Tim Keller - Human Condition: Living When Life Hurts

every night this week we're looking at something that each night this week we're looking at something that you can't live without no matter who you are no matter what you believe you have to have an identity a solid identity you have to have meaning in life you have to have the kind of satisfaction that lasts through the ups and downs of changing circumstances and each night we're looking at one of them and asking this question what in what way does Christianity give arguably unequaled resources to find that thing we all are looking for these things and the even though I'm trying to be especially tonight respectful of all the various views I'm here to make a case that Christianity gives unequaled resources for each of them now tonight I for those of you who've been here any other night I cannot possibly approach this subject quite in the same way the subject tonight is how do you get the ability to face difficulty in suffering Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written a book called anti fragile and in it he says obviously we don't want to be fragile that when tough things happen we fall apart but he said it's not enough just to say well how do you just get through it without falling apart he says we don't want to be fragile but we don't we don't want to just be enduring he says what does it mean to be a person who gets stronger through the shocks what what kind of person you have to be to actually grow through the suffering and he didn't think there was a good word for that so he called it anti fragile so he's written a book called anti fragile saying not just fragile not just sort of you know gritting your teeth till you get through it but what do you have to do what do you have to be in order to actually be anti fragile actually grow through it we all need that but I have to tell you in when I'm talking to people who have suffered and it suffered worse than me you've got to go at this sort of subject with a certain amount of fear and trembling and whatever humility you can muster but I would like to show you what Christianity has to offer and Simon's already made reference to it but I like to take a look at what we've been doing each night I'm gonna like to look at a text in the book of Mark it raises the issue will reflect on the issue and then at the end I'll bring you back to the text to show you actually what the Christianity offers in order to give us the thing we're looking for which is being anti fragile being someone could not just bear up under but actually grow and is something wiser and deeper and happier even through troubles and suffering I'm gonna read from mark chapter 5 what I've been saying every night is if you want to follow along there are Gospels of Mark out there but you may just want to listen to me and I'm going to be reading for mark 5 verses 22 to 22 42 and I'm actually going to give you only excerpts then one of the synagogue leaders named Jairus came and pleaded earnestly with him Jesus my little daughter is dying please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live so Jesus went with him now a large crowd followed and pressed around him and a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years she had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors she had spent all she had and rather than getting better only grew worse when he heard about Jesus when she heard about Jesus she came up behind him in the crowd and touched him his cloak immediately her bleeding stopped when she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it then the woman came and fell at his feet and trembling with fear told him the whole truth he said to her daughter your faith has healed you go in peace and be freed from your suffering while Jesus was still speaking some people came from the house of Jairus the synagogue leader your daughter is dead they said why bother the teacher anymore overhearing what they said Jesus told him don't be afraid just believe when they came to the home of the synagogue leader Jesus saw a commotion with the people crying and wailing loudly he went in and said to them why all this commotion and wailing the child is not dead but asleep but they laughed at him after he put them all out he took the child's father and mother and the disciples who were with him and went in where the child was he took her by the hand and said to her Talitha koum which means little girl I say to you get up immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around she was twelve years old at this they were completely astonished now there's actually three kinds of suffering already you see in here the little girl is acutely ill she's on the verge of death the the woman is chronically ill and she's not just chronically ill with the bleeding but on top of that she has been the victim of malpractice she's been spent all of her money on doctors the doctor has only made her worse I think they have a name for it now it's called iatrogenic which is treatment induced trouble which means she not only has the pain in her body but she has anger toward people who have abused her and then and then the little girl's father when you love somebody deeply who is suffering that itself is a unique kind of suffering which is often overlooked by the people around everybody's looking at the little girl she's suffering but the parents if you love someone deeply who is suffering that is a form of suffering and it's a the powerlessness is smothering suffering comes in forms innumerable and therefore suffering is inevitable suffering is inevitable to some degree it's coming and suffering will make you worse or better it will make you harder or more tender it'll make you weaker or stronger but it will not leave you as you were it will radically transform you one way or another and which way depends on your response and it's on its way the suffering is on its way but had already found you so you see how incredibly crucial it is to ask the question how do you handle it in fact how could you even perhaps grow through