Why Good Christians Suffer: PART 14
- Grantley Morris
- 23 hours ago
- 9 min read
Why does God sometimes let Satan have his way?
I find myself in a quandary. Having written elsewhere thousands of words highly relevant to the question in hand, I long to instantly meld into your mind all the information they contain without you having to take the time to read them. Since this is impossible, however, I feel driven to resort to begging you to read all of it. You will find the relevant information in links at the end of this webpage.
My dilemma is that I fear some readers will tire before absorbing it all, and end up with a grotesquely distorted view of the God whose love and goodness is so far beyond ours as to defy description.
Without stealing from what I have better said elsewhere, my goal right now is to try some approaches that, whilst not providing every insight I am aware of, might help you realize as quickly as possible that God is the most lovable and trustworthy person you could ever conceive of.
Our Lord is never in any way in league with the devil. As Habakkuk told the Lord, “your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong” (Habakkuk 1:13, NIV) Our God is totally opposed to all evil.
The Almighty is not some ogre. In fact, what alarms some people who don’t understand his ways is that he might be too patient and not nearly as despotic and aggressive as they would prefer (although they want him to act that way only toward other people’s sins; not their own).
As you know, the giving God (James 1:5, literal translation), whose love drives him to sacrifice his all for those who deserve nothing, is the extreme opposite of the one who “only comes to steal, kill, and destroy” (John 10:10-11).
God’s “work is perfect, for all his ways are just. A God of faithfulness who does no wrong” (Deuteronomy 32:4). He “is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves those who have a crushed spirit” (Psalm 34:18). “He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3).
Both intellectually and morally, God’s ways are as higher than ours than the stars are unreachably beyond us (compare Isaiah 55:9). “Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out!” (Romans 11:33). “For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him?” (1 Corinthians 2:16).
The appalling truth is that even the exceptionally humble among us have a perversely inflated view of ourselves. We are too blinded by the log in our own eyes to even recognize the perfection of infinite wisdom and goodness. Driven by a subconscious, self-serving ‘need’ to divert the spotlight off our failings, we have the audacity to judge our Judge.
Anyone thinking he/she is smarter or more tender-hearted that God is like a speck of water vapor thinking itself greater than an ocean. The combined efforts of a thousand Einsteins working around the clock for ten thousand years could not as much as discover all the intricacies and complexities that a loving God must consider when making what we, in our ignorance, think is a simple decision. It is like stumbling upon an expert sweating over diffusing the most sophisticated bomb ever constructed, and us wanting to intervene by casually cutting the first wire we see.
The Almighty detests evil. It infuriates him terrifyingly beyond anything humans are ever capable of feeling. It is safer to torment a grizzly bear’s cub in the presence of its ferocious mother than to even slightly offend one of God’s loved ones – and that’s any human on this planet. The only thing restraining the Almighty is that his love is so overwhelmingly vast that it even embraces the offender.
As the psalmist says of our God, “You are good, and do good” (Psalm 119:68). “The Lord is good to all. His tender mercies are over all his works. . . . The Lord is righteous in all his ways, and gracious in all his works” (Psalm 145:9,17). In fact, Jesus put us all in our place by affirming that only God is good (Mark 10:18, compare Romans 3:12; Job 15:14).
There might be moments – just one of which was Jesus seeming utterly defeated on the cross – when it looks as if God has allowed the devil to have the upper hand – but it is actually a manifestation of God’s genius as the master strategist. The Almighty might, as it were, give the Evil One enough rope to hang himself, but the goal is always the devil’s defeat, and our crucified Lord has given everything to seal the devil’s fate. This was the most critical aspect of Christ’s entire earthly mission:
1 John 3:8 . . . To this end the Son of God was revealed: that he might destroy the works of the devil.
Hebrews 2:14 Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in the same way partook of the same, that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil
Colossians 2:13-15 having forgiven us all our trespasses, . . . he has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross; having stripped the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
And we know the final outworking of this:
Revelation 20:10 The devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet are also. They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
Although Christians differ as to their understanding of the present-day implication of it, we also have this Scripture
Revelation 12:9-10 . . . he who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “. . . the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them before our God day and night.
Here’s solid proof, even in Old Testament times, that God sometimes denies Satan’s requests:
Zechariah 3:1-4 He showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the Lord’s angel, and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary. The Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! . . .”
It goes on to say that Joshua had been wearing dirty clothes and the Lord said, “Take the filthy garments off of him . . . Behold, I have caused your iniquity to pass from you, and I will clothe you with rich clothing.”
The Lord always opposes Satan; sometimes by proving him wrong and sometimes by not even allowing the test. Surely, God refusing to allow a test must happen often – probably more often than not. This is why Scripture confidently says God “will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able” (1 Corinthians 10:13). It is why Job suffered for only a tiny part of his long life, and why so many of us stay healthy most of the time or are healed, or are spared persecution, and so on.
Not only does God prevent tests, he urges us to cooperate with him in this regard. Let me explain.
