The Scriptures are clear about a vitally important factor for every living person: that it is not ultimately important about what happens to an individual outside his skin, but it is utterly important on what happens to the person inside it. The externals of our lives are greatly controlled by the willy-nilly of society/nature, (the providences of creation), somewhat unpredictable for us, and not in a complete pattern governed by adherence to fairness, to rules, to expectations, to human worth. Nature has its own context that includes paradox. Rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. In this context, blessing and suffering fall to all persons, good or evil, and a need to be evaluated in their own meanings and margins. The Apostle Paul rejoiced in suffering (Romans 5:3). He saw suffering as one point to develop virtue through a series of events – from suffering to endurance, from endurance to character. and from character to peace. All this is to say that God does not show favorites in nature – so common grace is for all. It is appointed unto human beings, angelic or devilish, to live in nature and to die there. There are alleviations and relief at times from nature’s blessing and fury. That is a matter of prayer which may introduce another dimension to nature that amends it. Prayer does not take away the vicissitudes of nature, but helps in managing them. Prayer may interrupt, or attenuate, the negatives of nature.
The secularist is angry with God, if there is a God to be angry with, because God permits suffering. He has difficulty in believing that if there is a holy God, how in all that is sensible can God permit the ill treatment of children, poor, denied or any suffering of any age? How in all that is holy can God permit a Herod, an Attila, a Hitler, a Stalin, a Saddam Hussein, or anyone wreaking murder, hatred, sorrow, hunger, poverty, disease, upon weak and unsure masses of human beings who have so little to say about life context and situations? The problem of evil is insoluble for natural man.
There is much that is insoluble for unassisted humanity. The pride of the human race makes any alienation from God even worse. Who can say that all issues may be limited to human logic, a logic that often betrays man in the areas he can measure, and even more in areas that he cannot. We can be reasonably sure that in trying to measure God and eternity with the tools available to us, there is something seriously missing in human understandings and conclusions. Our minds, as presently formed, are not capable of explaining the ultimate reality of God and his kingdom. To join the business of nature and God, we have been given faith. Faith is the safety chain that holds us while we climb life’s mountain to higher existence. Faith is the umbilical cord between one context of life and the next. That higher life will be significantly different from the present one, just as the life of the womb is significantly different from our present context. Faith is sufficiently pliable that the variances of persons and languages can engage with God at the door of what we call heaven, God’s residence. Magnificent as the mind is in its natural logic, it is incapable of constricting God and the divine processes in its boundaries. We put great store in faith because the mind is, in nature, unable to grasp all that God is. Hebrews 11:6 uses inner credence (faith in God) that gratifies man for God search. What would we do without it? Without it we cannot touch God as his children. Faith is that remarkable. It is a gift, absolutely necessary for anyone to be in fellowship with God. Human beings are tied to earth’s procedures which register on one or more of the senses. To hold truth by faith becomes more than some persons say they can bear. Knowing the difficulty God continues to ask only faith from us. Seems fair enough, and gains significant persuasive power when we discover how well it applies. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020