"Face to face with evil,
Jesus was outraged; face to face with suffering and sin, he wept" (Os Guinness).
It's ok to cry. It's ok to cry over our own pain and it is ok to cry over the pain of others. We are told to "mourn with those who mourn" (source). If we care about people, we'll weep.
What would cause Jesus to weep today? Many things. Here are some of them.
I think he would weep that women are treated like rubbish and bought and sold as a commodity.
He'd weep over all the wives who felt inadequate because of their husband's addictions to pornography.
He'd weep over the pain expressed in this man's story, as well as the pain
some of his followers experience day after day. He'd also weep about
the indifference many Christians seem to show toward the plight of
others, including the sufferings of their own brothers and sisters.
Jesus obviously didn't thank God the Father for all things, neither should we.
To suspend judgement on why something is happening is not the
same as denying that something is
happening. The former is faith, the latter repression, which should have no
part in the Christian faith. It is not the business of faith to deny reality but
to order it (Guinness, 1996, p. 192).
One of the ways faith is turned into
repression is by distorted teaching - for example, when faith is turned into
faith-in-faith rather than faith-in-God, or when thanksgiving is misdirected and
strains for praise that is unnatural. At first sight, the emphasis on praise
and thanksgiving is so welcome that it seems churlish to question it. But when
the biblical injunction to "give thanks whatever happens" 45 is
taught with wooden literalism, it not only contradicts much of the Bible, it
can also be psychologically damaging. Yet Christians are sometimes counselled
today to praise God even for evil.
This is a dangerous travesty of biblical
teaching. Jesus did not give thanks for everything. Face to face with evil,
Jesus was outraged; face to face with suffering and sin, he wept. And if it
were not for the anger and those tears and the resolute road to the cross they
marked, we would not realize how outraged by evil God is and how seriously he
takes sin. The dilemma is not the result of tension between the biblical view
of things and our experience of things, as if faith is opposed to reality. The
dilemma comes from the tension between the biblical view of evil (a reality God
hates and is not to be thanked for) and the biblical call for us to trust God
and give thanks whatever happens (Guinness, p.193).
There is no
situation so evil that it is beyond redeeming by God. From this perspective, it
is always right to trust God and give thanks (Guinness, p. 194).
Outrage is appropriate in response to genuine wrong, tears in response to grief, shock in response to unexpected disaster. We mustn't force
ourselves to thank God for these things
or we will be harder on ourselves and softer on evil than God is. It is not
that even Christians need to give
thanks for these things, but that Christians especially should not give thanks for them (Guinness, p.194)*.
We are to give thanks in all circumstances (see 1 Thess 5:18) but not to give thanks for all things. In every situation we can bring glory to God.
He'd
weep over Christian men who left their wives and children to go to the
mission field. (According to the Bible, that's disobedience. See) He'd weep that many Christians have turned their back on the truth.
But this raises a question, Why is the Church in such a sad state? I think one of the reasons the Church is in a sad state is because we have focused on making converts and not disciples (see The Great Omission by Dallas Willard). Another is because of ingratitude.
If you think life sucks you will be easily tempted. When we constantly see the bad things around us we will feel miserable and empty. When one feels that way it is only natural that they should desire to feel better. If this is how you feel, seriously consider the following.
A flower in the garden is just a flower, no matter how beautiful. But if you should give that flower to someone you love or that flower is given to you by someone you love, suddenly the flower is no longer just a flower; it is now a symbol of love.
The more you see you are loved the more grateful you will be and consequently the less tempted you will be. When we know we are loved we do not feel empty and short changed. George MacDonald wrote, "Love makes everything lovely." The birds, the stars, the clouds and the trees are not just birds, trees, clouds and stars. They are a symbol of someone's love for you. God gave them to you because He loves you. The more you look at those things and think about the fact that they were given to you by the creator who loves you the more you will see and the more you will hear. I sometimes think that if I was in prison being tortured for my faith how would I manage to remain sane? The answer is that I would have to look for the good things God has given me (and I would have to work hard at it in those circumstances) so that I could be grateful and hence strong.
You might be saying, "Those things are easy for you to say. I have lost someone I love." Keep this in mind. They are in God's hands and God loves them. You will see your loved ones again.
Jesus wept. But nothing causing Him more sorrow than the misery we bring on ourselves through our own ingratitude and disbelief in Him.
What can we do? We can be grateful and pray and love. (No piece of literature
has encouraged me to pray as much as "The Community of Prayerful Love"
in Dallas Willard's book, The Divine Conspiracy. See also, Prayer)
Perhaps that is not enough for you. Perhaps you want to see and end to injustice. So does God. What can Christians do about evil and suffering in the world? Guinness offers some suggestions in Unspeakable.