it so let's do the reflection first of all let's reflect on the various ways that various cultures help its members find handle suffering and then secondly again we'll look at what does Christianity have to offer now when I when I say let's look at what the different cultures are doing for a moment let me put secular culture here and all other cultures here I'm going to get back as you know and you expect to talking about how Christianity has unique resources but for a moment let's keep something in mind before the secular modern culture came along all other cultures and all other religions to some degree said your meaning in life your life purpose the thing you're living for is nothing inside this material world so the meaning of life for the monotheistic religions and cultures was the meaning of life is to live and believe in such a way that you go to heaven and live with God and your loved ones forever the meaning of life in karmic cultures is to live a life of such virtue that you eventually escape the cycles of reincarnation and you go into eternal bliss the meaning of life in Buddhism is that you need to be overcoming the illusion of the material world and of an individual self so you eventually go into the all soul in shame and honor cultures the meaning of life is to live honorably even bravely so that you not only bring an honorable name to your family but then you die and you rest with your ancestors it's all about family it's all about the name of your family it's all about honor now you see in every case what this means is because your meaning in life in whatever culture was actually not something inside this material world suffering not only can't take your meaning in life away but it actually in some ways can enhance it because suffering in a shame and honor culture to die and Loree it was actually a way to reach your goal and in all other cultures and other religions suffering was actually seen as a way to grow in virtue or an honor or or even as an impetus for salvation in other words every culture until modern culture since the meaning of life was something outside of this material world suffering which takes away things in the material world can't get at your meeting in life in fact if anything it can enhance it but the secular viewpoint is completely different what is the secular viewpoint well the secular worldview says either there's no God or we can't know if there's a god that everything everything has a natural cause that there's no transcendent or supernatural dimension to reality and there's certainly no afterlife so in a secular worldview what's your meaning in life whatever your meaning in life is it's always got to be something inside this material world it's got to be success financially or politically it's got to be romance it's got to be love it's got to be something inside and of course you know what that means it means in the secular worldview suffering well that's what suffering does what suffering does is it takes away those things that's what makes suffering suffering it's a it takes away love it takes away success it takes away health it takes away those things and if your meaning in life is in those things it doesn't just take away material things it destroys your very meaning in life Reid Victor Frankel's book man's search for meaning or Lent are less well-known Langdon Gilkey shantung compound landing Gilkey was put in an internment camp in China during World War two by the Japanese Viktor Frankl was actually in Auschwitz but survived and he was a Jewish psychiatrist and both of them talking about what happens to people who actually have their meaning in life be something in this world and when it's all taken away from them what happens to them they either go evil or they shrivel up into a little ball and disintegrate richard shweder who's a prominent cultural anthropologist at the University of Chicago says that of all the cultures and history secular culture gives its members by far the least resources for handling suffering one person has testified to this was Paul brand Paul brand was a pioneering orthopedic surgeon he was British he was pioneering in the treatment of leprosy patients but he spent the first part of his medical career in India and the last half of his medical career in the United States and this is what he says Americans listen up he says in the United States I encountered a society that seeks to avoid pain at all costs patients in the West lived in far greater comfort a far greater comfort level and a level of safety than anyone I'd had previously treated but they seemed far less equipped to handle the suffering and far more traumatized by it and Richard sweater adds this he says when it comes to the secular culture he says the reigning metaphor of the contemporary secular view is suffering it's just chance misfortune the sufferer is a victim under attack from impersonal forces devoted a devoid of intentionality and that means suffering is separated from the narrative structure of human life a kind of noise an accidental an accidental interference into the life drama of the sufferer suffer suffering therefore has no intelligent intelligible relation to any plot except as a chaotic interruption whereas all older cultures suffering was seen as an expected part of a coherent life story a crucial way to become the person that you want to be and to grow as a person and his soul larysa mcfar her was a staff writer for The New Yorker she is I mean and she at one point she did a lot of research on a particular kind of person she was doing research on people who lived in extremely dangerous places in the world usually to provide medical care but in places where there was high possibility of contagion and death and places where there was a high possibility and of persecution or capture or violent death and she was studying people who actually endured suffering in order to help other people and she did her research on other men by the way who did this who was also a journalist was Nick Kristof of New York Times and what both of them found was that