Philip Yancey | Why Suffering? | Sunday Talk | 25 May 2014

it is a great honor and a privilege to have the Yancy's with us Philip Yancy's books are well known to I imagine everyone here he's sold over 18 million copies he's written 25 books and I have every single one of his books on my bookshelf in fact I brought them here as a visual aid there they are and fact I didn't have them all but last time he came he very kindly filled in the very small gaps that I had and sent me the other copies so I do now have every copy and this one you'll see particularly well thumbed copy of what is so amazing about grace this is a book we recommend to every single person that comes on alpha it's a fantastic book if you hadn't read it yet it's life-changing but today I want to focus on really his first book and his last book both of which are on the subject of suffering and that's what I going to be particularly asking him about today so it's such a privilege to have you both here with us and the these the book I want to recommend is this book which I pits and I've just been reading the question that never goes away this is the US Edition this is the UK Edition why and Philips first book was on on that subject where is God when it hurts and then recently he's visited what tell us about the three places that you have visited because I wrote my first book where is God when it hurts I'm often asked to speak on that very question and I've been to some very wrenching places Virginia Tech after the shootings there Mumbai we happened to be in Mumbai India the night of the bombings a spontaneous meeting happened I had to speak again and at the end of 2012 I thought back over that year there were three places of extraordinary but very different soft kinds of suffering the first was Japan it the one-year anniversary of the tsunami and they asked me to come and visit the area that had been affected and speak to a national prayer meeting then in that was in March and D in September I went to Sarajevo the former Yugoslavia which was the scene of the terrible war in the Balkans four year siege around this town ten thousand people died just one horrible story after another of what humans did to each other and then the last one was the smallest in scale but in many ways the most poignant and the most difficult for me and that was in Newtown Connecticut the scene of the Sandy Hook elementary school shootings were twenty six and seven year old children and then six teachers and and staff were killed and a former Brit Clive Calver who was the director of the Evangelical Alliance here for years in Britain is now the pastor of a church right on the border on the city limits of Newtown Connecticut it's one of the few thriving evangelical churches in that part of the world 3,500 members and he called and asked could you possibly come and speak again on this topic so 1977 was a long time ago how many of you were not alive in 1977 yeah okay that was my first book and I wrote that book because like a lot of people it was a barrier to my faith I couldn't get past this question if there is a good God why did these bad things happen years later in 2012 I had spent a lot of time with people who have gone through that tragedy and I wanted to write a new book about things I had learned from them not so much the personal quest of trying to figure it out for myself but how we as a church can and should respond to people who go through great tragedy and it's not just of course seeing those great tragedies out there but it's also a very personal thing and you start the book by telling the story about your own father just tell it tell us about that yes I was only one year old my father is an extraordinary man I never knew him because he died that year he was planning to be a missionary to Africa and like a lot of missionaries had accumulated a mailing list and was raising funds and getting people to pray for him in 1950 he contracted polio that was the great Fuehrer disease back then in the u.s. 50,000 people a year were dying from polio he was healthy and strong but suddenly he was paralyzed he in fact he was so paralyzed he could not even breathe on his own so he was put in one of the iron lung machines that does your breathing for you and the people who were praying for him they couldn't understand how God could possibly take a person like that with such a future ahead of him so they became convinced that he would be healed they prayed believed he would be healed and against all the doctors advice he was removed from the iron lung as an act of faith and about a week later he died and I lived my whole life under the cloud and the way that affected my mother those around us our family so how was he when he died he was 24 24 and and how we I was one yeah just a year old so I have no memories of him no conscious memories the only thing I have of his is a Bible in which he records in the Flyleaf one person after another whom he led to Christ so he was an extraordinary person with great potential and what I learned from that is what we believe about this question matters if we get it wrong it can really lead to bad things has happened in my own family and of course you I mean many things in your life but the challenges and so on but one there was a particular challenges when you broke your neck this and the questions that you asked at that time yes I was on a book tour