And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, "Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him" (John 9:1-3).
One of the great problems and one of the great mysteries of life is the problem of human suffering and the problem of death. I suppose there is more pain and suffering today than there ever has been on the face of the earth-if for no other reason than the fact that there are more people than ever before. Not only is there more physical pain, but there is also more emotional and mental pain than there has ever been. "Well all right, if there is a God and if he is a loving and merciful God, how do you explain the problems of suffering a
nd death and all the tragedies that happen to people?" Why is it that these things occur? I believe any question that man can ask has a reasonable answer-at least an answer that is as consistent with God's existence as it is in opposition to God's existence. And so, in the problem of human suffering and the problem of death and tragedies-things that happen to all of us--there are answers. It is not going to be possible in this blog to give an answer to every conceivable situation that one might conjecture could occur or has occurred. But there are some things that can be said and some points that can be made that are useful and helpful in better understanding the problem of human suffering and in demonstrating that these things are not inconsistent with a loving and merciful God, such as the God we read of in the Bible.
There are some things that are obvious enough and that are simple enough to understand, that there is no need to go into great detail. So, I just want to mention them very briefly.
For instance, there are those who say there is no such thing as pain. There is a school of thought that says that pain does not really exist, that it is all in your mind, that if you experience pain, it is because you are weak or because you are psychologically not properly oriented or because you are not spiritual enough or whatever it might be--that pain is an illusion. But I doubt very sincerely if too many of us take this point of view seriously. Medically we know that the brain makes responses to a pin prick in the finger. There are very few of us that when we stick ourselves with a pin or cut ourselves do not thoroughly and completely believe that pain is real, and so I do not intend to go into this in great detail.
Although there are many things that could be said, I do not think it is necessary for us to get involved in long and protracted discussions about the things that we experience as far as pain and suffering go as a result of our own deliberate sin. In short, if you jump off a bridge you should not get too upset with God when you hit the bottom. We have examples of this in the Bible: Saul, David, Cain, Adam and Eve--individuals who suffered because of their transgressions of what God has said to do and what not to do. Certainly, in today's world we see this.
The people who drink alcoholic beverages can expect to have problems getting their brains to function properly in old age. They are people who can expect to have problems with liver cirrhosis and things of this kind. They can expect to have difficulties that are a result of having taken this material, this poisonous intoxicant material, into their bodies. People who smoke can expect to have problems with their lungs (emphysema, lung cancer, things of this type). The person who commits adultery can expect the consequences of that--the psychological damage, and disappointment. The person who drives too fast, uses drugs, or lies--is involved in things that naturally precipitate problems for us and they fall in the category of jumping off the bridge. I believe that if we abuse ourselves, we cannot be angry with our Creator for not stepping in and helping us avoid the consequences of these things. It would be unreasonable to expect God to stop us from hitting the bottom when we jump off a bridge. And so if we persist in taking chemicals into our body, in doing things that are contradictory to what God has told us to do, we can expect to suffer. I do not believe that it is inconsistent with the nature of God for a man to expect to suffer when he tampers with nature or when he fails to heed the situations that occur when our natural situation is abused.
When man was put upon the earth he was told to be fruitful, to replenish the earth, to subdue it. His first responsibility upon the earth (his only responsibility when he was first here) was to "care for the garden," to take care of the earth, to make sure that the earth was properly nurtured and properly supervised. The essence of that command still exists. Man still has the responsibility to take care of this beautiful creation that God has given us. Much of the suffering and tragedy man experiences is because he has not discharged this responsibility.
Man's persistence in polluting the water, for example, has caused disease and other problems which in some cases have been tragic. Man's unwise use of the land has caused floods and tornadoes that have brought great tragedy and great suffering upon man. When we violate the natural environment that God has given us, we cannot expect God to allow the consequences of this violation to occur. We know that emphysema and some of the other diseases that we have come in contact with have been, at least in some cases, caused by our violation of the air that God has given us originally in a state that did not cause these things. We have evidence that even leukemia may be related to man's indiscriminate use of nuclear energy.