almost all of the people that they they found and they admired very much were devoutly religious people the valley religious and they were virtually no secular people doing such a thing and at one point a Larissa was interviewed in the Boston review and in the Boston review she was asked he said are you religious and not only was she not religious but she wasn't raised in any kind of religion yet no religious background she said I'm a completely totally secular person so the interviewer asked does it make you wonder as a secular person what gives religious people the ability to face suffering like this and she was extraordinarily candid and here's what she said two things she said first of all with many religious traditions there's an acceptance of suffering not just as part of life but Ness but not necessarily a bad thing at all because it takes you and makes you become the person you want or even pushes you towards salvation and then she says for people of faith God is in control and God's love will see the world through whereas for secular people it's all up to us we're here alone and that's why I think for a secular person like myself there is an additional layer of urgency and despair whenever I face suffering so if it's true that secular people and secular worldview gives very little in the way of resources for suffering okay do we say well let's get religious well of course I'm here to tell you that Christianity has something unique and so let me now give you three last ideas the one is that Christianity differs from many of the other religions and secularism in three ways let me tell you what they are and now we're going to get back to the text the first is this unlike shame and honor religions I don't know if you've been part of a sort of a shame and honor culture or non-western culture you might be very often suffering is something that you're supposed to handle stoic ly stiff upper lip don't blubber about it don't melt down don't grieve get over it of course as you know the ancient Greeks were particularly but some of them were actually worse no accessible we get our name and so in many cultures the idea is you don't grieve you you know if you really want to be a person of virtue and self-control don't do that but unlike the shame and honor cultures and religions Christianity pioneered an enabling of grief that didn't destroy you it pioneered an enabling of grief that didn't destroy you first of all just take a look at the text for a second it's remarkable that for Jesus Christ who was a respectable male Jewish man a woman with a flow of blood from her uterus that's what's happening here who therefore was ceremonially unclean according to many of the religious ceremonial laws comes and touches Jesus and he has no problem with it not only that he brings her around and gets her to speak and to tell what's happened and then speak so warmly to her saying daughter your faith has healed you go in peace and be freed from your suffering your suffering speaks to her suffering you can find this on the Internet here's a man you never heard of 100 years ago he taught at Princeton Theological Seminary Princeton New Jersey a man named BB Warfield and he was a biblical scholar and he wrote an article called the emotional life of our Lord the emotional life of our Lord and all it is is an in-depth detailed look at every place in the New Testament Gospels Matthew Mark Luke and John whatever talks about the emotional life of Jesus and this shouldn't surprise you but when he analyzed it far more than any other emotion Jesus Christ is a man of sorrows he's a savior but he is not stoic he's always weeping he's always grieving he's always moved with compassion which is really a form of grief now there's a great book that actually I'm channeling right now in this talk Ronald pardon me it's a the name of the book is to make absolutely sure Ronald Ricker's the Reformation of suffering it's an Oxford University Press book I'm just saying that to make sure I get credibility for my citation and it's a history of the different cultural ways of approaching suffering and what he points out is that one of the reasons well one of the questions that historians always ask is why did Christianity essentially displace the old greco-roman pagan world what why did Christianity grow so much why was it so popular why was it so attractive to society that essentially displaced the older culture and he says among other things it was the Christians resources for suffering because what he says and there's other historians that he cites was that you know Cicero and Seneca the great you know classically the great poet philosophers antiquity they believed like the Buddhists that even though you continued after death you didn't continue personally you just went into the soul you didn't keep your personality and they believed that love therefore was epiphenomena it was it was temporary and and therefore they were the ones who said don't get too attached to anybody and if you're really going to be a person of virtue don't let it get to you don't let things bother you and what Ricker says the other historian said is that was a very difficult thing for the populace to hear to be told don't grieve you know that's a sign of weakness along comes Christianity totally different in two radically different ways on the one hand alone comes a weeping Savior Jesus Christ the exemplar you know the one we're all aspiring to and he's always crying he's always weeping there's no stiff upper lip about him and yet wicker says Christianity gave people three things to kind of rub into their grief the way you put salt into meat when you put salt into meat it keeps it from going bad and there are three things that Christians rubbed into their grief so they could weep and weep and weep but it didn't go bad it didn't turn into despair or hardness what were those three things he says the culture didn't have them only Christianity had number one a God who suffers there is no religion no other religion that says God second person of the Trinity the God the Son