Lester Start’s Works

1The Problem of Suffering

L. J. Start

January 20, 1980

First Baptist, Kalamazoo

As Illumined by the Book of Job

The examination of this great problem of human suffering discussed in the book of Job is not a matter of mere academic curiosity on my part. I have faced the issues raised not with the detached, objective viewpoint of the philosopher, but from a sense of deep need. I needed desperately some answer to this problem, because it lies on my heart at all times, for every weekend when I visit my home before going to my church I see the problem tragically in my mother, who is suffering from a painful and incurable disease. And so I have needed an answer to give her some sort of assurance that God has not deserted her, and to quiet the fearful doubts which inevitably arise in one’s heart, when he sees a good and righteous person whom he loves suffering for something he cannot understand. I am thankful to be able to report that I have found answers which have quieted my doubts, but, more important, which have helped tremendously the peace of mind of the sufferer as the various thoughts were passed on from week to week. If I have not contributed to the class discussions, it is not because of lack of interest or dearth of ideas, but because the problem was too close to discuss publicly. I shall attempt to make up for this now. . .

The first suggestion that the book of Job offers as an answer to the problem of suffering is that suffering is a test of character. In the throne room of heaven, as described in the prologue to the book, Satan, the “policeman” of God, intimates that Job is righteous only because he is enjoying happiness and prosperity and that he would soon curse God if he had to face hardship and suffering. And so God gives the Satan permission to test Job by taking away his property and his family, but Job passes these tests with flying colors. Then Job is inflicted with a plague of boils, and begins his great struggle with doubt as his suffering increases.

As we examine real-life situations, we see that suffering may very well be a test of character. So often it is the person who has endured physical suffering and disappointment who develops the radiant and godlike character. As suffering forces man to seek elsewhere for the satisfactions and props which men generally find in material pleasures and satisfactions, he develops a reliance upon spiritual values, and thus finds a different kind of strength. Suffering, then, is likely to bring man closer to God by forcing him to seek the spiritual values from God; it is much harder to come close to God, when all that man sees is material benefits which may not have any relation to God in his own mind. The temper of the modern mind all too frequently suffers from this spiritual myopia, as it concerns itself with the material things. The present world crisis is serving a good purpose in awakening men to the need of re-seeking these deeper values, and thus tests the character of modern man by forcing him to overcome his weaknesses, as it shows where his shortcomings lie. It is interesting to note that the Christian spirit has proven its character most effectively during the long course of the centuries in times of hardship and persecution. The Quakers showed their strongest character when they had to struggle against suffering and persecution, but after they became settled and prosperous in Pennsylvania, and everything was going their way, they lost their original character as they depended more and more upon their own power.

If we look to modern psychology for vindication of this point, we see in the idea of conflict as growth a support. According to this idea organisms develop strength only as they face and overcome obstacles in their lives. The athlete develops muscles by lifting weights; the fox develops cunning by his experience with traps; and man develops spiritual strength only by going through the crucible of suffering and disappointment.

If we look at the picture from the opposite point of view, and consider what life would be like if there were no hardships or suffering in it, we must recognize that suffering fills a needed place in life. A life of unadulterated bliss is likely to lead to a degenerate life of slothful ease or selfishness, for then there is no reason for the individual to struggle. The world is full of such parasitic creatures on the vital organs of society. A further important point which should be noted is that it is the man who drinks deeply of the bitter as well as the sweet in life who develops the compassionate and understanding attitude toward his fellow men. The man who has never suffered starvation or endured the agonies of poverty and disease is not so likely to develop a missionary desire to rid the world of these evils, as the man who has suffered a while as he lives. Thus, whether we think of the individual or the group we see that suffering is a test of character; it shows up the weak points, and provides the sting needed to spur men on to improve their weaknesses.

It must be recognized, however, that this cannot be considered a complete answer to the problem. All too often suffering of this sort can defeat is purpose, for, as in the case of Job, the sufferer may endure long and come to the point where the suffering is too great to bear. A little suffering serves admirably to test and strengthen character, but a tremendous load may bend the stoutest spirit, just as a good horse’s spirit may be broken when it is forced to draw a load too heavy for him. In such cases the sufferer may go down in defeat, unless there are further answers to help him.

This is the difficulty I met at home. My mother already had this idea, for she has previously found ultimate value in distressing experiences. But this particular suffering is so intense and has been going on for so long, that she cannot see how it could possibly still be a question of testing. There comes a time when the human spirit is no longer stout enough after prolonged suffering to face it as a challenge and test. Then it is necessary to point out that God is doing more than showing His faith in man by testing him; He is with the sufferer in his suffering, giving him the strength that is greater than the suffering he has to bear. Thus the idea of suffering as a test of character may backfire and be a curse instead of a comfort, for God will then appear to the sufferer, (as to Job), as a ruthless ruler torturing his children in a cruel manner by asking them to bear more than they can. This answer, then, is only partially satisfactory; it is true in the sense that if there were no obstacles there could be no achievements which spell happiness, but it is unsatisfactory when applied to an individual called upon to do more than he has the strength to do. Such suffering is all the more pitiful, when the sufferer realizes this possible intent and struggles to overcome his trouble only to find himself beating his fist against an unyielding stone.

The second intimation of the reason for suffering is stoutly maintained by Job’s three friends, who hold the orthodox idea that all suffering is the result of sin. This idea so strongly held by the Hebrew is still perhaps the best single explanation of the cause of suffering. As we look about us in individual lives and society, we see people suffering because of their own or others’ sins. Sin may be defined for the purposes of the discussion as “violation, either deliberate or unwitting, of the genetic and constructive, and cooperative processes of God, which may be discovered in the laws of nature, in the experience of society, and the revealed will of God.”¹ If the world could get rid of its sin, it is certain that it would be a pretty good place in which to live - we would have little cause to complain for most of our suffering, would then disappear. The sins of selfishness, greed, hatred, envy, jealousy, impelling men to seek their own interests, result in the poverty, exploitation, wars, and misery of the world. If this were not the case, if sin were not the cause of most suffering, if not all of it, there would be little point in the religious leader=s and educator=s attempts to improve the moral tone of society. It is this sin which most of us properly recognize as the cause of suffering in the world, and we do right in striving to overcome it.

There are four kinds of sin, if we distinguish between individual and group sin and between intentional and unintentional sin, and all four of them are vicious and lead to suffering. Sometimes the individual must some suffer for a group sin for which he is responsible only very indirectly, or perhaps not at all. Wars and plagues bring suffering sometimes to the very individuals who are least responsible. Quite often in this way the group morality conflicts with the individual, so that however a person acts he conflicts with one standard or the other and is guilty of sin no matter what he does. This leads to the question of what standard is ultimate; but, however we decide for ourselves, the fact remains that we individually cannot decide the issue, for there is always some contradictory criterion, and so long as there is conflict, there will be suffering. Sin seems to be not only the violation of the will of God but also what we understand to be the will of God. Thus it is possible for a person to act according to the will of God and still be guilty of sin according to another standard which another takes to be the will of God. The conflict is not irreconcilable, however. The worst conflict, that between group and individual morality, seems to be the result of a steady secularization of group life beginning with the period of the Enlightenment. If only individuals would make the impact of their morality felt in secular affairs, the tone of the group morality would tend to conform.