Another aspect of the problem of suffering is seen when we fail to heed the warnings of nature and thus reap the consequences. I think there are many classic illustrations of this. In California, for example, there is an area near Los Angeles where the earth is under great stress, and where there are a tremendous number of cracks, or faults as they are called. Geologists have warned the builders in that area that this is a place where they need to be extremely careful not to build tall buildings and that they should not construct structures that are sensitive to earthquakes and to cracks and shifting of the earth. Yet at this time there is a building under construction to replace a hospital that was knocked down by an earthquake not too long ago. This building is suppose to be sixteen stories tall and has no earthquake provisions of any real consequence in it. It is being partially financed by the Federal Government, and is straddling the very fault that knocked down the hospital that it is replacing. Now I'd like you to think for a minute, who will get the blame when an earthquake rolls through that area, knocking down the brand new hospital and perhaps killing ten million people, including everybody in the hospital? Who is going to get the blame? Well, I will guarantee you that there will be those people who will say, "If there was a God that wouldn't have happened". And yet the warning is there. If you build your house in the mouth of a volcano, it does not seem to me that you have too much to complain about when it erupts. A surprising amount of the problems we have fall into these categories that we have briefly examined.
But on the other hand I open this discussion by reading to you a passage from the 9th chapter of John, which describes a situation that does not fall in this category. Jesus was passing by, the Bible tells us in John 9:1-3, and he saw a man who was blind from his birth, born without sight. Now his disciples asked him the typical question. They said, "Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" It was their conviction that the problems that the man had were a result of man's sin, which in some cases is correct. But notice what Jesus said in the third verse: "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." Jesus said it was not because this man sinned or not even because his parents sinned that he was born blind. It was not sin that did it. It was not that this man abused his body; it was not that this man abused his environment; it was not that this man failed to heed the warnings of his environment. Jesus said it was that the works of God should be made manifest in him. Before we conclude I want to explain to you what I think that means.
First let us take a look at a few points that are related to this type of problem, at least in an indirect way. Let us see if we can make some sense of some of the things that you and I experience: some of the things that come our way in life that we sometimes find somewhat difficult to explain or somewhat difficult to rationalize or to work out in our own minds. There are some, for example, who suggest to us that pain is something that should not occur if there is a God. And yet, physical pain and other types of pain are absolutely necessary if we are to survive in a physical way. There was a story in Reader's Digest about a little boy in India who was born without the nerve endings of the extremities of his body connected to his brain. In simple terms, this child could not experience physical pain. Now you know, we might think that would be marvelous to never have a stubbed toe, a headache, a backache, or all the other aches and pains that bother all of us. But this is a very tragic, unpleasant story. This little boy was about 10 or 11 months old, just beginning to walk around hanging onto things, when his mother was kneading bread over on the counter and smelled the odor of burning human flesh. She turned and saw her little boy with his hands on the hot furnace in the center of the room, and the doctors were just barely able to save his hands by skin grafting. You see, that child could not know that the furnace was hot, and the natural reflex built into each of us was not operative in this child. Consequently he was not protected by experiencing normal pain. Any normal child would probably have never touched the thing, and if they had they would have jerked away immediately. They would have experienced pain. They would have screamed and would have gotten help immediately without a serious bum. But this child did not have that protection. A few months later the child came in one day and collapsed in the doorway of the hut, and when the mother picked him up she noticed his foot was badly cut and he had an obvious loss of blood. Once again his life was saved by transfusions but you see his body could not say to his brain, "You've been hurt! Get help! You need attention quickly." We need physical pain. The tragic end of the story came when the child was barely eight years old. He came in one day and laid down on the mat in the corner of the hut as is the custom in that country. The mother went over to check on him a few minutes later and found he was dead. An autopsy revealed he had died of a ruptured appendix. You see his body could not say to his brain, "You're sick. You need help. You're in trouble." Consequently, survival was not possible.