Jesus Christ immortal he comes into this world and he becomes mortal and he gets flesh and he suffers with us there is no other there's no other religion that says that Ricker says and the idea and we've already talked about it the idea to simply have somebody to have a God who says I know what it's like to have a God who says I know what it's like who's subjected himself that no religion ever said that number one number two christianity said you stay personal after death and you go to live not only in a love relationship with God Father Son Holy Spirit who've been loving each other for all eternity and then you you step into that joy and that glory in that love with God and loved ones but as Jonathan Edwards said an 18th century American pastor and philosopher has a sermon a classic sermon it's also out in the internet called heaven as the world of love stop thinking about harps and streets paved with gold heaven is the world of love so the second thing that Christians were given was a God who suffers heaven is a world of love and then the resurrection in the end we actually get our bodies back and therefore the future is not simply a kind of an ethereal otherworldly place but a new heavens and a new earth Jesus Christ was racing the dead he ate fish in the presence of his of his disciples to say he says I'm not a ghost a spirit hath not flesh and bones he said to them and when you think about that idea that means it's not just that the hope of Christians will look a little bit more at this tomorrow night it's not just a consolation for the life that you lost it's the restoration not only of the life you lost but the life you never really had and so if you take that kind of hope and you just rub it into your your tears you can't eat you can cry you will cry you should cry it's really quite unhealthy not to cry but how do you make sure your tears don't turn you into somebody hard despondent and that's the reason one of the reasons why Christianity flourished and grew so number one Christianity unlike the honor and shame religions actually enabled and pioneered grieving number two more briefly Christianity under like the unlike the karmic religions believes that suffering is quite often disproportionate and unjust disproportionate unjust I have to say with all due respect to anyone here who's Hindu I have went as a pastor when people come to me and say why did this happen why did that happen how could how could that happen I've occasionally wished I was a Hindu for a while because as you know in the karmic religions the idea of reincarnation is that if you're suffering in this particular incarnation it's because you're suffering for some sin you did in the past which means it's kind of neat actually it means that there is no such thing as unjustified suffering it may look unjustified within the space of your particular life but not in the space of yours the life of your soul and therefore hey there is no there is no unjustified suffering now with all due respect to a great world religion I'm afraid that's too neat and I'm not sure it actually how do I say it does justice to injustice I don't think it does justice to injustice and what we have in the Bible is this and actually Simon alluded to it if you look at the whole biblical story of the entire Bible it starts off by showing us that God actually did not create a world filled with suffering he didn't put cancer in the world he didn't even put death in the world and the biblical story line is that when we turned away from God everything started to fall apart everything in our soul our body in the world everything fell apart and therefore he didn't invent this but and what that means is part of the brokenness of the world that we now have is unjust and disproportionate suffering one of the most remarkable books of the Bible of course is the book of Job in the book of Job job suffers disproportionately and unjustly terrible things happened to him he didn't deserve them at all but of course his friends come along you know Elif as Bildad and Zophar and they come around and they say well you know what there is no unjust suffering if you are if you're if your life is going bad you must have done something wrong you must have they don't believe in unjust suffering they didn't believe it at the end of the book god is furious at them because he's furious of them for believing that there is such a thing that there is no such thing as unjust suffering that's what the books about innocent people suffered disproportionately it's part of the brokenness of this world but here's the interesting thing as we see in Jesus Christ you have the ultimate example of why I think karmak religion is wrong because if there's one person in the history of the world that deserved a good life it was Jesus he lived he loved the Lord he loved the Lord his father God with all his heart soul strength of mind he loved his neighbor as himself he did not deserve what he got but he did he got all that and that proves that God himself understands what it's life like to suffer unjustly so Christianity does not ever say oh if you if you've done something if you know if you're suffering you must have done something wrong there are still by the way Christians who walk around with that assumption radically unbiblical radically wrong so Christianity I'm like honor and shame and honor cultures does not say stoicism it actually encourages healthy grieving secondly unlike the karmic religions it absolutely says so much of suffering is horrible it's horrendous it's unjust it's something we ought to scream about but number three unlike secular the secular worldview Christianity says sufferings never pointless sufferings never pointless which is as what you saw the very secular author said to a secular person basically sufferings planets sufferings never pointless let's take a look at the text and then we're done Jesus goes is on his way to heal this little girl who's sick and dying and he stops to talk to deal with this woman now a chronically a woman who's been uh been sick for twelve years could