Where Is God When Things Don’t Make Sense? (Part 1 • Episode 55)

Brent and his son Preston, pastor of Sacrament Church in Nashville, Tennessee, discuss the questions people have in the middle of difficult circumstances and the struggles we have in understanding where God is in the midst of suffering.

The Life & Love Nuggets podcast will help you learn valuable insights into relationships, life, and love. Brent and Janis have been empowering couples through pre-marriage and marriage therapy in their private practice, Life Connection Counseling, since 1982. They recently retired after forty years of pastoral ministry and are continuing to help individuals, marriages and families in their private practice.

This podcast should not be considered or used for counseling but for educational purposes only.

Transcript:

Welcome to Life and Love Nuggets, where licensed therapists, Brent and Janice Sharp, share how you can thrive in your life, your love, and your relationship. Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you're at, wherever you're listening to this, welcome back to Life and Love Nuggets. We're glad to be with you here. We have a really interesting time planned for you.

My son Preston is with us today. He's a pastor in Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville, Tennessee. I'm here.

You've been there a minute. And we've known each other for a long time.

So how long has that been? Yeah, yeah, from the jump, as they say.

And you just had a birthday. I did. And so 40 years old, which just means that I'm a really old person. And so that's a big deal. And we thought we would talk together here a little bit about some things that we've experienced working. You've been a pastor now for almost, what, 20 years? Yeah, something like that, yeah. And so Janice and I have been doing our work for 40-some years, and we've talked to lots and lots of people. And one of the things we found is that one of the things that impacts people in an unhealthy or negative way in their life is just their sense of God and their perceptions of God and who God really is and what His nature is. And in my opinion, I feel like a lot of people have some misperceptions of God. And we shouldn't be surprised about that because we can't actually see Him.

We can't touch Him. And so His expression generally comes through people. And the people in our lives that have even expressed Him, sometimes we get a little bit confused about because, well, they're a little bit like this. I know they care about me, or they're my teacher or my principal or my coach or my pastor or parents or whatever. And I know they're trying to take care of me, but they have a certain way of treating me or being with me that confuses me a little bit because they're the closest thing we have to a representation of God. And so I think we just get a bit confused. And so I hear questions, and you can jump in with maybe questions that you hear, but these are questions that I oftentimes hear that I think just get people on the wrong track in their health and emotional health, their spiritual health, their ability to thrive in life.

Some of those are, if I'm a Christian, then I shouldn't really ever feel depressed. I shouldn't be discouraged. I should always believe that good's gonna happen and the joy of the Lord should be my strength. And if I feel depressed, then that's bad, that's wrong. I must be doing something wrong.

Another is, why is God letting this happen? So when they go through a difficult thing, I remember one woman I talked to, and her husband had been unfaithful, and they were going through divorce, and she said, I don't know why God's doing this. And I thought, what? I mean, I just wanted to go, what did you just say?

I don't know why God's doing this. I'm just trying to learn what he wants me to learn from this. I was just grieved about that. Another is, because bad things are happening, I must be doing something wrong. I must be in sin. It's some failure on my part because difficult things are happening. I oftentimes hear people go, I know I shouldn't feel. Is it wrong to feel?

And I'm like, no, no, no, no. Feelings are just feelings, okay?

There's no right or wrong. There just are. There's positive and negative ones. If God is good, why does so much bad happen in the world? I mean, these are huge questions. So Chris and I are gonna solve all these in the next few minutes. And another one that's similar to that is if God made all things new in the resurrection, if that's what we believe, then why are still bad things happening?

Why do we not see that yet? So here we are. We're all living life, doing the best that we can, and yet difficulty seems to happen, and I think people get really confused by that.

So, good example of this. We just celebrated your 40th birthday. That's right.

Just a few days ago. Yeah. And so here we are having a really great day. We had this little party planned for you.

I don't think you knew what was happening. Yeah, not at all. It was a surprise. Just your siblings, and it's just kind of an intimate time together. One of the things that Janice and I are so thrilled about is that all of you really like each other. You like to hang out with each other.

