Tag Archives: suffering

  • Bibledude.net has a series of posts on the issue of fatherlessness that you can check out by clicking this picture I cribbed from him.

    Why Christians Have a Moral Obligation Not to Have Sex Outside of Marriage

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    Bibledude.net has a series of posts on the issue of fatherlessness that you can check out by clicking this picture I cribbed from him.

    Everyone has a theory to explain the breakdown of the family: culture, government policy, the sexual revolution, poverty, racism, global trade, etc, etc.  A few days back, I shared my theory: unresolved trauma from often horrific life experiences.  I said I was going to write about what I think Christians have a moral obligation to do in response and that is what this post is about. Now, before you snort and click away, allow me to explain myself . . .

    A few years ago, the ex told me about a woman he knew who lived in a high poverty area and had put her 14 year old daughter on birth control pills.  The girl was an honor student, insisted that she wasn’t sexually active and didn’t intend to become sexually active, and didn’t really want to be on the pills but the mother insisted.  I told my husband that I thought it was probably a good idea.  Not necessarily because the pills themselves would keep her from getting pregnant, but because the discipline of having to remember to take one at the same time everyday would serve her well. 

    Many of us grew up in homes with bedtimes, we sat down for meals with our families, got handed a vitamin with breakfast by mom and could always find a quiet spot to do homework.  Often we don’t appreciate the way these simple routines and disciplines shape and prepare us to manage our lives in the real world.  Including using birth control methods effectively.  

    A fellow RA in college went to the local county health department and came back with a bag that looked like this. Flavored! Colored! Many sizes! The bounty overfloweth.

    I was a poor single mom.  I have known a lot of much more stereotypical poor single moms (ie not just the black sheep of an intact, well-educated, upper-middle class family).  I can personally attest to the fact that is not hard to get condoms or birth control pills.  People practically throw them at you when you’re a college student or a single mom.  The problem is I have known more than one person who became a parent while a bag of condoms from the local clinic sat on a dresser across the room.  Continue reading »

  • despair

    Christians and despair

    October 19, 2011

    3 Comments

    I posted this in response to a comment on my post “Does the Body Have Faith to Share?” in which I expressed despair.  I want to use it as its own post because we Christians are not good at dealing with people who have reach the point of despairing.  In fact, I have heard it said that the one thing that Christians are not allowed to do is despair.  And yet . . .

    “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – Jesus

    “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?” – David (Psalm 22)

    How long, O LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? – Habakkuk 1:2

    Why did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my days in shame? – Jeremiah 20:18

    But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.” – Isaiah 49:14

    Why, O LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me? – Psalm 88:14

    There is a reason these sorts of passages are found throughout scriptures. Christians need to encourage each other, but we have GOT to stop shaming people for those times when pain and suffering brings them to the point of despair. Jesus himself knew what it was like to be so overwhelmed by his suffering that he accused God of leaving him alone and unprotected. When we do not allow each other to express these sentiments, we do not stop people from feeling them; we just make them suffer in silence. Sometimes life is truly too much for us. Sometimes God seems to be failing us and although in our heads we know that God is faithful, our hearts see no evidence of it and break. The body has been told to “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). Sometimes a person really does need to be told to buck up and stop feeling sorry for themselves, but more often we need to resist the urge to deny or minimize a person’s trouble and pain and do like Job’s friends after God chastised them: “They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had brought upon him” – Job 42:11.

  • Our Suffering and the Cross

    June 26, 2008

    3 Comments

    Over at Jesus Creed, a regular comment box writer who goes by RJS has been doing a series of posts on a book called The Reason for God.  It has been a great series, but for whatever reason, today’s installment particularly struck me.  It discusses Chapter 13 of the book, which is The (True) Story of the Cross.  IMO, there is a tendency on the part of evangelical Christians to view the cross as simply a matter of forgiven sins and little else.  OTOH, there is a tendency in some progressive circles to see the cross as foolishness – almost an embarrassingly outdated myth.  While of course, I agree much more with the evangelical view of the cross, it seems to me that it actually reduces the cross to frame it as simply a quid pro quo for our sins.  In the discussion at Jesus Creed, RJS presents part of what the book has to say in regards to the issue of sacrificial/substitutional nature of Jesus’ death on the cross:

    The Gospel of Christ – the good news – is wrapped up in the story of the cross. This story however causes a great deal of consternation in our western world. Why was sacrifice required? Why did Jesus die? Isn’t the appeasement of the wrath of God best classed as divine child abuse — a remnant of an older more primitive society? . . . Forgiveness always requires sacrifice. When we forgive we bear the consequence, the suffering, ourselves rather than demanding retribution. No one “just forgives” any grievous wrong. How much more then for God? God did not, then, inflict pain on someone else, but rather on the Cross absorbed the pain, violence, and evil of the world into himself.”

