen. God didn’t force Adam and Eve to do evil, but he did create them with freedom and permitted Satan’s presence in the garden, knowing they would choose evil and knowing that what he would do in his redemptive plan would serve a greater good.

 

Chapter Twenty-three: “Free Will” and Meaningful Choice

 

God is intelligent, creative, communicative, and free to choose. To be made in his likeness likely includes having these attributes, though on a finite level. We think because he thinks, we speak because he speaks, we create because he creates, and we choose because he chooses. These things all come from God and comprise part of what it means to be human.

 

God sovereignly created angels and human beings and gave them freedom to choose. He knew what choices angels and humans would make under what circumstances. While he could have intervened to stop them from sinning, he wanted them to choose freely, not under constraint. Furthermore, he planned to use the evil and suffering he foresaw to reveal himself in Christ and his redemptive plan.

 

Chapter Twenty-four: This World’s Structure is Necessary for Meaningful Choice

 

Meaningful choice requires a cause-and-effect system in which choices generate consequences.

 

I’ve heard people argue that a good and all-powerful God should miraculously intervene every time someone intends to do harm.

 

If God disarmed every shooter and prevented every drunk driver from crashing, this would not be a real world in which people make consequential choices. It would not be a world of character development and faith building. It would not be a world where families put their arms around one another to face life’s difficulties. It would be a world where people went blithely along with their lives, content to do evil and put up with it, feeling no need to turn to God, no incentive to consider the gospel and prepare for eternity. In such a world, people would die without a sense of need, only to find themselves in Hell.

 

Chapter Twenty-five: Meaningful Human Choice and Divine Sovereignty Working Together

 

Our problem is both our unwillingness to understand and our incapacity to turn our wills toward God. Once we grasp the depths of this problem, we will fully appreciate the wonders of his grace. Without that insight, we might imagine ourselves in Heaven congratulating one another that we had the savvy and strength of will to turn to Christ. But God leaves no room for such boasting.

 

God’s amazing grace doesn’t end at our conversion. Even the regenerated human will depends upon the divine will to live as it should. Philippians 2:12–13 speaks both to those who understate and those who overstate the role of the human will: “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” We must will and work, and God must will and work.

 

Chapter Twenty-six: Further Thoughts on God’s Sovereignty and Human Will

 

We can believe in God’s sovereignty and still lock the door. “If a man is lazy,” says Ecclesiastes, “the rafters sag; if his hands are idle, the house leaks” (10:18).

 

These verses don’t attribute sagging rafters and leaking houses to God’s sovereignty. They lay responsibility on people to take action. Students who don’t study and set the alarm to get up for class aren’t trusting God; they’re just being irresponsible.

 

No contradiction exists between praying, “Lord, please protect us and the children on this drive,” and then putting on seat belts. Prayers for healing do not conflict with the common grace of medical treatment…why should we choose between the two? Believers understand that [medical treatment] before, after, and while we pray for the sick helps them in two vital ways.

 

Chapter Twenty-seven: The God Who Brings Good Out of Bad

 

God’s glory is the highest good of the universe…permitting evil and suffering—and paying the price to end them—will all ultimately reveal his character and cause his people to worship him forever.

 

If we recognize God’s sovereignty even over Satan’s work, it changes our perspective.

 

You might not know whether demons, or human genetics under the Fall, or a doctor’s poor decision, or God’s direct hand have brought about your disease, but you know as much as you need to—that God is sovereign, and whether he heals you now or waits until the resurrection, he desires to achieve his own good purpose in you.

 

If the world is as random as some theologians suggest, it would seem that people, demons, and luck determine our destinies. We can drive ourselves crazy with such thoughts—or embrace God’s higher purpose in painful and even tragic events.

 

 

SECTION SEVEN

The Two Eternal Solutions to the Problem of Evil: Heaven and Hell

 

Chapter Twenty-eight: Heaven: Eternal Grace to Unworthy but Grateful Children

 

Here, we have bodies and work, rest, play, and relate to one another—we call this life. Yet many have mistakenly redefined eternal life to mean an off-earth disembodied existence stripped of human life’s defining properties. Eternal life will mean enjoying forever, as resurrected (which means embodied) beings, what life on Earth at its finest offered us. We could more accurately call our present existence the beforelife rather than calling Heaven the afterlife. Life doesn’t merely continue in Heaven, it emerges at last to its intended fullness.

 

How will we feel when the great shadow departs forever?

