God has watched innocent men dangle from trees because of the color of their skin. God has watched frightened runaways be tortured, raped, and killed. God has watched old men and old women lonesome beyond lonesome weep in dusty rooms, their faces tight and worn with age, so seemingly dry that we think it’s impossible for tears to be made. God has watched nations crumble under regimes of murderous corruption. When we were in the room with a dying patient, awkward with sadness or discomfort, God has always been the One in the room who watched more deeply than we ever could, who felt more deeply than we could fathom.
“Where was God in all this misery?”
God was at the dangling, kicking feet of the hanged man. God was at the side of the men in
Chechnya forced to sit on bottles in a concentration camp. God was in the derelict shack in Greenville, Illinois with the helpless runaway and her killer. God was in the lonely room with the elderly widow. God was moving about the nations, present where bodies were piled up for mass graves, at the palace stairs when one evil regime overthrew another. God was counting the tears in the eyes, the hairs on the heads, the ounces of excruciating pain in the hearts. God grieved in anger and in sorrow at the lies we told ourselves about the color of skin, the twisted lust of the deviant who killed the runaway, the able bodied men who never visited the widow in her dreary post, the power-hungry madmen who trampled the poor. God must have been at every one of those nightmarish places, because He does not forsake His own word – “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). The Gospel is one not only of salvation, but of suffering; Christ will not turn away from His own Gospel, as He is the same Christ who cried out, as He Himself was unjustly murdered, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Without suffering, this world as we’ve made it would be incomplete, as it’s what we do best – we make one another pay for our sins. And without suffering, without the One who truly paid the debts of our sins on the cross, no atrocity, injustice, or lie could ever be made right, ever be forgiven, ever be driven away by Light that darkness cannot comprehend, either on this earth, or in the eternity to come. God watched His only Son, holy and blameless, mutilated upon a cross. He did not intervene, He did not save Him. He let this ugly, gory thing happen so that you and I, unholy and to blame for making one another suffer so miserably, could be holy, could be restored, redeemed, and given the strength and the light to do good and beautiful things in His name – millions of little candles in a world of mammoth darkness.
I think one of the reasons that the book of Job is the book in the Bible to which many atheists and doubters gravitate is its naked and honest outcry against the horrors of life, as well as the horrors of people, while waiting for God to deliver swift punishment and justice that doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to come. Job wails,
“Some remove landmarks;
they seize flocks violently and feed on them;
they drive away the donkey of the fatherless;
they take the widow’s ox as a pledge.
They push the needy off the road;
all the poor of the land are forced to hide.
Indeed, like wild donkeys in the desert,
they go out to their work, searching for food.
The wilderness yields food for them
and for their children.
They gather their fodder in the field
and glean in the vineyard of the wicked.
They spend the night naked, without clothing,
and have no covering in the cold.
They are wet with the showers of the mountains,
and huddle around the rock for want of shelter.
Some snatch the fatherless from the breast,
and take a pledge from the poor.
They cause the poor to go naked, without clothing;
and they take away the sheaves from the hungry.
They press out oil within their walls,
and tread winepresses, yet suffer thirst.
The dying groan in the city,
and the souls of the wounded cry out;
yet God does not charge them with wrong.”
We see hideous injustices in the world, we see those who perpetrate them go free, and we cry out, “Isn’t someone going to be punished for this?” But Someone was punished for the world’s sins – Jesus Christ, on a cross at Calvary. The Scriptures tells us, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). And Jesus, being God in flesh, could not break His New Covenant and “save Himself,” as those mocking from the ground challenged Him to do. Thus in His flesh, He died as flesh, as sin has no part with God. And having forsaken His Son, God allowed the wrath of sin to fall on Him so that you and I would not know it. Sin has no part with God, but because He who knew no sin “became sin for us,” you and I, sinners, can now have communion with God, in grace and holiness. Sin has no part with God, but our salvation depended on Him.
We muse bitterly that there’s simply no justice left in the world. But the truth is, that it was Jesus who absorbed the punishment of the iniquity of the world – those who believe in Him, in the atonement He provided upon that instrument of execution, have had their own part in the injustices of the world, no matter how big or small in their eyes, cleansed from them. Not only this, but they’ve been given the duty to strive for what is right, to fight against what is wrong, in a world that even God firmly proclaims in His word is evil, and needed a Savior.
