Why Does God Allow Suffering?

Transcript

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Well, hey, everybody, and welcome back to Qualified, the place where incredible people share their stories of overcoming great adversity and loss.

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To inspire you and give you hope.

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I'm Michelle Heaton.

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When tragedy strikes, we're often unprepared and when we find ourselves facing the most devastating moments of our lives, we can come undone and feel hopeless.

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And people of faith tell us to trust God and that He'll work it all out for our good.

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But when we're in the midst of the trauma and the shock and the pain, clinging to our faith can sometimes be just as challenging as what we may be going through.

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And it's been said that a faith that hasn't been tested can't be trusted, and I understand those words better now than I ever have since losing my son Sean, when my faith was tested.

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Well, my guest today is intimately acquainted with pain and suffering.

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His faith was radically put to the test several years ago when he and his wife, and then his two daughters, became severely ill and his two daughters became severely ill.

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And prior to the adversity that would come, he served in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, first as a deacon and then as an elder.

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He's a self-taught student of theology and a well-versed Christian apologist.

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He's also the author of the encouraging and inspirational book called A Different World God's Sovereignty in the Face of Suffering.

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His name is David Libby and it's my pleasure to have him as my guest on the show today.

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Welcome to Qualified David.

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Well, thank you, Michelle.

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I'm very glad to be here.

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Well, David, why don't you just start out by briefly describing the lifestyle and the living environment that you and your family had prior to the illnesses, and what you love most about that lifestyle?

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Well, the lifestyle that my family and I have enjoyed, really for more than one generation, is somewhat different from what is normal today, but it would not have been different from what is normal just a generation ago.

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A generation ago, people all lived the way we do.

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So we basically live what's usually called a homesteading lifestyle.

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We live very close to the land, raise our own animals, grow our own food.

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We live in a very rural part of the country, in rural Maine.

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Maine has a low population to begin with, and we're in a lightly populated part of Maine, so very rural.

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We've lived a lifestyle where we do a lot of outdoor stuff like hunting, fishing, gardening, foraging for wild edible plants and mushrooms and, you know, camping.

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We don't go camping at campsites, we go camping in remote, undiscovered areas.

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you know, kind of bust out a little campsite out of the brush somewhere.

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And that's the way we've lived and we've enjoyed almost every bit of it.

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I'll get to the almost part in a minute.

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We just love God's creation, we love seeing his handiwork up close and personal.

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We just love the outdoors and love living that way.

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We've enjoyed almost every part of it.

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The part we haven't enjoyed was contracting Lyme disease because of this lifestyle and it's caused an awful lot of suffering for a good many years.

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Yeah, well, thanks for describing it and kind of explaining the way that you lived and you brought up the Lyme disease.

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And in your book you say that obviously that was an unintended consequence of the lifestyle that you were living and that you and your family were bitten by dozens of ticks and that you all ended up with Lyme disease.

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And you said that the disease was not initially diagnosed properly and that your family's condition worsened to the point of indescribable pain and suffering and that your symptoms ended up at one point being lesser than your wife and your girls, and so you were the primary caregiver and emotional support for them.

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How did it impact you emotionally seeing your loved ones in a state like this?

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It was very, very hard.

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It was very difficult to see people I love suffering intensely and not be able to do anything about it.

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I told my daughters often I wish that I could take their symptoms upon myself, and then they would tell me, well, you have to work and we don't.

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I would say, well, I'll take your symptoms on days off.

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Then I was quite ill myself at times, but it was fairly easy for me to treat.

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And the reason why it was easier for me to treat than for them is mainly because of a genetic mutation that they have, which I do not have.

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It's kind of complicated and I'm a layman so I have a hard time explaining it all, but because they all have this genetic mutation, it's been very difficult for them to treat.

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The worst part of the disease for them wasn't so much what the Borrelia spirochetes do, but the fact that the combination of Lyme and this mutation shut down the body's ability to deal with toxins.

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So that was the biggest part of the problem.