The writer says in Psalm 139:14, "I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well." Indeed this physical body that I live in, ugly as it may be on the outside, is a marvelous machine--and if properly cared for might run as long as a hundred years without a valve job or a new transmission or even a change in oil. (Some of us may sometimes feel like we need a new transmission, but the fact of the matter is that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.) Physical pain is a part of being fearfully and wonderfully made; physical pain is that which protects us and enables us to survive in the environment in which we live.
I would like to suggest to you further that this same type of thing is true in the emotional sense. What kind of man would it be who could not experience guilt and sympathy and compassion and who could not relate to the needs of fellow human beings? We have had some famous people who were like this. They wear names like Hitler, Mussolini and Eichman--men who could watch innocent women and children by the tens of thousands walk to their death in the gas chamber and apparently not be moved. These men apparently were not able to feel sympathy or compassion or guilt in any way.
If you are a young man dating a young woman who cannot be moved by the saddest of human experiences (if she can watch the saddest movie and a tear does not come to her eye; if she can hear of the greatest plight of human beings and if she can observe the suffering and pain of others and not be moved) you had better think very seriously about what kind of a wife this girl is going to be. Is she going to be able to relate to your needs? Is she going to relate to your feelings? Is she going to have compassion for what you need in life? And when you fail, is she going to be sympathetic and understanding? Is she going to be a "helpmeet", or is she going to be "millstone" dragging you down, one who has no capacity to relate to you and to help you when you need help?
Perhaps even a greater need is the reverse direction. If you are a young lady dating a young man and if this young man somehow has the distorted, perverted idea that masculine strength depends on not being sensitive and not being able to relate to the needs of other human beings, you had better think very seriously about what kind of husband this man is going to be. If he can watch the saddest movie and not be moved and if he can watch the greatest tragedy of human life and not be disturbed, you can be sure he is going to be a husband who is totally unable to relate to you in the difficult business of being a woman and the more difficult business of being a mother. Do you really believe he is going to feel for your needs and be sympathetic to your problems? Is he really going to be helpful to you when you need help?
I am convinced that one of the greatest tragedies of our society today is the fact that somehow we have equated the ability to be sympathetic, the ability to be compassionate, the ability to relate to the needs of our fellow human beings as weakness--when, in fact, it is a sign of strength.
Sometime ago, I read about a little girl who lived went to a shopping center to get some cokes for some friends of hers. She was brutally attacked by a man in the parking lot of that shopping enter. Before the evening was finished she had been stabbed 24 times, and she died. Why did no one meet her needs? How could a young lady possibly be stabbed mercilessly for thirty minutes in a New York street with 1100 young men in the near vicinity and have nobody move to help her? Why is it that we have somehow equated the ability of a man to be sympathetic, to be compassionate, to be helpful, to be understanding, to relate to the needs of his fellow human beings as a sign of weakness? I would suggest to you that any third grade weakling can turn his back on the needs of those who are suffering and who need help. Anybody can refuse to help and refuse to relate to the needs of others. A man of strength is a man who can stand above a cold impersonal city and with tears in his eyes say, "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chicks under her wings, and ye would not!"
There is a man of strength; there is a man who was not afraid to get involved; there is a man who paid with his life for his ability to relate to the needs of other people; and there was the Son of God--Jesus Christ! We need to get over this idea that somehow the man who can do this--the man who can be sympathetic and compassionate, who can move into people's lives and try to help them--is a weak man. In fact, just the opposite is true.
I am also convinced that one of our great problems in this area of pain and suffering and death is brought on by ignorance. And I suppose that this is true of death more than anything else. Ignorance has caused us to throw away one of the great blessings that we have in being a Christian. In fact, is it not a marvelous thing that when those we love are no longer able to exist realistically in a physical way that they do not have to go on suffering. God has provided a means by which the spirit can be separated from the body and the physical pain that we endure now fades into insignificance. It is interesting to me that the apostles rarely used the term death to describe the end of life. They talked about being "asleep in Jesus," about being "absent from the body," about being "at home with God," and so forth. I have known people who when they lost a husband or a wife, a mother or a father, a child, a brother or a sister, have somehow seemed to quit living themselves. They atrophy and are no longer able to be happy, useful, and productive. This is a great tragedy. As a Christian we ought to be able to look at life much more positively because of death. As an atheist, as a disbeliever, as one alienated from God, a person has to look at life with all of its problems, with all of its suffering, with all of the pain, with all of the terrible things that one has to endure as the absolute best that he is ever going to experience. And yet, if we are wearing Christ, if we are a part of Jesus, we can look at life with all of its joy, with all of its beauty, with all of the wonderful things that we all enjoy as the absolute worst that we are ever going to have to endure. Can't we see that the difference is as different as left and right, as black and white, as night and day? If there was no other reason for us to believe in God but this one, it would be a compelling reason. Ignorance is one of the great curses of man. Ignorance of death is one of the great curses of the Christian.
