Where is God these days? Is he paying any attention to my life and needs? Does he know what’s going on in our lives?  In our families, churches, and neighborhoods? We hear in church that God rules the universe and knows every thought we think, and every act we do. So why is it that he seems so uninvolved with our practical needs? We pray, yet he hardly ever answers—or, for many of us, he never answers—so it’s hard to take him seriously. 

I suspect this exposes an unstated question shared by many Christians—and one that also keeps many non-believers from taking Christianity seriously: “Why is God silent?” Some ask if he even exists. What makes the silence even more troubling is that Christians constantly link love to God, as if his love for us is a basis for faith. Do love and language not go together? So the rhetoric of Christianity seems not to be matched by God himself. What is more, most legitimate claims about God speaking are from the distant past—located in events of 2000 or more years ago. Did God lose his voice back then? Does he really care for us if he never talks to us? 

Let me ask another question.  What is God’s point of view? Everything written so far has been biased by our human point of view, a viewpoint that requires God to meet our expectations. Given that God is greater than we are—as creator to creation—the question we need to ask instead is whether we are meeting his expectations.

And with that comes another question: have we been listening to the ways in which he is speaking? Is it possible that he is a great communicator who longs for us to listen him? Could it be that our sinful disinterest is really the problem? That, while having ears, we don’t hear; and while having eyes, we still don’t see?

Listen to God, for instance, speaking to a group of spiritual skeptics centuries ago: “when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen and when I called you, you did not answer” [Jer. 7:13]. The people of that era were blaming God for not listening to them, but from God’s point of view they were actually ignoring him.  And God certainly did not quit trying to get through to humans after the era of Jeremiah. Later on he went so far as to send us his Son to express himself in terms humans could literally grasp. Consider, for instance, the Son’s title in John 1:1&14 where he was introduced as God’s “Word” made flesh.

Let me press that point. God made us to be communicators because it represented his own relational image. Our own ability to communicate is based in God’s eternal Triune relationality—a state of being in which the Son is the expression of all that the Father is. That is, he is the Word for God and the Word who is God. When he was transfigured on the mountain for the three apostles to see—fully exposed in his divine glory for a few moments—the Father underscored the point of the event by proclaiming aloud from heaven, “listen to him!” But the fact is, most people in his own day did not listen to him.

I suppose many of us would excuse ourselves from that crowd—I would!—by aligning ourselves with the disciples who did listen to him. We, after all, are on the side of Jesus. Our only complaint is that he no longer speaks to us as he did in the times he lived on earth. We would certainly listen to him if he came back today!

Or would we? Here’s my challenge. First, begin by considering what Jesus said to a group of his so-called “disciples” in John 8:30. “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” The response of this group was remarkable: they immediately disagreed with Jesus! You can see for yourself how the event unfolded by reading the chapter. What I want to point to is an axiom Jesus expressed in this debate: “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here” (8:42). The reason Jesus gave for their not listening is that they had the desires of a different “father”, namely the devil.

Is God really silent? No. We have the words of Jesus, who is God the Son, written in the gospels; and his teaching stands behind the entire New Testament as its guiding impulse.  Jesus also assured the listeners of his day that the Old Testament Scriptures reveal him as well. This Bible, with both the Old and New Testaments, is now readily available to us.

The critical question is whether the “love” for Jesus, as a product of our being children of God, is an active motivation for our listening to him.  That axiom of John 8 was cited more than once.  See, for instance, John 5:42, where Jesus confronted the Bible College and Seminary professors of his day for not seeing how the Old Testament pointed to him. Why were they blind? Jesus answered: “But I know that you do not have the love of God within you.” These were men who knew their Bibles, but not the God of the Bible.

The second part of my challenge is this: read your Bible. Read it boldly, as if it is the main way God intends to share himself with us in this day and age. As if it is the boldest, clearest, and most tangible expression of God’s heart to be found on earth. Read it all the way through in just a few weeks, as if God is offering his deep concerns and purposes to you. Read it as a love letter.