You're really cheerleaders for each other. It's just, oh my gosh, we pinch ourselves and how beautiful that is. So we had this nice moment together. One of the traditions you like to do, because your birthday's the day after Christmas. That's right. You always used to get gypped, because everything kind of got compressed. But tradition was we'd always go to movies, so everybody jumped in and said, well, let's just go. Sometimes you and I just did that, but everybody went.

It was just, we just had such a great day. Yes, it was wonderful.

On the way home. Yeah. You're driving, Spencer's in the car with you, and just minding your own business, going through an intersection, and some young girl just turns in front of you. Yeah, right. And hits you head on, and it's like, what? Yeah. What? You know, it's just such a kind of a confusing thing. Yes. We thought God was, you know, just like a puppet master that just making all this stuff happen, and it's like, why did God let this happen? You know? Right. Or, anyway, we could ask any of those questions. Yeah. And so, I think people, again, just get confused. That's right.

And so, one of the difficult things that we have is holding good things and difficult things at the same time. Yes. And not judging the circumstances based on that.

I just realized that life's difficult. You know, Scripture says, in this life, we will have trouble. That's right. Right? And so, again, the reason I like to have these conversations with you is you studied Scripture all of your life. You are brilliant, in my opinion, really have a good understanding as you study theology. And so, I just wanted you to answer all these. Sure. And fix it all for us. Well, I'm glad you started with that story because I think that can be helpful. You know, our world is so chaotic, and there's good things and there's bad things that happen all the time.

It's like parallel tracks, you know, that they run. And I think one of our temptations that becomes so problematic for us is that we tend to formulize. So, we tend to try to think, okay, if I do this amount of thing, the world's like a vending machine. So, if I put in the money, I should get the good stuff out. You know, and if I do something bad, then I should get bad things. And of course, there are certain principles, there are ways that we naturally see in life that, you know, that harmful behaviors can lead to harmful things. Consequences. Consequences, exactly. But generally, as far as good things and bad things that happen, there's not a formula to that. There's not a way for us to just do all the, I mean, it's not like Santa Claus that you're naughty or nice, and then that's, you either get coal or you get presents. So, one of the things, that story is an example, and I realize as I say this story, I'm very privileged, I'm very blessed in this world and in this life, and people have gone through, this is a very superficial tragedy compared to so many of the other things that have happened in our world. Fortunately. Because I'm okay.

Everybody's okay, all the people involved. Exactly. So, but in that situation, so as 40- The cars weren't. That's right.

The cars are toast. Cars are gone, yeah. Anyway. As I was approaching my 40th birthday, and some of you may relate to this, I had all kinds of feelings coming up to my 40th birthday. There's some apprehension, 40 feels like a big deal. When I was, even 10 years ago, 40 felt like that's an old person, you know? And so approaching this, and okay, what does that mean? And all those feelings. And then that evening, the way that you guys blessed me and spoke to me and had, you did a little video for me where you brought in lots of voices for my life that spoke over me. And I told them it was one of the most significant days of my life, I felt like, you know, that evening. Then we go see this movie, and we see a movie about car crashes.

Which was a great movie, it was a good movie. But then we're all kind of having it on our mind, and then we go, and this happens right afterwards. There's so many things that if I wanted to get real superstitious about it and start picking things apart, it's going, oh, I needed so many bad things. But that's just not how the world works.

That's not how it happens. There's good things and bad things side by side. And then I also think about, so my brother was in the car with me, and though I didn't want him to go through that experience, there was something about having family with me in that moment that was really powerful.

I felt loved and supported. You know, all those kind of things that was really, really wonderful. So there's good feelings, there's weird feelings, not even good or bad, there's bad feelings, there's all these kind of things together. And I think that's how much of life works. So much of life is just, there's a variety of different kinds of things. I think there's some things we can start with that are really, really critical anytime we face pain in our lives.

And one of those is thinking of God as with us. We sometimes think of God as this kind of outside, you know, far away deity that looks down on us and kind of drops good things or drops bad things. But that's not how God chose to reveal God's self in scripture. Jesus steps into our world, God taking on human flesh, and stands in solidarity with us. Links, so the question is not so much links arms with us, the question is not even so much as God, you know, why is God dropping this thing or that thing on me, but he said the world is broken. Theologically we would say that the world is broken because of sin, because of, you know, the world is chaotic because of choices that humans have made and rebellion and all those kind of things in a general sense. But when God stepped into our world, he said I'm going to feel this with you and walk this with you and take it upon myself.