The ultimate standard is from God, and it is learned only through a progressive awareness of the laws of God. As we learn the laws of nature we recognize that conflict with them leads to suffering. It is a similar experience in learning the moral laws governing men; as we violate them, we suffer, and through suffering we learn what it is that is required of us.

If we understand sin in the broad sense, it would seem that almost all of our suffering is the result of sin, but there are cases where there seems to be no moral implications involved. It is possible, I suppose, to make a strong case for the position of the three friends, to insist that all suffering is the result of sin. Moralists in times past (and even today) have explained natural catastrophes as the punishment of God inflicted upon the suffering people because of their sins.

I found this point of view deeply entrenched in my mother’s attitude toward her own suffering. She often would torture herself with the idea that she was suffering for some past sin, and the trouble was only aggravated when she could not find such a cause. To get away from this idea entirely was perhaps the most difficult task in order to prepare for a deeper understanding of the cause of suffering.

When a tornado strikes a town killing and wounding its people, when a piece of stone falls from the facade of a building and kills a passerby (as it happened in New York City, a few weeks ago) it is difficult to understand how the sufferer is being punished for sin, because there seems absolutely no connection. When a virulent disease attacks indiscriminately good people as well as bad, one cannot see how moral implications are involved. There seem to be cases, then, when sin is not the cause of suffering, but these cases are probably not so many as we think. If we consider that the individual as a part of the group partakes of the bad features as well as the good of that society, if we consider that he shares in the benefits and virtues and also in the sins of the group, we will see that we can find moral implications which were not at first apparent. For example, the good man today is suffering because of the war not because he individually has sinned, but because society in general has sinned, and he as a part of that society must share in the suffering just as he shares in the privileges and benefits of society which are not of his making. The curse of disease epidemics quite often is caused by social sins as when society allows unsanitary housing, undernourishment, and unhealthy labor conditions. Even violent acts of nature may often be understood in this light; for example, the dust storms in the Midwest were caused by man’s exploitation of the soil. Certainly sin is involved in some manner in most cases of suffering even when it is not at once apparent. If we examine all of the various implications in Job as to the cause of suffering, we find that they could be fitted into this one general cause of sin, except for this one implication which suggests that sometimes sin is not involved. Suffering as a test of character points to shortcomings which may imply sin; lack of human sympathy is certainly a sin; warning implies something violating God=s will; mystery may point to violations as yet not understood; suffering as revelation of God would not contradict sin as cause either, for it may be a part of God=s revelation. The objection to this possible theory that sin is responsible for all sin {suffering} is the statement that Job is a perfect man. This objection might be countered by the thesis that perfection is a sin, that no man can be perfect in the face of God, and human perfection leads man to think himself equal with God (which was ultimately Job=s sin).

This theory is thrown out, not in the spirit of argumentation for its own sake, but because of a certain suspicion that the writer may be pointing to a further implication or problem, the problem of the righteous man, who knows he is righteous. The writer clearly indicates his disapproval of the righteousness of Job’s friends, but it is hinted that Job may not have been unlike them before his experience of suffering. It is hard to support this, but I feel that Job’s protestations of his innocence, and the accounts of his virtue in the prologue, may indicate the writer’s view in this way: “here is a man who thinks he is perfect, as if any man could be.” The fact that God humbles him so completely would seem to bear out the point also.

This idea has occurred to me as I see that those people who appear most righteous think themselves least worthy. The greatest spirits suffer the most because of their feelings of imperfection before a God who is so good in their mind=s eye that they feel far below the ideal of perfection. The idea was further brought home to me in seeing people who think that because they are righteous they have power with God, and instinctively feel that they must not be called upon to suffer. I find this attitude particularly among religious perfectionists and Christian Scientists who feel a unique gnosis which should protect them from suffering. And I have found the same attitude in my mother, who has felt that virtue must mean reward. And when I see how her suffering is bringing her closer to dependence upon God instead of self-righteousness as an armor against evil, I feel that this deeper meaning of the cause of suffering may be in the mind of the writer of Job.² But this idea is by no means settled in my own mind; I merely submit it as a possible consideration.

Lack of human sympathy is a particular sin which perhaps causes more havoc than any other. It was the harsh, uncompromising attitude of Job=s friends which broke his spirit. It is the harshness and lack of understanding and indifference of our dearest friends which is always the hardest yoke to bear. We do not mind suffering so much when a kindly hand or sympathetic eye gives us encouragement, but when we see only cold indifference or an attitude of unsympathetic judgment we cannot go on. When a friend says, AI cannot help you but wish I could,@ and genuinely extends sympathy we find he has helped. Jesus= emphasis upon love as the heart of the law bears out the importance of love as the balm on the hurts of life, and conversely points to the cruelty of its absence.

I have had this poignantly and tragically illustrated to me at home. My mother will bear patiently her suffering for days, but sometimes when we have neglected her, leaving her alone in her pain, forgetting to give the encouragement and sympathy which helps so much to ease the pain, I have found her quietly weeping alone, and I am sick at heart at what I have done.

Suffering is a warning to man against those things which are harmful to him, including his sins. If it were not for the toothache we would not care for our teeth; if burns did not hurt, we would destroy our tissues by handling hot things. If we did not feel suffering as a result of our sins, we would not be so interested in leading the moral life. Suffering is the warning which teaches us how to use the many things which God has given us for the right purpose. Suffering in the group is a warning against evil social conditions which must be changed.

Sometimes this type of suffering seems harsh, but it is the way we learn. And if experience seems to slap us cruelly in the process of learning, it also helps us to see what is right by encouraging us so that we know the good life is good for us. The bruises on a child=s knees warn him that he must watch carefully how he steps; they point to his faults, but they indicate also how he should use his feet to learn to walk. It is harder to learn the more stately and noble kind of walking, walking with God, and we receive many bruises by our suffering because we are not stepping correctly, but in the process we will learn to walk, for there is a hand which helps us to our feet again when we stumble.

A further implication is that suffering is a mystery, that there is no answer to its cause. This is the conclusion which most commentaries arrive at after studying the book of Job. In the sense that all the deeper meanings are hid in God, this is true. We cannot plumb the depths of the problem, for when we do so we find ourselves reaching out by faith to God. (And this sort of conclusion doesn’t fit in a scholarly commentary.) Often we badger ourselves with individual problems of suffering, forgetting that from the wider vision of God the picture is different. We find it a mystery, why suffering exists, while there very likely is a deep purpose and meaning that only the infinite view can see, - just as a tiny spot on an aerial photograph means nothing to us until we see a larger area of the picture.

