God is With Us in Adversity
I was asked recently to give a talk on Joseph of Egypt. I'm sharing an expanded version here because I want everyone to see it and draw strength from it.
Everybody has trials. Every single person. But the universality of it hasn't yet provided a satisfactory answer on the necessity behind each of those hard times. Sure, we have theories. Maybe the difficulties stem from agency--either we or someone else made a poor choice, and now we get to learn from the consequences. Maybe the struggles are because we live in a fallen world (aka "mortality") and we need the trials to become better people worthy of living with God. Maybe we are suffering because God made a bet with Satan [I'm thinking Job here] and we just need to hang on long enough to have full vindication and double the blessings we had before.
We've come up with phrases to offer to those who are suffering--"God is in the details." or "You're going through a refiner's fire." or "Everything happens for a reason." The implications of those statements are probably more shattering than the trial itself--so God gave me this problem on purpose? He caused those deaths, that torture, that rape?
Heaven forbid.
That is not the God I believe in.
So when I say that God is with
us in our trials, I do NOT mean that we deserved those trials, or even that
those specific trials are crucial to his plan. I say this because I believe,
and I want you to believe, in a loving, feeling, rational, personal God, who
wants us to relieve suffering wherever we see it, no matter the cause.
In the story of Joseph of Egypt, it is easy to see how his trials were used to rescue his people—if he
hadn’t been sold into Egypt, and been thrown unjustly into prison, then it seems unlikely that he ever would have been noticed by the Pharaoh and been able to enact policies that stored grain against the future regional famine and thus saved not only the people of Egypt but also his own family from starvation.
But most of the time, adversity is inexplicable, and
statements about God being in the details come off as trite and insufficient. I
think of the Holocaust and its genocide of Jews; I think of the enslavement of blacks and
the continued injustice of American laws that perpetuate inequality; I think of
Rwanda and the slaughter of nearly 10% of the population by their neighbors.
Where was the God of miracles, of love, of salvation, then? In an essay
reflecting on his struggle with understanding God, Patrick Mason writes “If
there is a God, and that God is both all-powerful and all-loving, how can there
be so much suffering and evil in the world? A loving parent understands that a
certain amount of pain and struggle is necessary for growth, but they still
hate to see their children suffer needlessly. If I, as an imperfect father, saw
one of my children inflicting serious harm on another—let alone trying to
murder them—I would immediately intervene. No one would think I was a good
parent if I said, “Let’s see what lessons can be learned from Child 1 hacking
at Child 2 with a machete” [1]
And yet it happens. In the past year alone, we have
seen people die for what they say, die for what they believe, die for defending
the defenseless, die from illnesses, and that’s just the deaths. It can be
difficult to see the God of Miracles there. In fact, Jewish scholar Irving
Greenberg questioned how we could “dare talk about [a] God who loves and cares
without making a mockery of those who suffered.”[2]
Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote that “the misfortunes of good people are not only a
problem to the people who suffer and to their families. They are a problem to
everyone who wants to believe in a just and fair and livable world. They
inevitably raise questions about the goodness, the kindness, even the existence
of God.”[3]
Suffering is exactly where Christianity should
shine, because the one we follow is the Supreme Sufferer. We have a God whose
love for us is inextricably linked to his suffering. He suffered in Gethsemane
because he loves us. He is able to love us perfectly because he suffered. Hebrews
4: 15-16 state “He understands humanity, for as a man, our magnificent
King-Priest was tempted in every way just as we are, and conquered sin. So now
we draw near freely and boldly to where grace is enthroned, to receive mercy’s
kiss and discover the grace we urgently need to strengthen us in our time of
[trials].” (The Passion translation)
In Mormon culture, we often focus on the Resurrected
Lord, on the glory and joy of that Easter Sunday; and we often don’t talk about
the God of Friday—the God who experienced abandonment, betrayal, and suffering
so profound that he bled from every pore. This focus often crosses over into
our approach to relieving suffering—that we should encourage those who suffer
by reminding them of the glory we will have in the Resurrection, rather than
acknowledge the very real toll mortality exacts. Worse still, we could think
that interfering with suffering would interfere with God’s plan. That
perspective is not the lesson of the God of Gethsemane, the God we ritually
remember every time we take the Sacrament.
That image of Jesus on the cross should evoke some
action in us. Patrick Mason said “I think God wants me to look at Jesus’ body
on the cross and to say, is this the world that I want? And the answer to that
is no. And so, then, God asks in return, well, what are you going to do about
it?”[4] This
is often how God shows up in our lives: through other people administering
relief. Harold Kushner warned us that “belief in a world to come where the
innocent are compensated for their suffering can help people endure the
unfairness of life in this world without losing faith. But it can also be an
excuse for not being troubled or outraged by injustice around us, and not using
our God-given intelligence to try to do something about it.”[5]
If suffering is part of the plan, it should be to
give us all opportunities to relieve it., to “look deep into the heart of evil
and then to resolve to do differently.”[6]
And if you think about it, if God and the heavens could weep over Lucifer,
crying “how art thou fallen, son of the morning star,”[7]
then we can try our damnedest to cry with our enemies, to mourn any sadness
anywhere inflicted on anyone. We are not taking upon us God’s right to judge,
and we certainly shouldn’t neglect his impulse to minister. That means I should
help you whether I like you or not, whether I think you deserve it or not,
whether you thank me or not. I read the story of Joseph, and am impressed with
his ability to help the very people who caused his suffering, whether they were
his brothers or his former captors. We like to sum up the story by saying
Joseph’s trials were part of God’s plan to save the Israelite nation, but I
think that neglects the full story, wallpapering over the trauma that Joseph
went through, and undermining the Savior’s role as fellow-sufferer. So I will
go back to the God of Friday.
