“I know that my Redeemer lives and that in the end he will rise again on earth.
And after my body is destroyed and without flesh, I will see God.
I will see it with my own eyes; myself, and no other!
How can I yearn for my heart in my chest?Job 19: 25-27 (NVI)
We keep going back to Job’s story because it still bothers us where we feel most irritating when the tests overwhelm us. I was attracted to Job in a new way a few years ago when a pastor friend and a close friend committed suicide. of our history, I’ll call you Steve.
He and his wonderful wife had experienced intense medical problems with their children. About a year after climbing the Matterhorn in Switzerland, this passionate athlete was hit by a train while searching through dense forest in the Rocky Mountains in the United States. amputated. After that, Steve suffered a “phantom pain”, in which his neurological system acted as if he was still suffering from the accident. He had to take high doses of black striped medication in order to get a few hours’ sleep each night.
Although we established a friendship in California, he had moved to the East Coast and I was a little relaxed at the thought of keeping in touch. Often, during Steve’s seizures, he should have been more involved. Now, I know that at least partly my unhook was due to the grotesque nature my friend had become, and that, of course, is a horrible thing to say. Steve had been a successful person, an athlete, who had embraced the whole world and now in perpetual anguish. As a child growing up in my parents’ nursing home, I had seen a similar phenomenon with my own eyes, as children practically abandoned their parents because they could not cope with their own mortality.
We live in this type of culture, where, despite quantum leaps in medical technology to prolong life, the elderly or those with terminal illnesses or severe disabilities (mental or physical) often suffer from loneliness. Health. Although we are Christians, we sometimes view sickness, illness, and death as random and meaningless events that must therefore be cured at all costs. Sometimes we forget that fall? deterioration of physical and mental health.
We face every day the reality that we are who we are now, but at the next moment we may be something else. A hopeful young professional, on his way to becoming a partner in the law firm where he works, while doing his Daily Career After Work is the victim of an accident, the driver crashes and flees. A mother who devotes her life to caring for her growing children is told she has terminal cancer. After twenty years of exemplary marriage, a husband wakes up and finds that his wife has left him alone with his children to live with another man. Are these some of the cases I’ve faced in my apartment?and now a fellow shepherd has brought tragedy too close to my comfort zone.
In any case, exhausted from spending who knows how many sleepless nights, dying for his already overworked family due to a girl with severe autism and hardly ever alert for the powerful drugs he was taking, Steve went to the garage and ended his life with carbon dioxide poisoning. His wife asked me to preach at the funeral.
Steve was a well-known pastor of a respected downtown church and it seemed that everyone had a theological theory as to why he was doing what he was doing and where he would end up in eternity as a result. Some have told the press that, based on his understanding of suicide, Steve would be doomed forever. In the midst of all this talk, Job’s story came to mind, and it was this story that I told that confusing day of Steve’s funeral.
Suicide is the last act of despair, are we full of the most varied emotions?Pity, sadness, anger, bewilderment, resentment? And we wondered how it was possible for things to get to this point We wondered how someone who created and preached the adequacy of the Word and God’s grace in the midst of the many tribulations of life could leave us like this on a summer afternoon. We ask ourselves, “If the gospel was not enough for him, can it be enough for me?What happens when Christianity fails?”
Our culture has begun to value only the practical, what works, every conviction, every idea is evaluated according to its usefulness: does it help raise my children ?, are you going to build a successful marriage?Does living a healthy life help you live? When an idea or belief doesn’t work, it’s easy to switch products. People often come to Christ with promises of “victory in Jesus. “Smiling people say how sad they were, but today they are full of joy, failed marriages recover, wayless children return to the narrow and right path, and depression disappears.
Of course, naive triumphalism was not Steve’s message. He did not see Christianity as an answer to all problems, nor did He adore Jesus as a “repairer of everything” but as a friend of sinners, a redeemer, a shepherd of his flock. I knew we were facing a deeper problem, fallen creatures, haven’t you dismissed earthly challenges as irrelevant or insignificant?He saw them from the right perspective of eternity. Even if life collapses, God remains God, his designs do not fail, and he demonstrated It by resurrecting the son of death. Although Christianity has no answer to all the problems of this life, the prospect of eternity certainly helps us to face these difficulties.
All we have to do is ask: Then why did my father, my brother, my husband, my friend and pastor kill himself?The old drama Job was a deeply devoted man of God. He was so jealous of his family that every time After many visits to his homes, Job offered sacrifices on his behalf for the return journey. Satan deceived God for his faithfulness, why would he not be faithful?After all, he has a haunted life! Are you happy, rich, wise, everyone in the house lives well?The ideal family of a Norman Rockwell postcard ?. Then God allowed Satan to test Job. It is impossible to avoid the facts of this case: God not only knew before Satan’s judgment, but also approved it (Job 1. 6-12). In this story, it is clear that Satan would not have access to Job if God had not allowed him to do so.
The next day, it was one disaster after another, and overnight Job lost everything that was precious to him. However, he replied, “I have left my mother’s womb naked and I will go. The Lord gave it, the Lord took it; Praise the name of the Lord!?(Job 1:21 NIrV) Job refused to accuse God of doing wrong.
In this book, Michael Horton addresses the problem and reality of evil, suffering and anguish in human life in the light of the theology of the cross, comparing it to the increasingly popular theology of glory. a robust theology of God’s providence and grace, and offers the reader the hope of speaking of Christ’s triumph in the Resurrection.
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