I am sure all of you have heard lessons from one time or another of the value of pain and suffering in people's lives. I think that it would be important for us here to make just a comment along these lines, even though it is a point you have undoubtedly heard. I think perhaps the best illustration that I have heard is a very old story but one that illustrates the point very well. There were five brothers out west somewhere who at one time had attended the services of the Church, but had become indifferent because of lack of involvement. They were not in attendance, not faithful, and were completely inactive. The story goes that at one time the oldest brother, John, was out behind the barn and he got bit on the arm by a rattlesnake. Of course the other brothers were greatly concerned. They called the elders and the preacher and anybody else they could get to pray for John. They made all kinds of promises of the things they were going to do. It was not too long until John began to recover. As he recovered, he reflected upon his condition and his rejection of God and his lack of involvement and the fact that he had not been faithful to the Lord. So he turned away from the kind of life he had been living, and he came to God. He got involved in the work program of the Church, and became a very active, very dedicated Christian. The story goes that one Sunday the preacher, in the process of a prayer, said, "Lord send us four more rattlesnakes that we may reach John's four brothers."
I am sure that no preacher would want to bring that kind of pain and suffering into a man's life, but the fact of the matter is that sometimes it takes pain, sometimes it takes suffering, sometimes it takes a tragedy to make us realize that we need God.
Pain humbles us. Somebody has said, "Humility is a funny thing. Just when you think you have it, you've lost it." Certainly that is true in 2 Corinthians 12:7 Paul said, "...lest I should be exalted above measure.... there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure." The apostle Paul apparently had a problem. The pain and suffering (the thorn in the flesh, whatever it was) helped Paul. It helped him overcome any sense of egotism that might have been part of his life. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to make us realize we are not self-sufficient. Sometimes it takes a disease to make us realize that no matter how much money we have, no matter how vocal we are, no matter how many friends we have, no matter what our situation in life might be, that sometimes there is no one who can help us but God. "...Whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's" (Romans 14:8).
The last point that I wish to make in our discussion is probably the most important point--a point that I think each of us needs to think about very, very seriously and understand very completely--especially as far as the Christian's situation connected with pain and suffering is concerned. The point deals most precisely with the passage of Scripture from John 9:1-3. Every now and then, I will discuss this subject with someone who will say, "Well, if God were real and if everything was as you say it is, then certainly Christians following God's system would not have to experience pain and suffering." I think if we consider that point of view for a few minutes we see that obviously this is not a realistic position for a number of reasons.
First of all, if becoming a Christian would automatically unravel all the various problems that confront a person in life, then we would have people flocking to religion to get away from their problems. The way it is, there are some people using religion as an escape mechanism when that is not what God intended. God wants us to serve him because we love him, not out of fear. It would be unreal and unrealistic for us to really believe that somehow being a Christian ought to exempt us from the problems that other people have to endure.
But I think even far more fundamental and far more important than this is the fact that if Christians did not suffer, they would be totally and completely incapable of doing what they were put here to do. God intends for his followers to communicate with the world, to bring Jesus Christ into the lives of people. You cannot communicate with a man unless you are enduring or have endured some of the same things that he has endured. As a matter of fact, I believe that the bad experiences that you and I have to put up with and that we all undergo from time to time are actually talents. They are actually things that enable us to communicate with our fellow man and meet his needs.
