Why Does God Allow Evil, Part 5: When God Becomes Real
A few weeks ago as I sat beside the river with friends, I listened to my new friend Joanna1 share her story of coming to know the Lord just a year before. Born in India and adopted by a single mother, Joanna had been bullied and derided all her life for her race and home life situation. When she finally felt loved and accepted, it was by someone she would realize was the biggest bully of all, aided in his evil by drug and alcohol addictions, intense anger, and narcissism. For a couple of years, Joanna was ridiculed, beaten, and raped repeatedly, but she didn't think she had anywhere else to go. She didn't think anyone else could love her...until she cried out to God in desperation, and for the first time in her life He became real to her.
A few days later I was reading about Brian, a young father who had accidentally backed over his eighteen-month-old son with his car and killed him. After describing the horrific nightmare that he and his wife had been living, Brian went on to say, "I feel like I reached this point in my life when I had absolutely nothing left, and it turns out that for the first time in my life, Jesus has become real. Do you know what I mean? Is that unusual?"2
About a week later my friend Hayley3 called. I asked how she was doing and she began to tell me about her year from hell. She described being publicly humiliated at work for months on end and then being pushed out of her job, leaving her without any income or support. "But," she said, "while this has been an indescribably awful season of life, it has also been amazingly wonderful because God has become real to me!" She went on to tell me about the surprising and unusual ways in which the Lord has provided for her, and the authenticity, boldness, freedom, and confidence she now carries with her everyday because she knows the King.
After our conversation I thought about Job, who lost everything - his health, his children, his wealth, his reputation, the support of his friends, the support of his wife - and after pouring out his anguish, doubts, and anger to God, he concluded, "Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know....My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you."4
In my twenty plus years of ministry, I've been privileged to hear hundreds of stories of people coming to know the Lord, either initially or in a deeper and more palpable way. Almost every story has involved some form of pain and suffering, and yet the results of that suffering are so often described as inexpressible joy, peace, hope, gratefulness, and goodness.
Living in a world with evil and suffering is not only the means by which we come to know the breadth of God's magnificent attributes (part 3) and the means by which God transforms us into people who enjoy Him and glorify Him maximally (part 4). Suffering is also the primary means by which we come to know the depth of His loving kindness in a deep, personal, discernible, life-changing way. It is through His faithfulness in our suffering that we can declare with Job, "My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you!"
The next time I saw Joanna, who had endured rape and ridicule, I asked her this: "If you could go back and have an easy, comfortable, self-confident life in which you felt no need or desire for God, would you take it?" Her answer was an emphatic, "Absolutely not! I wouldn't give up knowing God for anything."
I agree. I'm ready to be done with today's trials, but I wouldn't trade yesterday's trials for anything because of what God has done through them. Soon, not only today's suffering but all suffering will be in the past for those who know the Lord. All that will remain of our pain is the fruit it has borne: an intimate and glorious relationship with the Lord; our Christ-like character; our gratefulness for God's good and perfect gifts, heightened all the more by our awareness of what we actually deserve; and our eternal happiness with the redeemed saints5 and the holy King of kings who is perfect, beautiful, and magnificent in every way.
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[1] Names have been changed to respect the privacy of individuals
[2] Kyle Idleman, The End of Me: Where Real Life in the Upside-Down Ways of Jesus Begins (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2015), p. 11-13.
[3] Not her real name
[4] Job 42:1-5; italics are mine
[5] People of every time and place who put their trust in Jesus to save them from the due penalty of their sins and to lead them into all righteousness; this includes those who lived before Jesus and put their trust in the coming Messiah
