Human beings, being what they are, somehow feel entitled to question the reasons for everything that happens to them. In many instances life itself becomes a continual criticism and dissection of one’s circumstances and acquaintances. We look for someone or something on which to pin the blame for our misfortunes. We are often quick to forget our blessings, slow to forget our misfortunes.
Phillip Keller

Out Of Context

Out Of Context

Out of Context?

. John 3:16 — “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
. Over the years of my life (I’m close to 37 now, which I HATE to realize) I have had quite a few friends and relatives die, some after much pain and suffering. In times of suffering and death, especially when seemingly good, innocent people are involved, some of us may wonder (I know I often have) how God’s love can be seen in the situation. “If God is love, why did he allow my child to die?” “If God loves me, why must I suffer this constant pain?” Some also wonder about God’s love when they think of the starving multitudes in Third World nations. Why does he allow such suffering? How can he claim to love someone and then sit by and watch them in excruciating life-long pain, especially when he has the ability to stop that pain? . To be honest, I am myself puzzled concerning the reasons behind much of the apparent evil and suffering that I see or hear of in this world. And some of the proposed solutions to the puzzle that I have heard sound pretty shallow, and I imagine especially so to the one faced with an actual situation of suffering. . But I think that sometimes what aggravates the problem, making it seem even worse than it already is, might be called an attempt to “read” God’s love out of context. Living in a culture that’s completely wrapped up in the concerns of this life, legitimate as those concerns are, we can easily lose the “eternal perspective.” We tend to see things only within the context of this life, forgetting that God’s love in Christ is an eternal love, something that will find its greatest fulfillment on the other side of this life, in the “life to come.”
. The Apostle Paul is aware of the eternal perspective when, in I Corinthians 15, he speaks of the importance of faith in Christ’s resurrection. In verse 18 he says that if there is no resurrection, then those who are dead in Christ have perished, which is the tragic view of death and suffering from the perspective of this life alone. He continues, “If it’s only in this life that we have hope in Christ, then we are the most miserable of all men.” If this life is our only evidence of God’s love, then we ARE in pretty bad shape. “But now Christ has risen from the dead, and he’s only the first, for … in Christ all shall be made alive” (vv. 20,22). Thus, we are helped to refrain from drawing hasty conclusions out of context, for when all of this world’s words have been spoken, we know that God has yet another word. On that word we wait, trusting that it will put everything into context. The atoning death of Christ on the cross (“For God so loved the world that…”) has given us this larger context. . Surely, the eternal perspective should not be used as a cop-out from our responsibility to be concerned with removing or reducing suffering whenever and wherever we can, and of making the world a better place for all to live in. But it can help us to understand, when this life is unavoidably difficult, that suffering is never the last word for those who live in the context of God’s love.

Charles Shelton

Computers for Christ – Chicago