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You know, every day we're exposed to tons and tons of toxins and the food that we eat and the air that we breathe and the clothes that we wear and most of us, the the body takes care of it.

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The body is very well designed right down on the cellular level to take out, get rid of toxins and to take in nutrients.

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You know, god designed the body very well to do this.

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And my girls because of the Lyme the Lyme is a big piece of the puzzle that function was nearly shut down, so they were really being poisoned to death slowly.

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For me it was fairly easy to treat.

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I would get sick, I would treat it and I would get better.

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Okay so yeah, it was fairly easy to treat.

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I would get sick, I would treat it and I would get better.

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Okay so yeah, it had to be terrible on you, just kind of watching both us like the lowest point of both the physical and emotional pain that you went through and how you reacted to that.

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Yeah, the lowest point, I would say probably was more than one low point.

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So the disease it was very painful.

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It caused my wife and both daughters to have severe pain throughout their bodies.

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My wife which says on asset felix, she had shards of broken glass all throughout her body Caused severe swelling in the joints, flu-like symptoms all the time.

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The worst part of it was actually and this is a whole lot worse than those physical symptoms, and they were bad enough.

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There were times when my wife was bedridden for days at a time and we were awfully close to a wheelchair Never quite there because she's so tough.

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But worse than the physical symptoms were a lot of mental problems, psychotic-type stuff, bad seizures every single day.

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And then my youngest daughter would have episodes of what we came to call the badness that was her word.

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If they were really bad.

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She called them the bad badness, but it would be a combination of horrible seizures, body twisting in ways that I didn't know bodies could twist in, coupled with excruciating pain and all kinds of psychosis and bad stuff going on along with it.

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She also had what's called sound sensitivity and that was very, very bad.

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Anyway, it was years.

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It was about 10 years for my girls about 20 years for my wife.

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And you asked about the low point.

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And I would say the lowest points were when it first really got bad and we finally got a positive diagnosis and I thought, well, we'll be able to beat this now, now that we finally know what it is.

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And it went on, you know, a year, two years, only getting worse even after we're, you know, even after we're aggressively treating it.

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And that was a bit of a low point to see, you know, to finally have a glimmer of hope and then have that hope extinguished.

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And then probably the other really low point was actually kind of toward the end of their intense suffering.

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It had reached a climax of badness and these bad seizures and badness episodes every single day.

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By the grace of God this is really interesting.

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By the grace of God, there was never a time when all three were down all at the same time.

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So they were able to function.

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Because I had to work.

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Half my income was going to medical bills, so they were able to function because I had to work Half my income was going to medical bills, so I had to work during the day and then I would take over at night caring for them.

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A lot of one or two hour of sleep nights, occasionally a zero sleep night.

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But right to the end of it it kind of climaxed to a point where it was extreme extreme and we discovered that they had mold illness.

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Mold toxins were a huge piece of the puzzle.

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We lived in a house that we built ourselves.

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It was a fair sized house and a piece of land that my father had owned, a piece of land we absolutely loved.

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We learned that the only way to deal with this mold illness was to get out of the house and leave all our belongings behind.

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You know, that was quite a low point.

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The house wasn't terribly moldy, but there was a little mold somewhere, and almost every house in New England would be as bad.

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But we have a friend who had a fairly new construction garage with an apartment above and he was very, very careful about things like mold.

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He used dehumidifiers all the time and so he let us move in with him.

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We lived there for two years while I all by myself cleaned out that house, you know, threw away most of our stuff, sold the house you know this is, you know, working during the day, still working, you know, 50, 60 hours a week, and then working on the house nights and got it cleaned out, sold, bought and built a new house, and all that took about two years.

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And I don't think we would have made it if at that point, if when we moved out of that house, if they had moved into the apartment over the garage, if they had remained as ill, I don't think we'd have made it.

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But we saw improvements right away.

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You know, right away they all of a sudden were doing a whole lot better.

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So but anyway, those are probably probably the two lowest low points.

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So sorry for the long answer.

