Suffering, Growth, and Resurrection — Dale Eby — Ep. 196

If Jesus is who he says he is, what does that mean about the suffering we experience in the world?

Our guest today is Dale Eby. I'm just going to start by turning it to him to kind of describe what he sees as the world's reaction to suffering. Yes, well, we know that suffering is a big deal and that we all experience that. As we look at people who are struggling through a time of suffering, we see them wanting to get out of it as quickly as possible, as is natural. We see them as desiring to compare themselves with other people and say, "Why me instead of them?" And so then the opportunity is for us as Christians to speak to them and to comfort, but also to give some higher meaning to that. But for them, they can't see that.

A person that is an unbeliever is saying, "This is just the way it is. I need to accept it as it is." If life gets to be too unbearable, well, then they think about the alternative of getting out of this life. And we by no means want that to happen. And I guess we should think about it too.

This is people come at people experience this so differently. Like, okay, I've experienced things in life that I can call suffering, but for the most part, I look around and I see what some other people have been through and wonder how in the world I would handle that. Listening to this conversation, it's going to be the whole spectrum from right in the middle of it to maybe feeling like they had an easy life, but wondering, okay, what about these scenes across the world or war scenes or whatever? So as we look at people who are unbelievers and they look at famine in a famine situation, I remember a picture of a baby or a small child crawling across a drought-stricken land, and behind that child was a vulture.

It was eerie to look at that because of the idea that this vulture was waiting for this inevitable death of this child. And it was a distressing wake-up call to people who saw that picture. It angered them, first of all. Secondly, it caused them to say, "Why does this need to be?" And then motivated them to say, "This can never happen again." But it will happen again. The reality is we're in a world that has suffering, and we can't give a full explanation of why every time. But in that kind of situation, our world is saying, "There's no purpose in this. We have to do something to right this situation." If you talk to someone about faith in God, one of the questions is, why would God, who loves everybody supposedly, or God who's all-powerful, why would he allow this kind of thing to take place?

It's a legitimate question. Yeah, I'm coming to the question that question that I dealt with from students and so on. Students and, I don't know, philosophy community in general, when I was studying philosophy, and sometimes it's attempted to put as an argument or a proof, it's like, well, you say that God is all-powerful. You say that God, you know, knows everything, can do everything, and he has everyone's, you know, his omnibenevolent, willing good. And it's actually given as an attempt to prove that there can't be a God who's all three of those things. Of course, in philosophy, proofs are very hard, so it's not a proof, but it raises a very emotional question. So don't we need to come back and ask ourselves the question, since God is all-powerful, why doesn't he stop that?

And unbeknownst to us, there are times there would be disaster or suffering. Evil has brought it into our realm. And so how many times has God spared us suffering because of his mercy? What does a Christian, or what should we, if we believe in God, what should we see in suffering that is not obvious or is not apparent aside from believing in God's plan? Was it C.S. Lewis that said that suffering is a way that God gets our attention, kind of a megaphone to get our attention? And I know that when I'm in a midst of suffering and trial, that prayer is much more meaningful or more urgent, and it's something that has really got my attention.

And I can either then trip over that suffering and get angry at God, or I can instead decide that this is God's call in my life to get me into a new level of maturity. You know, I think we can use it as a stumbling block and fall over that, or we can use it as a stepping stone and get a perspective that our spiritual life needs to move on. And I don't want suffering. Nobody asks for it. But is there a pause that should happen in suffering that says, "God, are you teaching me through this?" There are people who have given up their faith because of suffering.

Charles Templeton was an example of that. He was a dynamic evangelist in the '40s and '50s, but he saw the suffering that took place in World War II and that climate after World War II, and he struggled with that whole idea. And he became an agnostic and said, "If there's a God, why is this taking place?" Rabbi Kushner, who had the book, How Can Bad Things Happen to Good People, I believe that's the title of it, 1981, he made that statement that if God is all-loving, he wouldn't allow bad things to happen to good people. But it's a wrong premise. He never spoke about the idea that God has given us free choice, and in our choosing to go against God, we have brought on the suffering as Adam and Eve brought on to us in the garden.

Romans 5:12 is clear about that and says that there is suffering and a curse upon the earth because of one man, and we have continued that, and we will have to endure that. We will need to go through that. So it's really a choice, it seems to me, how I'm going to deal with that. And I can't say that I've experienced an extreme amount of suffering, and so I want to have empathy for those who have. Some of the places where I've seen Jesus shining through have seen that just that bright spirit are people who have went through some of the most intense physical suffering.

If somebody is a sweet-spirited old man, he's probably gone through some suffering. He's probably had some hardships that have knocked off some rough corners in his life, probably have brought him to a place of realizing that he's not a self-made man, that he needs to keep trusting God for the experiences of life. Just a little bit hard to hear because it makes me, you know, you just think about what's the rest of my life going to be like.

Well, what did Job think? You know, Job was really thinking that his life was in order. I don't know that he thought that he was straying from the Lord or that he was not spiritual. I think he saw himself as a person who was seeking God, and yet that came, and we know his admittance at the very end that he is a frail human being. Those aren't the words he uses, but he says, you know, "I am nothing in light of all the questions you've just asked me about, can I make the snow? Can I do this? Can I do that?" Job said, "No, I can't do that."