wait another hour but the little girl can't wait an hour and yet she stops to deal with a woman and isn't this a perfect picture of what irritates us about God what is God thinking this makes no sense the timing is all wrong this is where the little girl's dying this woman could wait the little girl can't wait Jesus stops let's let's come and talk bring it out no surprise the little girl dies what is what is her father thinking she's looking at Jesus saying what is the matter with you but Jesus will not be hurried he will not be hurried even though it makes no sense to her human reason why he's not not hurrying up but here's the thing Jesus can see things that our human reason can't see now because we have the text we're able to get a picture of something that by the way in 90999 99.99999% have all the suffering that we're ever going to see or experience we don't get a picture like this we don't get it Simon even said something about that is I don't believe I'm not waiting to see why I don't believe I'll ever know why but here we have little text Jesus stopped Jesus knows what you and I don't that something has to happen in this woman's soul and character that requires him to stop that she does need him to stop he also knows that the little girl is not going to be any of the worse off for his delay see we don't know that but he does in fact there's gonna be more joy and glory when he gives her what he wants to give her so he gets there and he sits down alongside of her he tells everybody she's asleep they laugh at him and he sits down he takes her by the hand and he says in Aramaic which by the way is a mark that this is an eyewitness account not a legend in Aramaic it's an eyewitness memory he says Talitha koum now it gives you the little it gives you a little bit of a it gives you a little translation literally Talitha is a diminutive of the word girl so it means little girl get up but what you don't know is that it's actually a diminutive word but it was also an intimate word it was a word of affection it was a word that parents use with their children a better translation would be sweetheart Jesus sits down next to the dead girl takes her by the hand and says sweetheart it's time to get up the way a mother would say I don't know you know sunny morning sweetheart it's time to get up and then he lifts her up right through death you say oh wait a minute didn't he say she was just asleep yeah now by the way doesn't mean she wasn't dead because by the way in the Gospel of Luke it says her spirit returned to her in the in the Gospel of Luke that gives you the same story it explains very clearly she was dead well then why would he say she's asleep here's what he's saying look at my power and look at my love death is the most implacable inexorable foe that a human being has and Jesus just reaches right through it takes her by the hand and pulls it right up it's his way of saying if I have you by the hand even death is just a nice night's sleep and Jesus is also saying and Mark is trying to show us this - is oh no probably most it very very seldom is anybody who is actually physically dying going to be racing the dead that's rather unusual but if Jesus Christ has you by his hand even death is just a nice night's sleep death will not be the last word in your life and look what look at his tenderness and then ask this question why would you want to hurry somebody like this sweetheart it's time to get up why would you want to hurry somebody like this so here's the assurance if you've been reading the entire Bible narrative you'll know there's a problem of course you haven't been with me so the problem is we've already learned that the wages of sin is death the Bible sets that up it's the reason for the suffering of the world anyway because we've turned away from God so how can G if if death is the punishment for our sins according to the Bible how can Jesus Christ raise her up of course the answer is he goes to the cross which means he gets death so she can get life he sinks so she can rise up see he goes into darkness so she can get up and see the light and so here's my assurance that death is not pointless do we know what the reason is that God has not stopped suffering he didn't create the world of suffering and he says he's going to end it so the real question is why is he allowing it to keep on going why is he allowing it why does he let the haribol things happen okay I don't know what the answer to that question is but I do know now what the answer to that question isn't it can't be that he doesn't love us it can't be he doesn't love us look at his love look at his tenderness look what he's willing to do die for us you see when you have a God who is willing to come and plunge himself into our suffering and experience that for us I still don't know what the reason is that he's allowing suffering but I know what it isn't it can't be that he doesn't love us he does and that's the reason why though I don't know and Simon doesn't have any idea probably in this entire lifetime why when you rest in the fact that there is a point to it and that he does love us you rub that into your grief and it takes makes you into something really good Ernest Becker who wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning book the denial of death there's an interesting place where he says I think that taking life seriously means something like this that whatever man does on this planet has to be done in the live truth of the terror of creation of the rumble of panic underneath everything otherwise it is false I believe that Christian gospel the Christian God absolutely takes the rumble of panic seriously because he plunged himself into it himself he experienced the terror himself so that he could release us from it forever okay done and on this very difficult subject and I think we're going to take some questions Oh interviewers please come so this first question says in light of everything you spoke about regarding suffering and also trusting in God how do you explain unanswered prayers well actually I've answered