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As you're telling me this, I'm thinking that there's so much loss associated with what you all went through, and now, because of the house, that's obviously a big loss in all of the memories, but the loss of their ability to function the way they used to function and you all to function as a family is gone.

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So you're grieving that past and everything that you had, and so that had to be terribly emotional for you as well, right?

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Yeah, yeah, yeah definitely.

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In your book, you talked about the question that many of us have wrestled with, I think, which is how a perfect and loving God who doesn't make mistakes would have created a world so full of mistakes.

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In fact, you said that was the very question that you were facing and that was a place in which your book was actually conceived.

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And so tell us about the disconnect that you described between an encyclopedia of head knowledge and an application of that knowledge, and you said the muddy and bloody trenches of life.

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Can you lay that out for us?

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How did that work for you?

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Sure, yeah, yeah.

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Well, you've got two very good questions kind of put together in one there.

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The first about what's often called the distelological argument.

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An atheist, nationalist and philosopher named Ernst Haeckel came up with that name, the distelological argument.

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An atheist, nationalist and philosopher named Ernst Haeckel came up with that name, the distelological argument, in response to what is often called the teleological argument for the existence of God.

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Ernst Haeckel didn't come up with the argument.

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I know David Hume used the argument in his work Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, prior to Haeckel.

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The teleological argument says people use analogies like this all the time If you're walking out in the woods and you find a pocket watch, a gold pocket watch, laying on the ground, and you pick it up and it's functioning and you hear it ticking and all the little tiny intricate gears are all moving, you don't think, huh, this must have just come about by blind chance.

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It just kind of fell together by accident.

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You know, you assume there was somebody who made it.

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It was a designer.

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And so the argument goes that you know, the woods you found the watch in are almost infinitely more complex than the watch itself.

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So you know, shouldn't that also be assumed, to have had a designer.

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And then you know David Hume and Haeckel and others, charles Darwin.

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Others countered by saying well, if that's true, that it must not have been the God of the Bible, because the Bible tells us he's a perfect God, a God who does not make mistakes.

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But look around at the world, it's full of mistakes, there's all kinds of stuff that shouldn't be happening, be happening.

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And the answer to that argument there are a lot of answers that we hear and see in Christian circles, I think, well-intentioned answers that really miss the mark, in my opinion.

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I think the correct answer is if you read Genesis, chapter 3, romans 8, lots of other places in the Bible, you find that none of these mistakes are actually mistakes.

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You know, because man fell into sin, god has cursed his creation.

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I will greatly increase your pain, he says in Genesis 3, because of this fall into sin.

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So I guess that would be my short answer to the teleological argument.

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There are no mistakes.

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Everything is functioning as God designed it to function, even the painful things.

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I've been asking why would God have created mosquitoes?

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People are surprised sometimes to hear me say well, likely a number of reasons, but one reason to bite us and make us itch is part of God's curse.

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Look at it this way, a little word picture I actually use in the book.

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Imagine Adam working out in one of his crop fields under the blazing sun.

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He's sweaty and tired and his sons and servants are all miserable and they're pulling thorns and weeds out of the garden.

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And along comes a 27-year-old philosopher, atheist philosopher, and he says hey, I've heard, you believe in a perfect God, a God who doesn't make mistakes, but you're pulling weeds out of your garden.

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Doesn't that prove this?

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God doesn't exist.

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And I think Adam would say well, no, god is the one who put these weeds here.

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You know, read Genesis 3.

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By the sweat of your brow, you will now be able to live it.

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You know, weeds and thorns will now grow in your garden.

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So there are no mistakes.

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This world is sustained and governed by a sovereign God of providence and everything works according to his decretive will.

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So anyway, we could get into that in a whole lot more depth.

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But the other question was what is this disconnect between an encyclopedia of head knowledge, knowing the right answers, and then working that out actually on the battleground in the muddy and bloody extensions and the extensions?

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Of course we all recognize that as a as a military analogy.

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So if you have any military listeners, forgive me.