 

How will we feel when everything happy comes true, and everything sad comes untrue?

 

We will feel, perhaps, like it couldn’t get any better than that.

 

But each new day will prove us wrong.

 

Chapter Twenty-nine: Hell: Eternal Sovereign Justice Exacted upon Evildoers

 

When most people speak of the horrors of Hell, they talk as if it means the suffering of innocent people. That would indeed be terribly unjust—but nowhere does the Bible suggest the innocent will spend a single moment in Hell.

 

We rarely see ourselves as worthy of Hell. After all, we are not Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Bundy, or Dahmer. Guilty people can always rationalize sin. Hell exists because sin has no excuse.

 

Hell is not evil; it’s a place where evil gets punished. Hell is not pleasant, appealing, or encouraging. But Hell is morally good, because a good God must punish evil.

 

We cry out for true and lasting justice, then fault God for taking evil too seriously by administering eternal punishment. We can’t have it both ways. Sin is evil… To fear and dread Hell is understandable, but to argue against Hell is to argue against justice.

 

 

SECTION EIGHT

God’s Allowance and Restraint of Evil and Suffering

 

Chapter Thirty: Why Doesn’t God Do More to Restrain Evil and Suffering?

 

God may already be restraining 99.99 percent of evil and suffering. God may also be preventing 99.99 percent of disasters.

 

Why haven’t tyrants, with access to powerful weapons, destroyed this planet? What has kept infectious diseases and natural disasters from killing 99 percent of the world’s population rather than less than 1 percent? How much evil and suffering is too much? Could God reduce the amount without restricting meaningful human choice, or decreasing the urgency of the message that …we need to turn to the Redeemer before we die?

 

Suppose we rated all pain on a scale of one to ten… God could reduce the worst suffering to level three, but then level three, now the worst, would seem unbearable. Any argument that judges God’s goodness strictly by his elimination of pain will, in the end, not leave us satisfied if he permits any pain at all.

 

Chapter Thirty-one: Why Does God Delay Justice?

 

God’s is not a vending-machine justice in which a coin of righteousness immediately produces reward or a coin of evil yields swift retribution. Packaged theologies seek to neatly account for everything, but as Job, Psalms, and the prophets repeatedly demonstrate, that’s not how life works.

 

Yet God doesn’t delay justice so long as we often imagine. The wheels of justice may seem to turn slowly, but they turn surely. Some rewards of goodness and punishments of evil come in this life. And though ultimate rewards and punishments await the final judgment, considerable justice, both reward and retribution, gets dispensed immediately upon death, when God’s children immediately experience the joy of his presence and the unrepentant suffer the first justice of Hell (see Luke 16:19–31). This means that the maximum duration of injustice experienced by any person cannot exceed his life span.

 

Chapter Thirty-two: Why Doesn’t God Explain His Reasons?

 

Sometimes we make the foolish assumption that our heavenly Father has no right to insist that we trust him unless he makes his infinite wisdom completely understandable to us. This lays an impossible demand upon God, not because of his limitations, but because of ours. A physicist father bears no blame because he can’t explain quantum mechanics to his three-year-old.

 

We lack God’s omniscience, omnipotence, wisdom, holiness, justice, and goodness. If we insist we have the right, or even assume we have the capacity, to understand the hidden purposes of God, we forfeit the comfort and perspective we could have had in kneeling before his vastly superior wisdom.

 

He is infinite; we are finite. He is the Creator; we’re the creatures. Shouldn’t that say it all?

 

Chapter Thirty-three: Understanding that God is God and We are Not

 

Of all there is to know in the entire universe, how much do you know? Let’s say you’re the smartest human being who’s ever lived and that you know one percent (of course, nobody knows nearly that much). Now, is it possible that in the 99 percent of all there is that you don’t know, there exists or will exist enough goodness and happiness in the universe to outweigh all the evil and suffering?

 

Is it possible that in the 99 percent you don’t know, a good God exists who has legitimate reasons for not making his purposes clearer and for not forcing people to recognize his existence? Is it possible that some rational explanation exists—if you were smart enough to understand it—for why this good God permits evil and suffering?

 

We reveal a staggering arrogance in assuming God owes us an explanation for anything.

 

 

SECTION NINE

Evil and Suffering Used for God’s Glory

 

Chapter Thirty-four: Pain and Suffering in God’s World

 

Worse things can happen to us than dying young of a terrible disease. We could live in health and wealth, but if we die without Christ and go to Hell—or if we know Christ but fail to draw close to him—this is immeasurably worse than the disease that gets our attention and prompts us to look to him.

