The Placebo of Assurance

    Suffering is a part of all life. Suffering as a Christian is a privilege, serving as a form of discipline from our loving Father. The first lie in the garden was that “God is a capricious God who only gave you this law because he likes to torture his creation.” But it wasn’t true, and the act of God’s arrogant creature was a declaration that he was not worthy of being believed. The fundamental problem of man is that of disbelief: we do not believe God is good and so we do not do what he commands. This is true even for Christians. The temptation to doubt God doesn’t go away at the moment of our justification.

    When we suffer we want to know why. Was it something I did that God is disciplining me for? Is it to prepare me for some future faithfulness? Am I a false convert, fooling myself into believing that Christ died for me while remaining under the wrath of God? Was it just some random injustice by some evil force? Maybe God really is a capricious, uncaring, unjust being who loves to torture his creatures?

    The simplistic reaction of Christians to such honest questions makes it almost impossible to seek out counsel and solace. “God is good. You should not even ask such questions,” we scold. After all, that is the fundamental lie that Adam believed in the garden. Even entertaining such thoughts should be off the table.

    So we preach the gospel. “Christ died for you: repent and believe the good news again.” Well and good. But sometimes the questions go far beyond what words can even convey. Because suffering doesn’t just come from one place. It is true that God is Sovereign and that “he is working all things together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purposes.” But that is not the only source of suffering. And our fixation on assuring Christians of their salvation often misses the point of the war that rages in the mind of those suffering under peculiar weights all their own.

“Esau I have hated.”

    There is not only one source of suffering. Some people throughout redemptive history have been rejected, left without hope for the cure to what ails them. Esau rejected his birthright; He was rejected by God. Saul had the kingdom stripped from his house because of his own faithlessness. What God had given to him, He had also taken away. And it was entirely Saul’s fault. That burden, that guilt, and the curse of God lived with him for the rest of his life. It even ended up costing faithful Johnathon his life. Saul was God’s enemy, and he suffered for it.

    The side of suffering that’s rarely addressed is the fact that each situation and person has a context that changes the meaning of their own particular temptations. We all recognize this when it comes to God’s Sovereignty over what good He intends to bring about in his children. We also all recognize this when it comes to someone who’s suffering because of their own actions. “He’s made his bed: now he has to lie in it.” So people know there’s plenty of places suffering can come from.

    The problem is that we really don’t. Each of us is like the incompetent police in Sherlock Holmes: we see enough to convince us of our own position, and then condemn or excuse the person suffering on the basis of our own investigation. But in our story sometimes there is no Sherlock to untangle the webs, and even if there is then sometimes the case is beyond his abilities.

    “Why did it happen?” Us theology nerds always have the answer: for God’s glory. We may not know how, but we know that. Much rarer is the correct answer: “I don’t know.”

    Take Job’s friends: why did all of his children die? Why were all his possessions taken? For the glory of God. Did his friends know that? Yes. God would never allow such senseless injustice without a purpose. And that purpose was obviously that Job had sinned.

    It’s funny: in our attempts to honor God, we often destroy the righteous men and women who don’t fit into our theology. Job’s friends did it. The Pharisees did it. We transform the truth into arrogance with a dogmatic rigor masquerading as a simple faith. We are experts at looking at someone’s life and magically finding the fruit there that we need to understand them according to our own system. Is he joyless? He’s in sin, “because the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Is his property in disorder? Solomon has a lot to say about his slothfulness in Proverbs.

    And do you know what the worst part about this tendency is? Usually it’s right. That means when it’s wrong, we’re just as unlikely to recognize it as the Israelites were in the book of Joshua when the Canaanites tricked them into a peace treaty. Job’s friend had seen the wicked swept away in judgment before (as have others: see Psalm 37:38: Proverbs 14:11 for examples). This was an obvious case of just such a judgment.

“Jacob wrestled with God.”

    But do you know who else knew that God swept the wicked away in judgment? Job. And Saul. Heck, Saul had been the instrument of that judgment against many of Israel’s enemies. But God had cursed him. Not so with Job. But it sure looked that way. And that’s why Job doesn’t understand it.

    Job knew God was righteous. He knew God was good. He knew God did not arbitrarily toy around with the lives of men like the pagan gods of old did. And yet to the contrary, here he was being seemingly arbitrarily singled out despite his righteous life. He didn’t deserve this. God shouldn’t have let this happen. Why? Why was he, a righteous man of all people, being singled out for a such a peculiar torment?

    Job didn’t ask these questions simply because he was sinfully accusing God. He did do that (“in a multitude of words sin is not lacking”). But the reason he got there was because HE KNEW GOD. He knew there was no sin in his life worthy of such treatment and he did not believe that God was capable of such injustice. Because that’s what it was to him. Think about it: if you faithfully served an employer for years and profited from them, but then you were unexpectedly fired and had to pay back every penny you had earned from them, it would be completely unjust. And yet Job, though a faithful servant, had EVERYTHING taken from him in a moment. Good kings don’t treat their subjects like that. Knowing this, AND knowing that God is better than any good king on earth, Job thought God made a mistake. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t fit with what he knew of God. And yet it’s from his mouth that the words “I know my redeemer lives” come, even in the midst of wrestling with this redeemer that he sees himself in conflict with at the time.

    Job thought God was treating him like Saul. Job thought he was being rejected, only there was no cause for it. He was clinging to God’s promises in obedient faith only to have his entire world turned upside down in an instant.

    We like to think we’re immune. We tell ourselves “everything will work out” and go about our lives assuming that God will bless our efforts if we serve Him in faith, never expecting our investment in the things of eternal life to fail. We hear about the causalities of war out there while the main characters of our stories go on fighting and surviving against all odds. We never expect to be that incidental soldier, dead on the field while the war goes on.

    All that to say, sometimes the reason Christians struggle to believe the promises of God is because they don’t seem to be true. Or, even if they are true, they don’t appear to apply to them. They question whether there’s sin in their life, mindful of the theology of Job’s friends. “Or,” they think, “Maybe I have fooled myself. After all, ‘the righteous’ are ‘like a tree planted by rivers of living water...in all that he does he prospers,’ and heaven knows I’ve never prospered in anything.” They may have assurance. They know God loves them, that Christ died for them, that the Spirit lives in them. They just don’t see any proof of it, at least not in the darkest moments. Yet despite all this, they cling to a hope beyond their own hope. Because they’re not it’s source:

“Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law.”
- Isaiah 42:1-4 ESV

    The fact of the matter is assurance of salvation is a gift. And it’s not a cure-all for sorrow. Sometimes suffering goes beyond a remedy...at least in this life. Sometimes things really were lost, never to be recovered. And I think when we look at who’s first on the other side of eternity, we’ll be surprised to find that it was those who were last. I don’t know why God allows some of the suffering he allows on this side of heaven. I just wish he’d make it right.