speaking who new book tours could be so dangerous and in a neighboring state driving back I live in Colorado it's a it's a state of mouth full of mountains as you probably know if you've been there and going around one of those mountains in February I hit a patch of ice and a car I was driving went off the side of the road turned over five times like this I was belted in fortunately and didn't know how hurt I was was taken to a little clinic and it was a good doctor but if he if they still teach courses in bedside manner he flopped because I'm lying there and it comes to this well mr. Yancey you've got a broken neck so well that's bad yeah but it could be worse because you see it's not right next to the spinal cord so you're not in any immediate danger of paralysis oh well that's good well yes but it's right next to the carotid artery so actually your immediate danger of dying oh that's bad he literally did and he said he said we've got a jet standing by to fly you to Denver because this is a small town for emergency surgery but just between you and me if the carotid artery has been punctured you're not going to make it to Denver so here's a mobile phone you should call the people you love and tell them goodbye just in case so as it turned out for for the next 7 hours I was strapped down as they're doing arterial dies and all these different procedures to find out how hurt I was he did 3-1 arms so I could call the people that I loved and tell them goodbye and that that was a hallmark experience in my life Nicky yeah and what would the big questions for you at that moment yes I you know I'm sitting there thinking okay let's see I made my living as a Christian writer this could be my last hour I need to come up with something here okay and what occurred to me is that so much of what we spend our lives worrying about how does the lawn look what kind of car do I Drive how much money is in my pension fund how many books have I sold those did not occur to me for the next seven hours in fact as I lay there I could only think of three questions that were worth my time one was who do I love who will I call on that mobile phone and tell them goodbye who do I love what have I done with my life and am I ready for whatever is next those were the only three questions worth my time and I later reflecting back realized we should all be living in light of those questions every day but we get so distracted by just the busyness you know the to-do list all of that that we we let those sink into the background and and this traumatic experience really put them into the foreground for me and I've tried to learn from that not everyday as urgently but to live in light of those questions ever since you spend a lifetime studying this question why why does God a lot of suffering but I think one of the points that you make is that the Bible has a slightly different emphasis it does I like to talk about it this way when something happens that's bad we inevitably want to look backwards and try to find out what cost for instance the Malaysia Airlines you know what there's all this research going on what where were the pings is there any tape that shows us any evidence whatever that we're very good at that the Bible tends to not focus on looking backward but instead look forward so for example in Jesus day there was a man born blind the disciples came to Jesus and said why was this man born blind was it something that he did and he think about that he's a fetus right what do they what can you do wrong before you're born or was it his parents well that wouldn't be fair either and another occasion a tower fell down much like the kinds of traumas we deal with and then there was a terrorist act in the temple some some people were killed and each time the disciples and Pharisees wanted to know why did this happen tell us what about those people and Jesus would just sidestep that question they're no worse than anybody else what can be done afterwards he would move that arrow forward so he would say to the man born blind this is done so that the works of God can be manifest in him and in some people in some people the works of God are manifest with the disability so some of you know a friend of mine Johnny Erickson tada who prayed she was paralyzed prayed for healing had all these famous people pray for her she wasn't healed the works of God have been more manifest in my opinion in her in her unhealed state what she's done to the rest of the church and then there are others like demand mourn blind who was healed so in either case whether you get the miraculous healing or not the emphasis is not on why did it happen but now that it has happened can God make anything good out of it I I see God is the great recycler we take our junk we send it to the recycle place and they take that and and create you know they took my old computer a big thing that didn't work anymore and probably took all the little parts out of it it made a little iPhone that's far more powerful than my computer ever was and that's what God does he takes the junk in our life and creates out of it something good yeah and this whole idea of a redemptive suffering you speak quite a lot about I'm not fuzz well in Jesus and then the examples of people who have experienced suffering and found redemption through it yes everyone's life somebody will come up to me and say would you sign my Bible and put