 

When Nanci and I passed through a particularly difficult period of our lives, we felt like we’d “done our time,” as if we shouldn’t have to face more difficulty for awhile. But that’s not how it works…As everyone living with ongoing disabilities, diseases, and heartaches knows, in this life God does not parcel out a certain amount of suffering, so once it runs out we’ll face no more. But the promise remains: “Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love” (Lamentations 3:32).

 

Chapter Thirty-five: Apparently Gratuitous Evil and Pointless Suffering

 

Not seeing the point in extreme suffering doesn’t prove there is no point. Evils such as rape and murder certainly look gratuitous. But are we qualified to say they really are? Didn’t the violent, excruciating death of Jesus, when it happened, appear both gratuitous and pointless in the extreme?

 

Behind almost every expression of the problem of evil stands an assumption: We know what an omniscient, omnipotent, morally perfect being should do.

 

Since detailed past, present, and future knowledge is unavailable to us, we sometimes consider accidents random and pointless. We do not see that God has and will accomplish good purposes through them. Some good actions may result in great evils, while one tragic death may save the world from tyranny. Who but God is in a position to know such things?

 

Chapter Thirty-six: How the Health and Wealth Gospel Perverts Our View of Evil and Suffering

 

This false worldview breeds superficiality, seriously misrepresents the gospel, and sets people up to believe, when evil and suffering come to them, that God has been untrue to his promises.

 

In some cases, pleasing God results in suffering.

 

Suffering shouldn’t surprise us. God has promised it. One of the great tragedies about the health and wealth gospel is that it makes God seem like a liar. When people believe that God promises to keep them from suffering, God appears untrustworthy when suffering comes.

 

If you are a Christian, God will deliver you from eternal suffering. And even now he will give you joyful foretastes of living in his presence. That’s his promise.

 

 

SECTION TEN

Why Does God Allow Suffering?

 

Chapter Thirty-seven: How God Uses Suffering for His Glory

 

If you don’t understand that the universe is about God and his glory—and that whatever exalts God’s glory also works for your ultimate good—then …You might consider God egotistical or cruel to test us for his sake. But the testing he does for his sake accrues to our eternal benefit.

 

God uses suffering to purge sin from our lives, strengthen our commitment to him, force us to depend on his grace, bind us together with other believers, produce discernment, foster sensitivity, discipline our minds, impart wisdom, stretch our hope, cause us to know Christ better, make us long for truth, lead us to repentance of sin, teach us to give thanks in times of sorrow, increase our faith, and strengthen our character.

 

God doesn’t simply want us to feel good. He wants us to be good. And very often, the road to being good involves not feeling good.

 

Chapter Thirty-eight: How God Uses Suffering for Our Sanctification

 

People’s suffering from natural disasters, diseases, wars, and accidents demonstrates sin’s horrors. If life in a fallen world didn’t sometimes show us such dreadful consequences of sin and its curse, we might look at sin and wonder, “What’s the big deal?” Without a sense of the misery it produces, we’d have no motive to turn from it.

 

Sometimes we may resent God for imposing unwanted difficulties on us. If we see through the lens of eternity, however, that resentment changes to thanksgiving for making us better and ultimately happier people, even if it costs us temporary pain and extreme inconvenience.

 

The point is not the degree of evil intended against us, but our faithfulness in suffering. So regardless of why we suffer, God can use it to deepen our faith.

 

Chapter Thirty-nine: How God Uses Suffering to Build Our Character

 

You may think, I refuse to accept that suffering can prove worthwhile, but your rejection of God’s goodness will not make you better or happier; it will only bring resentment and greater pain. Accept health as God’s blessing and its absence as God’s severe mercy.

 

Suffering uncovers our trust in God-substitutes…God laments, “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug …broken cisterns that cannot hold water’” (Jeremiah 2:13).

 

Let’s be honest: virtually everyone who has suffered little in life is shallow, unmotivated, self-absorbed, and lacking in character…And yet we do everything we can to avoid challenges, both to our children and to ourselves. If we succeed in our avoidance, we’ll develop in ourselves and our children the sort of character we least admire.