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I'm not a military man, so forgive a non-military man for using a military analogy.

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But I've known a lot of military people.

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I've known people who have been in some pretty intense combat and they all say that all the training that you undergo before going into combat is all very worthwhile.

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It's very valuable, you know.

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You know how to use your weapon, how to use it well, you know how to deal with stress, because you've got this really mean guy you know called the drill sergeant who, uh, you know, turns up the heat almost to the breaking point.

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You know, what it's like to be torn down and built back up.

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But as soon as you get out there onto the battlefield, these guys all tell me that there's an aspect of that that you're not prepared for.

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There's a psychological aspect.

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You know your weapon, you know how to do things.

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Now, all of a sudden, you're there and can you really do it?

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There's a disconnect.

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The only way to connect that disconnect is to actually be there and do it.

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So as a theologian and elder in the church and somebody who took theology and philosophy and apologetics very seriously, I was very familiar with what the correct answers are.

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We counted all joy when we faced various trials.

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Right, that's what James 1 tells us.

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1 Corinthians 4 and 5, 1 Corinthians or 2 Corinthians.

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Anyway, we know that this life is filled with trials and sufferings, and the author, paul, or the Holy Spirit through the pen of Paul, tells us that these trials and sufferings, these momentary light afflictions, are working together for us An eternal weight of glory in life to come.

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So we know these things right, we've studied them and we know them, and we know that we need to trust in the Lord.

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He will not let us down, he's there with us.

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I will never leave you nor forsake you.

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But then, when we find ourselves in the heat of it, do we actually do what we know we're supposed to do?

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Do we actually trust him and do we actually cling to him?

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Do we continue to love him, even love him all the more, or do we shake our fists at him and curse him and turn away from him?

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And suffering seems to have that winnowing effect.

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People tend to be drawing closer to the Lord or they tend to be driven away from him, and it kind of separates the wheat from the chaff, don't you think?

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It does.

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And, as you're saying that, I kind of laugh because I feel like I say that every episode.

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You know, when I'm talking to a guest, that we always talk about how people either draw closer to God or they run away from God when these challenges in our life come.

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And you know all of that head knowledge.

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We know who stay so strong in their faith even having been through all of it, because, as I said in the intro, it really is testing your faith when you have to live it out.

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And you see and that's why I was asking you about the emotions that you experience watching your loved ones in the trenches, because it's so hard.

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It's so hard, you know and I experienced the loss of my son too to make sense of it in the natural sense of our minds, and that's what the atheists are trying to say and they struggle with to make sense of a God that would allow that.

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But those scriptures speak to that, those very scriptures that you cited, and those are the things that kind of in a supernatural sense, I believe, bring us hope, because it doesn't compute in the natural sense, wouldn't you agree?

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Right, I would.

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I would agree with strongly.

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Yes for sure.

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Yeah, you know all the head knowledge and all that.

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The head knowledge is important.

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We should never look down at the head knowledge like it's a bad thing.

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Some people do, unfortunately.

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But what does the head knowledge accomplish for you if, when you're tested, you fail the test?

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You know, if anything, you're worse off for having had the head knowledge.

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You know to whom much is given, much is expected.

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So people can have very little head knowledge and truly trust in the Lord, and that's commendable.

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You can have a whole lot of head knowledge and reject him, and that's damnable reject them, and that's damnable.

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I was thinking about when you mentioned 1st or 2nd Corinthians.

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I was thinking about in 2nd Corinthians, chapter 1, where it talks about that we're to comfort others with the comfort that we've received from God.

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And so when we go through these things it's like you said, the head knowledge is there and you use the example of the soldier.

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You know, in the trenches they get the training first, so the training equips them and then they draw on what they've learned when they're in the battle, and that's kind of the perfect analogy of what God does when we go through these things in life.

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So in 1 James, that scripture you cited about, you know, count it all joy.

