Responding to Tragedy

See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven. And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, “YET ONCE MORE I WILL SHAKE NOT ONLY THE EARTH, BUT ALSO THE HEAVEN.” This expression, "Yet once more," denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire. Hebrews 12:25-29, NASB

When you look at today's world news, you realize that, while the people of Haiti are seeing about the worst that life in a sin-cursed world has to offer, they are not alone in their grief.  Historically, the Haiti earthquake of 2010 will end up ranking very high on the list of the worst disasters in human history, but that list of disasters is very large. Right now there are people suffering in Haiti, but people are dying in other nations too. Violent crime, disease and tragic natural phenomena have not ceased on the planet since January 12, 2010. 

Without wanting to take anything away from the compassion we ought to feel right now for the victims of this catastrophe, I remind you that we have not seen the end of shocking adversity in this world—not yet. We should be pouring out our hearts toward heaven and our pocketbooks toward Haiti, but there are serious lessons for us to learn here while the concrete dust is still settling on Port-au-Prince.

Any quick mental review of the Bible invokes examples of tragedy:

·        Job lost nearly everything.

·        Israel lost thousands of male babies in the Nile at the command of Pharaoh.

·        Daniel and many other bright young Jews were deported and their nation and families pillaged.

·        Israel lost many male babies near Bethlehem at the murderous command of Herod.

Now it is in our time and in our back yard. You feel pretty detached when people are suffering and it seems there is nothing you can do about it. What should you do when tragedies like this strike others?

·        Pray for them. Beg for God’s mercy to put an end to the general suffering, but ask Him to give His people the grace to represent Him well. Even ask Him to help the dying die like Christians.

·        Weep with them (Romans 12:15). Ask God to help you love Him and His purposes more and to love your neighbors more. When you care more you will be moved to pray more.

·        Give. Scripture calls the people of God to do more than offer kind wishes of warmth and food (James 2:15-17). We demonstrate that we would lay down our lives for our friends when we are willing to lay down some cash for them. Action and truth are more convincing than word and tongue (1 John 3:18).

·        Refrain from pointing fingers. If you want to know who is to blame for this tragedy, do not go digging to see who sacrificed a pig to the devil. Look in the mirror. You sinned when Adam sinned, which means you are as responsible as anyone for the calamities that fall on a sin-cursed planet.

·        Say to yourself: "I deserve far worse." When people told Jesus of a brutal killing by Pilate in Luke 13:1-5, Jesus responded with an example of another tragedy in which a tower fell on 18 people. Instead of deflecting blame He reminded them twice: “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” The real question people should be asking is not, “How could a loving God do something like this?”  We should be asking, "How could a just God spare me from something far worse than this?"

After looking around the globe, you need in times like these to consider the smaller-scale crises that are going to touch you. They will come. If you have not experienced great loss in your life, the primary reason is that you have not lived long enough. What should you do when tragedy like this strikes your life?

1.      Ask “Why?” The psalmists did so in the context of worship (Psalm 10, 22, 42, 43, 44, 74, 80, 88). This is not the same as assigning blame to God. That is blasphemy. Asking why, like Jesus did on the cross, can be a confession of weakness and submission to the Father’s decrees.

2.      Mourn. This is not a waste of time. Jesus said this is a blessed activity (Matthew 5:4). Only mourners can know the sweetness of the God of all comfort.

3.      Rehearse the attributes of God. You should do this before the next tragedy strikes.

·        Rest in the knowledge that He rules.

·        Delight in the knowledge that He is good.

• Give thanks in the knowledge that He is merciful.

4.      Get back to work. God’s mission is all about Him, not about you. Elijah had to learn after a personal crisis that the “still, small voice” was not telling him anything new (1 Kings 19:13-16). It told him to finish the course.

The photo above was taken by James Kiffmeyer and used by permission.

Here is an expanded audio version of this article.

The Cross and My Trouble

What do you do when life doesn’t go your way? What do you think when an ordinary day or week or life turns into a nightmare? Let’s imagine, for the sake of illustration, that you’re living in circumstances that look like the part of a great American novel where the hero gets in trouble and the trouble is getting worse.

·         You uncover a shameful truth about your spouse or one of your children.

·         You face unexpected and overwhelming expenses at a time when your income it at its lowest.

·         You get bad news from the doctor about yourself or a family member.

How will you think and behave at a time like this? What will determine how you will think and behave? Can you prepare yourself to respond biblically to such circumstances or must you wait and see what comes out?

