Bad Crap for Christians ...

Why do bad things happen to good people?  So that premise is off right from the start.  There are no “good” people, there are just people.  But surely there is a difference between an old fart who has lived a long life and done many misdeeds; and some innocent child who has yet to explore their potential for good or for evil.  Surely the innocent child deserves better outcomes, less pain, less trauma, less anxiety, and a lot less death.  None of us want the old guy to contract cancer, we sympathize with him.  But compare that feeling of empathy with a picture of a toddler in a pediatric oncology unit at a hospital and I dare you to hold back the tears.  Now compound the feeling by imagining that toddler to be your child.  That kind of pain is likely as bad as it gets.  As a parent you would do everything in your power to prevent that scenario from ever happening.  But how?  That disease does not know who you are.  It does not care who you are, or that it is your child who will contract it.  There is no taking their place, because the disease does not move from one victim to spare another.  It stays there, until it kills its host, and never so much as bats an eyelash.  A fully indiscriminate killer, on a murder/suicide mission, with no conscience, and no empathy with which you could plead your case.

Part of the pain you suffer as a parent is helplessness.  Your total inability to do anything to prevent it.  Your total inability to redirect the outcome.  You can participate in treatment.  You can do everything right, and still suffer that ultimate loss.  Where is God then?  Christians who do not understand the nature of God make a distinction between believers and non-believers in cases like this.  Yes, there are Christians who think the value of a believing child is worth more, or deserves more, than the child who does not believe yet.  The disobedient parents must somehow bare responsibility for the suffering of their child.  As if Christian parents make no mistakes, or worse, make the same mistakes as those who do not believe in Jesus, continually.  But this is all wrong.  Cancer does not care if you are a Christian or not.  It ignores belief systems, and lifestyles.  It may be brought on by certain behaviors.  But it is not prevented by any of them.

The vegetarian may avoid the cancers that lay in the meat the rest of us eat.  But the cancers that come from pollution in soil and water, get right into the same food supply we are all eat anyway.  Radiated stuff gets us all, and no government is truthful about where it is, or how well it is controlled.  Sure, smoking is a veritable death sentence from lung cancer, and nearly as lethal is second hand smoke.  But not all air you breathe is as clean as you would wish.  Healthy lifestyles bring a better life, but do nothing to prevent cancer or many other diseases of a lethal variety.  Genetics trumps nearly everything.  You would think Christians can beat most of this, by the power of prayer if nothing else.  And sometimes this is true.  But not ALL the times, so what then.

But if you think your powerlessness is bad, imagine having all the power in the universe, and then dealing with it.  Imagine being able to fix it, but knowing that fixing it now, breaks it later.  Case in point; Joseph the earthly father of Jesus must have been very loved by our Savior.  It is believed Joseph died at some point in the life of Jesus, before His ministry begins.  Jesus could raise the dead.  Why would He leave Joseph, His own earthly dad, to rot in the earth?  Mary would suffer because of this.  There would be less provisions for her because of this.  Do any of us seriously believe Jesus left Joseph in the ground, because of lack of love?  Why not just pull him out like Lazarus, and just keep on going.  Do it quietly, in secret.  Or at least heal Joseph from whatever disease he had before it got him.  But Jesus does not, despite how much He must have loved Joseph.  He left him in the dirt.  You can bet the heart of Mary broke when Joseph died.  You can bet she wept for the only man who ever believed her and “knew” her story was true.  It appears she never remarried, preferring to wait for reunification in heaven at the end of all things.

We should have thought about this case, and realized the outcomes we would want, are not always the outcomes we get.  What if Jesus raised Joseph, and late in life, Joseph abandons his faith?  You could argue that it is the free-will of Joseph to make that choice.  But the same free-will choice Joseph made at the time of his death, was also his choice, and perhaps then he chose to cling to his faith.  Perhaps if Joseph did not see a decade or two more of Roman horror he remains faithful.  But once raised from the grave the horror of life then changes the mind of Joseph over time.  When is it better for Joseph to die, sooner when he believes, or later when he does not?  Hezekiah begged for more time, and got it.  He did not lose that faith, but his heart was broken by what he saw in the lives of his sons, and his nation.  Was it better for Hezekiah to find a peaceful sleep in the Lord earlier, or cling to life and witness the horror of evil so close to home?

