Shower Thoughts

All verses are in NRSV unless otherwise noted.

Suffering is, I think, the element of life that most often kills faith.

I know, diving right in here, but that’s where my thoughts on this started. I was recently having a conversation with someone who has been struggling with their Christian faith for the last five years. They think the story of Jesus as told in the Gospels is true and they call Jesus their personal savior. And yet, they don’t have an active faith or practice. They don’t pray. They don’t bring Jesus into their life.

The problem, they said, isn’t that they didn’t believe in Jesus or the Bible. 

The problem is that they don’t have faith in either of them.

Faith vs. Belief

I know that sounds like a trite line meant to be clever, but those two words do have different meanings. Belief is the mental acknowledgement that yes, I think something is real or true and I will base my actions on the resulting reality. For those interested, the actual definition is:

“the mental acceptance of a proposition, idea, or premise as true, often accompanied by a feeling of certainty, even without absolute proof”

Belief usually leads to actions; at the very least, it leads to choice. Believing something to be true places us in a new reality and forces us to contend with the changes that new reality will bring to our current mode of living. Belief happens in your mind and travels out through your behavior.

Faith is closely related to belief, in that neither require absolute proof. Faith however is about trust rather than an intellectual decision. Again, for those interested:

“profound, often unshakeable trust, confidence, or belief in something or someone, frequently applied to spiritual, religious, or personal conviction without requiring absolute proof”

In typical usage, we use “believe” as a verb and “faith” as a noun. It’s something you have, not something you decide. Faith is a thing that grows overtime as you see the object of your faith being as advertised, so to speak.

Peter gives us a great example. In Matthew 14, Jesus is walking on stormy water on his way to his friends in their boat. In his typical (and often admirable) zeal, Peter asks to join him. The story continues:

“Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?””

(Matthew 14:29-31, NIV)

Peter believes he will be able to walk on the water, and so he does it. He climbs out of the boat and successfully walks towards Jesus.

Peter struggles with faith. While he believes Jesus can help him walk on the water, he’s not confident Jesus will.

I think this difference, and specifically the space between these two words, constitutes the majority of Christian practice. Having belief and faith at the same time binds the mental acknowledgement of the head to the emotional tenderness of the heart. Without belief, faith struggles to act. Without faith, belief finds itself empty.

Suffering is Unavoidable

And that brings us around to suffering. Not one of us will get out of this life without it, and often it feels piled up on our shoulders, a heavy weight that becomes further suffering in itself. Often life feels like a series of sufferings that lead one into the other, sometimes causing each other sometimes not, never ending until at last we die.

Pretty bleak, isn’t it?

And Jesus knows how the world works. In John 16:33, he tells the disciples that yes they will have trouble.

“I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world.”

(John 13:33, NIV)

Suffering will come to them and to all humans because the world, at its very core, is broken. At a cosmic and spiritual level, the world doesn’t function like it is supposed to. We find ourselves living in an environment we don’t recognize because our souls were not meant to struggle through a broken system. 

And Jesus, knowing this, says that in order to have peace, his friends should have hope because Jesus has overcome the brokenness at the heart of the world. Jesus is so strong and full of  life that death and evil can’t compete. They are present but ultimately defeated. They have abilities and influence, but no power to change the outcome of the larger war. And while this all sounds comforting on its surface, it is the very fact of Jesus’ power that causes a problem with faith.

God Must Not Care

This person I spoke to about suffering has no trouble believing in Jesus’ ability to fix what is broken. Instead, they struggle to have confidence that he will do all he says.

And let’s be honest, everyone struggles with this at some point or another. The Jesus heals, but people still get sick. Jesus conquered death but people still die. Jesus said he would answer prayers but we often do not get a response we can see or understand. Jesus says his yoke is easy and his burden is light, but to have faith in the midst of suffering feels like a massive burden.

The whole thing feels like a farce. Based on the evidence, it seems pretty clear that God must not be good. We shouldn’t put our faith in him because he is distant and uncaring.

A Lesson from Job

This is where Job finds himself in the book named after him. After massive, unthinkable calamity strikes his house, he enters into a time of mourning and wrestling. Beset with grief and painful illness, he questions the character of God honestly and angrily.

“I have not departed from the commandment of his lips; I have treasured in my bosom the words of his mouth. But he stands alone, and who can dissuade him? What he desires, that he does. For he will complete what he appoints for me; and many such things are in his mind. Therefore I am terrified at his presence; when I consider, I am in dread of him.” 

(Job 23:12-16)

And again:

“Why are times not kept by the Almighty, and why do those who know him never see his days?” 

(Job 24:1)

And further:

“They harm the childless woman, and do no good to the widow. Yet God prolongs the life of the mighty by his power; he gives them security, and they are supported; his eyes are upon their ways.” 

(Job 24:21-23)

Job does not doubt God’s power. Job doubts God’s character. 

And of course Job is met with the answers all of us have received from well-meaning, or judgmental, church friends.

“Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off?”

(Job 4:7)

Maybe this is judgement for sins. God blesses good people.

“If you will seek God and make supplication to the Almighty, if you are pure and upright, surely then he will rouse himself for you and restore to you your righteousness.”

(Job 8:4-6)

God isn’t acting because you haven’t had enough faith or repented the right way.

“See God will not reject a blameless person, nor take the hand of evildoers. He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with shouts of joy.”

(Job 8:20-21)

I’m sure God will work it out. Just keep believing!

