Why I am a Christian (8)

Providence Means That Even Life’s Tragedies Are Redeemable

In 2012 I jotted down all the reasons I could think of why I am a Christian. I found 26 so I decided to serialise them in a blog every fortnight for a year.

The first four explained why I think belief in a creator is reasonable and credible from what I have learned from science. The next two examined the human condition and found that the way we are wired is entirely consistent with what the Bible says about us.

Now, I am moving on to some theological musings. Firstly (Reason 7), what the Bible calls 'sin' accurately describes the undeniable mess the world is in. 

And now, what theologians call 'providence' means that even life's worst tragedies are redeemable. I've observed it so consistently that I have come to see it as evidence of God at work in the world.

What good could come from your father committing suicide, from your stepfather abusing you, from your three daughters dying of cancer, from your family being murdered before your eyes and from ending up as a street kid in a foreign land? Read on…

Are such people the victims of chance? This view holds that our universe is subject to pure randomness. There is no rhyme and reason to the way things happen, everything is meaningless, nothing is fair in the world and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Or are they at the mercy of fate? This view holds that the universe is manipulated and controlled in every detail. It’s all written in the stars, everything is determined beforehand so your destiny is sealed and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Providence, unlike chance, says there is a rhyme and reason to the way things are because God wisely governs his universe, holding all things together. Life makes sense. 

But providence, unlike fate, says there is something we can do about our future because God weaves our real choices into the narrative of his glorious plan.

The Bible verse that perhaps encapsulates best what providence is about is Romans 8.28.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Providence means that, if you are a Christian, everything works out in the end. Everything. That doesn’t mean that God spares those who love him the worst things life could throw at them. Patently, that is not the case. Globally, Christians are among the most hated people on Earth. No surprise there; Jesus said it would be so (see Mark 13.13 and John 15.18 for example).

But providence means that even life’s greatest sorrows and disasters are redeemable. Something good can come from them and indeed the very greatest blessings often seem to be born from the deepest adversity and tragedy. I have seen it so many times that I have come to view it as evidence of God at work.

Providence means this: Almighty God, in his unrivalled sovereignty and immeasurable wisdom, sees to it that all circumstances, however dire, however adverse, however tragic, in the end work out for his glory and for the joy of a particular group of people; those who 1) love God and 2) are called according to his purpose.

Oh, I love the doctrine of providence!

The tragedy is that for those who do not love God and who are therefore not called according to his purpose, suffering and tragedy are rarely productive. They tend much more to lead to bitterness, regret, despair and a hardening of the heart.

I have often noticed in pastoral work that personal grief, say the untimely death of a loved one or the birth of a severely disabled child, or a messy divorce, seems to either draw the people involved towards God or provoke a drifting away from faith – or worse, a bitter hatred of him.

One of Britain's most popular Christian songwriters, Matt Redman, has often spoken publicly of his experience of being told when he was 7 that his father had died, then learning two years later that the cause was suicide. He has also spoken about subsequently being abused as a teenager over a long period by his stepfather (for which he was convicted and jailed).

You can only imagine the confusion, pain, loneliness and self-doubt that those events would stir in a child’s heart. But refusing a path of bitterness and choosing to turn to God in trust, Matt testifies to healing in his soul and how he has, by the grace of God, been able to break the cycle of grief and become a loving father in a wholesome family, even writing the tenderest songs about God's Father heart.

A friend of mine from our time in France, Jacques Barbero, was for about 20 years a militant union leader in the steel industry. Jacques was a convinced atheist. Then tragedy struck. His three daughters, one after the other, contracted leukaemia. Jacques and his wife had the unimaginable sorrow of helplessly watching each of them fight a losing battle against their illness. They had to lay their three precious girls to rest before any of them reached adulthood.

For many unbelievers, such a devastating grief would have surely hardened their atheism. How could a God of love have allowed such a thing? 

But some time after his season of distress, Jacques bumped into an industrial chaplain who explained that sickness and death are never God’s perfect will for us. They come from living in a broken and fallen world. He urged Jacques to read the Bible.

Jacques’ life was turned upside down. The consolation, the balm, the release he had so longed for - and had found nowhere else - flooded his soul. His life radically changed direction as the open wound of his sorrows found healing at last.

Jacques started a charity called Une Bible Par Foyer (A Bible for Every Home) offering people God’s word in marketplaces and street corners. 

But most of all, this man who had been angry, militant, confrontational and anti-establishment became one of the gentlest, warmest, kindest and most peace-loving people I have ever known. He is also irrepressibly cheerful and positive. He has had a huge influence on everyone who knows him and he has a gift for bringing together deeply hostile factions so they work together in unity like no one I know.