your favorite verse and I say I don't do verses because I'm a writer and I can't imagine plucking one sentence out of a book I roll it and say oh I like this sentence you know it's I don't think that's how you're right so I I don't choose one verse I say I'll put my favorite chapter my favorite chapter I call the great recycling chapter and that's Romans 8 because Paul describes his own biography he described and it was a it was a bio tree that included a lot of suffering torture imprisonment beatings shipwreck snakebite and in that chapter Romans 8 he describes only not only his personal biography but he says we live on a groaning planet the whole planet is groaning as as in the pains of childbirth and and then there's that verse in the middle of it that's often misquoted a lot of people when you when you say it they think it says for those who love God only good things will happen to you does it say that at all it says all things and Paul describes those things in his own life all things can be used for good in your life by God and that's the promise we have I read a summary of that chapter from Dallas Willard who said what Paul's really saying is no matter what happens nothing irredeemable can happen to you not nothing bad can happen bad things happen but nothing that God cannot redeem will happen to you using it for your own good somehow and you used an example of Michael J Fox and what happened to him yes Michael J Fox is American after he has Parkinson's disease and his his first response much like Johnny Erickson taro is what a terrible thing I I wish like anything that I could get rid of this disease now looking back he says I'm so grateful I wouldn't change this if I had the option because apart from this disease I would just be one of these spoiled self-indulgent Hollywood celebrities and this has forced me to be vulnerable to be weak to be compassionate toward other people who have disabilities and that's one of the ways in which God can work within us to redeem what is apparently a bad thing and even in the most terrible of circumstances when we had our own Sandy Hook I suppose in Dunblane yeah and you use you use you see rays of hope there as well I someone pointed out of this the story to me when I was writing the book the question that never goes away I didn't know it but I was dealing with the shootings at Sandy Hook and they said well actually there was something similar in in Britain and they talked about the Dunblane Scotland tragedy and there was a there was a six year old boy I think he was six might have been eight who was one of the students that day and when the shooter came into his room he was actually hiding under his desk he could see the feet of the shooter and he grew up of course deeply affected by that experience and he partially got got his strength back by playing tennis and of course it became Andy Murray the great tennis champion and after the Olympics here when they had the great parade where all the gold medallist strutted through London and were cheered and confetti and bands and all that and Mary said no I I want to go back to Dunblane Scotland my town and have a parade there I want to change the stain on that town so that it's remembered not just for a bad thing that happened but for something good that happened and that's what he did and we look to the cross of course for for our understanding of suffering but also to the resurrection and you say quite a lot about that in terms of because the gospel is good news yeah and how does that work out when I went to Japan we went to the site of one of the worst tragedies where something over a hundred schoolchildren were killed and it was a it was a middle school so they would have been you know 5th to 8th form grade whatever and someone brought an iPad with a video of the tsunami so as we stood on the steps of the school they were playing the site of this wave coming in quite extraordinary and the children all thought they were safe because the school was was high up but no one anticipated a way of that high so then the teacher said go up the stairway and they scrambled up the stairway and more than a hundred of them were swept away in the stairway so we visited the school it's now kind of a museum and in the gymnasium there are tables and tables full of boxes of things that the meticulous Japanese have picked up on the beach and Japanese Mother's this is a year later Japanese mothers go through that box every day looking for some fragment that may remind them of their child maybe a school paper a fountain pen a teddy bear a lunchbox it's all there and they go through it they've been doing that for a year and it occurred to me looking out at that site that's what we do with people we love we don't say oh well too bad I've got some other kids I won't think about him anymore no we keep them alive in our memory if you go to Newtown Connecticut today many of the parents have kept the rooms that their children lived in exactly as they were before that tragedy and it occurred to me looking out okay that's that's the best we can do we can keep alive in our memory those we love well we we serve a God who is greater we sang about that earlier greater than our he has the ability not only to keep us alive in memory but to make us alive to remake us you mentioned the cross Niki and it wasn't so long ago that we were memorializing that weekend and