When we get to heaven I expect this to happen—just a guess, mind you, but an informed guess—that God will separate religious people in the same way he addresses the non-religious people. Those who love what Jesus says, what he stood for, and what was written about him under the Spirit’s direction (i.e. the Bible) will be asked to form one group. Then he will have those who may have held important positions in their church, and even those who held high degrees in theology, but who didn’t really treat the Bible as a relational resource—i.e. “abiding in his word”—to move into a group that is filled with those who ignored the Scriptures because of their more overt dissaffection. These are all the ‘non-lovers-of-God’ (both religious and non-religious versions) who are ever ready to defend themselves for not reading the Bible because they are too busy. Too many good television shows to watch, perhaps? Or church meetings to attend?

The final addendum to my challenge is this: if you are one who has complained that God is silent, despite our having constant access to a Bible that shares his heart with us in some of the most remarkable and effective ways possible, then consider doing this: ask him, in a brief prayer, to open the eyes of your heart to begin seeing what you may not have seen before—that he loves you. Then begin to read the Bible with the passion it deserves.

Here’s my prediction: with that passion every reader will begin to see God’s point of view, that he is a great communicator and he wants us to listen to all he has to offer. The heart of his message is that his Son is wonderful and that we should listen to him!

This weekend I’m in beautiful Hawai’i to teach Romans at the Bible Institute of Hawaii.  I’m refreshed, as always, to have renewed fellowship with its director, Clive Cowell and Maya his wife.  Clive has been gracious enough to supply me with a second guest entry for this site (see his earlier entry in the April 2009 archive).  He touches on the New Testament imagery that helps us understand our relationship with God in Christ: read and enjoy! 

Images dominate our world these days, whether film or footage, broadcast or blog, Netflicks or news.  These images are many times as obtuse as they are overwhelming (well, except the Spreading Goodness blog). 

When it comes to images of the Church, however, the New Testament provides us six beautifully encouraging images that are certainly different, but have a wonderful thread running through them.  The Church is seen as:  1) the body of Christ; 2) His building or temple; 3) His household or family; 4) His flock; 5) a plant or vine; and finally 6) the bride of Christ.  Whichever image grabs your attention most, each speaks of a relationship:  us in Him with love central and circulating throughout. 

A closer look reveals some insights:

As members of one body, we are members one of another.  There is connection (Rom 12:4-5).

As His building or temple, we are joined together growing into a holy temple in the Lord.  There is a bond (Eph 2:21-22).

As his household or family, we are encouraged that even though we were strangers we are now fellow citizens with saints (Eph 2:19), and as servants we are now set free (John 8:35-36).

As His flock, we have the good Shepherd.  He cares for us so much He lays down His life for us (John 10:14-16).

As a plant or vine, through Him we can bear much good fruit.  We work alongside Him as we are connected to Him (John 15:1-8).

As the bride of Christ, we have a spiritual union with Him (Ephesians 5:30-32).

I purposefully placed them in a particular sequence.  I hope you see the progressing connections from individual block, to building, to household, to servanthood under loving authority, to fruitful connection, to final union.  However, one image compels us like none of the others do. 

See, it’s one thing to be a member of a group or part of a building, even part of a household, but quite another that Christ picks us out to be His bride.  This means we are more than sheep – even when we act like it – and more than grapes – even when we whine (pun intended).  We are His bride! 

The imagery concerning His church as found in the Bible is such that there is a very real sense of order and beauty, but if we take away the imagery of the Bride of Christ, we might find ourselves lacking something, or worse unwittingly autonomous. 

How so?  We could just be sitting in our household, even with friends, might even call it church, be eating from the fruits of our labor and even following the commands of a shepherd, and as much as all these are indeed connected in Christ, there is the distinct possibility of no real union. 

While it is also true that we can be as adulterous as the nation of OT Israel, our union is confidently sealed with His love.  Christ who has picked us out from all other imagery determines to proclaim His love to us.  I don’t want to be just a building block, although I am; rather I desire to be His bride.

Every Easter we are reminded that because Christ died for us we have new life.  As Paul said, “We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones” (Eph 5:30), and because of this “shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh” (Eph 5:31). 

Why does he connect these two verses?  According to Paul, the parallels are profound.  “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (Eph 5:32).

Paul is showing us that we have an attachment to Him and a strength of affection greater than any union that exists in earthly marriages, or indeed any response to the other images of the church. We are His bride, we are His church.  In a real sense, we are in a dress rehearsal here on earth for our eternal marriage with Him in heaven. I’m encouraged that so many are participating in this “rehearsal” even on the Spreading Goodness blog.