We are impressed (as was Schopenhauer when watching a cat eat a mouse) by the large amount of suffering in the natural world. The law of the jungle seems to be the guiding spirit of life, and mother nature often seems a cruel stepmother. But if we consider the wider view we see that death is a necessity, and that the suffering in the animal world which precedes death may be exaggerated. Perhaps the mouse does not suffer so much as we think; Livingstone describes a “feeling of delicious inertia and no pain at all@ when being mauled by a lion. The smaller dissonant notes in nature are mysteries in themselves, just as the individual discords in a symphony are meaningless, but they all fit in together with euphonious chords to make a sublime symphony whose grandeur is accentuated by the occasional cacophony.

We must ever remember that there is a problem of good as well as of evil; if it is hard to explain the causes of suffering, it would be just as hard philosophically to explain happiness. Ultimately the final meanings but lead to God.

Is life worth living with suffering in it? The answer in Job and in the lives of countless men who have endured great suffering is an emphatic affirmative. Life is its own validation. Even with the suffering it is good. When we see that suffering is an aid to development, when we see that it is the method by which man progresses toward God, we see that life is good because even with the suffering it is tied up with God.

It is true that many a skeptic who defines values in terms of pleasures (refined though they may be), finds this conclusion hard to accept. If surcease from suffering is the goal of life, then life with suffering in it is thereby invalidated. Aristotle defined happiness as the goal of life; but he defined happiness as gh*V4:@<\V not Z*@<Z. And eudaimonia implies a serenity of mind which further implies the pacification of discordant notes, held in check by a higher vision. This is the kind of life we think of when we say that a life with suffering in it is good. It is the kind of life we see in men who have faced the sufferings in life and come through them, refined by the fires, as gold; it is the life expressed by the radiance of a sufferer who has had to seek deeply for his strength, and found the more abundant life. It is a life in contrast to that of the sophisticated hedonist who finds eternity his enemy, the soft, parasitic life of the spiritual weakling, who must still wean himself on milksop.

But if we are to say that life with suffering in it is still good, we must base our conviction on spiritual values which rest upon faith. It must be seen in its deeper meaning as the revelation of God. This is hard for the person who has not suffered to believe, but he who has been through the fires, or watched while someone dear to him has experienced the agonies of suffering, will realize this. It is true that many go down in defeat, crushed by the weight of pain. But there is that which is within man which is from God, that will lift this weight and allow the spirit beneath to stretch up to a taller stature than ever before. I have watched this struggle of an indomitable spirit against an overpowering weight of pain in my mother=s suffering. There have been times when the spirit seemed crushed, or wounded mortally unto despair, but more and more it finds its strength in a closer walk with God. The times when my mother felt deserted by God have passed; now she feels Him closer than ever, and in spite of the pain, feels a deeper reality of serenity reached by the groping hand which has found a friend by the “nevertheless of faith.@

This Job has taught us both and we are grateful to him for explaining the great redemptive work of Jesus, whose Spirit makes this answer to suffering true. With His help, suffering must lead to a deeper revelation of God, the revelation of the God who never deserts his children, but enters their lives and their sufferings, and shows them life is good because it is of God.

P.S.

A further implication which is only slightly indicated in Job as to the cause of suffering, is that fear helps to bring it on. Job says, “that which I feared has come upon me.” It is certainly true that fear is one of the worst enemies of faith. If a sufferer lets fear rule him, destroying the serenity of mind which comes from faith, the suffering is only intensified. Thus while fear may not initiate suffering always, it increases its weight.

1 Definition drawn from seminar discussion.

2 Query: was the time of the writing of Job an era of religious perfectionism?

1THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

1/20/80

L. J. Start

First Baptist Kalamazoo

The problem of evil is as old as Job. How do we account for evil in a world created by a good God? After all, in the creation story in Genesis, we are told after each day’s creation - “and God saw that it was good.” Yet we know there are evils - hideous evils of man’s own making through his hate and violence and inhumanity to his fellow man - but, there are also the evils that seem a part of God’s basic order of creation - earthquakes, tempests, famine and plague. And so, we are faced with the classic dilemma. Either God is not good or not all-powerful. Either He wills the good and cannot achieve it, in which case He is not all-powerful, or He does not will the good and so is not all-good. The fact of evil reflects on His goodness or His power.

There are some obvious solutions. Blame the evil on an evil God,

Satan, or the devil, who opposes the good God. This was the view of the ancient Persians. There are two cosmic powers, a good God and His powers of light and an evil God with His powers of darkness, and the world of men is the battleground for this cosmic struggle. The Bible shows the influence of this thinking after the Babylonian captivity. Belief in angels and demons struggling for men’s souls became popular. But the Biblical belief in one God makes a counter force, an opposing God, unthinkable. And we see in Job that Satan has to take orders from God. So this solution of Gods is not available if we are to remain in the Biblical tradition.

We can, of course, play down the evil and say it all turns into good. In the famous lines from Alexander Pope’s poem, “Essay on Man”, we can argue, “All nature is but art, unknown to thee; all chance, direction, which thou canst not see; all discord harmony not understood; all partial evil, universal good; and spite of pride, in erring reasons spite, one truth is clear, whatever is is right.” He’s saying we need the discords for the resolution of a grand harmony - just as we need the shadows to enhance the highlights of a great painting to produce an aesthetic good. But why are some lives all shadows or discord? And we say pain is good - it warns us of something wrong so that we will take care of it. But need it be so severe? And some diseases, like glaucoma, come without any warning of pain, like the thief which comes at night. It may be comforting to think God never gives us pain greater than we can bear, but it is not a comforting thing to say, I think, to someone really hurting on a bed of pain or someone suffering the loneliness and pain of grief, trying to make a new life when a beloved partner has died. No, we cannot accept the optimism of Pope’s lines. When we consider the realities of suffering, we are more likely to agree with Dryden who wrote, “When I consider life, ’tis all a cheat. Yet fool’d with hope, men favour the deceit; trust on and think tomorrow will repay. Tomorrow’s falser than the former day; Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest with some new joys, cuts off what we possest. Strange cozenage! None would live past years again, yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain.”

Then why believe in a good God at all? Why not accept the truth that life is a cheat, as Dryden said, and fools us with false hopes? The answer, I think, is the very hope that Dryden points out, that we will find pleasure and good in spite of the evil. The answer is, I think, that without a good God, we would be hard put to explain the goodness we do find in existence. There are sunsets and symphonies, love and joy, laughter, great beauty, inspirational personalities, triumphs over hate and ignorance and disease. These are hard to account for in an evil world or even one that is mechanistically neutral. The mystery of evil is great when we think of a good God, but the mystery of goodness is unresolvable if there is no good God at all.