Then there are the questions about God’s perspective. What kind of reaction does He expect of his children when they are suffering? Does He say, “It’s okay to be mad at me” or does He say, “Suck it up. It could be worse”?

Our trouble is that we tend to gravitate toward one of those extremes. Either we crumble under the pressure and enter a mindless, faithless despair or we become bitter and cold, steeling ourselves against further hurt by refusing to feel emotion.

Many in the Church have attempted to answer the problem of pain. Some say our pain is as much a surprise to God as it is to us. Others say you suffer because you do not have enough faith. Still others blame territorial or ancestral spirits.

The world has its own answers. We are told there are predictable stages of grief—that anyone outside the pattern is likely in denial. We are taught to pamper ourselves when we hurt, to take a break from responsibility until the hurt goes away. To suggest that there might be a wrong way to respond to suffering is to be labeled judgmental. Among people “in the know” there is no consensus of what “normal” is, so almost anything goes, which raises an interesting question: Is there a “normal” way to respond to suffering? Is there for a follower of Jesus Christ a pattern which, if lived out, makes you God’s kind of sufferer?

Without hesitation we must say, “Yes. Normal is Jesus.”

Mark 10:45 (ESV) records these words of Jesus: “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” What is your task as a follower of Christ who is suffering? It is to serve and to give. That is what Jesus did.

Take special care in noting all the people Jesus ministered to as he hung on the cross:

 

·         To his tormentors

·         To the repentant thief

·         To the unrepentant thief

·         To John

·         To Mary

·         To the people he died to save

 

Developing an “other-focus” in prosperous times will prepare you for lean times.

To his tormentors (“Father, forgive them…”), He served a healthy portion of grace. He could have had them destroyed by the angels under his command, but He prayed for them. Following His own counsel to “pray for your enemies,” Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34, ESV).

In our nation of religious freedom it may be hard for you to imagine someone having a murderous hatred for you because you are an outspoken Christian. It isn’t hard to imagine the rolling eyes and verbal jabs that come toward Christ’s evangelists.

To the repentant thief, He granted a pardon (Luke 23:43, ESV), saying, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”

When you are hurting it is often because of the sins of others. To refuse forgiveness to them when they honestly repent is to say that what Jesus did on the cross was an insufficient price. The words “I forgive you” are a ministry to a repentant sinner.

If you are hurting because of your own sin, you need to view yourself as guilty as the thief hanging next to Jesus.

To the unrepentant thief, He offered common grace. This ministry was not in what Jesus said or did but in His silence. That is, Jesus allowed the man to live even in the midst of his blasphemy. He was witness to the same things as the repentant thief, yet he persisted in unbelief. Luke 23:39 (ESV) records it this way: “One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’”

Common grace is what God gives every man—even the worst among men—by allowing him life, sustenance and pleasure. You may have lived long enough to have had someone wrong you terribly. You cannot grant them full forgiveness without their repentance, but you can give up the right to become bitter. You can grace them by refusing to take revenge—even if they sorely deserve it.

To Mary, He ministered material provision. As the eldest son of Mary, Jesus took the responsibility to secure her a place to live. As Mary and John stood at the foot of the cross, He said (John 19:26, ESV), “Woman, behold, your son!”

As with everything else Jesus said and did at the cross, His focus here was on others. Facing unimaginable pain, He considered what His widowed mother would need to sustain her into old age.

To John (giving ministry is a ministry), He entrusted the care of His mother. John 19:7 (ESV) “‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.”

Suffering people might be tempted to give a job to everyone available to help themselves. Jesus commissioned John to carry out a task he would be unable to carry out.

To the people he died to save, He gave a completed work. He said, “It is finished” (John 19:30). He absorbed God’s wrath toward their sins. He purchased them from slavery to sin with His blood. He secured eternal life for them. He became sin so that they could be declared righteous in God’s sight. He washed their sins away.

This you cannot do. If you are one who has realized personally the washing away of sins, you can use the suffering of your master as a pattern for your own suffering, but you can add nothing to a work that perfectly satisfied the Father’s righteous demands. With these words of Jesus, yours is but to joyfully bask in the light of a completed work you had no part in.

If you are a stranger to this pleasure, yours is to see the unspeakable disparity between the holy Lamb of God and your helpless, guilty soul—to see yourself as an object of wrath. This is no exaggeration of the facts. Run to Him now for mercy.