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It makes absolutely no sense prior to real testing in our lives, at least for me, and I know I've read from a few pastors that have written books about the fact that they've lost their own children, and I'm thinking of Rick Warren and Greg Laurie.

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You know they've lost their kids and they've talked about the fact that they used to counsel others who were grieving and then they did this for a length of time, you know, with that head knowledge, and then when they lost their own children it took them to a new depth of empathy and understanding when they were communicating with people after that.

00:20:31.448 --> 00:20:37.124
Because of that, and that's what God wants, that's how he's equipping us and building us up.

00:20:37.124 --> 00:20:39.784
So, yeah, I love the way that you said that.

00:20:39.784 --> 00:20:46.246
I guess what I want to know now from you is based on everything you said.

00:20:46.246 --> 00:20:51.886
How did all of it change for you when you finally realized the truth of that?

00:20:51.886 --> 00:20:54.059
Because you said that intersection of head knowledge and life application?

00:20:54.059 --> 00:21:01.518
When you finally realized the truth of that, because you said that intersection of head knowledge and life application, when you got your brain around it, what changed, if anything, for the way your life went Well?

00:21:02.780 --> 00:21:04.365
yeah, yeah, very good question.

00:21:04.365 --> 00:21:07.715
I think the biggest change was having peace in the midst of the storm.

00:21:07.715 --> 00:21:15.083
The storm was still raging, but early on I just wanted to be done with it all.

00:21:15.083 --> 00:21:17.207
I wanted them to get well.

00:21:17.207 --> 00:21:27.084
Obviously I wanted that all along, but when it looked like they weren't going to be well anytime soon, it was very hard to have any kind of peace.

00:21:28.246 --> 00:21:34.646
But finally losing that disconnect that we talked about before brings a peace that surpasses understanding.

00:21:34.646 --> 00:21:37.540
Really we can have peace in the midst of the storm.

00:21:37.540 --> 00:21:50.605
In fact, one of the chapters of my book is one of the later chapters is called it's a privilege to enter this world, this other world of, you know, serious suffering, and it sounds kind of cheap and easy to say that, but I really mean it.

00:21:50.605 --> 00:21:54.367
It's actually a privilege because it gives us opportunities to glorify God that we wouldn't have otherwise.

00:21:54.367 --> 00:22:01.042
It gives us opportunities to invest in things that really matter.

00:22:01.042 --> 00:22:14.548
So when we come to realize those things and come to really trust in the Lord in the midst of it, it does change the perspective radically, a radical paradigm shift in the perspective, and we do have peace and we do have eternal hope.

00:22:14.548 --> 00:22:16.452
That really is tangible.

00:22:17.701 --> 00:22:18.987
Yeah, the privilege part.

00:22:18.987 --> 00:22:25.366
When you mentioned that, I was thinking about our conversation before and I think we talked about Job for a little bit.

00:22:25.366 --> 00:22:34.205
You know, and I think about that privilege because you know he was selected and God gave approval for Satan to have his way with him.

00:22:34.205 --> 00:22:54.203
You know if he will, and I always think about that story in terms of you know that for me, and the loss of a child, and I think about how Job, you know, the house caved in and he lost all his kids in one day and it's just, it's impossible for me to even think about it at that level all of your kids.

00:22:54.203 --> 00:22:59.583
And then scripture talks about the fact that in the latter part of his life was better than the first.

00:22:59.583 --> 00:23:02.791
You know, when it closes it all out and it's like how, how could that be?

00:23:02.791 --> 00:23:05.305
But it's basically what we're talking about right now.

00:23:05.305 --> 00:23:11.685
So how would you liken your realization of scripture and the way that it comforted you?

00:23:11.685 --> 00:23:14.601
How would you liken that to Job and what he went through?

00:23:16.183 --> 00:23:20.753
Well, I would say, how would I liken my experience to Job's?

00:23:20.753 --> 00:23:25.319
I would say that, first of all, I think he suffered more than I did, but that's beside the point.

00:23:25.319 --> 00:23:38.411
But I would say that he ended up with the realization that is the same one that I ended up with, and that is, you know, in my book I try to give answers.