If, then, the problem of goodness and the promise of goodness encourage us to cling to belief in a good God, how, then, do we explain or account for evil?

The Biblical answer to this in general is very clear. All suffering is the result of sin. The children of Israel were liberated by a good God, but they became unfaithful. They worshipped the Baals of the land of Canaan. They made burnt offerings to brazen idols. And they suffered for it, God using Israel’s enemies to punish the people. When the people, or individuals, withdraw from God’s guidance, when they no longer follow His commandments and obey His rule of righteousness, then evil befalls them. The basic dogma is that suffering is the result of sin.

Now this is a pretty good dogma. When we think of the terrible sins of man’s inhumanity to man, we see that the gross sins of greed, hate, lust, violence, exploitation and oppression do create almost all the misery and evil and suffering that we complain of. Moral evil causes suffering. The problem comes in insisting that all suffering is the result of sin. What sin could that baby have committed to have perished in that apartment fire yesterday! Why do the innocent suffer, and the righteous be served with a whole train of trouble, when everyone knows that the wicked seem to flourish? This is where the dogma wears thin. And this is why it is challenged. The Psalmist asks the question - but Job argues it. After all, Job is a righteous man, and yet God permits him to be so sorely tormented by Satan that he wants to die. Now why?

There are many suggestions in this marvelous book. The old dogma is stoutly maintained by Job’s friends, and it may well be that Job’s insistence on his own innocence and righteousness, and his demand that God justify His actions toward him, makes Job guilty of spiritual pride. This is perhaps the meaning of God’s saying to Job at the end, in effect, “Who are you to challenge me? Where were you when I made the world? Who are you to make demands of God?” In a sense, the dogma is still maintained in the face of the inscrutable Will of God. And so when Job repents in humility, we know that the evils are past. Yet the issue remains unanswered clearly and is still a challenge. Jesus obviously had questions about it when in the Gospel of John he refused to speculate on whose sin caused the blindness of the man born blind.

Perhaps he rejected the dogma; it seems so; perhaps he found it irrelevant. Like the Buddha who said that when one is wounded by an arrow, it is idle to wonder whence it came and why, but important to remove it. Jesus refused to discuss the possible cause of the man’s blindness, but proceeded to heal him. “Neither this man sinned, nor his parents,” said Jesus, “but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” He was born blind so that God’s power might be shown in curing him. This probably does not mean that God causes evils so that they can be the occasion for wonder working. But rather the problem of evil is not a theoretical one, requiring a rational answer. The problem of evil is a practical one. Evil exists so that with the power of God we do something about it. Jesus said in the world we will have troubles. He did not go on to say, “but I have explained why this is so.” He said, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

Yet, the questions don’t go away. Why must there be evil? How do we reconcile the existence of evil with a good God? I think there are some considerations which help to account for it. And I should like to explain them briefly.

First, there is man’s moral freedom. We are not automata. We are not machines, reacting to causal forces upon us. We can choose - at least within limits - what we are to do, how we are to behave, how we are to respond to certain situations, what we are to value and seek in life. And this power of moral choice can be misused. We choose the wrong things, react in the wrong way, give way to violent passions that we later regret. And how much suffering comes from this! This is the truth in the old Biblical dogma. Man’s evils and sufferings emerged when man (at Eve’s bidding - the sexist dogma is here, too - the woman is always to blame) — anyway, human suffering emerged when man ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge - the knowledge of good and evil. Man moved from innocence to moral freedom of choice. And he does make the wrong choices and he suffers. But consider, would we have it otherwise if we were God and could rearrange things? Would we really prefer to act like machines, with no choice over the input which makes us go? Isn’t it better to be able to choose, even if we do make terrible mistakes, than not to be able to choose at all? Isn’t it the very meaning of being made in the image and likeness of God, that we share His power of creative choice of the good?

A second consideration is the fact that our world operates according to law. There are physical laws that we must learn to live with and understand. We break them at our peril, because we break ourselves against them. We cannot violate the law of gravitation. We cannot speed around a curve slick with rain and avoid a spin-out, if we have exceeded the forces that hold the car on the road. We cannot violate the laws of health and remain healthy, abuse our bodies with drugs and remain unaffected. And some of us believe that moral laws represent a cosmic regularity that can never be violated either. There is the basic law that deeds determine destiny, that acts have consequences. The mills of the gods may grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. How much trouble comes from this fact! We cannot be unfaithful and have fidelity as a result. We cannot be dishonest and inspire credibility. We cannot be insensitive to the feelings of others and have them be sensitive in return. And we cannot sow hate and reap harmony; spread deceit and get trust in return. And yet, when we consider the evils that come from the regular laws of nature and the inexorable moral law, would we really want it different? If we were God and could change the arrangement, would we want a world without law? Could we even live in a world that we could not trust to operate in a regular way? Would we want a world in which moral acts had no reliable consequences? Would morality then make any sense?

A third consideration. Life is a process and represents a kind of evolutionary progress, and a lot of suffering comes from this.

We are born weak, ignorant, and we have to learn, painfully at times, to grow up to the spirit of mastery and maturity. There are growing pains - skinned knees, injured pride, bent noses on the way to growing up. All life represents a process from small beginnings to something larger or better. Our world has moved from slavery, ignorance and superstition to a point where we see the necessity of overcoming the poverty and war which keep peoples from living together in peace and plenty. We are born in an unfinished world and are called upon to complete it, to better it, painfully to bring about what is good. How much suffering in world history has come from this?

But again, if we could change things, would we wish this different? Looking back on growing up, weren’t the obstacles - even the bumps - essential in the process of learning? And isn’t life itself of value because it is an on-going process of growth over weakness and ignorance, a dynamic business of meeting challenges, overcoming problems, sharing in the creative processes of God? And would we want a static world, one that is not amenable to change or progress? One may wish for more political and economic stability today. We may be living the life which is the subject of a Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times”. Our times are indeed interesting, but their very volatility is the promise of change and the chance of progress. And surely we would hate to have to live without that promise.

Finally, there is the fact of human inter-relationships. We do not stand isolated as Fosdick once said, like milk bottles standing in the rain. We flow into each other. We affect each other’s existence. No man is an island. We are all members one of another. And the new fact is that today we must think in global terms in the sharing of resources and responsibilities. As individuals and as nations, our troubles, our sins, our stupidities spill over and affect others. This is why the innocent suffer. But, would you have it any different if you could? Would you prefer that we be isolated beings and destroy all the ties of human mutuality which make life truly human? Our interdependence, our inter-relationships, can cause suffering, make us vulnerable. But, when creatively affirmed, the ties that bind us together are what make life beautiful, what we value most.

