SUFFERING & INJUSTICE : LETTER FROM ZAMBIA
Dear Dad,
I just heard such a sad story: Mike is just off to drive one of the workers back to a hospital from which his 11 month daughter was discharged having suffered bad diarrhoea a few days ago. They’re going back to take her to the mortuary. She died the day after she was discharged. Why was she discharged if she was still sick? I can’t believe (even though I know it happens a lot)— I can’t believe in these days someone can DIE from diarrhoea.
It seems so ridiculous.
I could tell Mike was affected by it – he almost seemed angry, which is very unusual for him – and said ‘this is what life is like in Zambia’.
I guess I’m also struggling a bit with certain elements of the Bible and life itself: the whole senseless, or apparently senseless, suffering thing. And how the Bible says no life ends etc without God’s say-so.
How can that be if such things like that happen?
I read some of Ecclesiastes and Job which both seem to talk about how it's totally up to God. I've always kind of got around that by telling myself God doesn't send suffering per se and a large portion of it is down to the 'shit happens' part of life i.e. the fall which we brought about.
I don't know how to square Christianity, and the God we believe in, with that. What do you think about the whole God decides thing?
Joey xxx
Darling,
These questions are deep and written answers will not do.
There are several different points I can make, but at this stage I’ll confine myself to one only. Both my restraint and its substance may surprise you!
Your issues are not so much intellectual problems, as about feelings. i
I feel certain that God makes all things new. ii
I feel sure that he will put everything to rights in the new Earth iii and Heaven. iv
There’s so much I don’t understand, v and so much that seems unfair, but I feel vi assured that a time and state is coming with justice vii and healing. viii
Why?
Because I am convinced that He is coming.ix I know it in my bones, x feel it in my guts, and sense it in my spirit. xi When He comes, He brings all that is good with Him,xii for it resides within Him. xiii
Then, we will know as we are known, and see as we are seen.
Truly, now we see through a glass, darkly, xiv then we will see face xv to face. xvi
Our times are in his hands.xvii Dying, we live.xviii Suffering, we pass on to new fields; xix dying young, we are saved much suffering. xx
In suffering in our lives, we enter deeper into Himxxi, and add to His Godhood xxii and God head. xxiii
Life xxiv always xxv triumphs over death,xxvi resurrection over extinction,xxvii grace over law and sin,xxviii righteousness xxix over wickedness and stupidity.
Mercy triumphs over penalty, xxx yet our enemies will be tried, tested,xxxi judged and deleted. xxxii
The works of destruction only endure in this world. xxxiii They are all annihilated so that there is neither time nor space for them in the next!
If we trust God, as Job did, though we see only a tiny part of all this, only a fragment of His will and purpose, then we bow in submission.
In our anger, we do not sin by blaming or attacking Him. We offer ourselves up, for our truth is this: -
“Though he tears me like a lion, though he eviscerates me like a leopard, xxxiv though he smashes my head like a bear, yet I will love Him, xxxv and my pieces will still speak that love, just as Abel, though dead, yet continued to speak of His relationship with the Most High.” xxxvi
I am my Beloved’s and He is mine, and His banner over me is love. xxxvii
Nothing can separate us from His love, xxxviii so whether we are tortured, xxxix unjustly convicted and incarcerated, or become bed-bound and helpless, xl yet we will hold on, and in His Coming we will be uplifted, and in the vindication of our being raised up, xli we will find that all the poor innocents, xlii all the babes, xliii the victims, the casualties of Man’s greed, deliberate cruelty and casual indifference, will be raised with us, xliv and step into their inheritance. xlv
For the first shall be last, and the last, first. xlvi
Bestiality will become Beulah. xlvii Christ on the Cross will cross off God’s enemies. xlviii Chemosh has crumpled. xlix Molech has disappeared. l
Mammon liwill be rendered nugatory. Mercury will be muzzled. Jezebel will lose her sway over human sexuality. lii
The Queen of the Skies will be grounded, never to take off again. liii
Each Baal will topple, liv Dagon will gasp out its existence like a landed fish, lv the Empires of Man will crash and crush many of their elite in their fall, and each Principality will loose its grip upon its subjects. The Powers will lose control of their slaves. lvi
The sea will give up its dead. lvii
Satan, that old serpent, lviii will be bound, lix silenced, His lying and murderous tongue stilled, his accusations wiped away as if they had never been.