And he knew the answer was God was in control. And the sovereignty of God is something that is a challenge for us to remember when it doesn't make sense. I had a man talk with me the day after his nine-year-old daughter was diagnosed with a potentially terminal illness. He ranted at God. He raved at God. He was a Christian, but he probably went on for 10, 15 minutes giving a real angry confrontation to me and to God because he knew I was a Christian as well, and he knew that I was a person that, well, I wanted to listen to him. I wanted to hear him out. I wanted to really try to get his feelings, but I needed to bring him back.

What was your belief in God before this? And what's Satan trying to do with this thing? And yeah, I feel for you and your daughter in this situation. Allow you the ranting and the raving, but come back to what are the facts? Right now you're feeling this, but has God been faithful in the past? And will he be faithful in the future?

He will. We can confidently, based on the scripture, we can confidently say he will be. So how does, you mentioned this a little bit, but how does suffering, you know, physical illness, conflict, whatever it is, how does that relate to human sin? I guess you could go a couple of angles. Is it all due to sin? Or would we have suffering otherwise? That can get speculative.

So wherever you want to go. But then also, if it is tied to sin, is that in general or is that in a specific case? Do we tie a specific case of suffering to specific sins? Well, I guess foundationally we have to recognize that sin is man's fault and that we can't blame God. Suffering is man's fault. We can't blame God. We recognize that God does have a consequence for our sin. And I've experienced it many times, my own mistakes, my own sins, my own things that have some dire consequences.

And I knew I deserved that, and I hope I learned from it. But there's times too where I've suffered and I say, "I don't deserve to suffer this time." And was that because of my sin or a baby who's dying of cancer? What is that all about? Is that because of their sin? Obviously not. John 9, Jesus said to the blind man that, you know, he had not sinned, his parents had not sinned, but that it was because God's glory was to be shown through this man. And because of evil people and their decisions, we obviously have surroundings that are very, very troublesome. We have the school shootings. We have the Ukraine situation, which the idea that there are things that people are in the line of fire for without having anything to go back and say they were linked to it.

So it was the surroundings that were there that brought that hardship, brought that suffering, brought that distress on their life. We need to ask the question, is there something in my life that needs to be corrected? I know chasing for the present seems to be joyous, but it does bring something into our life. I wonder sometimes if we examine as carefully as we should where we're at in our walk with the Lord, or if we just go on until we have a big incident. A wake-up. A wake-up call, and here we are, and then we look back and say, you know what? I've been slipping in my relationship with God. Something has become an idol in place of God.

Something is in the way. And that's sin. Let's just identify it. It says, "I am an idolater," or "I have done this," or "pride has set into my life." What am I going to do with that? I hope I'm going to fall on my face and repent of that. Understand the error of my way. Understand that the need of confessing and the need of making a willful decision to go another direction is going to be there. I hope that's the case. But on the other hand, I think we also need to rest assured that God is there when we don't understand if there's anything in our life, and to rest assured that he wants to bring to us a peace in that situation.

I'm sure that Satan wants to tell us that it's all our fault. And I see Christians that are beating themselves up because they believe that God is just out to strike them down. And really, God is there to pick them up in his loving arms, just care for them in that whole situation. And he wants them to have a new level of trust in him through the uncertainties, through the dark times of life. It's not easy, but we as believers have a body of fellow believers that are there to help to encourage us or to encourage those that are discouraged. And that's quite a ministry to do that. Yeah, so let's switch here. I moved the topic along to think about what's the ultimate hope or God's plan.

One thing you talked about was God wants to redeem our physical bodies. So so far, we've been talking about how to respond to suffering, God taking care of us in the middle of it. But maybe the bigger picture, God's big plan for hope. Yeah, is it 1 Corinthians 15 that tells us that our mortal bodies are going to be changed?

And there's going to be a glorification that takes place. I think of a woman in childbirth. She would never think of going through childbirth without some pain, but she goes through that pain aware that there's a future benefit. And we go through this recognizing that there's going to be a redemption for this body. You know, it says in Romans 8, it says that the creation groans in waiting for that redemption, but we in our bodies wait for that redemption. Everything has been made less than what God had designed it to be. He designed it to be very good, to be perfect. The Garden of Eden was very perfect, but when man sinned, he had to drive them out of the garden because he needed to make an environment that was suitable for their violation.

And that's where the earth was cursed. That's where the thorns and the thistles came in. That's where the pain in childbirth came. Can we look at it and say, "God, I'm waiting for this redemption of the body. As long as I'm in the flesh, I'm going to suffer that because I'm a human being. But within my spirit, I don't need to stay bound by that oppression, by that weight, by that heaviness." I'm thankful for suffering. Usually, after I'm through it, I can go back and say there was something I learned from that. But at the present time, it's not joyous, but grievous. Yeah, one thing I'm thinking about, again, relating it to God's purpose, is in Jesus' life on earth, and especially his death, he entered into our suffering.

As we look at talk about the resurrection or redemption of the body, we enter into that kind of new life that he brings. Praise God for that. Yes. That's our abundant life. If we talked about suffering without it being God involved, we would be left with, I guess, the perspective that you can't see without belief in Jesus. So an atheist has nothing to say about suffering, and we don't have all the answers to suffering. But can we see that God makes something beautiful out of these experiences in our life? And can we confidently share with others that God has proven himself faithful in the past, and he is at the place of bringing us back into perfection?

More and more, we're changed into Christ's image. From glory to glory, he's changing us. And that pressure is what's bringing us there. That's a draw for us to look to God and say, "God, you are my all in all." Thank you for joining us for this episode, and thanks to our donors and partners for making this possible. To learn more about this ministry, view our About Us video linked below. You can also subscribe to our Supporters Update at AnabaptistPerspectives.org.