The conclusion seems to be this. The considerations which can be the occasion for evils and suffering can also be the occasion for good. It may be as Job suggests somewhere, that God has a struggle on His hands in evolving the better world. So believing in God is not some neat finished system or creed. It is betting one’s life on the forces of creative goodness and not being beaten by the evils that beset us. It is realizing that God needs our hands to help bring about that which is good. Evil exists so that we do something about it and share in the creative power of goodness that Jesus has revealed. After all, we do not want a theory to explain evil so much as a power to help us overcome it. And Jesus never said, “I have explained the world.”

He said, “I have overcome it.” Let us, with His help, dare to overcome the evils of this world.

1THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

1/20/80

L. J. Start

First Baptist Kalamazoo

The problem of evil is as old as Job. How do we account for evil in a world created by a good God? After all, in the creation story in Genesis, we are told after each day’s creation - “and God saw that it was good.” Yet we know there are evils - hideous evils of man’s own making through his hate and violence and inhumanity to his fellow man - but, there are also the evils that seem a part of God’s basic order of creation - earthquakes, tempests, famine and plague. And so, we are faced with the classic dilemma. Either God is not good or not all-powerful. Either He wills the good and cannot achieve it, in which case He is not all-powerful, or He does not will the good and so is not all-good. The fact of evil reflects on His goodness or His power.

There are some obvious solutions. Blame the evil on an evil God, Satan, or the devil, who opposes the good God. This was the view of the ancient Persians. There are two cosmic powers, a good God and His powers of light and an evil God with His powers of darkness, and the world of men is the battleground for this cosmic struggle. The Bible shows the influence of this thinking after the Babylonian captivity. Belief in angels and demons struggling for men’s souls became popular. But the Biblical belief in one God makes a counter force, an opposing God, unthinkable. And we see in Job that Satan has to take orders from God. So this solution of Gods is not available if we are to remain in the Biblical tradition.

We can, of course, play down the evil and say it all turns into good. In the famous lines from Alexander Pope’s poem, “Essay on Man”, we can argue, “All nature is but art, unknown to thee; all chance, direction, which thou canst not see; all discord harmony not understood; all partial evil, universal good; and spite of pride, in erring reasons spite, one truth is clear, whatever is is right.” He’s saying we need the discords for the resolution of a grand harmony - just as we need the shadows to enhance the highlights of a great painting to produce an aesthetic good. But why are some lives all shadows or discord? And we say pain is good - it warns us of something wrong so that we will take care of it. But need it be so severe? And some diseases, like glaucoma, come without any warning of pain, like the thief which comes at night. It may be comforting to think God never gives us pain greater than we can bear, but it is not a comforting thing to say, I think, to someone really hurting on a bed of pain or someone suffering the loneliness and pain of grief, trying to make a new life when a beloved partner has died. No, we cannot accept the optimism of Pope’s lines. When we consider the realities of suffering, we are more likely to agree with Dryden who wrote, “When I consider life, ’tis all a cheat. Yet fool’d with hope, men favour the deceit; trust on and think tomorrow will repay. Tomorrow’s falser than the former day; Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest with some new joys, cuts off what we possest. Strange cozenage! None would live past years again, yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain.”

Then why believe in a good God at all? Why not accept the truth that life is a cheat, as Dryden said, and fools us with false hopes? The answer, I think, is the very hope that Dryden points out, that we will find pleasure and good in spite of the evil. The answer is, I think, that without a good God, we would be hard put to explain the goodness we do find in existence. There are sunsets and symphonies, love and joy, laughter, great beauty, inspirational personalities, triumphs over hate and ignorance and disease. These are hard to account for in an evil world or even one that is mechanistically neutral. The mystery of evil is great when we think of a good God, but the mystery of goodness is unresolvable if there is no good God at all.

If, then, the problem of goodness and the promise of goodness encourage us to cling to belief in a good God, how, then, do we explain or account for evil?

The Biblical answer to this in general is very clear. All suffering is the result of sin. The children of Israel were liberated by a good God, but they became unfaithful. They worshipped the Baals of the land of Canaan. They made burnt offerings to brazen idols. And they suffered for it, God using Israel’s enemies to punish the people. When the people, or individuals, withdraw from God’s guidance, when they no longer follow His commandments and obey His rule of righteousness, then evil befalls them. The basic dogma is that suffering is the result of sin.

Now this is a pretty good dogma. When we think of the terrible sins of man’s inhumanity to man, we see that the gross sins of greed, hate, lust, violence, exploitation and oppression do create almost all the misery and evil and suffering that we complain of. Moral evil causes suffering. The problem comes in insisting that all suffering is the result of sin. What sin could that baby have committed to have perished in that apartment fire yesterday! Why do the innocent suffer, and the righteous be served with a whole train of trouble, when everyone knows that the wicked seem to flourish? This is where the dogma wears thin. And this is why it is challenged. The Psalmist asks the question - but Job argues it. After all, Job is a righteous man, and yet God permits him to be so sorely tormented by Satan that he wants to die. Now why?

There are many suggestions in this marvelous book. The old dogma is stoutly maintained by Job’s friends, and it may well be that Job’s insistence on his own innocence and righteousness, and his demand that God justify His actions toward him, makes Job guilty of spiritual pride. This is perhaps the meaning of God’s saying to Job at the end, in effect, “Who are you to challenge me? Where were you when I made the world? Who are you to make demands of God?” In a sense, the dogma is still maintained in the face of the inscrutable Will of God. And so when Job repents in humility, we know that the evils are past. Yet the issue remains unanswered clearly and is still a challenge. Jesus obviously had questions about it when in the Gospel of John he refused to speculate on whose sin caused the blindness of the man born blind.

Perhaps he rejected the dogma; it seems so; perhaps he found it irrelevant. Like the Buddha who said that when one is wounded by an arrow, it is idle to wonder whence it came and why, but important to remove it. Jesus refused to discuss the possible cause of the man’s blindness, but proceeded to heal him. “Neither this man sinned, nor his parents,” said Jesus, “but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” He was born blind so that God’s power might be shown in curing him. This probably does not mean that God causes evils so that they can be the occasion for wonder working. But rather the problem of evil is not a theoretical one, requiring a rational answer. The problem of evil is a practical one. Evil exists so that with the power of God we do something about it. Jesus said in the world we will have troubles. He did not go on to say, “but I have explained why this is so.” He said, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

Yet, the questions don’t go away. Why must there be evil? How do we reconcile the existence of evil with a good God? I think there are some considerations which help to account for it. And I should like to explain them briefly.

