Bob Zomermaand - Welcome back. We're going to be discussing some of what Professor Clouser has been talking about in terms of the problem of suffering and how that's an objection to a belief in God. Throughout my life, I was a pastor in local churches and church planter for around 30 years, and in the midst of that, the problem of suffering was a constant thing that was associated with what I did. Pastoral Care was something that I was always involved in. Every week there were people to go see, and every week, there were people who would say, Why? Why does God let this happen? Why does God make me go through this? I would visit widows who had who had lived for 45 years, 50 years with their husband and and suddenly he drops dead of a heart attack, and she is left totally bereft. And I'd go to visit. And the question always was, Why does God do this to me? What? Why? What? What is going on? I had one occasion where the wife died in and the husband, you know, for whatever reason, had always depended on his wife for really the basic necessities of life. He he didn't know how to pick out his clothes for the day, she had always laid them out for him. He He didn't even know how to put toothpaste on his toothbrush, because she had always done that either but, but what happened then is this man was just he was left bewildered and always asking, why, why didn't I die first? You know, would? It would have been so much better if I had died first. And and so, there's been so many occasions. And in the in the course on chaplaincy, kind of an introduction to chaplaincy that I wrote for CLI, one of the the big things that we talk about in there is that as a chaplain, you're going to run into people all the time who are asking, Why? Why? Why is this going on? And one of the things I try to do in there is to talk about a theology of presence, where what we as as pastors, as chaplains, do is we come and we stand alongside someone, and we share in their suffering. We're present with them, and just being with them makes a difference, unless we're like the Friends of Job who came and they were but but I find it interesting, they came in for seven days, they were silent because they saw how they were very powerful. At the beginning, the suffering was yes, but then then they start out answering the question, why, and and now, really, the book of Job was kind of long for people who are, who are struggling, what? How? How could we give advice, for example, to people who are chaplains and they're they're making a hospital call, and the people are just saying, why? How would you suggest that they could use the book of Job? 


Dr. Clouser -  I think that when you ask a practical question about how to approach people, there's no one answer or one way to do it that fits all. You have to know the people. To some extent, you have to know how, just how they're reacting to what and what troubles them the most. Lot of times when things go wrong, they pick on something and mention it a lot, and it's not the main thing that's bothering him. It's a peripheral thing. And so there's no one way that to do it, but you certainly can take the lessons that we know, that we learned from Job, and you can say to someone, I've done this too, and say to someone, well, yes, we don't know why God allows things like this, but we do know that he stands by us, and he'll never let go of us, and he's going to keep his promises. He's going to keep he'll be keeping his promise to your husband or wife, they are with him now, and they'll never suffer anymore. It, all we can do is speak some words of comfort and reassurance about the love that God has promised that is not going to go away, and it's not countermanded or overwhelmed by the bad things that he does allow to happen, and we just don't know why. 


Bob Zomermaand - And now, when you say it's not countermanded or overwhelmed, I think one of the biggest things for us to keep in mind, as we care about people, is to remind them that God's big enough to handle Yes, even if people are angry, God big enough to handle their anger, yes, just 


Dr. Clouser -  recently, a very good friend of my daughter's was phoned up to tell about the news that her son was dead. He overdosed, and she just went to pieces. I attended that funeral, and I gave her a hug afterward, and then I wrote her a letter, and I said, it's okay to be angry with God. God understands that you have reason to be if you weren't angry, you didn't love him, and I know you love Peter and but you know Peter's with him now, and he won't suffer anymore, and you'll be reunited. And I know right now that doesn't, that doesn't do it, so that's okay to be angry. You'll get over it 


Abby Dominiak -  like, you know how God has gotten angry at various times, you know, throughout the Bible. So you're saying that it is okay for us to be angry at God in the same way, 


Dr. Clouser -  that's right. In a way, being angry is an act of faith. I know you're there, and I know you did this. I had a friend one time. I have my longest standing friend studied in Europe for quite a while, and he got two PhDs, and he came back, and he's looking for a job. And I tried to help him find one. At one point, he wanted to go into college teaching, and he was interviewed at, I think it was McGill it was a Canadian university, a very good one, and they had narrow that he was in the top 10 that they picked, they interviewed him, and then he was in the top five, and they interviewed him again, and then they called him for a third interview, because it was between him and one other candidate. So he went back again, like you can imagine that, yeah, sure. The anticipation at this point, and the university picked the other fella. So he went through all that, and then didn't get the job, and the next day, you're sitting at breakfast, and he said to his wife, you'll have to say grace, because I just can't. She said, Well, Lord, we're still speaking to you, but barely. Yeah, no, but that's where it is. That's right. It's a real relation, yeah, and that, and that God doesn't fault us for being human. 