Patrick Mason, commenting on Rwanda, said that he
believes God was present in Rwanda, not in the acts of the perpetrators, but in
the suffering of the victims. That’s where Jesus was embodied in that time and
place. He was suffering with the victims. He was in his Friday-God mode.
I didn’t realize how important that role is until I worked
in a Behavioral Health Unit. For the uninitiated, that’s the Psych Ward. While
I was not there to address their psychiatric needs, I still needed to know how
to approach them and interact with them, and so I received initial training in
the basics of psychotherapy, but honestly what that meant is I got some
training in empathy. One of the instructions that prepared me for my role was
that I needed to validate their feelings before I express hope or give a
solution. No matter what their suffering was—something imagined like the guy
who thought that nano-bots from the government had taken over his body, or
something real like the woman whose abusive husband forced her to take the
blame for killing her baby girl—that psychological pain was real and deserved
my respect.
Christ follows the same pattern. When he first saw
Mary and Martha after the death of their brother Lazarus, he did not dismiss
their pain. John 11 reads “When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews
also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was
troubled,…and Jesus wept.”
In Moses 7, which is a remarkable passage that
repeatedly juxtaposes good (happiness, safety) with evil (darkness, pain),
Jehovah shows Enoch a vision of the future of the Earth, of what happens after
the City of Enoch is taken into heaven, “and the God of heaven looked upon the
residue of the people, and he wept.” Enoch is shocked by this, and asks how a
perfect, holy, just, eternal being who has created millions of stars and earths
and people, how can he weep over just a residue, just a small percentage of
humanity, who were doing bad stuff anyway and maybe didn’t deserve God’s
attention. And God answers, look, these people, who are doing terrible hateful
things to one another, so bad that Satan shall be called their father, they are
mine, and so "the whole heavens shall weep over them, even all the workmanship
of mine hands; wherefore should not the heavens weep, seeing these shall
suffer?"
We have a God who suffers, and that means we have a
God who will acknowledge our pain, will be with us in our aches and agonies and
adversities, whether we deserved them or not.
There’s a hymn that beautifully reinforces this
image of Christ being with us in our sufferings. The caveat is that you have to
realize that another word for “suffer” is “abide”. I’m going to change the
words just using synonyms
Suffer with me, fast comes the night. The darkness
deepens, Lord, anguish with me. When other helpers fail and comforts flee. Help
of the helpless, oh, ache with me[8]
It is a truly comforting thought to know that our
divine advocate has experienced all pains and troubles not just so He can know
what it’s like to suffer, but also so that we may know that we are not alone.
A
couple years ago, when we were still in DC, Mark and I went to the DC temple
for an endowment session—which is a presentation of the Creation, the Fall, and
the way back into God’s presence. For reasons that are irrelevant to my point, I was told to sit out in the hall, while Mark
remained in the endowment room. As I was sitting out there, waiting for some
unknown event so that I could go back in, a sister came out and sat with me.
That is what Christ does in our trials. He sits with us.
Elder Jeffrey R Holland testified “Because Jesus
walked such a long, lonely path utterly alone, we do not have to do so. …
Trumpeted from the summit of Calvary is the truth that we will never be left
alone nor unaided.”[9]
Some suffering may bring blessings here; some
suffering may be the way to transformative salvation, and some suffering may be
inherently pointless, but whatever the suffering, we can know that God is
there, with us in our Fridays, in our
vulnerability, torture, and even just in our dissatisfaction. The God of
Easter, who makes everything better, is not always the side of God that is with
us. When we look around at evil and wonder where God is, remember that God was
just as much a God on that bitter Friday as he was on Sunday; his nature did
not change.
Elder D. Todd Christofferson remarked in April 2022
that “In the end, it is the blessing of a close and abiding relationship with
the Father and the Son that we seek.”[10]
That relationship, that companionship, is how we get through trials.
I recently read a post on Instagram that was expounding on Psalm 16:11 which states "in Your presence is fullness of joy." The author argued that what we should learn from this is that "when life feels unbearable...don't just beg for strength. Get into His presence....Sit in silence and just BE with Him." Joy can come even when your situation doesn't change or when you don't get what you want, because joy comes from being WITH Him.
Francis Webster, in recounting the difficulties of
walking from Iowa to Utah in the 1856 Martin Handcart company, testified that
he “came through with the absolute knowledge that God lives, for we became
acquainted with him in our extremities.” He then asserted that “The price we
paid to become acquainted with God was a privilege to pay.”[11]
I am more cynical than Francis Webster, and so I
cannot tell you that I am privileged with trials. What I can tell you is that
Christ himself explained his bond [or his dedication] to us through his
sufferings. “I will not forget thee…behold I have graven thee upon the palms of
my hands [and your suffering] is always before me.” [Isaiah 49:16][12]
[1] https://www.wayfaremagazine.org/p/rediscovering-god-in-rwanda
[2]
ditto
[3] When
Bad Things Happen to Good People, Harold S Kushner
[4]
Rediscovering God in Rwanda, Patrick Mason, Wayfare magazine
[5] When
Bad Things Happen to Good People, Harold S Kushner
[6]
Patrick Mason again, Rediscovering God in Rwanda
[7]
Isaiah 14:12
[8]
“Abide with Me”, Hymn 166
[9]
“None were with Him”, April 2009, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2009/04/none-were-with-him?lang=eng
[10] “Our Relationship with God”, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2022/04/41christofferson?lang=eng
[11] https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/francis-webster-the-unique-story-of-one-handcart-pioneers-faith-and-sacrifice
[12] Based
on the Expanded Bible, which explains that the walls mentioned in the original
are referencing Jerusalem’s walls, which were destroyed by the Babylonions. I
interpreted the walls reference to be a reminder of what Israelites went
through and their longing to go back home.
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