So a LOT of questions come up as we think about human suffering, particularly when we think about the suffering of a people who serve such a powerful So how do we understand Christian suffering? Why does it happen? Where do I put the fact that God allows suffering to happen to His people? Why doesn’t he just rescue us? In all of these questions, I believe that the focus is backwards. In these common questions, we are trying to understand God in light of our own circumstances instead of trying to understand who we are in light of God’s revelation. I’m not saying that we are to NOT try to understand who God is, but I do think that it is dangerous to interpret God through worldly interactions and happenings. Should we be defining God or should God be what defines us as believers? I think that it is God who tells us who we are. When we pursue a line of questioning that ONLY seeks to make sense of God and define who God is in our minds by analyzing the world around us, we gain only a narrow view of who He is. We must balance that out with a healthy dose of accepting that God has authority over certain things and begin to place ourselves into His story and realm rather than placing Him into our own context. Is it okay to ask and ponder who God is? Yes, I certainly believe that it is. Should we ALSO ponder our reaction to who God is in light of the fact that He is eternal an unchangeable? Absolutely!
Here’s what I mean. Let’s say a terrible car wreck happens on a very public street. There are twenty witnesses, including those in the car, who can relate just what happened. Depending on the level of involvement, there will be at least twenty different accounts of what happened. All twenty stories will be told with varying levels of emotion that depend on personal experience and proximity to the car crash. Some of the details of the eyewitness accounts may even contradict one another. Here’s the deal though: not one story or even contradiction change the fact that the car wreck happened. There are certain things that are unchangeable about the situation. Twenty people will tell their version of events based on how they interpret it and that interpretation will be based, in large part, on that person’s individual experience. The fact that will not change is that the car wreck happened and it had an impact on the people surrounding the event. Each individual witnessing the event will be changed in some way as a result of the event. The event is not changed in one minor detail as a result of the interpretation of witnesses.
Our interpretation of who God is does not change who He is. God simply is. When we apply our own experiences and personal victories and tragedies to our story of Him, we begin to apply a very subjective slant to that story. The question must then become, “Who is God and who am I in light of that truth?” We cannot simply stop at the point of human understanding and apply our own version of truth to a God who is the very definition of truth.
