Love's Ultimate Test

The reality of evil is a contradiction to the belief in a God who is both sovereign and good.

Or so people say.

But there is another dilemma.

If God is not both good and all-powerful, true justice can never be realized.

Why is that?

Because if good is not all-powerful, evil might win.

How can a good but limited God save us if the Devil gets the upper hand?

How can a good but limited God protect us when the demons slip past the angel defenses and drag helpless people down to their hellish holds?

How can a good but limited God ensure that at the end of all things evil will fall and goodness will shine into eternity?

How can a good but limited God heal all wounds?

He can't. Because the evil is just as strong as he is.

Perhaps in the end, if we're not lucky, cruelty and violence and sadism will win, and darkness and despair will reign after all.

And why not, since whether you serve goodness or evil it's all up to whichever side you feel like? Someone who feeds the children, or someone who mutilates them – just pick the style that thrills you.

But if good is all-powerful, evil beware. Do as you please for now, but you are destined to burn in the fires of righteous fury.

Evil may reign for a time, but ultimately can never win.

Where are the innocents who were taken from us? They are in paradise with God.

Where will all our pain go? One day we will shed it like an old garment and forget it in our eternal joy.

Where is all our guilt and regret? It is nailed to the Cross.

Then the question remains. Why has God allowed evil to reign over our world?

Because only in a world where love seems distant and foolish can it truly prove its depths and power.

Only the once abandoned can know the joy of being found.

Only the wounded can know the value of being whole.

Only if God let us wander and sink to a place of unimaginable darkness and denial could he show us how much he loved us in coming to our help.

He knew it would be painful for us.

But what we don't imagine is how painful it must be to him, if he loves us so much, to see us suffer.

It is a journey God knew that he and the human race must take together, in order for their relationship to be what it was meant to be.

The God of the Bible is not distant and cold. He is a God who weeps for his children, who burns at betrayal, who laughs at his enemies, who charges in with fury when those he loves are in trouble.

He is a God who came down and became like us, so he could suffer as we might suffer, so he could be punished for us even though he had done nothing wrong, in order to redeem us who have done wrong, because he loved us still the same.

Could this have happened if evil had never existed? But only because it exists can we come to experience just how great is God's love for us.

Are you in pain or in tears? God is there with you, hurting and weeping at your side.

Is he powerful enough to change things in a flash? Yes he is. But he chose not to help us this way, but to allow pain to enter into our lives and our hearts as well as his own heart, in order that our love may grow deeper and fuller and richer than it ever could had he fixed everything to begin with.

Are you mad at God for not sparing a loved one from an untimely death? For not fixing your life? For not taking away your hurt and frustration?

Or do you love him for suffering with and even for us? For loving us even when it seems no one else should? For standing with us even when we turn our backs on him?

Hate can only consume you, eat up your soul, and send you to your death.

Only by choosing love can life start anew.

Only by choosing trust can peace truly be gained.

Do we have enough reason to trust? In Jesus we have more than enough.

Linking up with #ThoughtProvokingThursday

Bleeding Soul

Spears pierce my mind, and my soul bleeds.

We are told we can do anything if we set our minds to it. Believe in yourself and you can accomplish the impossible.

But the walls of my prison are rock-solid. They cannot be broken no matter how much I pound and push - and they are closing in.

Some people are born with strength. They press on through life, fall, but get up again and keep going. I have no such power. My arms shrivel, my heart grows weak.

Confidence is dangerous for me. A little more, and I hurt myself.

My heart calls – my mind does not respond. My brain beckons – my body does not heed. I face the future with determination – but can barely take one step.

Daggers pierce my mind, my soul bleeds.

We are taught to stand up for what we believe. Our beliefs are a part of us. But I am knocked down before I can even rise, again and again. And every time a bloated ego marches triumphant from the site of my defeat.

Perhaps it was only defense. Perhaps they were aware of my own fangs, and that was why they sawed them off. I can't blame them. Perhaps this was for the best.

But knowing this doesn't ease the pain, and the scars throb until they numb.

I never wanted to see them writhe. I never wanted to drive them into the dirt. I just wanted them to see.

Perhaps I was confused. But my feelings were real. It's the tragedy of any argument that one must always walk away the loser – though both sides may be right about some things while wrong about others.

But the greatest tragedy of all is that some hearts may never be reconciled. They reach for one another, but a black void lies between – a rift in reality, a crack in the continuum, forever open, never to be sewed back together.

I want to believe it can be bridged. I want to believe that if I can let my talents sing, swelling in a great symphony at the top of the world for all the universe to hear, that one day you would feel the joy I felt, humming along with the tune that so moved me. And maybe I could understand you better.

But it may be my fate only to find myself one day languishing on my face, with the time and the strength only to etch the words “I wish” in the dirt before I succumb to my final sleep. Such is the way the cards could fall.

Thorns pierce my mind, my soul bleeds.

I cry out to God. He doesn't listen. “Why have you forsaken me?”

Was it because my sins were too bad? Perhaps I just can't be forgiven, perhaps I have crucified Christ one too many times.

Do I have to believe that just yet? Perhaps "it is no longer I who do it, but sin dwelling in me."

“Your God will not answer, because he does not exist,” you say. But I will not comply with your pessimism, your sick excuse for hedonism and self-worship. I know where my hope lies, and as long as I live I'll trust in that hope.

I don't know what's to be my end. Perhaps my dreams are too incompatible with the ways of Jesus. Perhaps my views are too idealistic to stand up to the scrutiny of true Biblical faith.

But I will keep waiting, praying, listening, looking – and maybe some day my dead soul will rediscover life, and the spears, daggers and thorns will stop.