He faces erasure, lx and all his machinations will come to nothing. lxi
God’s glory will be unleashed, lxii and it will amaze and stupefy those who were once mighty, for it includes not just His transcendence, His munificence, His Excellence, but also His human experience, lxiii His vulnerability, lxiv His servanthood lxv and His humility. lxvi
His glory includes our story. lxvii
God’s finale will confound His enemies, lxviii for it will conclusively demonstrate and convict that by becoming human, He has made us sacred. Life is sacred,lxix and His gift. So there will be New Life, lives which cannot be taken away, or diminished; Life newly and radically embodied, lxx with no defects lxxi or shortcomings, lxxii no distortions. lxxiii
His story will replace history, lxxiv and His script is Adventure and Belonging, Challenge and Delight, Excellence and Fulfilment. lxxv God is good, all the time, lxxvi and all the time God is good. lxxvii
New Names will be given, lxxviii identities will be implanted, lxxix fresh and fragrant, and mountains and hills lxxx will sing. lxxxi
Forests really will clap their hands, lxxxiiand the wind shall be joyful. lxxxiii All losses lxxxiv will be turned into gains, all reverses will be superseded by creativity, and challenge will bring reward and fulfilment, and never darkness or despair. lxxxv
“See, I am making all things new” lxxxvi
Maranatha, even so, come quickly, Lord! lxxxvii
This is my short response.
With all my love,
Dad
1 “The heart has its reasons of which the reason knows nothing, as we see on a thousand occasions. I say that the heart has a natural love for the Universal Being or for itself, according as it surrenders to the one or the other; and it hardens against either at its own will. You have rejected one and kept the other. Is it reason that makes you love yourself?”
Pascal, B. (1746) The Pensées: 477, translated by J.M Cohen. London: Penguin, 1961.
2Matthew 9 : 16 - 17
“But I did not see sin. I believe it has no substance or real existence. It can only be known by the pain it causes… ‘It is true that sin is the cause of all this pain; but it is all going to be all right; it is all going to be all right; everything is going to be all right’.
Julian of Norwich (1373?) Revelations of Divine Love. translated by C. Wolters Penguin, 1966 :103
[often cited as ‘ All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well".]
3Romans 8 : 19 - 21
4Isaiah 9: 6 - 7
5Isaiah 55 : 8 - 9
6“ The heart feels God, not the reason. This is what constitutes faith: God experienced by the heart, not by reason.” Pascal, B. op cit : 481
7Psalm 85 : 8-12
8Malachi 4 : 2 1
9Thessalonians 4 : 16 2
10Peter 3 : 10 - 13
11James 5 : 8
121 Thessalonians 5 : 16
13 Chronicles 7 : 3
141 Corinthians 13 : 12
15Psalm 31 : 16; Psalm 105 : 4
16Revelation 22 : 4
17Psalm 31 : 15
18Romans 6 : 8 - 10
19Philippians 3 : 10 - 11
20Some say we owe the aphorism “quem di diligunt, adolescens moritur,” to the Roman playwright Plautus, who flourished around the end of the 3rd century BCE. Others say he drew it from Herodotus.
Others cite “Those whom the gods love, die young", as a saying from Greek mythology. There is the tale of Trophonius and his brother Agamedes, the sons of Erginus. According to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, they built Apollo's temple at the oracle at Delphi. Once finished, the oracle told the brothers to do whatsoever they wished for six days and, on the seventh, their greatest wish would be granted. They did, and were found dead on the seventh day.
21 Acts 17 : 28; Isaiah 53 : 3
22Hebrews 2 : 10
23My controversial reading of Colossians 1 : 24
24Life is love – see Acts 17 : 28 and 1 John 4 : 16
25 John 10 : 10
261 Corinthians 15 : 25
271 Corinthians 15 : 26
28Galatians 2 : 13 - 15
29Ephesians 2 : 14 - 16
30Micah 7 : 18
31Matthew 18 : 7
321 Peter 2 : 9 - 17
331 Corinthians 15 : 55
34“Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live ? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping…
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd”
Extract from the poem, Ash-Wednesday (1930)
Eliot, T.S. (1954) Selected Poems, Faber & Faber Ltd.