One of the great problems and one of the great mysteries of life is the problem of human suffering and the problem of death. I suppose there is more pain and suffering today than there ever has been on the face of the earth-if for no other reason than the fact that there are more people than ever before. Not only is there more physical pain, but there is also more emotional and mental pain than there has ever been. "Well all right, if there is a God and if he is a loving and merciful God, how do you explain the problems of suffering a
nd death and all the tragedies that happen to people?" Why is it that these things occur? I believe any question that man can ask has a reasonable answer-at least an answer that is as consistent with God's existence as it is in opposition to God's existence. And so, in the problem of human suffering and the problem of death and tragedies-things that happen to all of us--there are answers. It is not going to be possible in this blog to give an answer to every conceivable situation that one might conjecture could occur or has occurred. But there are some things that can be said and some points that can be made that are useful and helpful in better understanding the problem of human suffering and in demonstrating that these things are not inconsistent with a loving and merciful God, such as the God we read of in the Bible.There are some things that are obvious enough and that are simple enough to understand, that there is no need to go into great detail. So, I just want to mention them very briefly.
For instance, there are those who say there is no such thing as pain. There is a school of thought that says that pain does not really exist, that it is all in your mind, that if you experience pain, it is because you are weak or because you are psychologically not properly oriented or because you are not spiritual enough or whatever it might be--that pain is an illusion. But I doubt very sincerely if too many of us take this point of view seriously. Medically we know that the brain makes responses to a pin prick in the finger. There are very few of us that when we stick ourselves with a pin or cut ourselves do not thoroughly and completely believe that pain is real, and so I do not intend to go into this in great detail.
Although there are many things that could be said, I do not think it is necessary for us to get involved in long and protracted discussions about the things that we experience as far as pain and suffering go as a result of our own deliberate sin. In short, if you jump off a bridge you should not get too upset with God when you hit the bottom. We have examples of this in the Bible: Saul, David, Cain, Adam and Eve--individuals who suffered because of their transgressions of what God has said to do and what not to do. Certainly, in today's world we see this.
The people who drink alcoholic beverages can expect to have problems getting their brains to function properly in old age. They are people who can expect to have problems with liver cirrhosis and things of this kind. They can expect to have difficulties that are a result of having taken this material, this poisonous intoxicant material, into their bodies. People who smoke can expect to have problems with their lungs (emphysema, lung cancer, things of this type). The person who commits adultery can expect the consequences of that--the psychological damage, and disappointment. The person who drives too fast, uses drugs, or lies--is involved in things that naturally precipitate problems for us and they fall in the category of jumping off the bridge. I believe that if we abuse ourselves, we cannot be angry with our Creator for not stepping in and helping us avoid the consequences of these things. It would be unreasonable to expect God to stop us from hitting the bottom when we jump off a bridge. And so if we persist in taking chemicals into our body, in doing things that are contradictory to what God has told us to do, we can expect to suffer. I do not believe that it is inconsistent with the nature of God for a man to expect to suffer when he tampers with nature or when he fails to heed the situations that occur when our natural situation is abused.
When man was put upon the earth he was told to be fruitful, to replenish the earth, to subdue it. His first responsibility upon the earth (his only responsibility when he was first here) was to "care for the garden," to take care of the earth, to make sure that the earth was properly nurtured and properly supervised. The essence of that command still exists. Man still has the responsibility to take care of this beautiful creation that God has given us. Much of the suffering and tragedy man experiences is because he has not discharged this responsibility.
Man's persistence in polluting the water, for example, has caused disease and other problems which in some cases have been tragic. Man's unwise use of the land has caused floods and tornadoes that have brought great tragedy and great suffering upon man. When we violate the natural environment that God has given us, we cannot expect God to allow the consequences of this violation to occur. We know that emphysema and some of the other diseases that we have come in contact with have been, at least in some cases, caused by our violation of the air that God has given us originally in a state that did not cause these things. We have evidence that even leukemia may be related to man's indiscriminate use of nuclear energy.