Here in my neck of the woods, one friend put it to me this way in a class I am teaching, “I got to see [scripture] as something so much more than a guidebook, a textbook, a manual… I now see it as God’s love letter to us all.”  What a great way to continue as we get ready for our relationship in heaven.

Let’s continue to participate together as we all grow in our understanding and relationship with Him.  I am convinced that as we respond more fully in our devotion to Christ and His ministry, we will be even more passionate about Him, his love letters and the our desire to share Him.   I trust you find that an outstanding image.

Long ago I realized that I participate in a widespread form of relational abuse.  Why?  Because, like so many others, I realize that it makes life work.  We come to see it as an ordinary fact of life.  But it shames me and I can never be ”okay” with it.

The abuse is relational pragmatism. Or, more to the point, it views people as useful resources: nothing more, nothing less. If we know someone who has things we want or need—tools, appliances, money—or if they have special skills we appreciate, the pragmatists tend to give them time and attention. In fact it’s proverbial that people with unique skills and resources never lack for friends.

Every sphere of life is included.  Among those hardest hit are the relationships imposed on us by life events: our in-laws or fellow employees, for instance, are part of the social contracts of life—included in the fine print of a given contract. If someone has a less-than-stellar boss who, whatever their flaws, writes the job reviews and controls promotions, they tend to be treated as good friends. These are relationships of necessity—but not of desire. Call them “pretend-friendships.” They represent steps to success that need to be endured. Often, after success comes, and they’re no longer needed, they’re no longer endured. 

Every relationship has a purpose or set of purposes. I’ll expand on that below. And among those purposes is fellowship: each of us needs at least a few relationships that are more or less unconditional. Often we find such friends in shared circumstances such as school, work, or family; or in sharing common interests, as in clubs or small groups. Call this group our “true friends.” If we ever move from one locale to another the need to find some additional true friends is crucial to feeling at home. In looking back I now see that in my college days finding true friends was as important as finding a career pathway. 

But some mishaps can occur. I remember just settling into seminary life in Chicago years ago. I was as lonely as an old-time lighthouse keeper when a young couple, each gifted with winsome smiles, invited me to dinner at their place. I melted and started opening some heart space for them. Until after the meal when they asked, “Would you mind if we share a very special opportunity with you?” It was a marketing moment I hadn’t seen coming. Let me say right away that the opportunity certainly had some merits, but that wasn’t my hope for that night. I suspected I was mainly being viewed as a potential brick in the pyramid of their success. My worst fears came true when, after I very politely declined the offer, I never saw much of them again. 

Which brings me to a comment on social contracts by which we view people as objects of a contract or elements of a social system.  With this pragmatism in play we measure each person by the benefit they bring to the system. This is the stuff that formed unions as an attempt to defend against abuses. This pragmatism is often expressed through callous choices that come with staff reductions; or by offering unlivable wages and work conditions. People, in pragmatic and utilitarian work settings are reduced to machines. The financial bottom line is absolute.

The same pragmatism has slipped into the most fundamental of all relations: marriage. How many marriages, for instance, have broken up as one spouse tells the other, “you aren’t meeting my needs.” I recall one old ballad in which the crooner bemoans such a breakup: “you don’t bring me roses anymore.” This has spread into churches, too, as today marriages are often viewed by pastors and members as contractual events with certain contractual escape clauses. In the past a man and woman, when married, were held to be indivisibly one in a divine act of irreversible ontology. Theirs was a triune union [as husband, wife, & Spirit] as sacred as God’s own triune unity.

But let us be practical now. Most of us, if we are honest, have three types of relationships: the real, the potential, and the pragmatic. What defines a real friend is one who sees us, mutually, as one of their “real” friends—sharing common concerns and values. On the other end of the scale are our mutually-pragmatic friends—those we use and who use us. At the severely broken end of the spectrum these bonds have the weight of tissues during hayfever season: of very special value for a moment or two before being discarded. 