    That last part is probably the best explanation of the sacrificial nature of the cross which I have read.  RJS, goes on to talk about how death on the cross also helped us to understand that God can identify with our pain, injustice and oppression.  In conclusion he asks: Continue reading »

  • Book of Job Chapter 3: Ever Wanted to Die?

    June 4, 2008

    4 Comments

    Chapter 1 here

    Chapter 2 here

    At the start of Chapter 3 of The Book of Job, we find Job, having sat in silence with his 3 friends for 7 days, ready to talk. (Text of Chapter 3 here.) What comes out of his mouth is one of the more heartbreaking of the laments found in scriptures. Job does not curse God or Satan or even his misfortune. Rather, it is his very existence which is the subject of his lament.

    One of the notable things about Chapter 3 is that it is where the Book of Job ceases to be a narrative story and becomes an extended series of poems. We are of course reading a translation which can make it hard for us to appreciate the poetry involved. In addition, Hebrew poetry uses something called parallelism where an idea is stated and then restated. This can happen between lines, within lines, between stanzas or withing stanzas. For example, verse 17: “There the wicked cease from troubling, there the weary are at rest” is an example of parallelism within a line. We can see it in the repetition of the sentence structure and the repetition of the first word of each phrase. There is also a pairing relationship between the wicked and the weary and ceasing from trouble and being at rest (ceasing to be troubled).

    People with more patience and attention to detail than I have/can spend oodles of time teasing out these structures and themes. For the rest of us, however, the result is often that the text becomes repetative and we can get so caught up in the flow that we lose track of what is going on. Like I said, I am not a good detail person, so having to wade through a bunch of lines which repeat themselves with variations over and over again is not my cup of tea. I have found it helpful to look at these sections as what they are: poems. I try to break the poem into thematic sections which are usually composed of the same or similar number of lines. For this chapter, it looks like this: Continue reading »

  • Book of Job Chapter 2: Lowering the Boom

    June 2, 2008

    4 Comments

    Well, I figured I would pick up my slow-mo study of the Book of Job again tonight. (Here’s my take on Chapter 1.) Tonight we’ll look at Chapter 2. (Text of Chapter 2 here.)

    Chapter 2 starts with a repeat of the scene from Chapter 1 with a gathering before God at which Satan appears. Once again, God points out Job’s integrity – this time in the face of enormous suffering.

    One of the challenges of the Book of Job is God’s complicity in Job’s suffering. As I said in my comments on Chapter 1, God not only allows Satan to visit tragedy on Job, but He actually offers Job up as a target for this treatment. This doesn’t sit well at all with our understanding of God as a protective force for His people. This difficult state of affairs continues in Chapter 2. Here we find an oddly worded sentence which points both to the fact that God is manipulating Satan and that He is willing to take responsibility for causing Job’s suffering. Verse 3 says, “you incited me against him to ruin him without cause”. The Netbible translates “incite me” as “stirred me up”. This is a rather odd thing to say as it was God who actually provoked Satan’s desire to ruin (lit “swallow up”) Job. But, like a manager who allows an employee to think their new assignment was their own idea, God allows Satan to think that he rather than God is in control of this situation. The other odd thing about the sentence is the imprecise pronouns which obscure who is bringing about ruin. God does not say, “you incited me against him so that you could ruin him without cause.” Rather, by simply saying “to ruin him”, God leaves open the possibility that it is not Satan, but God who has brought Job to ruin. In which case, Satan is merely the tool by which God has done this work. Satan, of course misses this distinction (as do most of us, come to think of it).

    Now, I do know that I am treading in some ugly territory here. Continue reading »