It was while these matters relating to God, Satan and temptation were thrashing around in my mind that I chilled with horror. I suddenly realized my recklessness in not taking seriously Jesus telling us to pray, “Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:13). I had always held on to a childhood memory verse (1 Corinthians 10:13), that our faithful Lord will not let us be tempted beyond our ability to endure, and on that basis, I arrogantly presumed I could handle whatever was thrown at me without any need for preemptive prayer. Maybe I could, because of God, but to what unpleasantness could my prayerlessness be needlessly exposing me? Suddenly I was in awe of God’s mercy in sparing me until now despite my carelessly ignoring his instructions to take preemptive action through prayer. The very verse I might have misused as an excuse for being too blasé is preceded by “let him who thinks he stands be careful that he doesn’t fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). I’m beginning to wonder how appalled I should be by how cunningly pride and ignorance disguise themselves as faith.
I am by no means saying we can avoid all trials. I have entire pages about the limits God’s Word puts on prayer but, for now, simply remember how Paul’s earnest prayers failed to remove his “thorn” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). Often, however, prayer empowers us to take preemptive measures.
Let’s also note that God puts precise limits on any attack. Consider, for example, what he said to Satan about Job: “. . . but on the man himself do not lay a finger” (Job 1:12, NIV). On a different occasion, God moved the boundary but still kept one limit firmly in place: “. . . but save his life” (Job 2:6, NIV).
And God intervenes: “but I prayed for you,” Jesus told Peter in reference to Satan’s request to sift him (Luke 22:32).
What I presume is one reason for our Lord allowing Satan certain leeway is that if God refused, Satan’s accusations would sow doubts in the minds of other people and spiritual beings and, ultimately, it is better for the accusations to be proved wrong than for God to forcibly suppress the Evil One and let the doubts fester in other minds.
What we must comprehend is that God choosing a path can be mind-reelingly different from him being pleased about it. Most beings, if granted divine powers, might selfishly choose for themselves a life of uninterrupted bliss, but there is nothing remotely selfish about our Lord.
What a stupendously compassionate, selfless God must reluctantly do in a world of sin-drunk rebels enslaved by evil with no desire to be free, is entirely different from what he would delight in doing in a world where everyone is eagerly and continually yielding to the perfection of his wisdom and is whole-heartedly devoted to doing what is good and right.
Distilling complex truth into a few words might be impossible, but I think it is most quickly seen in the torment of the eternal Son of God in the Garden of Gethsemane. Grasp the fact that this was God himself suffering horrifically over doing his own will. “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death,” says Mark 14:34 (KJV). “My heart is oppressed with anguish (or overwhelmed/crushed/consumed with sorrow) to the very point of death” are other scholarly attempts to render these words. “Being in agony he prayed more earnestly. His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground,” says Luke 22:44.
Volumes have been written about the depth contained in these brief descriptions of Jesus’ torment. It is suggested that it could involve the rare, but medically attested phenomenon, known as hematidrosis (hematohidrosis is an alternative spelling). Severe mental stress (sometimes preceded by an intense headache and abdominal pain) can cause hemorrhaging of the vessels supplying the sweat glands, resulting in blood mixing with one’s sweat (Source: Wikipedia), 9th November, 2018). Note also that Jesus’ anguish was so intense that he sweated profusely despite it being a cold night (John 18:18).
Reading, even in gut-wrenching detail about someone’s pain, however, is vastly different from personally experiencing it.
Stupendously compounding this is that God suffers God-sized pain, which I believe is infinitely more intense than any human can endure. Although, as I have said, Jesus’ humanity gives us some conception of his suffering, our finiteness severely limits our ability to comprehend the extremes of divine anguish.
Consider two people who are being tortured. One is so weak that he dies after a few seconds. The other is so strong that he suffers it minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, century after century. Or consider two people who know that someone else will suffer the moment they cease enduring the pain. One gives up after a few seconds. The other loves so immensely that he keeps on suffering for centuries. Or think of the difference not in terms of time but intensity. Or look at it this way: if seeing someone dear to us in pain can distress so deeply that we would rather suffer than them, how would we feel if we had the intellectual capacity to be simultaneously aware of every detail of a million people’s anguish and feel equally deeply for each of them.
Our Lord keeps on loving sin-ravished people and it keeps on hurting him. Moreover, Christians on earth suffer, and through his love our Lord is as intimately connected to their suffering as we are connected to our own body, rendering him acutely sensitive to any part that is in agony. Remember, for example, how personally the risen Lord took Saul’s mistreatment of believers:
Acts 9:4 . . . “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
He is so deeply connected with us that:
Zechariah 2:8 . . . he who touches you touches the apple of his eye.
Matthew 25:40 . . . because you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.
Ephesians 5:30 . . . we are members of his body, of his flesh and bones.
The Story So Far
I remind you that I have not exhausted my limited understanding of a subject that exceeds finite minds to grasp. My goal has simply been to provide a few quick insights and leave it to you to pursue more in links at the end of this webpage.
Link Referred to Above
(Best Left Until After Reading This Entire Series)
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