prayer is that's a great question because I suffering comes in innumerable forms and I think answered prayer is a is quite very much a form of suffering you pin your hopes on something usually you don't pray I have to say most of us don't pray enough and therefore when we do pray it's usually because there's something we're really passionate about we don't usually take our daily life to God in prayer we usually wait until there's something we're really upset about or something we really want and we pray about it and therefore unanswered prayer is terrible here's what I can tell you again I I'll play the same trick on you I just play it I think it's unfair to say trick but I'll make the same move Jesus Christ experienced a rather remarkable unanswered prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane he said father let this cup pass from me and what he meant the word the cup was a representation of what he was about the company was about to drink it was a it was a metaphor in those times for suffering actually suffering to drink a cup meant a bitter cup meant the the suffering and he knew he was going to the cross and he actually says father there's some other way that we can do this let this cup pass from me which is a remarkable thing there's been there's a great deal of reflection on this nobody thinks that Jesus Christ the Son of God was surprised the cross was not something that I mean he knew he was he was talking about it for years he knew where he was going but evidently in his human nature he began to sense just how agonizing was going to be and he shrank from it in a normal human way and he just said is there some other way let this cup pass from me but then he immediately added not my will but thine be done which is actually I think the way you were supposed to pray which is on the one hand you're not a fatalist you know that God cares about you and actually there is a lot of answered prayer lots of answered prayer at a certain point you have to say but your God and I'm not you can see the whole and I cannot let me give you one example of this but when Jobe was suffering in justly what if God said to him Jobe would this help do you know that you're gonna become the most famous sufferer in the history of the world that hundreds of millions of people are going to be helped and inspired by your by your example in fact do you know that on February the 7th 2018 that there's going to be a huge hall in the middle of one of the great university towns in in the world talking about you have in other words hundreds of millions of people gonna be helped for till the end of time would that make it any easier to handle your suffering and Jobe what I said Wow okay you know all right bring it on you know I mean this is going to be great but he didn't know at all and therefore in the end he had to say thy will be done he struggled for 42 chapters in iambic pentameter and he's still and that's why he's so real and that's why we learned so much from him but in the end he wasn't told and he did submit he didn't know why in the end he basically said would this let this cup pass for me not my will but thine be done so you're supposed to let your needs to be known there's nothing wrong with struggling like he did in the end we even job has no idea but I do think the book of Job is there to tell us there is a plan and and yet in some ways you wouldn't become the kind of person God wants you to be through it if you knew the plan because ultimately he wants you to learn the same kind of love and wisdom and patience that job and Jesus learned so unanswered prayer is a toughy a really tough one but don't forget the one you're praying to actually understands what it's like don't you pray to Jesus he knows how you feel thank you our next question is I won't ask any of my own questions tonight Tim after last night great is this how do you deal with personal suffering that is caused by Christians or the churches so well that's easier you can really be mad at them it's a no that's this that's another talk another night I would say when some people tell me what's the Achilles heel of Christianity that is to say what is the thing that probably makes Christianity the least credible to a thoughtful person I don't think it's evil and suffering I mean I do know many people say I can't believe in in God because of evil and suffering I would suggest looking at John Gray's latest book seven types of atheism John Gray is an atheist but in the book he said is that if there is no God there really isn't a problem of evil and suffering the world's just the way it is and what he's really saying is evil and suffering is a problem for Christians and actually Simon said in some ways is a bigger problem when you say I believe in a good God but it's a huge problem for everybody it's a problem for non-christians a problem for atheists I don't think evil and suffering nobody's got the full answer so it's not the main objection that made it the strongest objection to Christianity and the ones probably shaking me the most like it probably has many of you is the behavior of certain Christians if you're a Christian asking this question then you have to forgive the people who've wronged you if you don't forgive them they will win because you will stay angry at them and they'll shape your behavior if you are bitter if you can't forgive somebody then the person who's wronged you actually controls your life in some various ways forever until you forgive them so the only way to in a sense make sure that you overcome evil with good not only in their life but in your life is you forgive it's the only way you'll ever be able to treat them without vengefulness and it's the only way that you yourself will be able to not be shaped and distorted by them so you need to forgive and the reason you need to forgive is because Jesus forgave you that you've got incredible resources so if Christians have wronged you you need to forgive them if you're not a Christian believer I would just say that please don't let what Christians do completely put you off the