 

Chapter Forty: Suffering Can Give Birth to Joy, Compassion, and Hope

 

God permits rebellion while guaranteeing its failure. And what will rebellion buy in the meantime? A loss of joy—and for those who do not surrender to him, a permanent loss of joy in the world to come,

 

We harm no one through bitterness as much as we harm ourselves. Someone told me, “Bitterness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” In the face of evil and suffering, responding to God or others with bitterness, distrust, and accusations bears no good fruit. Responding in honest brokenness and turning to God in submission, faith, and trust yields untold riches of peace and comfort.

 

We are no substitute for God. But we do serve as his ambassadors. I heard Christian Counselor David Powlison say that although God alone is the blazing sun, we can be three-watt night-lights. In darkness even a tiny light can bring hope.

 

Chapter Forty-one: God Uses Our Suffering for the Good of Others

 

We want to serve from the power position. We’d rather be healthy, wealthy, and wise as we minister to the sick, poor, and ignorant. When those preaching God’s Word have little personal familiarity with suffering, the credibility gap makes it difficult for them to speak into others’ lives. But our suffering levels the playing field.

 

God uses the suffering we try to avoid to spread the gospel and build his kingdom. Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” (John 12:24).

 

 

SECTION ELEVEN

Living Meaningfully in Suffering

 

Chapter Forty-two: Finding God in Suffering

 

A woman self-consciously told one of our pastors that before going to sleep each night she reads her Bible, then hugs it as she falls asleep. “Is that weird?” she asked. While it may be unusual, it’s not weird. This woman has known suffering, and as she clings to his promises, she clings to God. Any father would be moved to hear that his daughter falls asleep with his letter held close to her.  Surely God treasures such an act of childlike love, for his Word represents his person.

 

The believers described in Faith’s Hall of Fame (see Hebrews 11) all endured severe tests. None of them had an easy life. Yet they all clung to their belief in God’s promises, trusting his goodness, and believing “that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6, NASB).

 

Chapter Forty-three: Finding Help in Dark Times

 

Knowing that suffering will one day end gives us strength to endure this day.

 

Hope provides the light at the end of life’s tunnel. It not only makes the tunnel endurable, it fills the heart with anticipation—a world alive, fresh, beautiful, without pain, suffering, or war. A world without disease, without accident, without tragedy. A world without dictators or madmen. A world ruled by the only One worthy of ruling (see Revelation 5:12).

 

Though we don’t know exactly when, we do know for sure that either by our deaths or Christ’s return, our suffering will end. From before the beginning, God drew the line in eternity’s sand to say for his children, “This much and no more, then endless joy.”

 

Chapter Forty-four: Finding Grace to Ease Others’ Suffering and to Endure Our Own

 

To ignore someone’s pain is to add to that pain. Instead of fearing we’ll say the wrong thing, we should reach out to hurting people. Many times it’s better just to put our arms around someone and cry with them; people almost always appreciate it when you acknowledge their loss. Yet so long as your heart is right, saying something is nearly always better than ignoring them.

 

“No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it” (1 Corinthians 10:13, msg). This truth applies to every aspect of our lives, including the manner, timing, and duration of our dying.

 

Chapter Forty-five: Discovering Death’s Curse and Blessing

 

The last thing most people want to think about is the last thing they’ll do: die.

 

Death is life’s greatest certainty.

 

No exercise program, diet, or therapy prevents death. Corpses don’t get cosmetic surgery. Even the young die from overdoses, accidents, and diseases. Famous athletes and Hollywood stars alike wind up in nursing homes. Suffering and old age are the great equalizers.

 

Two things stand between where we live now and that marvelous world where we’ll live forever: death and resurrection. If we never died, we’d never be resurrected. We’d never enjoy a glorious eternity with Christ and our spiritual family.

 

So while death is an enemy and part of sin’s curse, because of Christ’s death and resurrection, it’s the dark passage through which we enter the brilliance of never-ending life.

 

CONCLUSION: Final Thoughts About God, Goodness, Evil and Suffering

 

In the end, Jesus Christ is the only satisfying answer to the problem of evil and suffering.

 

In fact, I’m convinced he is the only answer.

 

In this world of suffering and evil, I have a profound and abiding hope, and faith for the future. Not because I follow a set of religious rules to make me better. But because for forty years I’ve known a real person, and…because he willingly entered this world of evil and suffering and didn’t spare himself, but took on the worst of it for my sake and yours, he has earned my trust even for what I can’t understand. I and countless others… have found him to be trustworthy.

 

He is “the Alpha and the Omega…the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 22:13).

 

When it comes to goodness and evil, present suffering and eternal joy, the first Word, and the last, is Jesus.

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