First, there is man’s moral freedom. We are not automata. We are not machines, reacting to causal forces upon us. We can choose - at least within limits - what we are to do, how we are to behave, how we are to respond to certain situations, what we are to value and seek in life. And this power of moral choice can be misused. We choose the wrong things, react in the wrong way, give way to violent passions that we later regret. And how much suffering comes from this! This is the truth in the old Biblical dogma. Man’s evils and sufferings emerged when man (at Eve’s bidding - the sexist dogma is here, too - the woman is always to blame) — anyway, human suffering emerged when man ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge - the knowledge of good and evil. Man moved from innocence to moral freedom of choice. And he does make the wrong choices and he suffers. But consider, would we have it otherwise if we were God and could rearrange things? Would we really prefer to act like machines, with no choice over the input which makes us go? Isn’t it better to be able to choose, even if we do make terrible mistakes, than not to be able to choose at all? Isn’t it the very meaning of being made in the image and likeness of God, that we share His power of creative choice of the good?

A second consideration is the fact that our world operates according to law. There are physical laws that we must learn to live with and understand. We break them at our peril, because we break ourselves against them. We cannot violate the law of gravitation. We cannot speed around a curve slick with rain and avoid a spin-out, if we have exceeded the forces that hold the car on the road. We cannot violate the laws of health and remain healthy, abuse our bodies with drugs and remain unaffected. And some of us believe that moral laws represent a cosmic regularity that can never be violated either. There is the basic law that deeds determine destiny, that acts have consequences. The mills of the gods may grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. How much trouble comes from this fact! We cannot be unfaithful and have fidelity as a result. We cannot be dishonest and inspire credibility. We cannot be insensitive to the feelings of others and have them be sensitive in return. And we cannot sow hate and reap harmony; spread deceit and get trust in return. And yet, when we consider the evils that come from the regular laws of nature and the inexorable moral law, would we really want it different? If we were God and could change the arrangement, would we want a world without law? Could we even live in a world that we could not trust to operate in a regular way? Would we want a world in which moral acts had no reliable consequences? Would morality then make any sense?

A third consideration. Life is a process and represents a kind of evolutionary progress, and a lot of suffering comes from this. We are born weak, ignorant, and we have to learn, painfully at times, to grow up to the spirit of mastery and maturity. There are growing pains - skinned knees, injured pride, bent noses on the way to growing up. All life represents a process from small beginnings to something larger or better. Our world has moved from slavery, ignorance and superstition to a point where we see the necessity of overcoming the poverty and war which keep peoples from living together in peace and plenty. We are born in an unfinished world and are called upon to complete it, to better it, painfully to bring about what is good. How much suffering in world history has come from this?

But again, if we could change things, would we wish this different? Looking back on growing up, weren’t the obstacles - even the bumps - essential in the process of learning? And isn’t life itself of value because it is an on-going process of growth over weakness and ignorance, a dynamic business of meeting challenges, overcoming problems, sharing in the creative processes of God? And would we want a static world, one that is not amenable to change or progress? One may wish for more political and economic stability today. We may be living the life which is the subject of a Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times”. Our times are indeed interesting, but their very volatility is the promise of change and the chance of progress. And surely we would hate to have to live without that promise.

Finally, there is the fact of human inter-relationships. We do not stand isolated as Fosdick once said, like milk bottles standing in the rain. We flow into each other. We affect each other’s existence. No man is an island. We are all members one of another. And the new fact is that today we must think in global terms in the sharing of resources and responsibilities. As individuals and as nations, our troubles, our sins, our stupidities spill over and affect others. This is why the innocent suffer. But, would you have it any different if you could? Would you prefer that we be isolated beings and destroy all the ties of human mutuality which make life truly human? Our interdependence, our inter-relationships, can cause suffering, make us vulnerable. But, when creatively affirmed, the ties that bind us together are what make life beautiful, what we value most.

The conclusion seems to be this. The considerations which can be the occasion for evils and suffering can also be the occasion for good. It may be as Job suggests somewhere, that God has a struggle on His hands in evolving the better world. So believing in God is not some neat finished system or creed. It is betting one’s life on the forces of creative goodness and not being beaten by the evils that beset us. It is realizing that God needs our hands to help bring about that which is good. Evil exists so that we do something about it and share in the creative power of goodness that Jesus has revealed. After all, we do not want a theory to explain evil so much as a power to help us overcome it. And Jesus never said, “I have explained the world.”

He said, “I have overcome it.” Let us, with His help, dare to overcome the evils of this world.

1OF PRAYER

L. .J. START

FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH

1/13/80

The scripture readings for this morning focus on the life of prayer. There are two parables, remarkably alike — the parable of the friend at midnight and the parable of the unjust judge. The one is introduced by the disciples’ request — Lord, teach us how to pray; the other by the statement that Jesus spoke the parable to the end that men ought always to pray, and not to faint. Both point to the primacy and priority of prayer and face the question whether prayer availeth ought, makes a difference. Together they suggest that religion and prayer go together. And yet there is always the question in our secular age whether prayer has any role in a world ruled by natural causes, or, granting the existence of a divine Power or God, we ask how can our petty petitions have any effect in the divine economy ruled by God. Let us turn to the parables for illumination.

The first parable is a homely and amusing illustration that very probably springs from Jesus’ own experience. Here is the situation. A traveler wandering alone at night comes to the house of a friend at midnight. The law of hospitality requires that the friend be given shelter and bread. But the would-be host is embarrassed because he has no bread to serve. And so he goes to the home of a friend at that late hour, explains his predicament and asks for the bread. But it is late, very late. The household is settled for the night, and the friend makes it clear that he cannot be bothered at that hour to upset the household to get some bread for his friend. But the man will not be quiet; he pounds away at the door until the friend finally decided to open the door and give him what he wants. The point of the story seems to be that the man would not get up to give the bread to the other man because he was his friend, but rather just because the man was so shamefully persistent.

The text reads, “Though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will arise and give him as much as is needed.” The word translated “importunity” means “shamelessness” and indicates that the man is being hounded out of his bed by the persistence of his friend.

Now we cannot apply this story directly to God. This would-be host has to beat on his friend’s door to make him respond to his need. It is not suggested, I think, that we have to beat on the doors of heaven in prayer to make God pay attention. We don’t have to ring bells or clap our hands to get the attention of God as they do in Japan in Buddhist temples or Shinto shrines. Nor is it suggested that God is reluctant to hear the need of someone. No — this is the familiar general argument that takes the form of — if we will respond to the pleading of a friend, surely God will be even more responsive. If we, being evil, know how to give good things to our children, surely God will much more so give good to the children of men. The friend may be reluctant to get up in the middle of the night to help a friend, but God who neither slumbers nor sleeps shall be alert to the needs of us all, and freely give all things needed.