35Hosea 6 : 1 - 3
36Hebrews 11 : 4
37Song of Songs 2 : 4
38Romans 8 : 35
39Romans 8 : 37
40Romans 8 : 38 - 39
41Matthew 25 : 31 - 46
42Genesis 18 : 25,
43Matthew 19 : 13 - 15
44Matthew 5 : 3 - 10
45Acts 3 : 21; Colossians 1 : 19 -20
46Matthew 19 : 30; 20 : 16
47Isaiah 11 : 6 - 9
48Colosians 2 : 15
49Jeremiah 48 : 7, 13
50Leviticus 18 : 21
51 Matthew 6 : 24
522 Kings 9 : 30 - 37 ; Revelation 2 : 20 - 23
53Revelation 17
54Jude 14, 15
551 Samuel 5 : 1 - 5
56“ at that moment all the hosts of Mordor trembled, doubt clutched their hearts, their laughter failed, their hands shook and their limbs were loosed. The Power that drove them on and filled them with hate and fury was wavering, its will was removed from them: and…they… were afraid. [The Dark Lord, Sauron, then falls.] As when death smites the swollen brooding thing that inhabits their crawling hill and holds them all in sway, ants will wander witless and purposeless and then feebly die, so the creatures of Sauron… ran hither and thither mindless; and some slew themselves, or cast themselves in pits, or fled wailing back to hide in holes and dark lightless places far from hope.” Tolkien, J.R.R. (1966) The Return of the King. George Allen & Unwin Publishers Ltd : 226-227
57Revelation 20 : 13
58Revelation 12 : 9
59Revelation 20 : 2
60Revelation 20 : 10
61Psalm 2 : 1
62Ezekiel 48 : 35b ; Revelation 21 : 22 - 24
632 Corinthians 4 : 6
64Isaiah 53 : 3
65Isaiah 52 : 13; Matthew 20 : 28
66Philippians 2 : 5 - 8
671 Corinthians 12 : 12 - 27
68Isaiah 65 : 17
69Life is sacred, per Leviticus 17 : 11, 14 ; Deuteronomy 12 : 23. Scripture takes a high view of blood and life, and to deface the image of God in man is to attack both humanity and divinity. So I perhaps should say that Jesus did not so much make us sacred by His incarnation as confirmed it, thus repudiating the idea, held by many classical Greeks and subsequent Christians, that all flesh is evil.
70 Ezekiel 47 : 12
71Philippians 3 : 20 - 21
72
FEAST
Bouquets of blazing flowers
Adorn the tables of story,
Blithe spirits flow in liquid light
And spread laughter in this heaven.
We’re swimming in perfumed glory,
We’re clothed in righteous white.
Skyscapes of golden clouds
Cascade by the table of limes,
Expectancy marries delight
And sweet music streams at this feast
As in a dance that rhymes,
Experience soars into flight
Drinking midnight wine
At the table of kings,
God’s supper has flooded my soul
And has brought me to this banquet
As in a dream that sings.
Shalom has made us whole.
Copyright, David Cooke, 2003.
73Isaiah 65 : 25
74Revelation 21 ; 1 - 4
75“ ‘The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.’
And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
Lewis, C.S. (1953) The Last Battle. Lion : 173
76“For His goodness enfolds every one of His creatures and all His blessed works, eternally and surpassingly. For he Himself is eternity, and has made us for Himself alone, has restored us by His blessed passion, and keeps us in His blessed love. And all because he is goodness.”
Julian of Norwich (1373?) Revelations of Divine Love. translated by C. Wolters Penguin, 1966 : 69
77Psalm 16 : 11
78Revelation 2 : 17, 3 : 5
79Revelation 3 : 12
80Isaiah 55 : 12
You shall go out with joy
And be let forth with peace
And the mountains and the hills
Will break forth before you
There'll be shouts of joy
And all the trees of the fields
Will clap, will clap their hands
And all the trees of the fields will clap their hands
The trees of the fields will clap their hands
The trees of the fields will clap their hands
While you go out with joy.
©1975 Words and Music by Stuart Dauermann & Steffi Geiser Rubins
81Psalm 148 : 9
82Isaiah 55 : 12
83Hebrews 1 : 7
84Matthew 12 : 15 - 21
85Isaiah 61 : 3
86Revelation 21 : 5
87Revelation 22 : 7, 12, 20