here's an event that was the worst event in human history the the murder of God's own son sent to earth murder did nothing wrong and it's a day that we remember as tragic Friday dark Friday sad Friday Black Friday no Good Friday which is the greatest example of recycling how God can take the worst thing that has ever happened in human history and has turned it into the salvation of the human race because of the power of remaking even death even conquering death that's the hope that we have and when I went to Newtown I could stand in front of these parents and they really weren't interested in questions like where is God when it hurts in theodicy and whiter things happened their question was will I ever see my baby again my six-year-old daughter my seven-year-old son will I ever see them again and I could stand up with confidence and say yes you can yes you can God is the great recycler he can keep us alive not only in memory but remake us to the person said he intended for regionally and it's really it's kind of unique hope isn't it there's nothing like it that the world offers or new atheism offers right I remember when I got the call from Clive Calvert to go to Newtown I thought oh my goodness I've been in some tough situations but how can I stand in front of these parents and firemen and policemen and ambulance drivers and and give them any words of comfort that they were just shrouded in grief I happen to be writing an article separate article on the New Atheists so I've been reading some of your exports Christopher Hitchens Richard Dawkins gave it like that and I had written down words this is before I ever got the call you know we humans human beings are a random act of the universe never to be repeated a mistake Dawkins would say Christopher Hitchens would say that we live in a universe of blind pitiless indifference and I started looking at like the New York Times I noticed that in a time of tragedy after a terrible thing like that done blame 9/11 the the subway bombings here Newtown who do they turn to to write words of comfort to the nation they don't turn to the Christopher Hitchens and the Richard Dawkins they turned to priests rabbis and pastors and I could stand in front of the people in Newtown and and truly give them hope I realize there's one question that's even harder than where is God when it hurts and that is where is no God when it hurts I mean if I didn't believe in a god I would have a different set of problems I would stand up with a boy to expect it's a universal blind pitiless indifference so what you know the person's extinguished like a candle flame you'll never see your daughter again get used to it that doesn't do a lot for someone who just lost their loved one instead I could say not everybody believes us but I do believe with evidence the main evidence being Jesus resurrection himself that that God has not given up on this planet God is the recycler and God will do what he promised to do from the beginning yeah and in the meantime God sometimes does amazing restoration and you do right job and what happened in his life that's right it's kind of supporting what I just said I I've studied Jove a lot because if you're going to write on pain that's a good place to start here was the the most innocent the most righteous person in the world the Bible says and yet he suffered the most just one thing anything that you can imagine happening all of them happen to job and at the end of the book it is restored so if you Lee had three thousand camels seven thousand bunkies ten thousand she for whatever and when when God restored he instead of three thousand camels now he's got six thousand instead of seven thousand now he's got fourteen thousand stead of ten thousand now twenty thousand except except job lost ten sons and daughters and God restores not twenty but ten with the clear implication being job you're going to get those ten back this is a temporary loss you'll get here's some new ten something for you to to look after you an old age but you haven't permanently lost those first ten they will be restored I'll make them alive again and you'll be reunited with them another thing that you point out is that that it's not so much a question of why did it happen but what can we do about it and the role that the church has in situations of suffering yes ah I was being interviewed one time on on the radio and this guy says well you know I didn't have time to read your book so could you just summarize it in a sentence or two where is God when it heard thanks a lot and I say well everything where is God when it hurts I guess I would have to answer that with another question and that is where is the church when it hurts because we have we have been commissioned by God to be the actual presence of God in the world to be the body of Christ is the phrase Paul uses more than 30 times Jesus is in in 30 ad you could go and shake hands with Jesus ask him your questions now we are the body of Christ and I have seen this all around the world in Japan this Shinto Buddhist country there were teams of people from the UK from the US who are rebuilding houses Christians why are you doing this because God loves you and we want to show that love in Newtown Connecticut today there are Christian counselors who are still treating those who are going through hard times and that's not that's not Plan B because plan a didn't