We hate the suffering.  So does God.  God sees how evil is responsible for all the suffering.  For everything from the greed that leads to pollution, to the weakness that embraces self-destructive behavior, to the virus’ and diseases that should have never existed.  God sees how hate leads the powerful to destroy the weak for no reason that could ever matter.  God sees the cycle of sin, that begins so small, and ends so horrifically.  And the mind of God must then be on how best to eradicate sin forever in the universe.  God does not just want to kill the patient, but to kill the sin within the patient, and keep the patient alive.  And God does not just measure life in this world, He measures it in the eternal world as that is the ONLY place that actually matters.  As hard as it is for us to taste death in this world, or see our family taste it, it is a far worse thing to see that become something eternal, instead of something so brief.

So Jesus cannot always do what He wants for us in the here and now.  But He ALWAYS does what we need in the eternal point of view, the one that matters.  And as hard as it is for us to endure the bad crap that comes our way, it is harder for Jesus to see us endure it, and let it happen, in order that it works together for our more important good.  Harder for Him, because He has the power to fix it now.  But must delay, in order to fix it forever, later.  Matthew tells the story of a loss like this.  And it is not just some random friend of Jesus, but His cousin.  This was the first Christian.  This was the first person to carry the gospel to the river Jordan, and cry out to the nation to repent, and make straight the way of the Lord.  John had fire.  John was a prophet.  John was the most effective preacher ever born.  He lived His message.  He was absolutely humble.  He recognized Jesus for who Jesus was.  John believed Mary.  John sent his own disciples to follow Jesus.  John nearly convinced Herod to do the right thing.  But for all his belief, John still died, beheaded as the first Christian martyr.  Sometimes bad crap comes right to your doorstep.

Matthew picks up in chapter fourteen of his gospel beginning in verse 01 saying … “At that time Herod the tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus, [verse 2] And said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead; and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him.”  This begins as a ghost story.  Herod thinks Jesus is actually John the Baptist back from the dead, doing miracles only a supernatural being could ever perform.  And Herod is afraid, perhaps very afraid.  Miracles tend to unnerve the guilty who have no way to explain them, and every reason to fear them, particularly when they have yet to repent, and yet to change what they were doing wrong in the first place.  Who but a ghost could pull off the deeds of Jesus in the mind of Herod?  Herod missed redemption entirely, so fear alone gripped him for the guilty conscience he held to.

Matthew enumerates further in verse 3 saying … “For Herod had laid hold on John, and bound him, and put him in prison for Herodias' sake, his brother Philip's wife. [verse 4] For John said unto him, It is not lawful for thee to have her. [verse 5] And when he would have put him to death, he feared the multitude, because they counted him as a prophet.”  Herod did not enjoy being called out publicly as an adulterer.  At first he was mad and would have killed John to shut him up.  But having John in prison allowed Herod to come visit him, and the more Herod listened to John, the more he became convinced John was right, and he needed to do something to fix the situation.  While the crowds delayed the hand of Herod at first, a growing conscience within him delayed it later.  And that became a situation considered way too dangerous by the adulterous woman to be tolerated.  Herod may no longer have wanted to kill John, in fact he refused to.  But Herodias wanted him dead on a silver platter.

Matthew continues the story in verse 6 saying … “But when Herod's birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod. [verse 7] Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask. [verse 8] And she, being before instructed of her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist's head in a charger.”  Salome asks her mom what to ask for, likely interested in jewels or land.  But evil mom knows the truth, if John lives, and Herod repents, they will be sent back to Phillip with nothing, likely ostracized, perhaps stoned.  So if Salone wants to live to spend the wealth Herod may still bestow on her later, they need John dead now.  And a young girl asks for the most horrific thing sin always results in, death.