The moral seems to be: man must be shamelessly persistent in prayer not because God requires this to be moved, but rather because man must be clearly motivated by a sincere desire, an earnest quest, a passionate sense of urgency, as exhibited by the persistency of his pleas. He must hammer his fists not at the walls of heaven to make God hear; but he must hammer his fists against the walls of his own making which shut him off from God by means of casual or insincere petition. Prayer must above all be sincere. Persistence implies this sincerity. Prayer must represent one’s dominant desire to be effective. In the words of James Montgomery: “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed; the motion of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast.” The parable, then, points to a basic teaching of Jesus: if one is to approach God, he must do so with the intensity born of urgent need and dominant desire. This is required not because such persistence, such intensity is needed to make God hear, but rather because it is required to make clear what we really want and pray for, what our dominant desire is, and then we may be ready to hear what God has to say to us. Prayer, you see, — persistence in prayer — results not so much in changing God or the objective situation; prayer results in changing ourselves, in clarifying our goals and values, in balancing our strengths and weaknesses, and in giving us a sense of direction. The persistence which symbolizes the struggles of prayer, represents the struggle with ourselves, not God. It is not our struggle with God but rather His struggle with us — our pride, our weakness, our vacillation — that needs to be resolved by the persistence of prayer.

If there is any doubt about the meaning of the persistence, importunity, in this parable, the second one serves as valuable commentary and support for it, making the same point. The introduction to the parable makes its meaning, its point, clear. Luke says, “And He spake a parable unto them to this end that men ought always to pray and not grow weary in praying.”

It is tempting to think that this parable might have a biographical base. Tradition has it that Joseph died when Jesus was quite young leaving His mother a widow. It is clear that Jesus had a concern for the plight of the widow and orphan. His anger blazed out against those who devoured widows’ houses and ignored the need of the orphan. At any rate, the story tells of a widow who has a case and needs a judge to support it. But the judge in the parable is an unjust one; he fears neither God nor man. There was no way in which the widow could move him. She had neither money to bribe him nor power to coerce him. The only thing she could do was to wear him down by persistent pleading until finally the judge said, “Although I fear not God, or regard man, yet because this woman keeps troubling me, I will avenge her lest she wear me out by her continual coming.”

The same argument form is being used here. If with all his unrighteousness this unjust judge can be moved to respond to help the widow, how much more will the loving God in Heaven respond to the persistent prayers of the faithful. It may well be the original hearers of this gospel needed this assurance in a time of adversity when God seemed far away, and Roman cruelty very near, and they needed reassurance. The story closes with a darker note which betrays Jesus’ anxiety for the sincerity, persistency, and faithfulness of his followers when He asks, “Nevertheless when the Son of Man comes, shall He find faith on the earth?”

Putting these parables together, then, if we are to answer the question how should one pray — or the question how can one be effective in prayer — the answer is be persistent — urgent — sincere. This persistency is reflected in the famous verse “Ask and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” The verb form is present imperative. In the Greek it means, “Keep on asking, persist without pause in your seeking, keep on knocking and you will have a response.” Again, persistence, faithful seeking — even importunity — seems required as a measure of sincerity.

Prayer, then, is ineffective when it is not sincere, when it does not reflect what we really want. There is a nice saying that makes a nice sampler — as a matter of fact, my wife has embroidered it on a pillow for our daughter — it reads, “O Lord, grant me patience — but I want it right now.” There is a logical problem in demanding patience immediately which reflects the large problem of what our dominant desires really are. Any lazy student can pray to get by on an examination. This is not a sincere commitment to be informed. Any idler can pray to be wealthy; this is not a sincere motivation to self-improvement. Any irresolute person can pray for a strong character; any weak person can pray to be freed of an addiction. But a sincere desire coupled with a firm resolve is something else again and it must be hammered out — not by hammering at the walls of heaven, but by hammering out and sorting out our own wills and desires, and hopes and commitments — in a persistent endeavor to see ourselves as we are and as we might be — and this means in the light of God and through the example of His Son.

But what of unanswered prayer? As Wordsworth puts it: ” Whence can comfort spring when prayer is of no avail?” It may be, but I think this may be overstating it, that we always do get what we really pray for. If the weak person’s desire is really to remain in the indulgence of his weakness in spite of his protestations to the contrary; if his prayer for strength to subdue his weakness is not sincere, he may very well get what he really prays for, if not what he truly needs and should achieve as a son of God. Then, too, sometimes the answers to prayers require a delay that seems a lack of response until our motives are purified. The story is told of Galileo who went to a shrine to pray for money, health, renown, success — until he finally earnestly prayed for illumination and a knowledge that would benefit mankind. Sometimes we pray for easy answers. and there aren’t any. Sometimes we pray for that which we should not or can not have. Hereclitus said it is not good for men to get what they wish. Sometimes with all our sincerity we pray for that for which God’s answer is a “No”. We pray that that problem will go away, and we are forced to face it and grow. We pray that we will be spared that illness — and have to learn the humility of mortal frailty and the wonder of God’s healing power. We pray that that spectre of death will go away from a loved one — and it does not — and we are left to remember the beauty of that life and learn that it somehow can never die. We must in the life of prayer share the agony of Jesus Himself Who prayed persistently, repeatedly in the Garden, so hard that the sweat dropped off like blood from His brow. Three times he prayed, “Father, all things are possible with Thee. If Thou be willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine, be done.” And yet as we know, God was at hand in the bitterness of His trials with the triumphant power of the Spirit. When the answer is “no”, when God does not seem to give us the things we petition, know that there is the gift of the Holy Spirit to sustain us.

It is not so much unanswered prayer that is the enemy of the life of prayer. Rather it is the reluctance to practice prayer at all, and prayer like everything else requires practice. Someone might say, “I do not pray because I do not find God real in my life.” It would be truer to say, “I do not find God real in my life because I do not pray.” Prayer is a way of seeing, a kind of sensitivity, a kind of awareness of the possibilities of existence. There are different kinds of prayer. Some are verbal. Some are felt. Some are modes of actions. For some their very kindness is a blessing and a prayer. Confucius once asked about prayer said, “My whole life has been a prayer.” For some their prayer is a dream of a better world to be that we can achieve — like Martin Luther King’s famous prayer-sermon — “I Have a Dream” — a dream that is closer to realization because it was his prayer.

Like everything else, prayer requires practice. But is in practicing the life of prayer, in stopping to give thanks for the goodness of God and His world, in being sensitive to the beauties that surround us, in being aware of the forces of good at work, in committing ourselves to that good, that somehow one feels more closely related to that which is the source of all these values, and can somehow look forward with a calm confidence.

Some of you have noticed that I have mentioned our fellow countrymen held hostage in every pastoral prayer since their being taken hostage. And one might ask, “What good does this do?” I cannot honestly answer. We may not effect the outcome. We do call attention to their plight. We invite a combined concern to be expressed. We identify with the compassionate love of God. We may very well contribute to the moral force of good over the spirit of violence and Terrorism. At the least it is a natural impulse of the committed Christian to cry out, “O God, help these poor beleaguered souls — O God, may our wills, small as they are, somehow stand firmly for redemptive love over violent passion.” At least we identify this much with what we understand to be God’s purpose and nature. And who knows what hidden tides of spirit may be touched to effect the future? As Tennyson wrote:

More things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice

Rise like a fountain for me night and day.

