Covenant Presbyterian Church

Each day, an encyclopedia of misery is written with the ink of human suffering, tears, and blood. Children starve, endure neglect, and are prostituted. Husbands beat their wives. Young men die in war. Hospital wards are full of the diseased and dying. Mothers pine away for children lost to the world. Nursing homes smell of death and disinfectant. A family’s lone breadwinner loses his job. Hungry men, women, and children scrounge dumps for any morsel of refuse to satisfy their gnawing, bloated stomachs. Crops fail. Currencies are debased. Homes burn, collapse, or flood. Six thousand years into man’s existence, with marvelous technology at his fingertips and the hubris to match, humanitarian agencies galore, an avalanche of pity-evoking media exposure, and a wealth of painful and pleasant experience upon which he might draw for warning, direction, and comfort, he still suffers, sometimes horribly.

Our suffering will not go away. We cannot outspend it, feel it away, or eradicate it through socialism. The guilt manipulators, of course, constantly endeavor to do so, but the billions and billions spent by western nations to fund social programs, fight poverty and hunger in the world, and redistribute wealth under the guise of equalizing opportunity, are just a drop in the bucket, which has a huge hole leading directly to the coffers of the bureaucrats, dictators, petty tyrants, and corrupt systems, foreign and domestic, that create a significant amount of the world’s tangible misery. The real problem of suffering, moreover, is never touched. Never. I am speaking of its impact upon the soul - the hopelessness it creates, the uncertainty, the unquenchable sadness, the sense of alienation from life itself, even the longing for death. This is the real toll of human suffering, and it cannot be measured by charts and graphs or cured by money and government programs.

There are other forms of suffering beyond the obvious instances related to physical deprivation and abuse. There is the haunting sense of guilt. We can pontificate about a world without God, absolute moral standards, heaven and hell, but try telling this to ordinary men and women. Deny God, however, and life is hell - without justice, meaning, or relief. These realities are too engraved upon the human personality to be erased by philosophical sleight of hand. They are not placed there by books and preachers but are written by an insuperable hand upon the very fabric of the soul. We can no more escape our convictions that there is a God, that we owe our lives to him, and that judgment hangs over our head for our sins than we can escape our shadow. They are persistent, doggedly insistent that their claims be heard. This is one reason there is so much guilt associated with consumerism - on the one hand, we spend and spend, acquire and acquire, but on the other hand we decry consumerism and try to silence our guilt with collectivist social policies. It is odd, no, that the most vocal proponents of global warming, expansive socialism, feeding the hungry, and conquering poverty are usually the richest, most self-indulgent, and arrogantly elitist. What else is this but evidence of our divided souls, or our unbelievable hypocrisy? We want our cake while making others feel guilty for having theirs. Such self-deception, especially when it becomes a way of life, sinks its poison tentacles into the heart of every man.

We feel now that there is change in the air, that the good times are soon to become the good ol’ days of memory, that suffering of various sorts is about to intensify. Many are angry - at politicians, at the very businesses that once served to satiate their covetousness, at banks, from whom very recently they eagerly accepted easy money, at themselves. Whatever may actually occur in a society that begins to lose prosperity and feel the pinch of tyranny, the deeper problems are the hopelessness it generates, the sadness, the downcast soul that can no longer look to its possessions or prosperity for comfort, a deceptive comfort, to be sure, for that comforts masks the real emptiness of the human heart without God, but nonetheless a temporary relief that provides some sense of personal well-being. When this is taken away, when man is confronted with the truth that his "outward man is perishing," that "man at his best is altogether vanity," that "riches are uncertain," and that "the expectation of the wicked will perish," he is precariously poised to sink into the nothingness that was there all the time. Unless.

In the midst of human suffering, God is present. He is here all the time, providentially directing, patiently waiting, efficaciously calling men and women to himself. The world may be against us, but God’s friendly face is always turned to us in mercy, divine pity and compassion joined with power, if we look upon him through Jesus Christ. God is over and works through economies, but he is not bound by them. He is the author of suffering, but he always intends good through it, again, if we will look to his friendly face through Jesus Christ. His mercy is all around us, ready to assist us, support us, comfort us, and ground us, if we will but seek him. There is no sinner so far gone in his rebellion that he cannot be reached by the hand of mercy. There is no child so sick, no pervert so depraved, no atheist so hardened that he cannot be comforted, transformed, and broken by the God of mercy. And he delights in mercy. He rejoices in the salvation of even one sinner. He loves to comfort the downcast, to strengthen the despairing, to restore the wanderer. His mercies are fresh each day, are never exhausted, always ease pain and create hope, no matter the darkness of the valley, the intensity of the pain, the crushing weight of the burden. His mercy does not erase them; rather, in them he shows us the sustaining power of his mercy and teaches us to seek his eternal kingdom.

There are many in the world who deny that biblical Christianity offers any ultimate answer to suffering. They are blind guides of the blind; do not listen to them. The only answer is mercy. Through suffering, our Father reveals his power, his grace, and his love. Suffering is purposeful because it is the occasion for mercy. He would wean us from our pernicious and ultimately dissatisfying love for the world. He would shatter our self-deception. He would teach us to seek first his kingdom and find joy in bearing our Savior’s cross. He would show us something of the depths of our sinfulness that we might seek his wealth in our poverty, that he might clothe us in our nakedness, support us in our weakness, and, above all, free us from the world’s most dangerous delusion, that we have any other good than the knowledge of God’s mercy in Jesus Christ. Oddly, those who mock the Bible’s answer to suffering do not have a leg to stand on, for in denying God, his sovereignty, providence, and power, they lack the moral right to speak of suffering. Suffering only makes sense in a world created and governed by God. It is ultimately meaningless upon any other foundation, any other foundation than God’s great occasion for mercy.

If you have tasted something of God’s friendly side, of his mercy in Jesus Christ, now is the time to proclaim this hope to our hopeless world. It is not a time for anger. Even righteous anger, if not balanced by mercy, can become an ugly, paralyzing disease in the heart. It can turn you away from those whom you ought to love and show God-like pity. The world is feeling God’s justice. Point it to mercy, to God’s friendly face in Jesus Christ. It is perhaps sensing its own frailty. Direct it to the only sustaining power. It is suffering. Its only hope is mercy. And you, believer, are the only one who can tell hopeless men where to find light in the darkness, purpose in the meaninglessness of consumer culture, comfort in the despair produced by leviathan governments, collapsing economies, and personal tragedy. In the mercy of God promised, given, and received through Jesus Christ. What an opportunity has been given to us! We have prayed for God to work, and he is. Perhaps we wrongly thought in terms of guns and gold, revolutions and elections. We should have been thinking in terms of mercy, judgment unto mercy, death unto life, sin unto righteousness. This is God’s greatest delight. He did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.