00:23:38.411 --> 00:23:47.979
I start out answering Ernst Haeckel's teleological argument and then from there I move on to the problem of evil how does evil fit into God's sovereign plan?

00:23:47.979 --> 00:23:52.632
And then from there I move on to some answers to these tough questions.

00:23:53.020 --> 00:23:55.307
Why did God ordain this reality filled with suffering?

00:23:55.307 --> 00:24:08.991
In the first place and there are good answers in scripture God has ordained a reality where there's a fall into sin and suffering, for his glory gives him the opportunity to display his glorious justice, mercy and grace that he wouldn't have otherwise.

00:24:08.991 --> 00:24:11.667
Well, you can push back against that answer.

00:24:11.667 --> 00:24:14.849
You know, couldn't he have given us the capacity to know these things without experiencing them?

00:24:14.849 --> 00:24:17.785
And you know there are always ways to push back against these answers.

00:24:17.785 --> 00:24:33.324
You know, god's ordaining a world with a fallout of sin, filled with suffering and so forth, gives him the occasion to display an amazing outpouring of love that wouldn't have been possible in a different world.

00:24:33.324 --> 00:24:53.799
I think we really can know his love with a depth that we wouldn't have otherwise, because we're, you know, wretched sinners who are loved by God rather than deserving servants, if there had been no fall into sin we would deserve Eden, but we don't deserve it, and he has lavished it upon us anyway.

00:24:53.880 --> 00:25:04.955
But beyond that, more than that, the means that he used to give us paradise in the end is a very costly, painful atonement that he did for us.

00:25:04.955 --> 00:25:08.869
So he entered our suffering and he suffered with us and he suffered for us.

00:25:08.869 --> 00:25:12.990
But anyway, that answer can be pushed back against as well.

00:25:12.990 --> 00:25:17.380
Why couldn't he just give us a capacity to love him as much without all the suffering?

00:25:17.380 --> 00:25:25.701
And so, anyway, there are always ways to kind of push back against these very good answers until you get to the place where Job was Finally.

00:25:25.701 --> 00:25:27.147
Maybe I'm going to go back to Job here.

00:25:27.147 --> 00:25:32.269
But Job, the answer that God's word gives, that cannot be pushed back against any further.

00:25:32.269 --> 00:25:35.354
The end of the line answer is he is God and I'm not.

00:25:35.354 --> 00:25:38.763
You know, his ways are higher than my ways, and that's where Job ended up.

00:25:38.763 --> 00:25:47.076
At the end of the book Job wanted answers, and at the end of the book of Job, god just told him I'm God and you're not, basically.

00:25:48.799 --> 00:25:57.423
And we can trust him and we can love him, the way you described it, going to a new level of relationship with God through it, and you mentioned that with Job.

00:25:57.423 --> 00:26:03.310
And what is that scripture where in Job he actually said basically I thought I knew you, but now I have seen your face.

00:26:05.060 --> 00:26:06.386
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00:26:07.300 --> 00:26:08.984
And I think it's that realization.

00:26:08.984 --> 00:26:15.569
Yeah, now, because we rely on God, we need him like air after we go through something like this.

00:26:15.569 --> 00:26:17.476
So he's created a new intimacy that with him that we would have never like this.

00:26:17.476 --> 00:26:21.328
So he's created a new intimacy with him that we would have never had otherwise, right.

00:26:22.441 --> 00:26:43.932
Absolutely, absolutely yeah well said Let me ask you then, in summary, given everything that you've gone through, that your family has gone through and that you've had to suffer kind of supporting them what are those big life lessons that you learned that you could share with someone listening right now who might just be going through a really challenging time, to give them hope?

00:26:46.079 --> 00:27:06.010
Yeah, okay, the biggest life lesson is and I just looked it up a minute ago while we were talking it is 2 Corinthians, not 1 Corinthians, chapter 4, and on to chapter 5, where Paul talks about his momentary, light afflictions, storing up an eternal weight of glory in the life to come.