In fact, so much of the life of Jesus is suffering. There's this creed that we say in the church and it goes back to like the first century, it's called the Apostle's Creed. And in the creed it says that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, was buried, ascended to the dead, on the third day he rose again, he ascended into heaven, says all these things. But it doesn't say a whole lot of things about his life, his teachings, his ministry, his healings, all these things we know from the Bible that he did.

Why doesn't he say that? Well, one of these theologians in the 20th century, Karl Barth, said that actually Jesus' entire life is summarized in this word suffering. That everything he experienced was suffering. That there was rejection, that there was pain, and it all led to the cross. So sometimes when we ask, hey, if I'm a Christian, why should I, you know, I shouldn't suffer, right? Well, look at Jesus.

I mean, he suffered for us and experienced that pain. Yeah, and so we're going to experience that. That's right. You know, you said something about formula. Yeah. I think that is, in our modern world, I think that is one of our challenges is we read the Bible like it's a scientific textbook. Right. We want to know step one, step two, step three. If I do this, then this will happen. And I think that all comes out of our desperate need for control as humans.

This is my experience as a human. Yes, oh yeah. And working with humans is if I can control this somehow, then I can make good things happen.

I can cause only positive things. You know, I think that, you know, some of our faith training is, well, you know, we've got the steering wheel of our life. If you love God, you do the right things, you make good choices, then good will always happen. And of course, as pastors and counselors, we see people are trying to do that all day and then stuff doesn't work that way. That's right.

And so then they come up with questions. And I think it's a need for control. We all desperately need control, which comes out of fear, I think, that we, the reality is we do not know what's going to happen. That's right. You know, I mean, God knows the beginning and the end of all things. We don't know what's gonna happen five minutes from now. I always tell people, this makes us crazy people. Yeah. We are crazy trying to control stuff, you know, in life. And the reality is we have very little control. The control we think we have is pretty much smoke and mirrors. That's right.

I mean, you know, it's, and that's why faith, that's why trusting is, I think, so difficult and so hard, but so necessary. Yes. And so if people are trying to then have some kind of control, they kinda wanna, certainly they wanna come up with a formula. Yeah. And we've had preachers and teachers for centuries come up with formulas. Yes. Well, if you'll do this, if you pray this way, if this, and then this will always happen. And I, you know, we wanna believe that. And again, there's some, as you said, there are some ways of living, some ways of believing, some ways of trusting that do have good consequences. Yeah. Right, that are helpful.

But the challenge is when bad things happen to good people, you know, which is the biggest question. That's right. On the planet, right? Yes. So understanding, so again, we're trying to, if these are not so helpful ways of thinking, then what is helpful? Yeah. And so one thing we would say is feeling negative or difficult feelings, going through difficult things is just part of the human journey. That's right.

It's not you've been bad or you're failing at something. It's, again, in this life we will have trouble. And you know, that scripture goes on and says, so then we look to Jesus who's overcome the world. Yeah. But we all know that that doesn't mean just because you believe in Jesus that he comes in and changes all your circumstances and makes nothing bad ever happen in your world. And so it really is, we look to him, we trust, we stretch our faith in that direction because we believe he is present. I think that is the key, right?

Yes, that's exactly right. That's the whole idea of Christmas. Yeah. That he came near, that he chose to be with us. And so whatever people are going through, he's close. Yes, and I honestly think that's so critical. I mean, my experience, and I know everybody's different, but my experience often is with all the theological questions that we have about why things happen, we ultimately can endure so much more or feel so much comfort knowing just that someone is with us and particularly that God is with us.

That idea of presence is so critical. I think about in the Jewish tradition, there is this practice of sitting Shiva. And it's this idea that when someone dies, the community goes to the grieving person's house and just sits with them. They can't say a word, they can't speak, they can't give Bible bullets, or those are like little helpful things to get them through. They can't fix anything.