Another aspect of the problem of suffering is seen when we fail to heed the warnings of nature and thus reap the consequences. I think there are many classic illustrations of this. In California, for example, there is an area near Los Angeles where the earth is under great stress, and where there are a tremendous number of cracks, or faults as they are called. Geologists have warned the builders in that area that this is a place where they need to be extremely careful not to build tall buildings and that they should not construct structures that are sensitive to earthquakes and to cracks and shifting of the earth. Yet at this time there is a building under construction to replace a hospital that was knocked down by an earthquake not too long ago. This building is suppose to be sixteen stories tall and has no earthquake provisions of any real consequence in it. It is being partially financed by the Federal Government, and is straddling the very fault that knocked down the hospital that it is replacing. Now I'd like you to think for a minute, who will get the blame when an earthquake rolls through that area, knocking down the brand new hospital and perhaps killing ten million people, including everybody in the hospital? Who is going to get the blame? Well, I will guarantee you that there will be those people who will say, "If there was a God that wouldn't have happened". And yet the warning is there. If you build your house in the mouth of a volcano, it does not seem to me that you have too much to complain about when it erupts. A surprising amount of the problems we have fall into these categories that we have briefly examined.
But on the other hand I open this discussion by reading to you a passage from the 9th chapter of John, which describes a situation that does not fall in this category. Jesus was passing by, the Bible tells us in John 9:1-3, and he saw a man who was blind from his birth, born without sight. Now his disciples asked him the typical question. They said, "Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" It was their conviction that the problems that the man had were a result of man's sin, which in some cases is correct. But notice what Jesus said in the third verse: "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." Jesus said it was not because this man sinned or not even because his parents sinned that he was born blind. It was not sin that did it. It was not that this man abused his body; it was not that this man abused his environment; it was not that this man failed to heed the warnings of his environment. Jesus said it was that the works of God should be made manifest in him. Before we conclude I want to explain to you what I think that means.
First let us take a look at a few points that are related to this type of problem, at least in an indirect way. Let us see if we can make some sense of some of the things that you and I experience: some of the things that come our way in life that we sometimes find somewhat difficult to explain or somewhat difficult to rationalize or to work out in our own minds. There are some, for example, who suggest to us that pain is something that should not occur if there is a God. And yet, physical pain and other types of pain are absolutely necessary if we are to survive in a physical way. There was a story in Reader's Digest about a little boy in India who was born without the nerve endings of the extremities of his body connected to his brain. In simple terms, this child could not experience physical pain. Now you know, we might think that would be marvelous to never have a stubbed toe, a headache, a backache, or all the other aches and pains that bother all of us. But this is a very tragic, unpleasant story. This little boy was about 10 or 11 months old, just beginning to walk around hanging onto things, when his mother was kneading bread over on the counter and smelled the odor of burning human flesh. She turned and saw her little boy with his hands on the hot furnace in the center of the room, and the doctors were just barely able to save his hands by skin grafting. You see, that child could not know that the furnace was hot, and the natural reflex built into each of us was not operative in this child. Consequently he was not protected by experiencing normal pain. Any normal child would probably have never touched the thing, and if they had they would have jerked away immediately. They would have experienced pain. They would have screamed and would have gotten help immediately without a serious bum. But this child did not have that protection. A few months later the child came in one day and collapsed in the doorway of the hut, and when the mother picked him up she noticed his foot was badly cut and he had an obvious loss of blood. Once again his life was saved by transfusions but you see his body could not say to his brain, "You've been hurt! Get help! You need attention quickly." We need physical pain. The tragic end of the story came when the child was barely eight years old. He came in one day and laid down on the mat in the corner of the hut as is the custom in that country. The mother went over to check on him a few minutes later and found he was dead. An autopsy revealed he had died of a ruptured appendix. You see his body could not say to his brain, "You're sick. You need help. You're in trouble." Consequently, survival was not possible.