work if I read the Bible correctly that's God's plan all along God isn't really interested in interfering anytime something bad happens and fixing it personally and in fact he isn't even interested in doing it all himself in the way Jesus did when he was walking around with these dense disciples trying to explain things before he left he said you will do greater works than these and I'm thinking show me some but he told them toward the end he didn't say this part but in his entire lifetime Jesus had only dealt with an area of maybe 200 miles maximum range but he said now I'm commissioning you go to Judea and Samaria go to the uttermost parts of the earth Jesus did nothing for Britain in his day he did nothing for the American continent he did nothing for China he only affected a few thousand Jews in one small corner of the Roman Empire and then he said now it's up to you go and be like me and that's what the church should do and and does I found it all over and I would encourage I mean I think it's so thrilling to come to a healthy church like this I wish I could put a helicopter around this and take you back to where I lived so I could come here every I guess it'd be easier for me to move here wouldn't it we'd love that but we this is not God's alternative plan this is God's plan from the beginning if you read Paul that's what God had in mind to to create a different kind of human being to show the rest of the world what God had in mind and and that is called the church that is the body of Christ and if we're on the front lines of suffering as the church so often is bringing practical help food and medicines bringing comfort bringing love bringing hope people aren't going to sit around scratching their head thinking where is God when it hurts they'll know where God is God is in the people around them demonstrating little Christ Dimmick Christ in a thousand places as the poet said that is where God is when it hurts but if you're a journalist to write it but there anyone looking you can see that you also have a heart of a pastor supposing there's somebody here who's going through a really tough time at the moment they're suffering for whatever reason well what would you save them one thing I learned early on and I don't want you to I want you to hear everything I've said in light of this is that suffering is not a mathematical thing okay almost twenty thousand people died in the tsunami in Japan twenty children died in newtown this is not a thousand times worse than that for the parents in newtown it was twenty thousand times worse suffering is one hundred percent and i look out in this group and i know there are people in Hounslow Queensgate who knows where else who are looking at watching and I know that you each have your own individual pain some of the the deepest pains I know our pains of a parent who see their children making self-destructive choices it's a very deep pain some of you struggle with depression it it doesn't get a lot of it doesn't have much sex appeal you don't talk about it you hide it but every day when you wake up and look in the mirror that pain hits and then others of you have much more overt pain maybe cancer in the family maybe a child with birth defects or a parent with Alzheimer's and and this is a pain that you live with every day that's what the church is for and I know it I'm speaking to you British people okay because I know it's hard to get you to talk and open up about pain I have anything else okay her anything else I have a friend in America who whose ancestor was Scottish and so he went and visited the tombstone of his great-grandfather and literally carved on the tombstone was this he loved he lived a tough life but no one ever knew it that's got it well that's that's not the Christian way to handle pain we we are to be we are to bear one another's burdens go back and read second Corinthians chapter one the God of all comfort a phrase that I love may you know the God of all comfort and bring that God of all comfort to those who need your comfort so if you're going through a hard time first thing I'd say is you're not alone you're in very good company there's there's a lot in the Bible the songs Joe Habakkuk lamentations Ecclesiastes they will give you words to express what you're going through it's okay to say I don't like this I don't like the way you're running the world God in fact there's a lot of that in the Bible already God doesn't like the world as it is now either God plans to restore it redeem it but in the meantime he has chosen us people like us to represent God's presence in the world and that would be the people sitting around you right now there's a prayer team here I know at the other sites there are also prayer teams so go against your British genes and and get it out cry out to God first and then to a community of loving careful people who can not only surround you and pray for you but some of you actually need practical help you need help after surgery with meals with looking after kids things like that get it out don't put on your student tombstone nobody ever knew it you know it's it's there's something like they lived a tough you live the tough life he got it out and Holy Trinity Brompton helped him yeah thank you Philip Yancey very much indeed

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Length: 30min 38sec (1838 seconds)

Published: Tue May 27 2014