We should ask, then, how and where sin is in play here. Is it wrong, in God’s eyes, to arrange a pragmatic exchange of goods and services with others, yet without treating those we work with as real friends? Jesus, after all, did not give himself in such broad terms to everyone. He had three in his inner circle of friends, then twelve, and a few others such as Lazarus, Mary, Martha, and so on. 

Let me invite readers to read through the Bible as a whole with this question in mind. I promise: some huge insights will come of it. Let me offer, as a teaser, some highlights from my own readings. God made us to share, strictly, in real friendships. Why? Because that is how he exists eternally—in a mutual, eternal, glorious embrace of Father and Son, by the Spirit. He then created us in this, his relational image, to embrace him and each other from the heart and by the indwelling Spirit who pours out love to and through us. 

He also designed us to be inadequate so we need each other. So there must be ongoing commitments among us to exchange goods and services. But the Bible treats these as gifts to be exchanged out of mutual devotion. While he does not ask us to try to bond with every other person in the world—he made us as very limited people—he does call for us to be fully devoted to those we do bond with: to love them as we enjoy being loved. This has remarkable benefits: it gives us a basis to trust others, and to become fully authentic ourselves. What would it be like if each of us shared deeply with a dozen or so other friends who, in turn, were equally and unconditionally devoted to our personal welfare? We might find some security. Others might want to join us. 

This fits the Scriptures. As the head of our shared body, the church, Jesus told our forbearers: “By this all men will know you are my disciples: that you love each other.” How much love and for how long? He answered, “No greater love has any man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.”

But, I hear some of us thinking, all of this theology is nice but it’s not very practical. Each of us has our own concerns that need to be met, programs to run, people to direct, and if we wait for some distant utopia to form, nothing will get done. So it is that many Christian communities—both churches and ministries—are famously practical but not famously devoted to each other in love.

How did Jesus do? Read the gospels again and see for yourself. I think, from my reading, of the way the disciples of Jesus treated the two blind men on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem. The two were shouting and making a nuisance of themselves, so the disciples told them to shut up. I suspect the sighted disciples were anxious to get on with the trip. Jesus, however, stopped and did the healing. Or the time when the apostles just returned from a missions trip, anxious to get to the retreat center to rest and to share their stories. Jesus, on the way, saw the crowds all around them who were hungry and needy. So he interrupted the retreat and fed them. Why? Because he had compassion.

So here is the question of the day. Which type of relationship do each of us have with Christ? Real, potential, or pragmatic? Let me confess where I am too much of the time: in my utilitarian ways I treat him as my great resource in the sky.

Others do the same. Consider many prayer meetings:

“God, will you please ______ us!” [fill in: bless, refresh, stir, encourage, heal, strengthen, etc., etc.] All of which set out our own benefits as front and center. It goes on from there: “And please be with ______, and help us to ______.” God is the giver; we are the perpetual takers.

Also, I think of sermons where very little is said about God—speaking about how great, attractive, and winsome he is in his triune reality—and great chunks of time are devoted to the “application” of the text. It’s as if the whole point of Scripture is to set up behavioral modification events with our welfare (and compliance) in view.

Finally, here’s a bottom line question: does God enjoy being in a “pretend-friendship” with so many of us? Does he like a contract-relationship where he supplies eternal fire insurance and we try to pay him his weekly premiums with a visit to church and the giving of a few bucks?

And, if not, what would a “real” friendship of mutual delight be like with God? I think he might like it. After all, it’s what the Father and Son, by the Spirit, have been sharing back and forth from eternity past. Lots of mutual love and glory going back and forth. Is anyone willing to try joining in that exchange, with a further openness to share it with still others? I’d like to. And—assuming we have the Spirit—he is ever active in pouring that love out from the font of the Godhead and into our hearts (Romans 5:5).

Recently I was visiting with a friend who was once a pastor. His marriage is broken—already into years of separation with no restoration in sight—yet he longs to be together with his wife again. In our conversation he touched on the promise of Romans 8:28—”for those who love God all thing work together for good”—as a confusing text. His frank prayer is familiar to many of us, even if our circumstances may differ: “My God, how can anything good come out of this?!” 

I won’t try to offer an answer here but I do want to probe the question he raised. To begin let me confess that I never feel so limited as in moments when a tender word or some wise counsel might soothe, heal, and restore. I tend, instead, to share the lessons of a professor and lecturer. By now I know that is not what is needed! So I sit silently, pondering the problem, aching with and for my friends. And I pray. 