Exactly, all they can do is be quiet and sit. And there's something transformational about presence. In fact, there's this theologian named Nicholas Wolterstorff. And he wrote- Can you say that three times fast?

Yeah, Nicholas Wolterstorff. I think it's German, right? And he writes this book called Lament for a Son. He lost his adult son when his son was 25 years old in a mountain climbing accident. And he said, I didn't intend to publish anything on this, but he kind of journaled his thoughts and ended up publishing his thoughts. And he's a theologian, so he's studied all the different questions and all the different things.

But here's what he writes. It did not console me to be reminded of the hope of resurrection. If I had forgotten that hope, then it would indeed have brought light into my life to be reminded of it. But I did not think of death as a bottomless pit. I did not grieve of one who has no hope.

Yet Eric is gone, here and now he is gone. Now I cannot talk with him, now I cannot see him, now I cannot hug him, now I cannot hear of his plans for the future, that is my sorrow. A friend said, remember, he is in good hands. I was deeply moved, but that reality does not put Eric back in my hands now, that's my grief. For that grief, what consolation can there be other than having him back? And I just think about our intention sometimes is we want answers.

And I understand the need for answers. But I think often when we're actually grieving, presence is actually way more powerful than answers. A hug, an embrace, someone with you, I actually think that speaks to the nature of God because our God knows that and our God is the one who is the with God, who is with us in the midst of pain. So again, there's so many questions as to why, as to, and I think those are appropriate, theologians have batted those back and forth. But what I encourage people in the midst of suffering is remember who is with you, that God is with you. Well, that sitting with without saying anything, that's really huge. I think that speaks to the idea of even being safe people for others, having safe people in our life. I always say that safe people are people that, first of all, they're confidential.

They don't try to fix you. They're just presence. And those are hard to find. And yet it is what is actually healing. And so it's a idea of just that presence, that we're not alone and that, because most of our experience with God is through people. That's the way he expresses himself. Now, all of us have had moments where we've been alone and felt his presence or felt something that has been awe-inspiring or something that we see God in. But most of our, I believe even the way God designed this is that most of our encounters of him are through people with him in them. And so it's a, it's understandable why when people go through difficulties and they go and try to share that difficulty with somebody and then somebody starts trying to give them all little answers.

Well, it's all gonna work out. It'll be fine. And just trust in God and those kind of things. And first of all, it's so minimizing. It's just like, so you think if I just think those thoughts, then all this pain, this guy losing his son, that that'll just somehow go away? Yeah. And it's just so diminishing. I think in our church cultures, I have, I don't know, like in 40 years worth of people saying I went and tried to talk to this person, whether it's somebody in my church or a friend or a pastor or whatever, and they just tried to give me little answers.

And it pretty much shuts down people wanting to go. That's right. I'm not gonna talk to that person again.

I've even had that experience. That's right. I always tell people, you're probably gonna have just a few people in your life that are really, really safe that can just sit with you, that don't feel this pressure to have to give you an answer. That's right. Now again, trying to give people answers and people trying to give us nice little thoughts and stuff, it comes from a good heart. Sure. They just don't want us to be in pain anymore. That's right. But I think it speaks to the fact that we are uncomfortable with people in pain. Yes. And I wonder when we feel bad or are in pain that we want, we feel like we should get through it fast. Yes. Because people are uncomfortable with this.

If I talk to somebody, they don't know what to do with this. Yeah. And so I guess I should get through it fast. I mean, there's lots of pressures that we've picked up from this. And so I think that speaks to who we should be for people. Yeah. And people come to us in the midst of these kinds of questions. Yeah. When I have people ask these things and say these things, well, I can't just give them a, even though I think I have an understanding of maybe a misperception that they have. Yeah. They can't receive that right now. That's right.

So oftentimes it's just, I'm so sorry. Yeah. That's gotta be really confusing to feel like God's a good God. Yes. And he's caused your husband to leave you. Yeah. That he's doing this. Yeah. And because you need to learn something. Yeah. Oh my gosh, how horrible that must be.

What kind of God are we talking about here? That's right.