For what are men better than sheep or goats

That nourish a blind life within the brain,

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer

Both for themselves and those who call them friend?

For so the whole round earth is every way

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

And Jesus spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.

1OF TIME AND ETERNITY

First Baptist Kalamazoo

01/06/80

I like Ecclesiastes. There is no strong doctrine of redemption in the book; many would say it lacks the concept of faith entirely. But that is overstated. There is a sense of faith, as I shall try to show.

What I like about Ecclesiastes is the way he raises the fundamental questions of the meaning of life and probes the basic issue of the reason for existence, so that one is faced with making fundamental choices which require the affirmation of faith.

In the scripture lesson for today we find the basic question of the meaning of life raised in the context of the changing scenes of life. Says the Preacher: “There is a time to be born — a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck what is planted; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to get and a time to lose” — and so on until he raises the fundamental question, “What profit does one who works get from all his labor?” What is the point of it all? one might ask. Says the Preacher: “I have seen the travail that God has given the sons of men to be busy with.”

It is as he said earlier — it is all a weariness. All men’s deeds are an emptiness and chasing the wind. It is like the weary spirit of Macbeth saying, “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. … Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Shakespeare had no faith.

But Ecclesiastes doesn’t go this far. He raises the question of the meaning of life in the midst of processes of change. He asks the question whether there is any new thing under the sun. But he does not, like Shakespeare, deny the possibility of a meaning.

This is suggested in the difficult verse which says, “God hath made everything beautiful in His time; also He hath put eternity into man’s mind yet so that he can not find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” The New English Bible puts it perhaps more clearly: “God has made everything to suit its time; moreover He has given men a sense of time past and future, but no comprehension of God’s work from beginning to end.” There is, you see, for the Preacher a purpose, a work that God is making from beginning to end. But man has no comprehension of it. And yet as the revised version puts it, God has put eternity into man’s mind. So man has a sense of the eternal behind the changing scene. The problem for Ecclesiastes was to find the eternal in the temporal — he did not reject it out of hand in spite of his questions

And this is the problem for all of us. As the seasons change, the old year passes and a new year begins, as time moves on, what spiritual principle can we hang on to as giving permanence and meaning to our lives?

“Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away; they fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.” So goes the old hymn. But surely there is the white radiance of the eternal beyond the dark passage of time. Time, says Plato, is the moving image of eternity. How do we find the eternal in the temporal? How do we find the fundamental spirit that will endure yesterday, today and forever?

“God has given man a sense of time past and the future, but no comprehension of God’s work from beginning to end,” says the Preacher.

This suggests how men do try to find the eternal in the temporal. First of all, they tend to look to the past. The eternal is that which has stood the test of time, we say. The fundamental values must then be found in the past, and the disturbing, changing values of the present must be pushed aside as we recapture the old values, the eternal verities.

This is tempting. The eternal suggests the permanent, the unchanging, that which is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It is symbolized by the tablets of the law given to Moses. And where do we find the eternal except in our traditions that have stood the test of time. This is the appeal of the conservative in politics and the fundamentalist in religion. Both involve a rejection of contemporary philosophies and modes of thought.

The problem with this approach is that the eternal cannot be buried in the past. This is the basis of Jesus’ rejection of the Judaism of His day. The eternal spirit of God cannot be frozen in legalistic Phariseeism. You cannot put new wine in old wine skins. You cannot keep on living in the past. It closes our minds to the on-going revelation of God. It blinds us to present duties –”new occasions teach new duties. Time makes ancient good uncouth. They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.” So goes the old hymn by James R. Lowell. And we sense this truth. Focus on the past gives a stability, but as Jesus showed, the past can take on a sanctity which distorts the perspective on the future. And the past, when all is said and done, is past — and as such is related to the symbol of death. For those who live in the past are dead to the possibilities of the present and the promise of the future.

So where do we look for the eternal in time? If not in the past, let us look at the future. There is good Biblical authority for this. After all, the breakthrough of the eternal in time was associated with the future event of the coming of a Messiah, and the promise of the second coming of our Lord would suggest we look to the future for the dawn of the eternal. And this intuitively makes sense. All is change here and now, but then, in the kingdom to come, the changeless, immortal spirit of the eternal will rule, when God’s final purpose is accomplished.

But this view has problems. If the eternal is that which is basically real, then the future is least like eternity — because the future is the temptation to dream and illusion — the great by and by which will cure all our ills. There is a temptation to look in the future for the end of the rainbow, but it can lead to fatal procrastination in religion, waiting for the Lord instead of doing His bidding. It encourages false dreaming, empty resolutions. And when we stop to think of it, so many of our sins — greed, lust, revenge — are pointed toward future gratification. The problem with looking to the future for salvation is like the problem of the boy who keeps planning on what he’s going to do when he grows up — after he grows up. That is, perennially planning on the future, just as relying on the past, blinds us to our duty for today.

No, strangely enough, the mode of time most like the eternal is not the past, nor the future, but the present. Where time and eternity intersect, the mode is always now, and always personal, in the religious consciousness. When the vision of the eternal breaks through, it is always in present consciousness. When the spirit of God shines into our lives to reveal the power of the spirit, to show how the earthly can reveal a meaning that is more than earthly, when the vehicle of the material expresses the power of the spiritual, the time is always now.

And this is terribly important to remember. We must savor the spiritual possibilities of the present, not live in the past, or for the future, if we are to catch a sense of the life eternal. And this found in the simple things of life — in love, in trust, in beauty. How important it is to treasure the moments God gives us to live for today — rather than to live in past regrets or vain hopes.

And this, I think, was the urging of Jesus. There was an urgency about His message. Now is the time of the Lord. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent — discard the past, don’t wait for the future. The kingdom of heaven is within you, in the midst of you. Not here in some past or there in some future. Now is the time of the Lord.

It seems to me that this is the answer to the problem of Ecclesiastes. We have a sense of the past and the future — often regrets about the past and anxieties about the future. And no one comprehends God’s purposes.

But we do have in Jesus Christ a revelation by faith of the nature of God. We do have in Jesus Christ an example of the power of God transforming the earthly and temporal to the spiritual and eternal. We do have in the Lord’s Supper, in the service of the Communion, a reminder and a promise that that same power can work in us and through us to give us in time some sense of the life eternal. Let us then come to the table of the Lord in the earnest expectation that we can leave with a closer walk with Christ in the kingdom of God, that the white radiance of the eternal can break through the shadows of our temporal lives.