severe troubles. The witness came in the form of his own reported life paradox, the pit of human experience (thorn in the flesh) and its pinnacle (being transported into the highest heaven). He begged God to have the first removed, but it wasn’t. He was careful not to boast inappropriately about the latter, even though God was lavishing goodness on him in the midst of his suffering. A resurrection had overwhelmed Paul’s cross with a glow of glory. He had learned that there can be gain in loss, and that all gain is by God’s pure grace.
Christians have chosen the cross of Jesus as a central symbol. Why? Because it represents the dramatic redemptive act of God and the full range of the experience of those faithful to Jesus. We humans are fragile beings. When following Jesus, we find ourselves out of step with the world as it now is. Our weakness is real and we are not promised a free pass through trouble. On the other hand, the crucified Jesus is no longer hanging in death, nor should we be terrified of a cross for ourselves.
The story of Jesus did not end when his tortured breathing ceased. Resurrection trumps crucifixion. Here is theological wisdom. “To the New Testament, pain is not morbidity or hopelessness or retribution. It is still the devil’s work, but the devil has been overcome and the penalty has been cancelled. So pain is now cleansing, illumination, and vocation. . . . The Event of Christ has changed the bitter waters into a pool of healing.”29
The later chapters of this book attempt to explain how the bitterness can be transformed into healing and how suffering should become our calling as Christians. To be a true Christian is to walk a special and often rocky path. Suffering will be part of it. Some have called the suffering “apostolic,” that is, we will be speaking and acting and being treated like Jesus. Again, so be it!
The Christian’s jagged faith and discipleship journey is paralleled on the larger scene by God’s own journey. What is the will of God for events on our earthly scene? The answer is not simple to state. There is the threefold will of God (see below). Not being clear about this is responsible for a rash of unnecessary and troubling questions people ask constantly, especially when suffering.
Did God cause the disaster or bring my suffering to me? Why didn’t God stop it from happening in the first place? Does God control everything in this world? If all-powerful, how could God not be in full control? What is the usual way of God’s working in our tragic situations? Is it through divine love or divine power? See the ROSE metaphor in chapter two and the explanation below of the threefold divine will. They are both critical to addressing these questions and walking successfully the 8-9-10 path of suffering.
Dimensions of the Divine Will
Classic (“orthodox”) Christianity speaks often and clearly about our present suffering and God’s present working. Obviously there is some variety in this speaking, like the mixed messages we find in the Bible. But also, again like the Bible, there are some key anchors of belief that have received broad consensus. Here is a brief summary of this consensus as reported in the masterful work Classic Christianity, by Thomas Oden.
1. “God’s will is the effective energy inherent in God by which God is able to do all things consistent with the divine nature.”30 There are no “limits” on the actions of God other than the divine nature itself, which is love. God is Person and has created persons to share in loving relationship with God. This ultimate will of God never changes regardless of what we humans do.
2. An essential element of personhood is freedom to choose and act accordingly. Humans have been granted such freedom by the loving God. The wrong use of freedom is the source of much of the evil in this now-fallen world. Despite the current circumstances of our human history and personal lives, God remains free to express the divine loving will, but necessarily now within the changing conditions of our freely chosen history (Ps 40:8; Matt 6:10; John 7:17). See below for an explanation of the threefold will of God.
3. When we humans act counter to God’s loving intentions for us, God remains fully able and committed to taking our idolatries and sins and making them work toward the greater good God intends, all to God’s glory and our good. Such contingent divine actions may be viewed as the “consequent” will of God, God’s strategic adjustments appropriate to the historical challenges, failures, and sufferings that we cause by misuse of our freedom (Heb 10: 5–10). Human willing is able to resist the will of God, but temporarily, never ultimately.
We will use these perspectives as essential theological markers to understand our walking on the jagged pathway of faith. They arise naturally from the anchoring truth perspectives found in the Bible and our resulting inclination to favor the ROSE over the TULIP model of understanding God’s sovereignty (see chapter two). They also are fully consistent with the threefold understanding of God’s will.
It was in the terrible war year of 1944 that Leslie D. Weatherhead shared unusual wisdom with his City Temple congregation in ravaged England. Suffering was everywhere and so were the questions about how God was related to a reeling world at war. What was God’s will for the suffering English people, not to mention the terrible plight of the Jews on the continent? Surely God did not intend the awful evil seen everywhere. But if the mass suffering was not God’s will, how did it manage to happen? Was God really in control or was the will of God being defeated by the forces of evil?
The answer from Weatherhead came in the form of his explanation of the threefold will of God. This understanding can be of great comfort to the sufferer tempted to blame herself or God when neither is actually at fault. Published in the book The Will of God,31 Weatherhead describes the three dimensions of the divine will as follows.
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