00:27:06.010 --> 00:27:13.166
And if you read the list of afflictions Paul endured, they're anything but momentary or light by human standards.

00:27:13.166 --> 00:27:17.390
He suffered a lot and he considered them momentary and light.

00:27:17.390 --> 00:27:18.031
Well, why is that?

00:27:18.031 --> 00:27:20.208
It's because he had his eyes fixed on the end goal.

00:27:20.208 --> 00:27:30.151
He had an eternal perspective, yes, and he knew that eternity is, you know.

00:27:30.151 --> 00:27:32.994
Let me draw an analogy that shows how immense eternity is.

00:27:32.994 --> 00:27:34.205
It's an analogy I use in my book.

00:27:34.779 --> 00:27:40.932
My daughter Bethany and I watched a lot of nature documentaries when she was really sick and one of them was on the Sahara Desert.

00:27:40.932 --> 00:27:48.717
I didn't realize this at the time, but the Sahara Desert is as large in land mass and acreage as the entire United States of America.

00:27:48.717 --> 00:27:50.400
It's absolutely enormous.

00:27:50.400 --> 00:28:05.393
So if you imagine a little bird that flies down once every thousand years and plucks away one grain of sand, in all of world history it would have plucked away less than a pinch.

00:28:05.393 --> 00:28:10.856
The eons of time that it would take to remove one little shot glass full would boggle our minds.

00:28:10.856 --> 00:28:12.923
A spoonful of sand.

00:28:12.923 --> 00:28:14.688
The time it would take to remove that spoonful of sand.

00:28:14.688 --> 00:28:16.834
I don't think we have a number that big.

00:28:16.834 --> 00:28:17.576
We don't have a name.

00:28:17.576 --> 00:28:18.719
Have a number that big that we've?

00:28:18.719 --> 00:28:20.663
We don't have a name for a number that big yet.

00:28:20.663 --> 00:28:27.236
So try to imagine that bird, one grain every thousand years, removing all the sand of a desert the size of the United States of America.

00:28:27.236 --> 00:28:28.862
That's a good picture of eternity, right?

00:28:28.862 --> 00:28:34.403
Well, no, actually it's not, because once that last grain is removed, eternity has only begun it.

00:28:34.403 --> 00:28:35.404
It still goes on forever.

00:28:35.464 --> 00:28:46.711
So, with that in mind, my advice for people, my parting comments to people who are suffering first of all, trust in the Lord.

00:28:46.711 --> 00:28:52.152
If you don't know the Lord, if you don't have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, you need to.

00:28:52.152 --> 00:28:55.787
You need to submit to his authority, turn to him in faith.

00:28:55.787 --> 00:28:58.814
Whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

00:28:58.814 --> 00:29:05.833
And when you do that, remind yourself every day that you have eternity to look forward to.

00:29:05.833 --> 00:29:07.546
Revelation 21 tells us.

00:29:07.546 --> 00:29:14.587
He will wipe away every tear from our eyes, so there will no longer be pain or sorrow, you know, think of the tenderness of that verse.

00:29:14.587 --> 00:29:20.842
By the way, it doesn't say your tears will dry up or your tears will no longer flow.

00:29:20.842 --> 00:29:23.386
It says I will wipe away every tear from your eye.

00:29:23.407 --> 00:29:31.394
So you know we have eternity after that to look forward to, without this pain and suffering.

00:29:31.394 --> 00:29:38.240
So you know it's right to say our afflictions here are momentary and they're also light compared to the weight of glory.

00:29:38.240 --> 00:29:52.840
So not only do we have a very, very long time to be without these sufferings and a very short time to be with them, we also have a sharp discrepancy between the quality of the suffering.

00:29:52.840 --> 00:29:59.444
Now you know the bad quality, the pain and the good quality of the reward that awaits us in heaven.

00:29:59.444 --> 00:30:07.534
And 2 Corinthians 5, I think it's verse 10, actually tells us that the former is contributing to the latter.