So allow me to think aloud, still pondering our conversation. Maybe there’s a counselor who will read this and be stirred to help this dear couple, or others like them. This post will be very brief and simply suggestive. Other thoughts are invited by readers. 

I started my reflections by considering the broadest biblical frame possible—looking to the accounts in Genesis and in Revelation as the beginning and the end of the present age. In both books sin and pain are paired realities. Before the fall there was no pain or death. There was no distrust. There was no rejection or fear. Pain began with sin. Even ordinary illnesses—or any form of physical suffering—are linked in the Bible to Adam’s fall. Earthly catastrophes including cyclones, fires, earthquakes, and tsunamis, are all linked in the Bible to the fall: as the groaning of a cursed cosmos, cursed to a slow death because of Adam’s sin. Yet in the end, at the conclusion of the book of Revelation, we find that every tear will be dried. The curse will be lifted. Suffering and sorrow will flee away. A new heaven and earth will replace the old. 

Huge amounts are written in the balance of the Bible on the collective issues of pain, suffering, and God’s providence. Providence is the common label for the theme of Romans 8:28—addressing God’s successful oversight and interventions in a world filled with sin and pain. 

In the broadest consideration we turn to the hope of eternity: the answer offered by God’s final judgments and the restoration that Revelation promises us. A clear application of this answer is offered in the faith chapter of Hebrews, in 11:39-40. 

And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. 

The point here, in a context of those whose lives ended badly yet without their faith being lost—some killed, sawn in two, some destitute, some afflicted—seems to be that the fabric of God’s overall tapestry has yet to be completed, so the happy final viewing must wait until others, ourselves included, are woven into the whole and thus bring it to completion. What is assumed throughout is that for all who live by faith there is a happy ending that will make sense at last: the “promise” will be finally received. 

Another insight, using a narrower frame of reference, is that God is not as interested in our stability, security, and comfort as we are. As we live in the capsized, upside-down world of Adam’s fall, we are not meant to feel at home. But we are assured that God never fails to use sin as an unintended (by Satan, that is) source of benefit for his followers. The story of Joseph in Genesis is remarkable in that respect. Two lines of narrative run in tandem: God’s blessings and Joseph’s miseries! Read it and see. God gives Joseph dreams of a wonderful future and, as a result, his brothers hate him and consider how best to be rid of him. He becomes a slave to Potiphar. He is falsely charged of attempted rape and sent to prison. Years go by. And, with these misadventures the alternate narrative continues to report that “God blessed him in all he did”. Our impulse is to shout at the text, “Well, then, God, get him out of there!” In the end God does intervene, but only after more than a decade has gone by. Joseph, in the end, was satisfied with God’s care and able to separate the two narratives when he spoke to his brothers afterwards: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20). 

The same sort of double dimensions are found in the stories of Job and the man born blind in John’s gospel (chapter 9). Both Job and the blind man are forced to endure some very, very difficult experiences in life. Yet in both cases we discover the forces of good and evil are being distinguished in the process: Satan and the “friends” in Job are linked; and the skeptical leaders who harangued the newly-healed blind man in John 9, are exposed and diminished in the stories.  Job and the blind man are seen as faithful.

At other times we see God allowing the people he loves to experience harsh judgments in order for them to feel the weight of their sin—the book of Habakkuk is a gritty summary of God’s willingness to allow the sinful attitudes and activities of one group (the Chaldeans) to crush another group of sinful people (the people of Judah). The ultimate outcome is that, after the Babylonian exile, the persistent habit of whoring after foreign idols ended for God’s people after they were restored. This theme of moral repair is also captured in the New Testament: “whom the Lord loves, he disciplines.” 

I will end here. The triad of our title for this post—”pain, patience, and providence”—is as much as I can bring into some sort of focus for now. We suffer, but we need to be patient. Why? Because God is providentially ruling over all our circumstances so that, for those of us who are with him—”who love him”—everything is sure to be explained in ways that make sense. Even those things that are clearly wrong, broken, painful, and difficult to live with. That’s what it is to live by faith and not by sight. But, you can be sure, I’ll be more than curious when we get to heaven to see that final tapestry!