God and Pain: Is He Out to Get You?

By: Jennifer Brost

Time has run out. The answer to your prayer has not arrived. The child is dead. The job is lost. The marriage is over. Grief overwhelms you. Despair quickly sets in. Someone mentions that God will find a way to bring good to you despite your losses. You can’t imagine how that would be possible, but you long for some kind of relief. Years pass by and the torment continues. Your next child is chronically ill. You hate your new job. Another failed marriage. Where is the good that was supposed to arrive?

On the morning of November 17, 1999, I was hospitalized in a suburb of Chicago for complications following the removal of my gallbladder. I was 5 months pregnant and displaying the classic signs of internal bleeding. I had been re-admitted three days earlier after some severe symptoms at home. I felt as though my team of doctors had forgotten me when a nurse told me that my blood counts were severely off and that I was in need of a blood transfusion—and yet, I never got the blood transfusion nor did I see any doctor until the morning of the 17th.

My husband was attending Seminary during this time. I’d been sick throughout most of our marriage and was carrying a heavy load of guilty feelings about his continual sacrifice for me. I pretty much begged him to go to class that morning. “I’ll be fine,” I told him. “I’ll call if I need anything.” Somehow, my encouragement worked and he went.

Around 8:30 a.m. I received a call on my hospital room phone. It was my oldest sister. “Dad’s been killed in a car accident!” she cried in a panic stricken voice. I don’t know what I said in response because I had passed out. I was told several days later that I had “coded”: they couldn’t find a heartbeat or blood pressure on me.

Thankfully, a janitor had entered my room and found me unconscious. A team of doctors finally showed up. Our son’s heartbeat was fading as they prepared me for emergency surgery. He was dead by the time the operation was complete.

They called my survival a “miracle”, and yet, somehow, I didn’t feel fortunate. My re-current nightmare had indeed come true—I did give birth to a small, dead, and red baby. I felt like someone had tied me upside down and beaten me to within an inch of my life. And the fact that I remained soon became a source of great pain. Suicide was now on my mind again. I wanted out!

I did not walk out away from my faith immediately. For a few weeks, I continued to use the same old tactics, “It’s ok,” I told my nurse as she handed me our stillborn son, “It just wasn’t meant to be.”

When I was barely well enough to walk, I attended a Future Pastor’s Wives Bible Study. When the leader of the group responded to my tears by misusing the Bible to suggest that my suffering was insignificant—it was just good in disguise, a part of God’s plan, and necessary for my growth—well, I just smiled and thanked her. However, this charade could only go on for so long.

“Good in disguise? Are they crazy?” I wondered. “You expect me to believe that the deaths of my mother-in-law, mother, father, unborn son, and facing a life of chronic illness—as well, as the possibility of never having another child—that all of this pain is actually good? That it is part of God’s plan? If this is the way God runs things, then I want out—out of the church, out of the faith, and out of this world. I’d rather be in hell than commune with a Heavenly Father who causes or allows me suffer in this way!” I was just a little mad!

And so, within a few weeks, I ceased my daily devotions…I set my Bible on the shelf, announced my departure from faith to my husband, and merely sat in the pews to keep him looking good.

“God is out to get me,” I told my counselor.

“Really,” he replied. “How do you know?”

“Everything’s going wrong in my life. I’ve either offended Him terribly or I am so full of sin that this is what He has to do to weed it out of me!”

It’s no wonder, given the rampant prevalence of abuse in our society, that we can’t seem to comprehend that the only true God of the Universe is not in any way, shape or form out to get us or bent on hurting us. We can’t scare believe that He’s constantly at work for our good. We have thought of Him as just sitting there pushing the “OK” key on cancer, death, sickness, marital strife, job loss and more—as if He is giving the final OK. BUT HE IS NOT!

Don’t believe me? There’s one story in the book of Acts that settles this matter for me. It is the tale of how the Apostle Paul was being held as a prisoner while traveling at sea. The crew encountered a fierce storm and Paul, being the evangelist that he was, took advantage of the situation to teach his terrified shipmates about God. Acts 27:21-31 tells how an angel of the Lord appeared to Paul to reassure him that everyone on board would survive the storm. You could say that this angelic being was proclaiming God’s will, His desired outcome…His predestined plan for the trouble that was threatening.

Good for Paul and his crew. How nice it was for them that they had received a word of knowledge about was going to occur. I sure wish that one of those angels would have appeared to me during my darkest hour and said, “Don’t worry, Jennifer. You will be the mother of two remarkable boys. You will regain your health and be empowered to tell others about God’s love.” But I didn’t know how things were going to turn out. There was no angelic voice to comfort me. Paul and his fellowship mates, however, had a promise. God had clearly stated His intentions and was going to make certain that this good news would come to pass.

But would it have been possible that this good—this sparing of life—this blessing that God had stated He wanted—was it possible that God could have not gotten what He wanted? Verses 29-32 tell us that they could have died. In these verses, Paul warns that “Unless these men remain in the ship, you yourselves cannot be saved.” God wanted and you might even say, predestined for those men to live, but if they had left the ship, they would have died.

God could have ordered His universe in such a manner that His desires were automatically carried out. He could have dictated every little move to us. He could have wound us up like old-fashioned wind up dolls, set us on the floor towards the path He wanted us to go, and watched in delight. But we aren’t wind up dolls. We are people. And I say that life is far too complex to be narrowly defined by cause and effect. A+ B doesn’t always equal C. You can’t always determine the value of x simply by knowing the other variables. I don’t see this matter of suffering as being crystal clear.

In my mind it is now obvious: Just because you got sick, just because your loved one died, just because someone mistreated you, just because you lost your job, just because your windshield wipers broke—does not mean that God wanted those hardships for you. It wasn’t necessarily a test…a punishment…or part of God’s plan.

I do, however, believe that God was “out to get me.” He was out to get me for good. Whatever you are facing today, please know that God loves you. He’s not out to harm you. He is, however, out to get you…much like I’m bent on capturing my 3 year-old for loving hug.

Article Source: http://www.articles.narrowisthepath.com

Jennifer Brost is the author of "How I Suffered from My Theology: and regained my faith by questioning 3 beliefs," (www.deliverancepublishers.com), a Pastor's Wife, the mother of 2 lively boys, and the President of The Job Foundation (www.thejobfoundation.org). She travels from her home in Iowa to speak on topics like, "If God is so good, then why...?" and "How to Heal and Not Wound: avoiding statements that hurt already fragile spirits."

Please Share and Bookmark this Article