Magyar Egyház, 1975 (54. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1975-11-01 / 11. szám

I

came to be with her, “she felt that he was saying, ‘And you can still believe in that idiot God of yours ?” We are not to bow in supine resignation before unmerited, undeserved pain or bereavement and say “It is God’s will.” Suffering, pain, and death are not God’s will. Jesus treated disease as demonic, an evil, and he cured persons of disease whenever he could. The Scriptures call death “the last enemy to be destroyed.” It surely cannot be God’s original purpose that man should suffer and die. Here let me commend the twentieth-century classic treatment of the will of God to any who have not read it. It is the hook by Leslie D. Weatherhead entitled The Will of God. In it he writes of the “intentional will of God,” “the circumstantial will of God,” and “the Ultimate Will of God.” God’s original purpose is that man shall find his existence to be good, and without pain. In the Bible we are given the picture of God’s ultimate purpose being realized when there shall be “a new heaven and a new earth . . . and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more” (Revelation 21:1, 4). We may suffer as we strive to do God’s will in a given situation. But God does not send the suffering. If I give up some debilitating habit — say I am a drug addict — I will suffer withdrawal pains, but while God desires me to be whole and healed, and the process of becoming so entails suffering, God does not send the suffering. Leslie Weatherhead comments: “When we say . . . that nothing can happen unless it is God’s will . . . we mean, (or should mean) that nothing can happen which can finally defeat him.” Death, we say, comes as a friend to some loved one who has suffered a cruel, lingering illness. But really, death is the lesser of two evils. Ask an older person and you would find that he would agree with Maurice Chevalier, who, when asked if he resented growing old, is said to have replied with his inimitable charm, “Not when you consider the alternative.” Christians believe that God has conquered death, but it is not part of the Christian faith that physical death is good in itself. Death is the last enemy that God will overthrow. So we must be careful when we are tempted to say, “God has chosen you to suffer for his glory.” God is not a sadist. Would a normal loving parent show his love by deliberately making his child deformed or retarded? What human parent would inflict suffering and say, “I am doing this for your own good, because I love you”? God, to be God, must be at least as good as the best father or mother. Jesus said, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?” (Matthew 7:11).

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_______________________________MAGYAR EGYHÁZ

Why do human beings suffer? “Because an enemy has done this.” We need not think of the enemy as a stereotyped stage devil with horns, tail, and pitchfork, dressed in fiery red. God has given freedom, and man has abused it. Evil has come into the very order of things. Evil is present in us, along with the good. God asks us to use our freedom to join him in defeating the evil. Whether we do so or not, God will vanquish the evil at last.

But is not some suffering beneficial? Is not pain a source of ultimate good? I would prefer to say that the ways in which we make use of suffering may contain ultimate good. But in themselves, suffering, sin, and death are evils to be overthrown, to he fought.

Someone has classified suffering in two categories, punitive and remedial. Punitive suffering occurs not by God’s action but by our own wrongdoing. If I smoke cigarettes excessively, I may punish myself by developing emphysema, lung cancer, or arterial trouble. Then God is not punishing me; I am suffering as a direct result of my own folly and selfindulgence. Between some suffering and sin there is a direct causal relationship. Our Lord was sure that whatever a man sows, that he also reaps. That which is reaped may be evil; it may be good.

Some suffering may be remedial or educative. We believe that there is no neat system or equal rewards and punishments in this human life of ours. We are to live in a dynamic relationship with God, and in that relationship God does help us to use suffering to reshape ourselves into mature, responsible members of God’s family. Good parents do not always shield their children from a painful experience if it promises to be remedial. But the pain should have some purpose and not be out of proportion to the action. The Letter to the Hebrews said that even Jesus, the Son of God, learned by what he suffered. God did not send his Son to suffer or to die, but to save the world. The death of Jesus surely was not decreed by the loving Father. The idea that an enemy has done this is implied in the New Testament and our gospel.

This mention of the cross of Christ brings us to say that, although God never wills evil, God does give grace to those who suffer from their own folly, their wrong choices, or from the demonic forces in the world. Grace for what? Grave to use the pain and the sorrow redemptively. To find suffering redemptive, we must always volunteer for it. Each man, each woman, must take up the cross for himself or herself. “Cross-bearing is voluntary suffering for Christ’s sake.” Jesus could have bypassed Calvary. So can