Just today (this was written 17th March 2013), I was told about a man called William Sempija. William fled Rwanda after his parents and siblings were butchered before his eyes during the genocide. As a refugee he ended up as a street kid in Kampala in neighbouring Uganda. He lived ten years on the streets before he was spotted by a Christian and fostered. Miraculously, William began to achieve among the highest school grades in Uganda. After some time, William became a Christian and he now works with street children in Bwaise, Kampala. Over 250 children, orphans from war, AIDS or victims of poverty, are now cared for by his charity.

I am not saying that any of this makes Matt's traumas, Jacques and his wife's pain or William's suffering as somehow O.K. That’s not what providence is about. The point I am making is that through providence, beautiful things can come from even life’s worst tragedies. They needn’t define our lives or condemn us to decades of resentment and regret.

Stories like these are legion in the Christian world and it is a running theme in Scripture too. 

In Genesis 37-50, for example, there is the story of Joseph. An impulsive and gifted young man provokes the jealousy of his brothers who sell him into slavery. He ends up languishing in jail in Egypt after being falsely accused of sexual assault. Due to his gift of interpreting dreams he is brought before Pharaoh and made Vice President of Egypt. His rise to prominence averts mass starvation when a seven-year famine follows a seven-year period of plenty. The remarkable developments in the story show how he is eventually reconciled to his eleven brothers. The story ends when he reveals himself to them saying “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

Then there is the story of Ruth. It’s about a widowed young foreigner who shows amazing and sacrificial loyalty to her Israelite refugee mother-in-law (Naomi) when she could have pursued an opportunity to remarry while still young instead. The unexpected twists in the story show how it just so happened that everything worked out for good; Ruth eventually ended up harvesting in the field of a  man named Boaz who just so happened to be distantly related to Naomi. And Boaz, under local laws and customs, it just so turned out had a moral obligation to consider marrying Ruth. The family tree growing from their marriage included David (Israel’s greatest king) and their Messiah, Jesus.

What about the New Testament where, as Louie Giglio observes, all the good guys get killed? We know the Bible claims that it worked out well in the end for Jesus - raised on the third day. I'll say more about that in Reason 14. But what about John the Baptist (beheaded), Stephen (stoned), James (beheaded) and Peter (crucified upside-down)? What about Paul (imprisoned, severely flogged, exposed to death again and again, given the thirty-nine lashes five times, beaten with rods three times, pelted with stones, shipwrecked on three occasions, constantly in danger, deprived of sleep, often hungry and thirsty - and eventually beheaded)? 

Even then, their deaths resulted in an explosion of growth for the infant church. Persecution scattered Christians everywhere and the church rapidly spread. Tertullian, in his AD 197 work Apologeticus noted that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church. The more Christians were suppressed the more the message of Jesus got out. That so many were willing to lay down their lives rather than deny their faith speaks of the strength of their conviction fuelled by witnessing the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

This is more than just ancient history though. These events illustrate the principle that tragedy, even death, does not have the final word for those who love God and are called according to his plan.

In the mid 1990’s I went through the worst period of my life. Kathie suffered three miscarriages in a little over a year and our children were being bullied and mugged at school. Our income was slashed making it hard to live on our budget. I was in a high-pressure/low reward job where I was being publicly undermined and forced out of work. Kathie was being stalked and threatened at her job in a local hospital for refusing to cover up a professional error. Our house was a building site - I could go on.

I would be lying if I were to say that my faith didn’t wobble at all during that 2-3 year period. Pain and grief and discouragement and pressure seemed relentless and overwhelming. Doubts haunted me. Cynicism threatened to drag me down.

But I look back now and see that time as the most fertile ever period in my personal, emotional and spiritual development. I am so thankful for the character built in me over those years. I am grateful for the way it drove me to my knees – and so many prayers prayed through gritted teeth at that time have been answered over the long term. My family and I have truly prospered in every way.

We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

I’ll leave the last word to Malcolm Muggeridge. Born in 1903, he was an agnostic for most of his life, but he became a Christian at the age of 66 and said this in 1978:

“Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful, with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my seventy-five years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence, has been through affliction and not through happiness, whether pursued or attained. In other words, if it ever were to be possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo jumbo . . . the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal or trivial to be endurable. This of course is what the cross [of Christ] signifies, and it is the cross more than anything else, that has called me inexorably to Christ.”

That’s the eighth reason I am a Christian; my experience of providence. Time and again I have observed that life’s misfortunes do not have the last word for those who love God and who are called according to his glorious plan.