In our last post, I (Robin) wrote about how we look at death.  After a discussion with a new friend, I realized that how we look at ‘good and bad’ also dramatically affects how we live.

We all know that there is a progression with life.  The older you get, the wiser you get.  With that knowledge progression comes a different perspective of what is bad.  For example, a child is distraught over not getting candy or cries profusely when a $3 plastic toy breaks.  The parent comforts the kid, however, she knows that the situation is really not ‘bad’.

The next level happens around adolescents/teens.  Pimples are the end of the world.  They are horrible. Then, older teens and college students have another set of good and bad.  I have counseled several college students lately that have struggled with losing a boyfriend or girlfriend.  Their world is crumbling all around them.  They are swimming in a sea of ‘bad’.  Again, as older adults, we look to these situations and think they aren’t that bad.

The reason we think things are not bad is because of our experience of much worse things.  When life gets progressively worse, then when we see minor issues: broken toys, pimples, and girlfriends and think of them as small hurdles.

So what happens to an adult when rape, incest, murder, disease, bankruptcy, suffering children or other haunting life situations happen?  What is our perspective  on life?  Especially, from a ‘God believing’, faith perspective… Why does God allow these ‘real’ bad things to happen?  How do we deal with them?

The truth is that they are bad, and God does allow them.

What is His reason for allowing them? Does he look down at us (when facing a huge challenge) and have the same perspective we do of our 4 year old when she is crying and not getting her way?  Does he allow it because he thinks it is not that bad, and we just need to get over it?

All those questions lead us to this… If he allows something like rape is that because he has seen something (in his all knowing power) much worse than rape and therefore, he doesn’t really think that we should fret over it?

No.  At some point there is a end to the ‘bad’ scale and getting over bad is not simply graduating to the next worse thing.  God is able to handle all bad things because he has a clear understanding of how Good He is.  At some point, we will find the ability to deal with difficulty when we get a better picture of the power of God…not more life experience.   The School of Hard Knocks does not have a solution for everything.

When we suffer and simply have no idea of how to deal with the pain, then we should rest in the fact that there is more God to know.  The good of His attributes are more powerful than the bad of situations.  If we aren’t living in that realm of consciousness, then we pray.  We pray for a better understanding and revelation of God before we pray for bad things to go away.  If we are more like God, then we understand like He understands.   We live in the truth that strength and power and are able to face any situation.

Sometimes, God’s power overturns wrong here on the earth and we experience a supernatural miracle.  The wrong is reversed.  At other times, God doesn’t reverse the wrong on earth but he gives us the grace to live through the situation.

Heaven is the ultimate culmination of God’s goodness and where all wrong is reversed.  Tears are dried.  Timothy Keller says in The Reason For God,

The Biblical view of things is Resurrection…not a future that is just a consolation for the life we never had but a restoration of the life you always wanted.  This means that every horrible thing that ever happened will not only be undone and repaired but will in some way make the eventual glory and joy even greater…

At the final scene of Lord of the Rings, Sam realizes that his friend Gandolf was not dead but alive.  He cries, “I thought you were dead!  But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue?”  The answer of  Christianity to that question is…yes.  Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost.

This is our hope now.  When we face the reality of our broken world, we find peace in the future destination of Heaven.  We pray “Maranatha”. Come ever so quickly, Lord Jesus.  We long for the presence of the Lord.  We long for more revelation of God’s attributes.  We desire to be more like Him.  And if that is where we find ourselves…where else would we want to be?