Bob Zomermaand - Well, that's just it. You know, it's part of our being human. I once heard the definition of anger as being that emotional response when we sense that something precious to us is threatened, you know, and our relationship with God often feels threatened and and we'll get angry. And sometimes it feels like God is the one that's threatening it, yeah, sure, and the appropriate use of that anger then is to express it, yes, sure, 


Abby Dominiak -  yeah. And I think it's true too. It's like you get more mad at someone the more you love them. If they hurt you got a lot. So when you feel 


Dr. Clouser -  furious, as best just to express that, yeah, and ask for help to get past it. Yeah, yeah. 


Abby Dominiak -  I guess I'm curious. Okay, so I had a friend ask me this, and I kind of tried to answer, but I'm curious of you to a better answer. So they'll say, sometimes in the Bible, you know, in the Psalms, it'll say, you know, the wicked will perish, and the righteous will, you know, prosper. And it almost feels like, you know, prosper on this earth, not just in the future kind of thing. But then, in the same way, it's, you know, a lot, you know, they're going to suffer, we're going to sometimes have its heart of everybody. So it's like, how do you kind of connect it? Where it's like, oh, we are going to have times where prosper. We're going to have times where we're suffering. Or, I don't know, I just wish I had a better way to kind of explain why both of them are said so much, and I get they coincide. But you know, 


Dr. Clouser -  I think that part of the answer anyway is that the psalms are being written by by people, and that people has been called by God and is following God, and God dwells in their temple. God lives there with them, and they are thinking about the prosperity of the nation, of the people as a whole, that God will protect and care for his people. And so you get terms like prosper. I mean, it doesn't mean if we believe in God, we're all be rich, or we should believe if we want to be rich, that's not it, because they had the poor among them too, and they had laws about taking care of the poor, so everyone was obliged to do that. But yes, it's often given expression in that way, but you have to think it comes out of a nation state that was called to bear God's covenant and be the messenger and the servant through whom the rest of the world would would receive redemption, yeah, and so there's, there's a lot going on there that doesn't apply. Doesn't carry over for a Christian today, the church does not replace Israel. Christians are grafted into Israel. The church is our organization, but we don't think that it's got to prosper, as though it's an entity to which we belong, that, you know, it's an important one, but it can get me it did its best, some of its best work when it was very persecuted and very poor, yeah, and that's in God's hands too. So it doesn't have to be prosper in that old timey sense. The Psalms also have lots of crying out where your people are. Look what's going on. Do you see what they're doing? Help Us? And sometimes God does, and sometimes not. 


Bob Zomermaand - A few years ago, I was working in this one office and and there was regularly a Jewish guy who came through, and he was, he was really quite a devout Jewish guy. And at one point, he said, we were talking about, you know, people say, Man, you want to be really, really proud, you know, proud or excited. You're part of God's chosen people. And he said, I'd like to swap and then see what you think. 


Dr. Clouser -  I've heard that from Jewish people, yeah, why do we have to be here chosen people? That's a terrible burden. It is a burden. 


Bob Zomermaand - And and so there is, there is a sense, then, of how we need to understand that now, one of the, one of the people that I have learned a lot from over the years of Abraham Heschel, does that ring? Writer? Good he talked about in my servants proud of the pathos of God, that God suffers with us. Yes, that's right. And so 


Dr. Clouser -  that's a big part of Christian doctrine, because God comes incarnate and suffers right next to us. I had, I was attending a conference, philosophy conference, Philosophy of Religion in Canada. Remember where? And I'm walking in, into the main dining room and with another fellow who is a Jewish representative of some organization, and I was talking about that suffering business, and he said, Yeah, you know what we say? We say to God, you ought to come down here and see what it's like. We've got we've got tough. We have this and this and this. And I said, funny, you should mention that that's what we think happened. He laughed. He thought that was really funny, yeah. 