“If you direct your heart rightly, you will stretch out your hands toward him.”

(Job 11:13)

You just need to pray more.

“Are the consolations of God too small for you, or the word that deals gently with you? Why does your heart carry you away, and why do your eyes flash so that you turn your spirit against God and let such words go out of your mouth?”

(Job 15:11-13)

Complaining and doubting are sinful. You’re not responding with hope.

Unsurprisingly, none of these answers help Job. Rather than encouraging hope and stirring up confidence in the Lord, his friends’ responses only frustrate him because they are denying the reality of what Job sees. Good people suffer, the innocent are punished, and the wicked prosper with no hindrance. Faith? Job scoffs. How can I have faith? Nothing God says is true.

God’s Answer

And then God answers Job but not in the way any of us wants. God answers Job by outlining his character. He walks through creation, describing laying the foundations of the earth, creating the sky, and collecting the seas. He tells of the weather and the soil and how they work together to make things grow. He tells of animals and their proliferation, how they procreate and prey on one another in order to keep creation healthy. 

Finally God tells Job to gird his loins and gather up his glory for two challenges. First, God challenges Job to conquer the earth and enact justice (basically, “let’s see you do it.”) The second challenge is to capture two massive wild beasts, one on the plains and one in the sea. In other words, God challenges Job to conquer humanity and nature. God asks Job to think about suffering from a critical perspective: how, God asks, would you do it?

I have to say, when I first read this years ago, I prickled at God’s answer. I read it like a cranky manager receiving a reasonable complaint and saying, “Do you know how hard I work? Why don’t YOU try doing my job!”  Now I read it differently. I think God is validating that yes, these are big and difficult questions because they concern the foundations of the earth. Job’s questions are about cosmic mechanics and the physics of the spiritual world. These, God acknowledges, are worthy questions.

Next God lays out the qualifications for understanding concepts of this magnitude. In order to comprehend how these things work, you need perspective. You need to be able to see the full picture and judge humanity. But. God points out, you can’t even conquer the pride of a natural beast, much less man.

“Pour out the overflowings of your anger, and look on all who are proud, and abase them. Look on all who are proud and bring them low; tread down the wicket where they stand.” (Job 40:10-12)

“Look at Behemoth, which I made just as I made you; it eats grass like an ox…it is the first of the great acts of God – only its Maker can approach it with the sword.” (Job 40:15 & 19)

Essentially, God answers Job by saying that Job is lacking the prerequisites to understand the answers. God understands these things because it is in his nature. He is made to have the perspective. This level of comprehension is not in Job’s nature. He was not made to pull levers this large. In order to make him understand, God would have to turn Job into himself.

Not the answers we want in response to suffering, because ultimately this means that we have to trust God. We must have faith in the person of God when we don’t have answers. We have to remember that Jesus told us about this trouble and that our hope is not in having the answers. Our hope is in the fact that God is good and he is at work fixing what is broken in the world.

Practicing Faith in a Broken World

And here we are faced with the hardest question: what does that mean? What does it look like to have faith in the face of senseless suffering? How does a person have faith in the person of God when it seems like all the evidence points to a capricious and careless God?

First, we remember that God wants us to approach him with our pain and doubts. He can handle a wrestling match with us. We will not hurt him. He does not need us to worry about how he will feel. In fact, God corrected Job’s friends who had said Job should just be quiet. He tells Job’s friends they “did not speak what was right” about the nature of God (Job 42:7). God doesn’t want perfect, unwavering faith from us; God wants the conversation.

Second, we actively build our faith, even if we don’t want to. The solution to lack of faith is relationship. We need to know a person to be confident in their character. When Peter began to sink into the waves, Jesus asked Peter, “Why did you doubt me?” Jesus tells Peter, “You know me. You know how much I care about you. Why did you doubt that I would be with you?” In the same way, God tells us to know him so we will trust him. The more we know him, the more trustworthy we will find him.

Third and most difficult, we must surrender. We have to give up on having answers that no one but God is qualified to know. Job does this at the end of his conversation with God:

“I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”

(Job 42:3)

He humbles himself, acknowledging that he is not God and that there are things about the universe he will never understand. He goes further and repents of his pride, saying:

“I despise myself (meaning he turns from pride, not that he hates himself) and repent in dust and ashes.”

(Job 42:6)

He recognizes his place in the cosmos, understanding that he was created to know God and to trust him. Rather than try to control things much bigger than himself, Job is allowed to relax and trust that God will manage the unmanageable. Finally, Job explains his conclusion.

“I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.”

(Job 42:5)

Before, Job knew God because he’d heard about him. Like us, Job knew about God and the kinds of things God says. But now that he has wrestled with his doubts and brought them to God, Job knows God in a new way. Job understands now that trust in God is the answer to these deepest of questions.

A Ministry of Reconciliation

Like Job, we are incapable of comprehending how to reconcile justice and mercy, predestination and free will, the coexistence of healing and brokenness in the same spaces. And so like Job, the answer for us is to have faith that God knows those answers and that he is capable of reconciling all these things together.

In fact, Paul tells us this is exactly what God is doing – and what he invites us into.

“That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.”

(2 Corinthians 5:19)

Because of who he is, God knows the answers. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, he began the work of reconciling all these impossible things. We are invited to work with him, to have faith that he knows what he is doing, and to bring that comfort to the sufferers around us.

God’s job, in other words, is to reconcile the world that is with the world that should be. Our job is to walk beside him and tell everyone we meet what he is doing.