Devotional by Dr. Wayne Peterson
May 12, 1997
When a person is pushed to life's outer limit, despair and hope struggle at the deep heart's core. This happened to Maggie, a non-attending member of my church.. I visited her because she was very ill. Yet she resisted all my efforts to provide care. She would have no comforting words, no reading of Scripture, no prayer. "Prayer," she mumbled "didn't do any good. Two years ago I prayed, that God wouldn't take my husband, but he did anyway. God does bad things." It was clear she felt she couldn't trust God. I have reflected on those words many times. The urgent question, "Why did God do this to me?" screams out for an answer. But no answer is forthcoming.
As I surveyed biblical statements in the Old Testament, I realized that with all its marvelous revelation of God, it doesn't recognize the laws of nature. But in those days people would not have understood such references. The Old Testament speaks of thunder as "the voice of the Lord. (Psalm 29: 3 - 9)" and it has God saying, "I will cause it to rain upon the earth for forty days and forty nights." All the phenomena that we recognize as occurring by the laws of nature are regularly ascribed directly and literally to God's immediate action, from the weather to Pharaoh hard heart, to death. Whoever dies, dies because God took away the breath of life.
We now know that God created nature to operate according to the cause and effect of natural laws that are built into to it. We have learned to work in accord with these natural laws for good. Exercise and good diet bring the joys of health and strength. Smoking may cause lung or throat cancer. Maggie's husband smoked most of his life. Should God be blamed for his death by lung cancer? Is not God blamed for a multitude of things he is not responsible for?
Jesus faced this same issue. His disciples saw the man born blind. Their insistent question was, "Whose sin caused him to be born blind? Was it his parent's sin, or did he sin in the womb?" Jesus calmly replied, "neither. But now I will show people how God really works by healing him!" (John 9; paraphrase)
Recently I bought a bag of grapefruit from a roadside vendor. In my hurry to get home, I ran my car over a bag that was for sale. I would have felt foolish if I had prayed, "Lord, why did you let me run over that bag of grapefruit?" The laws of nature work for and against me too. I did it and I paid for my mistake. Quite literally!
The New Testament modifies these Old Testament teachings. Even though the New Testament writers had no comprehension of natural law, they rarely attribute disease directly to God. Rather, they point over and over to God's love for all people, especially for those who have responded in faith. They say that God is love, but never that God is wrath. He comes again and again to bless. "We know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him" (Rom. 8:28 NIV). Nevertheless, the New Testament conviction of God's grace still affirms the reality of God's wrath and judgment. Without God's just judgments the grace of God in Christ would become cheap grace and that would be no grace at all.
That would have been good news to Maggie, if she could have heard it, and to all the other Maggies of this world. She would have known that just when she felt all alone and helpless, God makes his love known in the most personal way. He is there to help. He never forsakes his own. And he sends members of his congregation to supply needed support. Paul affirms, God "helps us in all our troubles, so that we are able to help others who have all kinds of troubles (2 Cor. 1:4) If we let God, he will take away our feelings of guilt and our anger and replace them with his peace that passes all understanding. It was not God who took Maggie's husband, but the consequences of natural factors he did not understand. That doesn't mean that God can't intervene. He is the Creator and Lord of nature with its endless series of causes and effects. He can step in and introduce new causes to create new effects. He does that every time he saves someone, or gives someone peace or courage by direct action of his indwelling Spirit. Just when Maggie needed to be close to God, she drew away from him in anger and missed his healing touch. He wanted to be there for her. Paul underscores this truth. "What then," he asks, "can we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? . . . Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" And we could add, "or grief, or anger, even anger at God?" Paul continues, "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (Rom. 8:31 - 37).