The story of humanity from the Bible claims that the world was created without sin allowing a perfect, direct relationship with God. But this relationship was not coercive, God did not demand love and affection from his image-bearers. Instead a tree was planted in the middle of this paradise with a prohibition against eating from it. This was the relationship escape valve. The promise was that if they wanted out from the relationship they could have it, and in obtaining their out they would die. But of course, the story goes that they didn't die immediately; they didn't experience a physical death immediately.
Instead the first thing they experienced was shame, shame that caused them to sew leaves to cover themselves with (Genesis 3:7). And when they next encountered God, they were afraid because of their shame (Genesis 3:10).
From their choices, our first parents Adam and Eve introduced sin into the world and all the rest of creation was touched by the stink of death and suffering.
Last week, I reflected on the idea that suffering is less about the (in)justice of God and more about the destructive nature of sin. In this post, I want to present three areas that have been distorted by those first sins that results in our personal and collective suffering.
- Human choice
- Creation
- Powers and Principalities
(Excerpts are from Reynoso's essay "Formed through suffering" in The Kingdom Life)
Human Choice
When we choose our own way over God's way, we can inflict "intentional and malicious harm...[that] causes a world of grief, pain and injustice."
But we can also make choices out of "ignorance, neglect and indifference" which "passively, but effectively hurt individuals and people groups, sometimes perpetuating unjust systems on entire nations of people."
And we also have to live with the limitations of our humaness. "Sometimes we cannot prevent tragedy simply because our strength and knowledge are not sufficient or we are not in the right place at the right time." It only took a moment of my distracted crazy for my son to fall off his changing table and break his leg.
Creation
I don't know about your influences, but a lot of arguments and advertisements I come across claim something is good because it is/was natural. But in the light of very natural disasters like tsunamis or very natural critters like bed bugs or very natural diseases like malaria or very natural biological processes like cancer and aging, how good is nature?
"All creation suffers hurt, damage, erosion, death and decay (see Romans 8:20-22) because God linked nature to the consequences of Adam and Eve's sin...God allowed sin to distort His creation and cause suffering...Meanwhile until its liberation the natural world suffers pain and humans suffer with it through the wildness of nature..."
Turns out nature is bent by sin too. It's not that there is nothing good in nature--it is product of a good God's creativity--but like humans, it has been warped by sin and is capable of inflicting great suffering.*
So while "God may use nature to carry out His plans...he is not the source of damage and death in this world." Natural disasters are so beyond our control we call them "acts of God", and in doing so we fail to grasp how thoroughly sin has warped even nature.
Powers and Principalities
These words carry a lot of Christian "voodoo" in them, but Paul seems to be describing "human and spiritual structures" which includes both the sense of evil spiritual forces as well as human institutions found in our culture, economics, and politics.
The latter "come under the influence of damaged and corrupt world systems, insatiable desires of the flesh (i.e., greed), and Satan, who desires to enslave the hearts and souls of men and women. The result is suffering beyond measure. Powers in the form of war, ethnic cleansing, slavery, systemic prejudice, and unjust dominance of the strong over the weak...break spirits and bodies by the weight of suffering they impose."
On Palm Sunday, we celebrated the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem even while on the back of a common donkey. On Easter Sunday, we celebrate the risen Jesus having defeated death. But in these days in between, we travel with Jesus in the consequences of sin. Before resurrection there is the cross, and Jesus hung on the cross as the definitive act of bringing restoration to a broken world. His death was costly in that it paid off an enormous debt, righting countless wrongs. To understand the glory of a risen King, we have to be willing to stare into the darkness. To live in grace, we must understand how wholly broken we are individually, corporately, and in the world at large.
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*This is why comparing the love of God to a hurricane may be inapt.
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