Today's teaching at church was from the tares and wheat parable of Jesus and the story of Daniel in the lion's den. The common theme was the presence of pain and how are we to make sense of it in our life. The parable of the tares and wheat reveals a few things - evil is with us until the end of time, often we can't tell evil from good until fruit is born, and Jesus is the One who sows good (wheat) while Satan sows evil (tares). Daniel found himself in a difficult situation (den of lions) because those in the world jealous of him contrived against him with evil intent, but evil was not more powerful than God's purpose.
Some points were made that raised some questions for me. One point that causes people to doubt about God is that evil exists while God is Sovereign and all powerful. Another was that pain obviously exists even for the Kingdom dweller and that while Scripture explains how God uses pain in our life to strengthen our faith, God is somewhat silent on His role in the source of our pain. Both of these points seemed to suggest that pain itself is evil.
I do not believe that our pain is evil. What is evil is our desire to get our needs met from the world around us, subjecting us to the disappointment and hurt that comes when the world doesn't cooperate so well. While there are forces of evil at work in our world, evil receives power as our flesh influences us to seek our well being from something in our environment and not from God's redemptive work of Grace. Our human nature wishes to equate pain with evil ignoring God's perspective.
While the sermon on Daniel today was quite a nice picture of Grace, the Reflection for today's service was from Iain Duguild's book "Daniel". The quote from his book went something like this - "God is not committed to our comfort. He is committed to sanctifying us and demonstrating His own glory in and through us and very often, that commitment means He will subject our earthen vessels to pressures that certainly would shatter us, were His Grace not sufficient for us .... His wonderful plan for your life is to sanctify you through trials and tribulations."
I say, "WHAT?" His wonderful plan is making us whole by the redemptive work of the Cross, not to scrub us clean (many theologians view of progressive sanctification) by inflicting pain on us. Jesus said "Oh the JOY of being rejected by the world for His sake because then we are operating in His Kingdom." Daniel was not sanctified by the horrible fear of being eaten by lions. he was sanctified much earlier when he was set apart from others by God for God's purposes. His pain was not evil God thrust on Him to clean him up, in fact the difficult circumstances may not have even been painful for Daniel as he trusted God for his eternal well being. Pain would have been fear that exist absent faith.
The human imperative is (1) to see our life as a progression toward Holiness rather than one where we appropriate the Holiness we have already received when God claimed us (definitive sanctification), and (2) to determine good vs evil based on whether our circumstances are difficult (pain) or favorable (happiness). This is not God's view!!!
While there are tares that coexist in the world with wheat, the wheat is not destroyed or even weakened by the tares. In addition, its not the tares that make the wheat bear good fruit, its the SEED!! Wheat is sanctified to be wheat because of its seed, not because it dukes it out with the tares.
Just some of my pondering today .....
More about the human imperative in my book
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