And so being able to just be with them in that confusion and in that pain and trusting that the Holy Spirit will actually lead them into some clarity or some understanding of that, because God's present with them too. Yeah. And so I think we get a little bit anxious about Holy Spirit, come on. Yes, right.

We need to help you. Yeah. We need to help you help these people, you know, sooner. And so there's something about that, just being with somebody that is incredibly powerful that we jump at, because all of us may have some of these questions at times. Yes, yes. And even people that know better that God's not just this puppet master that's causing everything to happen out here, that's just maneuvering pieces. I'm gonna cause this person to get in an accident, and then they'll learn something out of that. Then we'll cause, you know, even though we know that, when we go through something like that, people still do, but still, why me? Yes, exactly. Why didn't the next person go through this? Why didn't I go through this? Yeah. And again, it's just trusting that a lot of this we're not gonna understand. That's right.

But he's committed to be present. Exactly. With us.

And that's, I think, realizing that was God's choice, God's free choice to be with us in the pain, not to think of it as yucky or too icky or, oh, look at them, they've messed this world up or all this stuff's happening, so I'm gonna stay far away and maybe do something from a distance. Our God said, no, I'm actually gonna enter that pain. And then in the cross, there is some sense in which he actually took all of that pain upon himself and said, everything you could possibly suffer, everything you could possibly experience, I'm now walking through that with you. And that's just, it's incredibly powerful and meaningful. And then as we look forward to, Christians also have this hope that there will be a day when there will be no more mourning or crying or pain. In some way, we also have to anticipate that as God lives outside of time and how we understand time, that not only will there be kind of one day in time that God will heal everything, but God will heal every part of time and most of the things we've gone through in the past that we can't ever explain and there could be no meaning for us, God will somehow heal all of that as well. Yes, trust. And I don't know, I wish I could say I knew why God chose to do it this way. The kingdom of God works in such a way that it's like, and it says it all over the Bible, all over the New Testament, that it's like a seed that's planted and then it grows.

I mean, even the resurrection, you had a question there about if Christ is risen from the dead, why do we have any struggle? Well, for some reason, Paul tends to talk about Jesus' resurrection as like a seed and then the first fruits is what he says. So somehow this is something that unfolds over time and that means that in this life, we're still gonna see a lot of thorns, a lot of kind of brokenness in the world and yet we're also gonna see things sprouting up, beauty sprouting up. And so it's, yeah, it's difficult to live in this world and you're exactly right. That's when we go back to the formalizing idea that, I mean, we can formulize all kinds of things. You can even formulize, so many of the saints throughout history have believed that God was so present in their suffering that something actually happened in their suffering, right?

Well, that I believe is true. You could also take that and say, there are certain forms of Christianity that will say, well, those who suffer more are actually the more virtuous ones. Well, that's an opposite way of formulizing it, right? We all like to come up with formulas. We like to have some understanding. Things are messy, but we can trust Christians do have this hope that when we go through suffering, God is with us and somehow that actually changes us and can transform us. God doesn't cause the suffering, but he can do something in and through us in the suffering.

Human life is messy. That's right. That's what we're comfortable with, right? That's right. Well, we've maybe just scratched the surface here. If you can hang with me a little longer, I'd like to kind of go into another session on this.

And so for today, we're gonna kind of wrap this one up. And I think we've solved at least half of these. Oh, gosh. We're gonna keep talking about this a little bit more. And again, I just wanna reiterate what Preston has said, that whatever you may find yourself in, the confusion that you might be experiencing, the difficulty, the questions that you might have, just know God gets it.

He certainly understands it. And the most important thing to know is that he's present with you. Yes. And I know that we think presence means if God is present in my situation, then that means it's gonna all just get fixed or he's gonna maybe reverse it, so it wouldn't have even happened. And that doesn't seem to be the way it works.

But he's with you. Either he will adjust some future circumstances or he usually does something in us.

That's right, yeah. So that we can be renewed in a way to handle our circumstances in a different way. And so hang in there. And for this moment, go in peace.

Blessings as you go. The Life & Love Nuggets podcast should not be considered or used for counseling, but for educational purposes only.