Bob Zomermaand - And yet, that's really something that's so, you know, God came down and shared our suffering. That's right. And, and I think that that's part of how then the the objections, you know, when it's a problem of undeserved suffering, well, but God joins us. 


Dr. Clouser -  I said, that's another dimension that the New Testament adds to that that's not there for Job, but there was a reason for his suffering. He became the example for all time, for all people. Yeah, about how to confront this question, the problem of evil. And so there's a there was a reason for his it accomplished a great deal. Sometimes we suffer. We don't see how it accomplishes anything except to make us miserable, 


Bob Zomermaand – right. And you know, in the book of Job and in that particular place, if all of you go there and look it up in the Hebrew, you'll find that the text is corrupt. They say the text that my Redeemer lives, yes, and to be able to say that, and that's the best reconstruction that the. Scholars have been doing. I know that my Redeemer lives and to come down to that, yes, often is the most secure and the most uplifting spot to find ones out. Sure, it's rough down here, down in the pits, but I know that my Redeemer lives, 


Dr. Clouser -  and the rest of that goes and the worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh, I will see God, and that's what inspired Benjamin Franklin to write one of the cleverest epitaphs I've ever seen. I wish I had it memorized, but it's roughly like this. Here lies Ben Franklin, printer. Like the pages of an old book, tattered and torn, but the work will not be lost. It will be reissued, a new and better edition by the author. Okay, yeah, like that, yeah, yeah, that's close. 


Bob Zomermaand - It's not issued in a new and better edition by the author. And so when, when have you got anything else? 


Abby Dominiak -  kind of says like, we won't suffer beyond what we cannot bear kind of thing. It sometimes feels like people can suffer so much that they, you know, they go and commit suicide, or they go, it seems like a spot where they couldn't bear the suffering that they were given. That's 


Dr. Clouser -  that's not quite what the verse says that you have in mind. God won't allow us to be tempted more than we can bear. But there is suffering that can be just brutal and overwhelming, and it doesn't do anybody any good. It debilitates someone. It makes them. It makes a person hate themselves. There is such but still, what's promised us by God is far greater than even the worst suffering. I remember when my kids were little, I used to read one chapter of the Bible after dinner every night. My translation so came out kids language, and I reached the verse where Paul says, No one's mind has ever thought of no one's eyes have ever seen no one's ears have ever heard of all the wonderful things God has waiting for those who love Him. And my oldest son was about seven or eight, he said, Oh, I get it. Dying is like going to bed on Christmas Eve, and when you wake up, there are all the presents God has for you, that actually kind of made some sense, and I thought that was better than most of the sermons, 


Bob Zomermaand - yeah. And so one of the things I just wanted to jump on question there, because I have heard that said over and over, and when people say that, I don't question them at that moment, because they're they're struggling, and it's not a time to to say to them, Well, you know, you got it wrong. But what I what I try to do, just let it slide past, because later I want to show them what the professor just talked about. That's not really what it says there. God sometimes gives us more than we can bear, and that's why we need Jesus. You know, so often we are we want to be so strong, and we want to be so powerful and so resilient that we carry it ourselves. But we can. It's more than we can bear and and one example of showing that is is go to the Via Dolorosa, Jesus carrying the cross, and he falls. It is more than he can bear, and they get Simon of Cyrene to carry the cross the rest of the way, somebody comes alongside and carries it with Jesus. And that's what I can do for people when they are feeling so overwhelmed, I can come alongside and I can carry it with them. That's good. So So Thanks for listening and and really, the whole issue of suffering can't be covered in just this little bit huge topic, and and in your ministries, you're going to run into this over and over and over and over again, because we live in a broken world, but it's redeemed, amen. And so we we always look for Jesus. And we seek to minister in his name. Thanks for listening. 



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