Matthew continues in verse 9 saying … “ And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath's sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her. [verse 10] And he sent, and beheaded John in the prison. [verse 11] And his head was brought in a charger, and given to the damsel: and she brought it to her mother.”  Herod was sorry.  The king was sorry.  This was not a gleeful Herod bathing himself in the blood of the man who called him out for his sin.  This was a king worried too much about going back on his word, to do what he knew was right.  So for sake of ego and reputation, Herod did the unthinkable to Herod.  And John was beheaded alone in prison.  Bad crap coming the way of John through no fault of his own.  Unless shutting up is considered the alternative by modern Christians.  Better to shut up than lose life, or jobs, or promotions, or friends, or position in society.  Better to keep your Christianity on the down low than lose what you have through the loss of favor with the world.  But when a Christian loves the non-believer, they are compelled to love them.  How can you keep your mouth shut then?

John had a higher mission of conversion and ironically he was right on the doorstep of success with Herod.  It was the wicked women who had no use for God that wanted him killed.  Imagine if this story went differently.  Imagine if Herod had the strength to throw those witches out on their butts, and truly repent of what he was doing.  Herod would have become the first Christian King.  And perhaps the sequence that ended the life of Jesus would have had to leave Herod out of the whole thing, lest Herod protect the Jesus, cousin of John, who John introduces Herod to.  Instead of being part of the bad crap that came to Christ, Herod might have had no part in it at all.  But Herod succumbs to his carnal urges, all too easily satisfied by women seeking to protect wealth and standing.  And John dies now, Jesus later.  And faith altogether is lost.

Matthew concludes in verse 12 saying … “And his disciples came, and took up the body, and buried it, and went and told Jesus.”  And here begins the worst kick in the faith His disciples will ever suffer.  Dude!  Dude this is your cousin, the greatest preacher this nation has ever seen, until You that is.  Just go put his head back on his body, and breathe life back into him, and let’s get going again.  We know You can do it, we have seen You do it for other folks.  Over time the disciples will do it too.  So why not just resurrect John the Baptist and show the nation how great You truly are.  We know You care about him.  We know You love him.  He is Your cousin for goodness sake.  And while we are at it, let’s go raise up Joseph too, and make a real showing of how great Your power is.  How can You just sit there?  How can You do nothing for one of Your own?  How could You let this bad crap happen to John, and Joseph, and have the ability to fix it, but do nothing … at least now.

But this is where the lens of the vision of God is so much wider and farther than our own.  Jesus knows He will see Joseph again because He intends to raise him up Himself, in just a little while (from His perspective).  Jesus knows He will raise John again, because He intends to do it Himself, in just a little while.  Both of them raised to perfection to a home in heaven, that will forever allow them to be close to Himself.  He will shower them with love.  And no one will ever be able to stop that shower again.  No more bad crap ever.  Raising them up to a world steeped in Roman horror would not be a favor.  Having them face the decades that follow would not be a benefit to them, only a selfish act to Himself so that He could reduce the pain of their loss in the short term.  It was not best for John, or Joseph.  They would sleep and in the blink of an eye find the glory of His second appearing.  They had no concept of the passage of time.  It would be immediate for them, as it is for every believer who has ever died in the 6000 years of our history.  Dying sucks.  But being dead, is like having fallen asleep at night, in the blink of an eye the morning is here, and you wake up.

Cancer sucks.  The suffering it brings sucks.  Cancer was never supposed to exist, and it is decidedly not the will of God, but the invention of His enemy.  As is all disease and suffering and decay and death.  The pain sin has brought to this world, and to us, is the natural result of turning away from the perfect happiness of God to find “another way”.  Here is where “other” ways end up.  And while bad crap does happen to Christians.  There is something Christians have that is an advantage our non-believing friends so desperately need.  While we may sit in the same oncology units, and even mortuaries, we have a hope and a view of the final state of things not everyone else understands.  We know we are loved, even in our pain, by a God who feels every tear ten times more than we ever will.  Our true “Dad” longs to see our pain gone forever, and He is working to see that occur for us, and in us, and in the patient beside us who may have never heard that hope that way before.  Whether He heals us or them now, or drives all the pain away when we wake up in that resurrection morning, there will come a time of no more pain, no more death, and no more bad crap ever again for anyone.  Perhaps our hope is the testimony the patient beside us needs more than anything else in their world, and we have it to offer today.  Can we shut up, and still say we love them?