And I will fly once again.

The Dark Truth and the Radiant Truth

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It's nothing new to say that the world we live in is messed up – but that's the problem.

We wish or perhaps even dare to believe that life could be a fairy tale for anyone if they just have the right perspective – but every day the truth grows less and less flexible, and with every perspective added it takes form piece by piece into exactly the hard, cold, unfeeling lump of rock we first took it to be.

The truth is not always pretty.

The arts and the media reflect the current feelings of the human race. They abound with sorrow, superficiality, anger, elusive portrayals of justice, and pride going hand-in-hand with hollow egos. Some have merely resigned to the darkness and embraced it, deciding to milk what fun they can out of life in spite of its horrors before resigning themselves to fate. Perhaps it's all they believe they can do.

What manner of world is it? A place where broken families are the norm, disease and pain are commonplace, relationships are fun but short, where the weak always fall prey to the stronger or smarter with or without morals, and violence and killing happen somewhere every day. The damage is mountainous and often irreparable. Under it all we sense something is very wrong. Deep within us we hear a voice that is often stifled but is ever constant, which finds its way into our wording, “This is not the way it's supposed to be.”

No, this is not the way it's supposed to be.

Even though we are told to shut up, accept it, and make the best of it, we are still left with that cold feeling. What we do to amuse ourselves, all that we indulge in to drown our sorrows, it minimizes the pain but it never heals. Beneath it all we want that peace. We want to find the light that shines in the darkness – but the only light we find is a will-o-the-wisp, gone even as we reach for it.

I won't accept it. I will not resign myself to the notion that the darkness is all there really is. And you know something? I don't have to.

Nothing I believe can change the harsh realities – but with Jesus in the picture, I can make sense of them.

What was it that drove them?

What was it that made the early Christians sing and find joy in spite of imprisonment and torture? 

What caused them to hold to the name of Jesus even to the point of painful death?

It was hope.

Not a blind hope, not wishful thinking – but the conviction that Jesus rose from the dead, conquering death, showing that life was not as lost a cause as the world seemed to think, not with him. In him they found an eternal family. With him they saw justice, and also forgiveness. To him the wicked and the oppressor would ultimately answer for their crimes. In his light, the darkness of the world seemed like merely a shadow before dawn – it became the superficial thing, having lost all its power to control and convince them, for it was doomed to disappear, to be replaced by a new heaven and earth – a world no longer messed up, but where everything will be made right again.

Is broken the way our world is supposed to be? No. Does it have the final say? Not on your life. In the light of Jesus, its threats become empty. It can inflict pain and take away our comfort, but it can never command us again. It is dead.

The life in Christ is the only reality now that matters.

Many have claimed to find peace and happiness through one means or another – but only Jesus went through the ultimate sorrow and torture, crossed to the other side, then came back to show us that he is indeed life itself, giving us assurance beyond doubt that it could be found. Darkness, struggle, and death are ever present in this world – but for those who believe, it's lost its sting. We have been freed.

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A Foolish Faith?

Why do I so strongly want God to be real?

Because without God we would be alone. With only our limited power. At the mercy of greater human powers and the elements. With no hope beyond death.

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The atheist is free from God. Free to do anything he wants. But he is also vulnerable. Vulnerable to the merciless quirks of a universe governed by chance. His success lasts no longer than his luck – and when it runs out his paradise crumbles. Death is ultimately his final sentence.

But why the God of the Bible? Why Jehovah and Jesus? Why would I accept Jehovah's seemingly harsh nature in the Old Testament even if it makes me uncomfortable? Why would I accept what Jesus teaches about Hell?

Because of their mercy and long-suffering. Jehovah gave his people protection and prosperity. Jesus taught us to love our enemies and be good to those who hate us. Divine judgment is only for those who will never accept Jehovah as God and Jesus as his son even after they come to know them, because they prefer their fantasies. Mercy is for the humble heart that knows it is sinful, that it is creation and not Creator, and whose deepest desire is for redemption and transformation.

Why would I think the accounts in the Bible any less legendary in nature than Greek or Chinese or Norse mythology?

The sincerity of the authors? The authenticity of the Apostles' letters albeit the bizarre claims therein? The admission by their enemies and the unbelievers of Jesus' existence despite their skepticism of his claims? The testimony of writers who claimed to be eyewitnesses and companions of Jesus, well within an area they knew it could be verified? The closeness of the testimony to the time of the events they talk about? The witness of those who followed after them in the following centuries and millenniums even unto death?

If so, could miracles really happen? Could Jesus truly have worked wonders and rose from the dead, even if people who heard it were skeptical, and even if we do not see such things happen today? I would not rule out the possibility.

The world of skyscrapers and iPhones insists the answer is no. If we lived in a world where such tech did not exist, however, perhaps our perspective would change. Technological advancements change nothing concerning God's existence – we have only fooled ourselves into thinking so.

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Finally, as an independent testimony should not the Biblical documents be understood on their own terms rather than doctored up and re-interpreted to fit one consensus or another? Should not God be allowed his own voice no matter how radical or politically incorrect? Perhaps if we would let the radical nature and politically-incorrectness in, we would understand something about ourselves and the world we never could before.

Perhaps, as the Bible claims, we would understand how much better it is to be slaves of Christ than kings of this world. Because God's slaves are better off than royalty by the world's standards, and have a treasure far greater than any rich man could hope for. The treasure Jesus brought when he gave up his rights, when he emptied himself and made himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant, making the ultimate sacrifice, which in the end caused him to be exalted above every other name.