Praying God's Wisdom: Asking the Hard Questions

 

He alone is my protector and deliverer. He is my refuge; I will not be upended. Psalm 62:6

 This verse seems so simple, so straightforward, and yet it brings up questions, deep concerns in my mind, and then these lead to doubt and shame. Rather than letting things sit there, I’m going to wrestle through them with you. Maybe some of my musings will speak to you. Maybe, at the least, they will encourage you to not shove down doubts and concerns deep into your soul but bring them out to be examined. Our God is not so small that He cannot handle our questions!

 My first thought was to the beginning of the verse where it says, “He alone is my protector and deliverer.” This sparked a wondering in my mind as to whether it was inappropriate to do things in our lives to protect ourselves – locking our doors or using a security system, subscribing to insurance to cover harmful situations (home, auto, travel, etc). I even acknowledged that I tend to think of my husband and my son as my first line of defense here at home. Is this bad? Am I not leaning on God as my only protector? Then the thought came to me (from God?) that the author of this psalm also had earthly protections in place. King David had a vast army including his “Mighty Men” which were comprised of “The Three” and “The Thirty,” all of which were mighty warriors dedicated to David and who performed incredible feats in his service (2 Samuel 23:8-39, 1 Chronicles 11:10-47). David said he relied on God alone as his protector, and yet he employed these Mighty Men alongside over a million troops (1 Chronicles 21:5). So, did he think it was inappropriate to have earthly protections? Certainly not! Likewise, I think that God has given us things on earth that He uses for our protection – like my husband or even insurance. What this psalm does communicate though is that David ultimately believed that it was God in charge of his protection.

 He knew that God could give him victory over his enemies (1 Samuel 17:41-52), warn him of trouble coming his way (2 Samuel 12), and even seemingly withhold His protection for a time (2 Samuel 15:13-17:22). I say seemingly because while it was going on David felt like he was done for (2 Samuel 15:14), but he still relied on God and trusted the outcome to Him (2 Samuel 15:25-26), and ultimately David was restored to his position as king (2 Samuel 19:14). But even this eventual rectifying of the situation came at a dire cost. David lost his son. Yes, it was the one who had come against him, but that didn’t mean that David no longer loved him. In fact, he nearly brought down the morale of the entire army, the entire country, with his weeping (2 Samuel 18). So, did God protect David? Yes. Did God make it so that no harm came to David? No. Can we rely on God to protect us? Certainly. Can we trust that He will keep us from all harm and nothing bad will happen to us? Definitely not. We are never promised this last one. We’d like to believe it, but no where in the Bible does it say that if you believe in God nothing bad will ever happen to you. That’s just not the way that life works.

 And so we come to the question that lingers in the back of every mind, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” We want life to be fair. We want there to be a reward for our good service, for obeying the law and doing the “right thing.” We feel entitled to it in fact. We want bad things to happen to bad people, for them to be punished. This question has been asked since the beginning of biblical recorded history. The book of Job is widely accepted as the first book of the Bible ever written. Its events take place during the age of the Patriarchs, described in the book of Genesis, but Genesis was actually written by Moses as much as 400 years later. In my research this morning, I happened upon this excellent blog post that I highly recommend concerning the existence and reason behind suffering according to the book of Job. In it the author summarizes two main points posed in the book: “Job claimed that God has fallen asleep at the wheel in running the universe, and because of this divine neglect he’s had to endure unjust suffering”¹; and then, Job “demands that God uses the strict principle of retribution to reward every good deed and punish every bad one”¹. I’ll let you read the post to see the author’s understanding of the whole thing, but in essence, we’re just too finite to get it. What we see as something “bad” happening, isn’t necessarily. I love this explanation from the author:

When Job critiqued God’s knowledge and ability, it was based on the limited horizons of his life experience. His brain has only a finite capacity to understand cause and effect from his point of view. God’s perspective is infinitely broader, which means he may allow or orchestrate events that from one perspective look morally suspicious, or just plain wrong. However, from a wider perspective, those same events look entirely different. It’s similar to a child observing their parent throw a chair at a window to shatter it. From a six-year-old’s point of view, this is precisely the kind of behavior that would earn a time-out, grounding, or worse. But if the parent knows there’s smoke coming from the adjacent room and that this window was the only way out, all of a sudden the broken window becomes a life-saving escape route. The parent has a wider range of available information that makes the same action (throwing a chair out the window) become the morally necessary thing to do. ¹

Here’s the Thing: Do I have the clear and ultimate answer to the hardest question posed by mankind since the beginning of time? No. No I don’t. But I know the One who does, and I trust Him implicitly. I recognize that my limited understanding and perspective don’t compare to God’s all-sufficient, omnipotent omnipresence. I don’t know it all. I don’t even know most of it. He gets it. I don’t. But He has gifted me with a relationship with Himself, a connection to the all-powerful God of the universe. He has invited me to trust Him. When I don’t understand. When I hurt. When I mourn. I trust Him. As Peter said in John 6:68, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

1 - God’s Response to Job’s Questions About Suffering