Those who don’t believe not only cast away from themselves the forgiveness of their own wrongs, but they refuse to accept their punishment taken by Jesus Christ, refuse to embrace the gift He offers to live life anew. And so, that gift is ignored, dismissed as fiction and superstition, and another life in the world, another part of the world, slips further into apathy, and believes the lie that wrong cannot be made right.
-from Sheep Named Spike by Cpt. Bud Sturguess
“Where was God in all this misery?”
God was at the dangling, kicking feet of the hanged man. God was at the side of the men in Chechnya forced to sit on bottles in a concentration camp. God was in the derelict shack in Greenville, Illinois with the helpless runaway and her killer. God was in the lonely room with the elderly widow. God was moving about the nations, present where bodies were piled up for mass graves, at the palace stairs when one evil regime overthrew another. God was counting the tears in the eyes, the hairs on the heads, the ounces of excruciating pain in the hearts. God grieved in anger and in sorrow at the lies we told ourselves about the color of skin, the twisted lust of the deviant who killed the runaway, the able bodied men who never visited the widow in her dreary post, the power-hungry madmen who trampled the poor. God must have been at every one of those nightmarish places, because He does not forsake His own word – “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). The Gospel is one not only of salvation, but of suffering; Christ will not turn away from His own Gospel, as He is the same Christ who cried out, as He Himself was unjustly murdered, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Without suffering, this world as we’ve made it would be incomplete, as it’s what we do best – we make one another pay for our sins. And without suffering, without the One who truly paid the debts of our sins on the cross, no atrocity, injustice, or lie could ever be made right, ever be forgiven, ever be driven away by Light that darkness cannot comprehend, either on this earth, or in the eternity to come. God watched His only Son, holy and blameless, mutilated upon a cross. He did not intervene, He did not save Him. He let this ugly, gory thing happen so that you and I, unholy and to blame for making one another suffer so miserably, could be holy, could be restored, redeemed, and given the strength and the light to do good and beautiful things in His name – millions of little candles in a world of mammoth darkness.
I think one of the reasons that the book of Job is the book in the Bible to which many atheists and doubters gravitate is its naked and honest outcry against the horrors of life, as well as the horrors of people, while waiting for God to deliver swift punishment and justice that doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to come. Job wails,
“Some remove landmarks;
they seize flocks violently and feed on them;
they drive away the donkey of the fatherless;
they take the widow’s ox as a pledge.
They push the needy off the road;
all the poor of the land are forced to hide.
Indeed, like wild donkeys in the desert,
they go out to their work, searching for food.
The wilderness yields food for them
and for their children.
They gather their fodder in the field
and glean in the vineyard of the wicked.
They spend the night naked, without clothing,
and have no covering in the cold.
They are wet with the showers of the mountains,
and huddle around the rock for want of shelter.
Some snatch the fatherless from the breast,
and take a pledge from the poor.
They cause the poor to go naked, without clothing;
and they take away the sheaves from the hungry.
They press out oil within their walls,
and tread winepresses, yet suffer thirst.
The dying groan in the city,
and the souls of the wounded cry out;
yet God does not charge them with wrong.”
We see hideous injustices in the world, we see those who perpetrate them go free, and we cry out, “Isn’t someone going to be punished for this?” But Someone was punished for the world’s sins – Jesus Christ, on a cross at Calvary. The Scriptures tells us, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). And Jesus, being God in flesh, could not break His New Covenant and “save Himself,” as those mocking from the ground challenged Him to do. Thus in His flesh, He died as flesh, as sin has no part with God. And having forsaken His Son, God allowed the wrath of sin to fall on Him so that you and I would not know it. Sin has no part with God, but because He who knew no sin “became sin for us,” you and I, sinners, can now have communion with God, in grace and holiness. Sin has no part with God, but our salvation depended on Him.
We muse bitterly that there’s simply no justice left in the world. But the truth is, that it was Jesus who absorbed the punishment of the iniquity of the world – those who believe in Him, in the atonement He provided upon that instrument of execution, have had their own part in the injustices of the world, no matter how big or small in their eyes, cleansed from them. Not only this, but they’ve been given the duty to strive for what is right, to fight against what is wrong, in a world that even God firmly proclaims in His word is evil, and needed a Savior.
Those who don’t believe not only cast away from themselves the forgiveness of their own wrongs, but they refuse to accept their punishment taken by Jesus Christ, refuse to embrace the gift He offers to live life anew. And so, that gift is ignored, dismissed as fiction and superstition, and another life in the world, another part of the world, slips further into apathy, and believes the lie that wrong cannot be made right.
-from Sheep Named Spike by Cpt. Bud Sturguess