The writer says in Psalm 139:14, "I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well." Indeed this physical body that I live in, ugly as it may be on the outside, is a marvelous machine--and if properly cared for might run as long as a hundred years without a valve job or a new transmission or even a change in oil. (Some of us may sometimes feel like we need a new transmission, but the fact of the matter is that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.) Physical pain is a part of being fearfully and wonderfully made; physical pain is that which protects us and enables us to survive in the environment in which we live.
I would like to suggest to you further that this same type of thing is true in the emotional sense. What kind of man would it be who could not experience guilt and sympathy and compassion and who could not relate to the needs of fellow human beings? We have had some famous people who were like this. They wear names like Hitler, Mussolini and Eichman--men who could watch innocent women and children by the tens of thousands walk to their death in the gas chamber and apparently not be moved. These men apparently were not able to feel sympathy or compassion or guilt in any way.
If you are a young man dating a young woman who cannot be moved by the saddest of human experiences (if she can watch the saddest movie and a tear does not come to her eye; if she can hear of the greatest plight of human beings and if she can observe the suffering and pain of others and not be moved) you had better think very seriously about what kind of a wife this girl is going to be. Is she going to be able to relate to your needs? Is she going to relate to your feelings? Is she going to have compassion for what you need in life? And when you fail, is she going to be sympathetic and understanding? Is she going to be a "helpmeet", or is she going to be "millstone" dragging you down, one who has no capacity to relate to you and to help you when you need help?
Perhaps even a greater need is the reverse direction. If you are a young lady dating a young man and if this young man somehow has the distorted, perverted idea that masculine strength depends on not being sensitive and not being able to relate to the needs of other human beings, you had better think very seriously about what kind of husband this man is going to be. If he can watch the saddest movie and not be moved and if he can watch the greatest tragedy of human life and not be disturbed, you can be sure he is going to be a husband who is totally unable to relate to you in the difficult business of being a woman and the more difficult business of being a mother. Do you really believe he is going to feel for your needs and be sympathetic to your problems? Is he really going to be helpful to you when you need help?
I am convinced that one of the greatest tragedies of our society today is the fact that somehow we have equated the ability to be sympathetic, the ability to be compassionate, the ability to relate to the needs of our fellow human beings as weakness--when, in fact, it is a sign of strength.
Sometime ago, I read about a little girl who lived went to a shopping center to get some cokes for some friends of hers. She was brutally attacked by a man in the parking lot of that shopping enter. Before the evening was finished she had been stabbed 24 times, and she died. Why did no one meet her needs? How could a young lady possibly be stabbed mercilessly for thirty minutes in a New York street with 1100 young men in the near vicinity and have nobody move to help her? Why is it that we have somehow equated the ability of a man to be sympathetic, to be compassionate, to be helpful, to be understanding, to relate to the needs of his fellow human beings as a sign of weakness? I would suggest to you that any third grade weakling can turn his back on the needs of those who are suffering and who need help. Anybody can refuse to help and refuse to relate to the needs of others. A man of strength is a man who can stand above a cold impersonal city and with tears in his eyes say, "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chicks under her wings, and ye would not!"
There is a man of strength; there is a man who was not afraid to get involved; there is a man who paid with his life for his ability to relate to the needs of other people; and there was the Son of God--Jesus Christ! We need to get over this idea that somehow the man who can do this--the man who can be sympathetic and compassionate, who can move into people's lives and try to help them--is a weak man. In fact, just the opposite is true.
I am also convinced that one of our great problems in this area of pain and suffering and death is brought on by ignorance. And I suppose that this is true of death more than anything else. Ignorance has caused us to throw away one of the great blessings that we have in being a Christian. In fact, is it not a marvelous thing that when those we love are no longer able to exist realistically in a physical way that they do not have to go on suffering. God has provided a means by which the spirit can be separated from the body and the physical pain that we endure now fades into insignificance. It is interesting to me that the apostles rarely used the term death to describe the end of life. They talked about being "asleep in Jesus," about being "absent from the body," about being "at home with God," and so forth. I have known people who when they lost a husband or a wife, a mother or a father, a child, a brother or a sister, have somehow seemed to quit living themselves. They atrophy and are no longer able to be happy, useful, and productive. This is a great tragedy. As a Christian we ought to be able to look at life much more positively because of death. As an atheist, as a disbeliever, as one alienated from God, a person has to look at life with all of its problems, with all of its suffering, with all of the pain, with all of the terrible things that one has to endure as the absolute best that he is ever going to experience. And yet, if we are wearing Christ, if we are a part of Jesus, we can look at life with all of its joy, with all of its beauty, with all of the wonderful things that we all enjoy as the absolute worst that we are ever going to have to endure. Can't we see that the difference is as different as left and right, as black and white, as night and day? If there was no other reason for us to believe in God but this one, it would be a compelling reason. Ignorance is one of the great curses of man. Ignorance of death is one of the great curses of the Christian.