00:30:07.534 --> 00:30:20.732
So you know you'll have eternity to look back at this tiny, tiny little blip of time and be thankful for it, because it actually contributed to what you're experiencing for all of eternity in heaven.

00:30:20.732 --> 00:30:22.727
So keep that perspective in mind.

00:30:22.727 --> 00:30:29.010
Every moment can be hard to get through, but there's a very, very finite number of those moments.

00:30:29.010 --> 00:30:30.983
And just hang on.

00:30:30.983 --> 00:30:32.750
Trust in the Lord.

00:30:33.861 --> 00:30:35.186
Yeah, I think that's key.

00:30:35.186 --> 00:30:37.339
Those two things go hand in hand, don't they?

00:30:37.339 --> 00:30:42.806
Because if you don't have that faith, it will seem like there's no end in sight.

00:30:42.806 --> 00:30:46.230
So when you have that faith, then you can have the hope.

00:30:46.230 --> 00:30:48.772
So that is the message that we want to convey.

00:30:48.772 --> 00:30:49.794
So thank you for that.

00:30:49.794 --> 00:30:51.616
I love that answer, David.

00:30:52.160 --> 00:30:52.762
Well, thank you.

00:30:52.983 --> 00:30:58.519
Yeah, very good.

00:30:58.519 --> 00:31:00.724
Well, david, at this point I just want to say thank you so much for agreeing to be my guest on the show.

00:31:00.724 --> 00:31:13.269
I appreciated meeting you and getting to know you, and I want my guests to know that I'll put a link in the show notes to the Amazon site where, if they'd like, they can buy a copy of A Different World God's Sovereignty in the Face of Suffering.

00:31:13.269 --> 00:31:14.613
David, thanks so much.

00:31:15.299 --> 00:31:16.944
Well, I appreciate it too, Michelle, very, very much.

00:31:16.944 --> 00:31:18.409
It's been a pleasure talking with you.

00:31:21.220 --> 00:31:22.461
Good to know there are fellow soldiers out there.

00:31:23.721 --> 00:31:37.556
So for those of you listening, if you're facing serious challenges right now and you find yourself wondering why a loving God would allow such suffering in your life, I hope you found some comfort in David's words.

00:31:37.556 --> 00:31:44.492
He told us how difficult it was to watch his wife and daughter suffer, and yet he could do nothing to stop it.

00:31:44.492 --> 00:31:51.009
And he himself became seriously ill, but continued to work and pay bills and take care of his family.

00:31:51.009 --> 00:31:56.448
He had the head knowledge to know that God allows suffering in this imperfect world.

00:31:56.448 --> 00:32:00.984
But, like you might be, know that God allows suffering in this imperfect world.

00:32:00.984 --> 00:32:03.413
But, like you might be, he struggled to apply it in his circumstances, but only for a while.

00:32:03.413 --> 00:32:08.861
Then he realized that he had been trained in the Word and practiced in the knowledge of God.

00:32:09.782 --> 00:32:18.529
And when the battle came the real-life test of faith he used what he knew to be true to combat the hard things that were a reality in his life.

00:32:18.529 --> 00:32:22.156
He used what he knew to be true to combat the hard things that were a reality in his life.

00:32:22.156 --> 00:32:26.944
God told us that in this world we would have trouble, but to take heart, for he has overcome the world.

00:32:26.944 --> 00:32:36.811
So remember what David said about our lives now in light of eternity this life is short compared to what's ahead if we acknowledge and turn to him.

00:32:36.811 --> 00:32:43.090
Ahead if we acknowledge and turn to Him.

00:32:43.090 --> 00:32:45.160
So my prayer is that you would do that today, my friend.

00:32:45.160 --> 00:32:54.159
Knowing God won't take away your troubles, but knowing that He'll walk beside you in them makes all the difference in the world.

00:32:54.159 --> 00:32:54.599
Thanks for listening.

Why Does God Allow Suffering?

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