faith here's my own little judo move on you what you don't like about Christians is they're not living up to their own standards right other words what what's so infuriating about Christians who wronged you and do injustice and mistreat you is they're not living up to Jesus standards they're not living up to Christian Sanders what that means is they are failures or the church is a failure but that doesn't really undermine the validity of Christianity does it because what you're actually doing is you're using the standards of Christianity to critique them which is perfectly right but it undermine Christianity itself so if Christians have wronged you that doesn't necessarily mean Christianity is wrong in fact in some ways you're affirming the some credibility to Christianity just by the way you critique them but by the way you need to forgive - I don't know what resource resources you're going to use but you must forgive people who have wronged you or else they distort your life and they win so that's what I think yet you have to forgive them and that's the best thing the best way my wife noticed what she did there and now you've probably didn't hear it she said what you usually say so this is a wafer to say I'm not undermining you in any way I'm actually just reminding you of the wisdom you usually have and and and what what she's reminding me of is this that you not only need to forgive people who've wronged you but you will only pursue justice well if you've forgiven them I think right now in our in our culture today by the way honey thank you the you're absolutely right the only way in our culture right now to pursue justice seems to mean you don't forgive because if you forgive then if you're not pursuing justice right that's it it's like one of the other I can't forgive him or her or them because then they go free not at all as a matter of fact look let me just be real personal someone wrongs me I have to forgive them Jesus by the way in mark chapter 11 verse 25 says if you're standing and you're thinking of something you have against somebody forgive them you don't wait for them to repent you forgive them why because unless you learn to forgive and that's another subject which I'm not getting into when you do go to pursue justice it won't be justice it'll be vengeance do you know the difference you see justice means I'm really for the sake of the perpetrator and the sake of other people the perpetrator might be hurting and for the sake of justice itself I want to stop that I want to bring them to justice but there's another reason to go after Matt is I just want to make that sucker suffer because I suffered and if you do you'll always overreach and you'll never reclaim them because they'll see the they'll see the anger in your eyes and therefore even if you try to show them they're wrong they'll never believe you because basically you're not really arguing with them you're paying them back unless you forgive from the heart before you pursue justice you won't be pursuing justice you'll just be creating a kind of back and forth blood feud back and forth and back and forth so my wife's absolutely right as she usually is thanks Tim and Kathy I'm gonna repeat this question because I think some people are finding it hard to hear and so this one says how can you explain natural disasters human suffering is one thing but this is God's beautiful creation that seems to be going so very wrong so the question is how can you explain natural disasters when it seems to be God's creation that's going wrong actually I can be short on that even though it's probably if you if you look at Genesis however you take the Genesis story it's teaching us something that as soon as Adam and Eve turned away from God four things happened first of all they were alienated from God they couldn't stand in God's presence you call that spiritual alienation the second thing is they were ashamed and they hid from they hid that's psychological alienation they experience guilt and fear and so on then thirdly they they they were naked and then they had to cover themselves because they had to hide from each other well let's call that social alienation so when they turned from God their relation with God broke down their relationship with themselves broke down their relation with others broke downs there's social alienation but then lastly it said that instead of the garden just producing fruit now you're going to have to labor and it in in the sweat of your brow and thorns will come up instead of fruit and eventually you're going to die and that's actually how do I say it that's environmental alienation that's a natural alienation the Bible teaches that natural disasters that that the the nature is no longer a friend that we're a lien ated from it and very often terrible things happen because it's actually not the it's not in this original order that is to say the created order was perfectly harmonious psychologically social sociologically physically and all the relation has been disrupted when we turn away from God that's a little harder for us to grasp I think most of us realize okay if I'm a if I'm a sinner and I'm selfish I can see why that would lead to murder and theft and so on it's a little harder for us to see that turning away from God would have actually affected the natural environment but it's what the Bible says and I think when you think about how much we are woven into the natural environment how human beings are absolutely part of the warp in truth for the natural environment it does make sense but anyway that's the that's the answer of Christian theology that over the years has made a great deal of sense to me though I'm not sure I had to be pretty brief there but at least please feed on that think about that brilliant well I'm afraid that's all we've got time for this evening so let's give Tim around my floor thank you very much [Applause] you

Channel: OICCU

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Id: OuRvyMNJsAQ

Length: 47min 47sec (2867 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 19 2019