I am sure all of you have heard lessons from one time or another of the value of pain and suffering in people's lives. I think that it would be important for us here to make just a comment along these lines, even though it is a point you have undoubtedly heard. I think perhaps the best illustration that I have heard is a very old story but one that illustrates the point very well. There were five brothers out west somewhere who at one time had attended the services of the Church, but had become indifferent because of lack of involvement. They were not in attendance, not faithful, and were completely inactive. The story goes that at one time the oldest brother, John, was out behind the barn and he got bit on the arm by a rattlesnake. Of course the other brothers were greatly concerned. They called the elders and the preacher and anybody else they could get to pray for John. They made all kinds of promises of the things they were going to do. It was not too long until John began to recover. As he recovered, he reflected upon his condition and his rejection of God and his lack of involvement and the fact that he had not been faithful to the Lord. So he turned away from the kind of life he had been living, and he came to God. He got involved in the work program of the Church, and became a very active, very dedicated Christian. The story goes that one Sunday the preacher, in the process of a prayer, said, "Lord send us four more rattlesnakes that we may reach John's four brothers."
I am sure that no preacher would want to bring that kind of pain and suffering into a man's life, but the fact of the matter is that sometimes it takes pain, sometimes it takes suffering, sometimes it takes a tragedy to make us realize that we need God.
Pain humbles us. Somebody has said, "Humility is a funny thing. Just when you think you have it, you've lost it." Certainly that is true in 2 Corinthians 12:7 Paul said, "...lest I should be exalted above measure.... there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure." The apostle Paul apparently had a problem. The pain and suffering (the thorn in the flesh, whatever it was) helped Paul. It helped him overcome any sense of egotism that might have been part of his life. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to make us realize we are not self-sufficient. Sometimes it takes a disease to make us realize that no matter how much money we have, no matter how vocal we are, no matter how many friends we have, no matter what our situation in life might be, that sometimes there is no one who can help us but God. "...Whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's" (Romans 14:8).
The last point that I wish to make in our discussion is probably the most important point--a point that I think each of us needs to think about very, very seriously and understand very completely--especially as far as the Christian's situation connected with pain and suffering is concerned. The point deals most precisely with the passage of Scripture from John 9:1-3. Every now and then, I will discuss this subject with someone who will say, "Well, if God were real and if everything was as you say it is, then certainly Christians following God's system would not have to experience pain and suffering." I think if we consider that point of view for a few minutes we see that obviously this is not a realistic position for a number of reasons.
First of all, if becoming a Christian would automatically unravel all the various problems that confront a person in life, then we would have people flocking to religion to get away from their problems. The way it is, there are some people using religion as an escape mechanism when that is not what God intended. God wants us to serve him because we love him, not out of fear. It would be unreal and unrealistic for us to really believe that somehow being a Christian ought to exempt us from the problems that other people have to endure.
But I think even far more fundamental and far more important than this is the fact that if Christians did not suffer, they would be totally and completely incapable of doing what they were put here to do. God intends for his followers to communicate with the world, to bring Jesus Christ into the lives of people. You cannot communicate with a man unless you are enduring or have endured some of the same things that he has endured. As a matter of fact, I believe that the bad experiences that you and I have to put up with and that we all undergo from time to time are actually talents. They are actually things that enable us to communicate with our fellow man and meet his needs.
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